January 2006 – LonelyMachines

Challenger, 20 years later

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which killed seven astronauts and shattered the idea that space travel would be as routine as air travel is today. The whole thing is made even more poignant by the loss of the Columbia crew three years ago.So, what happened? Basically, bad management in the name of good PR. The shuttle shouldn’t have launched that morning, and flight techs and ground crews told NASA this. Still, the launch was greenlighted, and 73 seconds later, the first teacher in space and six other astronauts were dead.

The specific cause was quite simple and avoidable. A rubber O-ring that held one of the SRBs in place had cracked from the cold, and it began to leak. When it gave, the main fuel tank blew up and fell away, while the boosters kept going. This can be seen on the archival footage as two separate plumes of fire–one climbing and the other hurtling groundward.

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Humor

Zen wisdom of the Mall Ninja

1 comment

Whoever owns mallninja.com didn’t renew their domain, and it’s gone. I went looking for the original thread on GlockTalk, but they don’t have it in the archives. Does it mean that the eternal wisdom of Gecko45 and SPECOPS is gone? No! For I once saved the original pages (as text), and I’m going to mirror them here.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Allow me to explain, young Grasshoppa. The Mall Ninja is an elite operator, usually with some shadowy Special Forces experience, whose job it is to guard our nation’s shopping centers from Chechen rebels, youth Triad gangs, child molesters and teenage shoplifters. To this end, they acquire and train with the best and most powerful ordnance and hone their skills to a razor-sharp edge.

The Martialist gives a somewhat droll definition as:

(…) stems from a famous series of threads at an Internet discussion forum in which one deluded troll regaled the assembled participants with tales of his dangerous life providing covert security as part of a secret ninja group keeping safe a public shopping mall.

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Audio Technology Minidisc

Sony MZ-EH930

This is the second-generation Hi-MD playback unit. Notice the similarities to last year’s MZ-E630 MDLP player. This unit has the HD amp as well as a connexion for an external battery pack. The internal battery is still the old NiMH one they’ve been using for the last few generations, but I’m not complaining as it’s interchangeable with all the old ones I have floating around.

As you can see, it’s only slightly larger than the discs themselves, but it’s still a bit thicker than the EH1.

I haven’t had a chance to compare battery life between the NH-14WM and the newer LIP-4WM, but the newer ones do appear to last a bit longer.

Like most MD players, this unit is meant to be used with a remote. As such, the button layout on the unit itself is somewhat sparse, and not quite as intuitive as the EH1.

Still, quite a nice unit, and one I was able to get very cheaply second-hand.

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Audio Technology

Rumors of Rio’s demise possibly premature.

A bit back I posted that Rio had gone belly-up. All assets had been sold to Sigmatel, and hope for anything developed by their team looked lost.

Looks like I jumped the gun.

Turns out, Sigmatel has kept Rio’s development team, along with everything they’d been working on when Rio closed up shop. According to a thread on Riovolution, the whole STMP3600 reference design that was planned for the Chroma is still alive and well, and will likely be used as the foundation for other players soon. That includes the best features of the Karma (gapless playback, wide format compatibility, parametric EQ), plus MSC compliance and several others.

How long before we see it in a consumer-level product is anyone’s guess. Austin Vaughan was at CES a few days back, and Ralph Fiennes (Rio’s primary Karma developer) gave an interview, in which we get this:

We got a product demonstation of Sigmatel’s reference design for a player that’s just like the Rio Avalon – an 8gb MicroDrive based player which has the same body style as the Rio Carbon but has a color screen and all the features of the Rio Karma.

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Humor

Darwinism in action…

This is very similar to an event that once happened to me. Gansta Homey Tip of the Day: retain your weapon and ensure you’ve got it under control when robbing someone. This guy just didn’t get it:

A few years ago, I ran a record store in a bad section of town. MC Pimpin’ Twitch walked in with a Jennings J22 tucked in the back of his pants. When he drew it to brandish, the weapon slamfired, discharging into his left leg on a downward trajectory. A .22 can do alot of damage that way. He was bleeding profusely and crying like Ted Kennedy at an AA meeting. When Fulton County showed up, they couldn’t keep from laughing. At one point, he asked them when they were going to call an ambulance, and their response was, “yeah…in a minute.”

Of course, in an ideal world, people like this would just end getting weeded out by fate.