It is now official: Our solar system has only eight planets!

Textbooks around the world will now have to be rewritten.

Prague astronomical congress strips Pluto of planet status

Yes, it's official. 2,500 astronomers can't be wrong ... besides, what else do they have to do, it's only taken 2 weeks to decide against what we've accepted for so many years ... there must not be enough real science happening lately. Why with Global Cooling, oh wait, maybe that's it ... since the big cool down we've needed a diversion to take the minds off the fact the the Global Warming scare isn't really there. Is that it?!?

And what's this do for the mysterious Planet X (or 10), takes care of that one doesn't it. It's not Planet X anymore, it's something like Planet 9 ... unless it waits too much longer, then it might be Planet ... 4

Just waiting,
-Liam

All You Need to Know About Night vision Equipment

by Rory H. Hawkins

Night Vision is an optical device consisting of high-quality image intensifier tubes and optics that amplify existing light. The Night Vision makes it possible for you to see in conditions that are otherwise not possible for naked eyes. Night vision products are empowered with Infrared Illuminator that provides a light source for the system. The light source amplifies the images and as a result we can see the objects in dark. We can see the objects in low light conditions as well such as in dark caves, where there is no source of available ambient light.

The working principle of a Night Vision is not at all complex. It is quite interesting on the contrary. In very dark conditions, the night vision gathers any available light like starlight, moonlight or infrared light through its front Objective Lens. The objective lens transmits this light through a set of optical lenses and passes it to the Electronic Intensifier Tube (EIT.). Located on the front of the Electronic Intensifier Tube is the photocathode screen that rap out electrons to produce a high level of energy.

A high static field is generated from EIT that pushes the electrons at the back of the EIT. This is a very sensitive layer and is known as phosphorescent screen. The electrons gathered, strike the Phosphorescent Screen with indefinite high speed and allow it to illuminate. During this process, an image is produced that gets magnified by the Ocular Lens located at the back of the Night Vision. The ocular lens makes it possible for us too se in the dark.

The image that you perceive in the Night Vision is not at all clear at the initial level. It appears as an indistinct, blurred green color. The Ocular Lens slowly makes the adjustment that fits your eyesight.

There are different types of Night Vision glasses available in the market are Generation1, Night Vision Monocular, Advanced Night Vision, Night Vision Binocular and the Audio Monocular. The Generation 1 works without active infra red light source. It amplifies the existing light several thousand times to make our vision clear in the dark. It is a low budget night vision and most popular all across the world. The other types of Night Vision are for specific purposes only and quite expensive too. They are mostly used by professionals and are not for ordinary fun and adventure loving persons.

Rory H. Hawkins writes about night vision and other interesting topics. For more information on night vision goggles visit us today.

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RUN! Hide your vegies! The Ware-Rabbit Lives!

Yahoo News:LONDON (AFP) - In a tale reminiscent of the last Wallace and Gromit movie, furious villagers in northeast England have hired armed guards to protect their beloved communal vegetable gardens from a suspected monster rabbit.

Leeks, Japanese onions, parsnips and spring carrots have all been ripped up and devoured by the mystery were-rabbit -- prompting the 12 allotment holders in Felton, north of Newcastle, to hire two marksmen with air rifles and orders to shoot to kill.

"It is a massive thing. It is a monster. The first time I saw it, I said: 'What the hell is that?'" the Northumberland Gazette newspaper quoted local resident Jeff Smith, 63, as saying on its website (www.northumberlandtoday.co.uk).

He claims to have seen the black and brown rabbit -- with one ear bigger than the other -- about two months ago, and at least three fellow allotment holders say they have seen it as well.

"I have seen it and it is bigger than a normal rabbit. It's eating all our crops and we grow the best stuff here," said retired miner George Brown, 76, quoted by the domestic Press Association news agency.

Smith could not be reached for comment Friday, but his mother told AFP that the hare-raising story is true -- and no less an authority than the British Rabbit Council said it was credible.

"Certain breeds do grow very big, like the Continental Giant" which can be 66 centimeters (26 inches) in length or more, a spokesman for the Nottinghamshire-based council, which represent rabbit breeders, told AFP.

In the last hit movie featuring Wallace and his dog Gromit, the two cartoon characters battled a monster rabbit that was cutting a swathe of destruction through locals' prize vegetable plots.

Toast on a stick anyone?

I suppose I should ramble tonight about the Flavor Wave Oven.

After burning almost everything I put my hands to, *keep that fire alarm plugged in*. I’ve got too many things to do, so I’m always multi-tasking, and when I cook I run off to do other things … but then I forget I was cooking … and … opps, toast again.

Today I found hiding in a closet, like are many thing that Mom bought and never got around to using, or bought for backups, (she had enough Christmas gifts stashed away for years to come), *ahem*, I found a “Flavor Wave Oven”. It’s a convection oven, the first model no doubt (#20007). This oven has a TIMER on it, *joy*, that’s what I need. Something to stop the burning process that I begun and forgot about.

But I found no manual for it, and wasn’t sure if I was operating it correctly. Naturally I can push enough buttons to figure anything out, but how they though it would be operated and how I’m deciphering it, might be separate realities. So I looks for a manual in the great ether of knowledge, and Shazzam, I find Thane who now markets it. Mine was made by Hearthware (TM) Home Products, but remember mine is the original *lightning, thunder, echo* “Flavor Wave Oven”. (Oven, not Onion, I keep wanting to say onion. I must still be hungry)

I found the Thane site here. And they actually have their manuals available for download here.

So now I’ve found a great Oven to do my burning for me :-) I can set it and if I forget, it shuts down, unlike my stove and oven. I really like convection ovens anyway. I hate microwaves, I don’t use them! Microwaves are for radio communications, not for mounting in your kitchen. Dangerous on your health, and on your food. Try watering a plant from microwaved water (cooled back down) and see if it lives.

Perhaps I’ll let you know how this all works out. Cheers.
Let the flames begin.

Cutting edge, or over the edge?

So you’re looking for some “out-there” stuff are you?  After all, this is ‘tHe wARp cOiL ReLoadEd’. Then try some of these on for size:

Jeff Rense is on the edge sometimes, but probably more on the right side then he looks --  http://www.rense.com/

Alex Jones and his InfoWars and PrisonPlanet is on the cutting edge, this is a must see, visit it often.  This site I will endorse -- http://www.infowars.com/  &  http://prisonplanet.com/

And try this one too -- http://www.propagandamatrix.com/

Check out this video -- http://www.adcritic.com/interactive/view.php?id=5927

I know that’s not much, but those there will take you quite some time to digest, so have at it, and keep your head up.

May Day, and you thought Communism was dead.

If communism is dead, and the cold war is over, then why do they still celebrate May Day and have their military parade in Russia?!?

1.5 million people participated in May Day rallies in Russia.  In Switzerland, Sweden, Chile & Turkey protesters clashed with police, and demonstrators denouncing the International Monetary Fund and the U.S.

Under communist rule, an annual parade in Moscow’s Red Square marked the international labor holiday known as May Day. Although the parade honored the working people of the Soviet Union, communist leaders such as Joseph Stalin, used the event to display the country’s military forces and to honor themselves.

Associated Press reports that THIS year:

“communists in Russia honored Lenin and Marx.”
“Some of the biggest traditional gatherings were in Moscow, where 25-thousand people gathered to hear speeches from trade union leaders and the city mayor.”
“Meanwhile, communists marched from a square where there is a statue of Lenin to their usual rallying spot opposite the Bolshoi Theatre, where there's a statue of Karl Marx.”

Hmmm, response, interesting

So I write a little gibberish and it sells.  Interesting.  I seem to have moved far from my being a journalistic reporter, to just a dull blogger.  What’s become of me?!?  Perhaps I’ll wake up soon and get out of the rabbit hole – or not.

The day here was striking, and yet had a chill to it that one couldn’t bring himself to accept.  Why it looked so nice, and it’s been so warm, and after all – it’s supposed to be spring isn’t it?  The mind just couldn’t bring it’s self to understanding just why it had to turn the heat on with such a sunny day as it was.  Why it’s 230am now, and it’s just as warm as it was in the bloody daylight.

Watched a couple movies this even.  Too much cussing going on.  I know we don’t want censorship, but what about morals, can we get some of them!?  That would help the foul mouth problem, and many others as well.

I warned you

This is what happens if I just ramble on…

The grass is growing fast. Yesterday my brother overfilled the gas can in the back of the car, so he’s trying to air it out (exciting isn’t it).

Listened to Car Talk and Prairie Home Companion today.

The cat’s in heat for the first time.

I have a couple cars to work on and a weed-eater to dissemble and re-ring. Trees to trim. Garden to plant. Computers to wire up (LAN). Oh, and it’s almost 3pm and I still haven’t taken time to get breakfast (as usual), see why I don’t have time to blog :)

So that’s just some blithering from down here in the valley, catch you later, Cheers.

Liam's getting tired of blogs

They are taking too much of his time, even though he doesn't spend that much on them.

Blogs are something that should be kept up to date regularly, and he just doesn’t seem to have the time or material to do that. So… either he gets on here and just babbles, or he focus his energies on more static web page designs.

He doesn’t know yet.

MSWord Blogger thing

Just a comment on this Blogger for MSWord thing.

This is a real great tool for posting a quick blog, though I usually like to do some other tweaking while I’m at Blogger, this really makes it fast to post as I don’t have to wade through Blogger to do it.

I wonder how good it translates the MS Word coding though.  I’ve had problems with pasting Word into Blogger before.  I’ve hopes it will continue to work out ok.

Human organs on eBay?

China 'selling prisoners' organs'

Top British transplant surgeons have accused China of harvesting the organs of thousands of executed prisoners a year to sell for transplants.

(read article)

Hitler – Was he ever born?

Seems to be quite a difference in opinion as to the exact date of birth of one Adolf Hitler.

• “The pageantry of the Third Reich and the precision of its army reached a dramatic climax during the festivities honoring Adolf Hitler on his 50th birthday: April 20th, 1939”

• “21 Apr 2006. Cities notch up security for Hitler's birthday”

• “several dozen skinheads in Tartu, Estonia held a torch-bearing demonstration to mark Hitler's birthday, according to an April 22, 2001 broadcast on Estonian Television.” This piece dated April 24, 2001

• “On April 20, 1939, Archbishop Orsenigo celebrated Hitler's birthday”

• “Today In Alternate History, April 20th, 2005. in 1889, Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau, Austria” Among other alternate views.

I would seem that 20 April wins out as the most popular date for Hitlers birthday. That is if popular opinion is the correct thing to gauge it by. After all the popular opinion of the powers in Germany in the 1930’s & 40’s wasn’t to be questioned now was it?

We also find that Wikipedia has some interesting things to say about the man:
“Hitler was a black comedian who gained power in Germany facing crisis after World War I.”
(I see that that’s been changed now, I suppose to what it should say. But one never knows what Wiki might say next.)

Remember, this year the Days of Remembrance fall between April 23 and April 30.
Visit http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/dor_06/ for more information.

Cool that Hard Drive.

A project of interest:

Ventilating a hard drive case.

Is your external Hard Drive Case toasting your hard drive? Try this fix.

If you have on of those external IDE hard drive case that interfaces via USB you might not have enough air flow to cool the hard drive and thus lead to premature failure.

This project involves widening the fan slots to increase the air flow. (Read the article)

Good news, I'm no longer a wanted man.

Good news. After more than a week, and over a dozen requests – blogger.com has responded and my Motorsport Madness blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared it and it will no longer appear as potential spam. Hoorahh! Hmmm, seems I’m not a fugitive now :-).

We live and learn. Thanks Blogger :-),
-Liam Sand

Welcome to my spam-blog!

It would seem that my Motorsport Madness blog is considered a “spam blog” by blogger.com, and I can’t get them to review my site or respond to me. Now I’ve see many spam blogs on blogger.com or blogspot.com (whatever you prefer), and I find them COS THEY’RE ROTATING THEM TO YOU IN THEIR SYSTEM, but alas, I’m not rotating in the system and can’t seem to get there – cos I’m considered a spam blogger.

Real Spam Bloggers on Blogger.com

It makes me wonder how they found me, because there’s plenty on real spam bloggers on blogger.com (or blogspot.com, if you like) and they’re obviously so. But me? I’m just a little guy with hardly any posts or activity, what made me flag them. Well it appears that it’s because I have several links back to the same site (sounds like a forum would be “spam forum”, … spamfortium … whathaveyou). So that’s how the spam-bloggers don’t get caught, they have their spam-site with all the links (nothing but links) to many (very many) diverse (many) sites, and that doesn’t flag the system.

Yes I use some articles from a select few sites, not because I support them or am affiliated with them or anything, but because I liked their articles, and they let me use them. Thanks ArticleCube.

I Finally looked into it

This took me quite some time to figure out too. It’s not like blogger.com informed me that I’d been flagged as spam-blogging. No! After a few months of having to deal with verifying my posts, I finally looked into it. First I checked my settings – for a long time I though it was something that I set it to do. But after getting annoyed by it, and I can’t used MS Word to post because of the picture verification, I found it was this “spam-blog” thing. Well that’s just great, I wondered why I wasn’t getting the traffic I once had, and here I was doing more work on my Motorsport Madness blog, and it was getting me nowhere.

I say as Graham Chapman repeatedly said, "I don’t like Spam!"

From Dark Ages to PDA's

What's a man to do about a PDA today? I'm sure I'm not the only one that has been in the dark ages, and is now looking at getting a PDA.... but I look and look and look, and can't find anyone that has a good review on, basically, all the PDA's, like a history outline. Tell me when they came out, what features they have, pro/con, comparisons, PDA Brands – HP, Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Palm, Acer, ...

Accuracy in media?!?

Fox News (watch it only for the entertainment, if you can stand it), Why is it I could easily find more/better information than they had during this particular report!?!

My days in the media we wouldn't do such a thing, If you don't know what you're talking about you're better off to shut up.

And NEWS?!? News is to be non-biased reporting. Fox News is blatant at giving their opinions, or more accurately said -- their politically bent opinions. Or is this SNL (Saturday Night Live) news? They talk off camera joking with the crew to blur their "news" opinions, and it's not just them coming up with this off their head -- they make such errors that they must be reading it from a tele-prompter. (like saying comma for coma)

Our role is to inform the public

Marvin Kalb, a longtime broadcaster now with Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, says "some tilting toward a sympathetic view of the American soldier at war" is "a natural phenomenon in this context," one that had not prevented the public from getting "very good coverage on television."

But Mark Hertsgaard--whose books about U.S. foreign policy include "On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency"--strongly criticizes what he calls the "false patriotism" of the networks.

"It is not our role to revere or applaud the government or the military. Our role is to inform the public and thereby serve the country," he says. "The government is not the country, and so when you see reporters talking about 'we' and essentially following the good-guy script, they are...betraying the real principles of journalism and American democracy."

Visit Memory Alpha

Warp coils are an integral part of a starship's warp drive. Mounted within the warp nacelles, the coils take the plasma generated by the warp core, and use it to create the warp field that allows faster than light travel.

Warp coils are typically composed of cast verterium cortenide surrounding a core of densified tungsten-cobalt-magnesium.

Learn about the warp coil.

Bias in the Media

I'm watching Fox News, (for entertainment I guess.) Is this cowman I'm watching? Letterman?

They're certainly not trying to pass this off as NEWS are they? Whatever happened to the BBC's stand on being non-biased in reporting? Even the BBC has veered from that long held motto. You don't get news anymore, you get a politically corrected spin to it, but you're not supposed to notice they're spinning it.

It's one thing to be an alive, thinking, real personality, another to take up the chat show persona on news events, to sway your viewers toward your side of the issues.

Remember one mans freedom fighter or patriot - is another mans terrorist. Terrorist is a word the BBC wouldn't use years ago. It's not because there weren't any, it's because it's a biased word. It's not reporting -- it's biasing!

Ventilating a hard drive case

In this project we're working on ventilating a Hard Drive case.

This case is for housing an external IDE hard drive and interfacing it to USB 2.0

The case comes with a small fan, but I'd say it's just for looks, as it only has micro-slots for the air to come out of. There are slightly bigger holes in the front for the air intake, but not by much.

So what's the deal? The hard drive gets hot! There's no airflow.

Our mission - to ventilate it!
>

The project involves routing out the fan slots to increase the non-existent air flow.

Let's get to it!

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Tools you'll need:

• Phillips driver #2 & #1
• Thin narrow flat bar or knife
• Dremil™ tool (or similar) with straight flute (or slight taper) bit
• Or a drill & bits if you want to use the files to make to holes
• Round file - small chain saw file about 3/32"
• Small thin flat file - like a point file
• Small needle nose pliers

The side straps is all that holds the case together, and removing them is to be a careful matter, they snap off, but we don't want to snap them. If you carefully pry between the fan and the case the pins holding the fan will pop out.
Once the case is open you'll need to remove all the guts but the power switch & plug, this includes the hard drive (I started this without doing removing the hard drive, but found it had to be done to cut the tapers in the slots with my router/grinder), it will be easier and safer in the end to remove the HD also. So mark the plugs or make a drawing of the color codes, trust me, you'll forget how it went when you go to reinstall it, what seems obvious now will have you questioning it later.
The hardest thing, after the case side straps, is getting the fan out. This case has the fan mounted with plastic pressure pins that just press into 2 protruding case mounts.

Use a thin narrow flat bar or blade and place it between the fan and the case at the point where the fan has a mounting plug (where they should have used screws). You might elect to replace these plugs with screws when you reinstall the fan, a small screw should work in the holes, be very careful they're not too large or you'll break the protrusion, and then you'll be a happy camper.

These pins should pop out with a little twisting force on the bar. Careful you don't loose them as they'll POP out.
With the fan removed, take a marker or pencil and mark (or trace) where the metal plate meats the plastic case. This will be your guide when you cut the slots out.
If you're not use to working on cutting holes this small with your cutter you should do some practicing on something laying around that you can destroy. This takes a steady hand and an understanding of how the cutter and bit act in the plastic of the case, if you've got sharp deep groves in your bit (like mine does) it can get away from you and take out more material than you want. Take it easy and slow, you can do the edges with the files if you like, then you just need to open a hole so you can get the file into it. If you don't have a Dremil™ type tool and wish to use a drill bit, then you can just cut a series of holes on the slot so that you can get your file in to finish to job. This technique can produce better looking results as a router can easily gouge out too much material (I know).

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To the cutting room -

On this case they have a foot under the fan (great design), so you can't cut that out, and you don't want to make it too thin around it or you'll take the strength away from the weight bearing foot. But you can still get good airflow by simply opening up the slots that are under the fan. The slot extends out beyond what the fan sees, there's only limited benefit by opening them up more than where the fan sits, I opened them up a little as to aid in the distribution of exiting air because of the low clearance on the bottom that you're blowing the air into and to make it look symmetrical (if that didn't make sense, don't worry about it). There is 1 whole slot that I didn't touch as it's not under the fan.

Make sure you remove the metal plate, it will dull your bit if & when you hit it, and you'll want to remove more material from the slots than you can get to with the plate in place..



After removing the metal plate you can see your marks and know what material to remove.
Here you can see I alreay started cutting the slots.



Inside & outside views of case after cutting, and before.

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Before you put things back together -

Clean the case of burs
Clean the fan




Cleaning the fan with a mascara brush. Don't throw out those old brushes, having several kinds of brushes on hand is helpful. After you get it all in, and before you put the case top on, plug it up and power it up to see if the fan is going to work. Mine made a lot of noise because of an alignment problem, because of the shotty mounting (pins). I had to press on the center a few times and get it centered, then if quieted down.



The guts in the case (metal shield romoved).

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Next up-

I'll finish up on the front plate and the cosmetics in a later update.
We're going to put a filter in the front to keep the dust out (yes, you have dust).