Cuppacafe

All that Mars and not a drop to drink…

…not so fast kids, it seems that Scientists have indeed found some Aqua on the Red Planet. According to :

Water ice has been discovered on Mars by the Phoenix probe which landed on the planet last month, scientists confirmed.

Mission controllers had been excited by chunks of white material in the Martian soil exposed by the craft’s robot arm.

On Saturday scientists confirmed what they had hoped - that the material was frozen water.

The Press Association

So you all know what this mean, don’t you? Well Walt will have a place to make a rest stop on his way to Senda

On Beyond Pluto (or, I think I might have found Walt!)

So as I was beating the bush looking for our lost leader, I think that the problem that I’ve been having is that I’ve been looking, well in the bush, not the heavens. You see, knowing not only what a geologist (rock nerd) that ol’ Walt is, I nearly forgot what a science nerd he is as well.

Hence, Rocks + Nerd + Science + Nerd = well, a pretty far gonzo space rock nerd. Needless to say, I think I found him on a well what can only be described as a Vision Quest for Planet X, the missing 10th planet of our Solar System. To wit:

If I’m reading this correctly, According to Space.com there is apparently a large planet-sized object three times as far from Earth as is Pluto. The new body (called Sedna):

The hidden world — thought to be much bigger than Pluto based on the model — could explain unusual features of the Kuiper Belt, a region of space beyond Neptune littered with icy and rocky bodies. Its existence would satisfy the long-held hopes and hypotheses for a “Planet X” envisioned by scientists and sci-fi buffs alike.

Via Space.com

I mean, we all know how goofy Walt gets for this stuff, so it is perhaps not entirely impossible that he made his way to the Houston Space Center in an effort to sneak aboard the space craft so that he can be the first person to step foot on Senda in 2015. So, I know that you all will join me in wishing Walt well on his desire to find new means of fuel subsidies, even if it means he has to go to the ends of the Earth, er, the Solar System to find them.

(Here is where I was going to insert a faked quote by Alison saying something like “I always knew he was out of this world,” but I figured that was pushing it, even for me, so, I figure I’ll just wind it up here, and move on to, you know, important stuff.)

Hey, it could happen. I mean, the part about Senda is real, and well, we do all know that Walt is a bit, ah, off (especially these days, diggin’ around in the dirt, takin’ pictures of cows, and talkin’ all crazy like there’s Black Gold (Texas “T”) out there in them thar hills or sumptin’)

Or, I could just be hallucinating again, like that time in college when my hair caught fire, and I was chased down the street by that dinosaur…and got Debbie Gibson pregnant with my two-headed love child…

Mmmm…Let me get back to you on all of this, eh?

The Perfessor

Bus schedules loaded on your cell phone

Google Maps on a cell phone is great for people getting around in cars, but now they’ve added an interactive bus schedule feature that looks to be essential to those trying to get around town on the bus system. There was a time when I used the bus system here in Houston to get back and forth to work (yes, there actually is a mass transit system in Houston, go fig!) but not knowing other bus schedules and routes made veering away from my chosen path a bit unpredictable. Nobody wants to get stuck somewhere after discovering that a bus line ends its day an hour earlier than you expected…

Google Maps is easy enough to figure out, you probably don’t have to listen to this Google Guy talking in his strangely nerdy sounding voice about the details of transit solutions for Google Maps, but here he is anyways –

A new way to search

Well, given that Walt has been off playing with his new friends and leaving us to our own devices, I think that it is time that we have a little bit of fun in these pages. A few weeks ago, I got turned on to a new search site that seems to be looking through the Web in a brand new way.

The site is called SearchMe, and well, you really need to click that link, open the window, and then see it for yourself. The site is currently in Beta Test, and It would be extremely premature to say that it will overtake Google, Yahoo, Ask, or even any of the other existing search engines of choice, but it is certainly a way-cool way to look at the web.

Check it out, you’ll be pleasently surprised. and, well entertained.

The Perfessor

Better than Jesus Phone; the Android could be God Phone

I won’t go so far as to say that this Android Phone of Google’s is the “God” to Apple’s “Jesus” iPhone, but at the end of this video I get all weak in the knees. It’s the application of Google Maps to an intelligent phone that just rouses my geek lust. Right now, I have zero use for all the cool stuff on this phone, but I can tell you without question, I want it.

Come on, Street Map view locked into the phone’s Compass Mode? Oh, I’m so there. Truly this is what I want.

Warning, the video is taken at a developer’s conference Google held this week, so expect the first few minutes of this vid to bore you with developer chatter, but then the phone is demo’d, and you get to see the way a small desktop on a small phone can be utilized…

Funnybooks for the Geek on the Go!

That’s right little ones, soon you will be able to get your comics on the go, as Marvel is apparently toying with the possibility of making their line of digital comics available for delivery to your cell phone.

According to a recent post on Gizmodo, this is the new mad-cool app for your phone.

Marvel Comics wants to port their comics to mobile phones. Seems like a perfect thing to read while you’re supposed to be paying attention to what’s going on around you, but sure how you’re going to get through full page spreads while maintaining text readability on 3-inch screens.

Read the rest of this post.

Interestingly enough, the fellow that posted this doesn’t feel that “$5-$10 a month” to subscribe to Marvel’s online digital comics “isn’t something to complain about.” only, there seems to be some dissension on that particular point. Briefly:

why can’t I take smaller bites at the apple? Your monthly subscription model looks fine, it’s one I’ve tried and liked on various music services, but you know what? Sometimes I just want a song, and sometimes I just want a comic. Think about it: Do you think everyone wants to take a $10 bite right out of the gate? Or that everyone wants a full-blown subscription plan, paying yet another monthly fee for yet another service? … Let me access the single issues I want for a quarter or 50 cents. Let Joe High Schooler check out that comic his friend told him about without having to sign up for a full blown plan. Let people get comfortable with paying for digital comics in small, easily-digestible doses.

There’s more, but you can use the link and see for yourself. Personally, while there are way-cool sghts for digital comics on the Web, me personally, I’m still patched into the dead tree versions.

The Perfessor

Out of this world!

While I know that this sort of post is more Walt’s interest than mine, he’s been real busy sleeping at the switch lately, so I figured that I’d jump into the fray and post it for him.

Seems that NASA has finaly managed to hit one out of the park (so to speak), and successfully landed a probe in Mars’ most northern polar region, which is believed to hold a reservoir of ice beneath it. Well, instead of crashing yet another billion of our tax dollars on the Red Planet, they seemed to have successfully landed the Phoenix Mars Lander softly in the Martian arctic plains on Sunday. Since then it has apparently dazzled scientists with the first-ever glimpse of the Red Planet’s high northern latitudes.

Yep, we finally got one placed (gently) on the surface of mars (and not coming in at 100 MPH). So I guess that the NASA guys all do have something to celebrate! If you want to read more about the post, you can check out the full post over here. Then you can post a quick note to our Imperious leader, and tell him that while he was on vacation some mad-cool outerspace stuff took place. Boy will he be jeralous, eh?

The Perfessor