Geek-Online

July 15, 2009

Apollo 11 - The loss of wonder in today’s society.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — Jeff Smith @ 7:55 am

40 years ago today the crew of Apollo 11 would be getting ready for their historic launch. Tomorrow will be the 40th anniversary of the successful launch of Apollo 11 with Monday being the anniversary of the actual landing. We have not had a lunar mission in the life time of any registered member of this forum. The last lunar mission was Apollo 17 in December of 1972.

In an age when people wonder why the number of sceintist and engineers are dwindling I propose the reason is lack of wonder. In the 50’s and 60’s we had the lunar mission to inspire student. Even in the 80’s we had a new space shuttle. The future looked bright and full of hope. In today climate we are about to retire the space shuttle without a suitable replacement. The International Space Station will be /deorbited/ in 2016.

Many people deride the space program because of the astronomical cost (no pun intended). There are very few direct financial gain by having a space program. The intangibles from such work are tremendous. Technologies developed for the space program make their way into our life. Items such the ear thermometer, smoke detector, and everyone’s favorite drink Tang are spin off of the space program.

I would encourage everyone to take a moment and think about the beauty and wonder of space. Reignite the wonder you had as a child when you first heard of the brave men and woman who roared into space. Math and Science are fundamental to our society. I can think of few ways to inspire more children to because scientist and engineers than the space program.


June 12, 2009

iPhone Quick Tip: Cut and Paste

Filed under: Apple, Quick Tips, Uncategorized, iPhone — Tags: , , , , — Jeff Smith @ 8:01 am

One of the features requested the most on the iPhone is Cut and Paste.  I took 3 generations of the iPhone software before Apple finally added this simple feature.  I doesn’t work quite the way I thought it would but it does work.   To Cut|Copy you double tap the text you want to Cut|Copy.  This will bring up the Cut|Copy menu and the highlighting handles.  Chances are it has not highlighted all the text you would like.  To highlight more text just drag the handles over the text you need.   Tap the Cut or Copy command once the text has been selected to move the text into a temporary buffer.

iPhone-CutCopyPaste
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iPhone-SelectSelectAllPaste

To Paste is just as simple.  Once the text has been moved to a buffer you can navigate to the location you want to paste.  Double tap and selected Paste.

You will also notice when you double tap an area with no text you get the option to Select All.  Use this feature to select all available text.


June 9, 2009

Are hackers partially schizophrenic?

Filed under: Uncategorized, crafts — Tags: , , — Jeff Smith @ 10:06 am

http://www.developingsecurity.com/weblog/2009/06/are-hackers-partially-schizophrenic.html


March 3, 2009

Utah House Bill 353 - Why I Support It.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Jeff Smith @ 2:35 pm

There has been a lot of talk in the video games industry about Utah House bill 353.  There main complaint is that it will punish retailers for following the rating system.  That if will force retailers to drop the rating system altogether.  The Video Games Voting Network, a great organization supporting the rights of gamers across the nation recent sent me an email asking me to write my congressman in oppostion of this bill.   They say there is no need for the bill as 80% of underage buyers are already being turned down and Utah has an amazing 94% particaption rate in the ESRB system.  Why jeapordize this with unesccasry regulation.  I on the other hand see this as a method to let the industry regulate itself with govermnment backing.  Obviously the system is failing if 20% are still able to get their hands on M rated games.  I guess 80% isn’t bad, is it?  If your doctor only had an 80% survial rate you would still go with him, right?

It is either and industry rating the games with government backing in the enforcement role or government rating and enforcement.  Lets face it there is no way the industry can enforce the rating system.  Anyhoo that is why I am in favor of Utah House Bill 353.


December 15, 2008

Extra Day Conclusion

Filed under: Uncategorized — Jeff Smith @ 10:17 am

Well the experiment was a failure.  I should not say a failure because experiments do not fail, they sometimes don’t support your hypothesis.  Physically I was able to maintain my schedule for a few days.  Unfortunately social  norms precluded me from getting adequate sleep.  People (work, friends, etc) kept calling me during my sleep cycles. :(


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