Since pages, as opposed to blog posts, don’t show up in the regular RSS feed or even on the front page, I thought I’d throw this little quickie post out there letting blog readers know of this new page.

Here it is: http://www.astrakan.ca/region-free-blu-ray-solutions/

The above photo was taken by Miroslaw Swietek, a physiotherapist from Poland who has photography as a hobby. There’s more amazing photos in the article linked below.

From the article:

These remarkable photographs were taken by physiotherapist Miroslaw Swietek at around 3am in the forest next to his home. Using a torch, the 37-year-old amateur photographer hunts out the motionless bugs in the darkness before setting up his camera and flash just millimetres from them.

Mr Swietek said: ‘I took up photography as a relaxing hobby two and a half years ago and I particularly like taking pictures of insects and lizards.

‘I photograph them in their natural environment in the forest next to my village. At 3am to 4am insects are sleepy and taking photos of them is easy, but it is very difficult to find them.

I just love that he’s not a professional photographer and that he’s only had photography as a hobby for 2.5 years, yet he can take photos like that.

More here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1260946/The-stunning-pictures-sleeping-insects-covered-early-morning-dew.html

The turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish may be the only animal in the world to have truly discovered the fountain of youth.

Since it is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again, there may be no natural limit to its life span. Scientists say the hydrozoan jellyfish is the only known animal that can repeatedly turn back the hands of time and revert to its polyp state (its first stage of life).

The key lies in a process called transdifferentiation, where one type of cell is transformed into another type of cell. Some animals can undergo limited transdifferentiation and regenerate organs, such as salamanders, which can regrow limbs. Turritopsi nutricula, on the other hand, can regenerate its entire body over and over again. Researchers are studying the jellyfish to discover how it is able to reverse its aging process.

Because they are able to bypass death, the number of individuals is spiking. They’re now found in oceans around the globe rather than just in their native Caribbean waters. “We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion,” says Dr. Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute.

I love it!

Source: http://green.yahoo.com/blog/guest_bloggers/26/the-world-s-only-immortal-animal.html

That’s for everyone south of the border. Today you’ve taken a step towards joining the rest of the developed world.

While I realize it’s not quite universal health care, it’s certainly better than what you had before and probably a necessary step towards one day having a proper health care system.

Yeah, I realize I’m being a tad condescending… but let’s face it, when it comes to this topic, you deserve it.

Out of my predictions below, there’s only three where I’m not completely comfortable with my guesses:

Original Screenplay: I can think up equally valid reasons for each of these nominees to win, and in the end I went with my personal preference.

Costume Design: To my mind this category has three front runners: Bright Star, Coco Before Chanel, and The Young Victoria. I’m going with Victoria because of the Academy’s voting history in this category.

Art Direction: I’m thinking this one is Avatar’s to lose, but if it does lose I think it’s going to go to The Imagniarium of Doctor Parnassus. My gut tells me it’ll be the doctor, but my brain tells me it’ll be the Na’vi. I’m going with my gut on this one.

Anywho, these are my predictions for this year:

I realize I left out a couple of categories, but I haven’t yet seen any of the movies competing in those so it’d be pure title-based guesswork. Figured I might as well not bother.

added day after the show: Well, so much for “one of the more predictable years in a while”… I ended up with 12 out of the 20, which is pretty weak. Out of the eight I got wrong, there’s only one (Art Direction) that I was more or less expecting to get wrong, and a couple were I wasn’t too surprised at the outcome, but for the rest I was pretty confident in my picks. Oh well, at least I tied with my wife.

1. MOVIE REGIONS
This page has region maps and country listings showing both Blu-ray regions and DVD regions.

2. REGION FREE BLU-RAY SOLUTIONS
This page has lots of links and information regarding region free Blu-ray playback.
 

Back in the mid-1990s, when astronomers were just beginning to find new planets around distant stars, nearly every new discovery got front-page headlines. Today, with the extrasolar-planet count up to about 400, it takes something extraordinary to make news.

But extraordinary may be too understated a descriptor for the discovery reported on Wednesday in the journal Nature: an international team led by Harvard astronomer David Charbonneau has spotted a “super-Earth,” a planet 2.7 times bigger than Earth, circling a dim red star called GJ 1214, just 40 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. “It’s spectacular,” says Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, who is the world’s most prolific planet hunter and is credited with discovering 70 of the first 100 exoplanets. “It’s a top-of-the-top discovery in the quest for Earth-size planets.”

While the new planet, dubbed GJ 1214b, is too big to be considered Earthlike, it comes pretty close. But GJ 1214b’s relatively compact size — smaller than the vast majority of planets identified so far — is only one reason for astronomers’ enthusiasm. Another is GJ 1214b’s likelihood of bearing the stuff of life: water.

If you’re looking for a world where life might thrive, a planet must be at the right temperature for water to exist in liquid form. So it needs to orbit its star in the so-called habitable zone, a “Goldilocks” location that allows a planet to be neither too hot nor too cold. In that respect, GJ 1214b is again a near miss. Its surface temperature hovers at a sweltering 190°C (374°F), which is well above the boiling point of water, at least in Earth’s atmospheric pressure. Fortunately, GJ 1214b’s atmosphere makes the pressure a lot higher than on Earth — “crushing,” as Charbonneau describes it — and increases the odds of liquid water. (Under pressure, water can remain liquid above 100°C, or 212°F.)

Astronomers were further able to estimate the planet’s makeup by calculating its size, based on the amount of light that GJ 1214b blocked when it passed in front of its star, as well as its mass (6.6 times Earth’s mass), based on the wobble in the wavelength of starlight caused by GJ 1214b’s gravitational pull on its star. That analysis revealed the new planet’s density: about one-third of Earth’s. Because water has a much lower density than rock, astronomers figured that the “most plausible scenario is a planet made mostly of water, with a significant atmosphere,” says Charbonneau. So despite its high temperature, GJ 1214b’s high atmospheric pressure and relatively low density mean liquid water could exist there after all.

Nevertheless, it’s too soon to suggest that astronomers have found the site of potential exoplanetary life. “What you want [for life] is a nice toasty ocean with a little bit of atmosphere. That’s not going to happen here,” says Charbonneau. “I think it would be foolish to say categorically that [GJ 1214b] doesn’t have life. But we have no basis for thinking it could.”

If it does, astronomers will be able to look for it in unprecedented detail. Since GJ 1214b is only 40 light-years away, which is practically next door in cosmic terms, its atmosphere can be studied more closely than that of any other exoplanet, both with the Hubble Telescope and with the infrared-sensitive Spitzer Space Telescope. Charbonneau’s team has already applied for observing time on both scopes to do just that.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about the discovery of GJ 1214b is that the planet was found at all. Planet hunters usually focus their attention on Sun-like stars — that is, large and hot — on the assumption that if you’re looking for life, you should look in a place that is as similar to our solar system as possible. Charbonneau, however, focused on about 2,000 small, dim, red stars known as M-dwarfs, nearby Earth. M-dwarfs are much more numerous than Sun-like stars; of the 300 stars closest to Earth, says Charbonneau, 220 or so are M-dwarfs. They’re also much cooler than Sun-like stars, so their habitable zones are close-in. A planet in the Goldilocks position around an M-dwarf doesn’t take a year to orbit, as Earth does; it takes only a few days (1.6 days, in the case of GJ 1214b). So astronomers need to wait only a few days to spot a planet passing by, and only a few weeks to confirm the orbit with several passes.

M-dwarfs are so small, moreover, that an Earth-size planet casts a relatively big silhouette as it passes in front of it, making the telltale dimming of starlight easy to spot. It’s so easy, in fact, that Charbonneau didn’t even need a giant telescope to see it. Instead, he got away with the kind of scope a serious backyard amateur might use. In other words, says Charbonneau, “we did it on the cheap.”

They also did it fast. “We thought it would take us two years to find something like GJ 1214b,” says Charbonneau. “It took just six months. Either we got really lucky, or these planets are common.” If they are, then it wouldn’t be surprising for astronomers to find planets that are slightly smaller and slightly cooler — in short, more Earthlike — as well.

Charbonneau’s group isn’t the only one looking. An international consortium of observatories just announced the discovery of several other super-Earths around Sun-like stars, though these new planets are far too hot to sustain life and too far away to be able to study. Separately, NASA’s Kepler Mission will present the first results of its planet search at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington in January. “[The Kepler team] has already submitted 28 scientific papers based on 43 days of data or less,” says MIT planet theorist Sara Seager. “It’s going to be a big year for planets.”

I love this stuff, and I really hope they can confirm the presence of extra-terrestrial life in my lifetime. I’m completely convinced it’s out there, it’s just a matter of finding it. Intelligent or not, more evolved than us or not, it would all be very cool stuff.

Source: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1947868,00.html

For those that don’t know, Child’s Play is a charity started by those wacky Penny Arcade guys because they felt that gamers were getting a bum rap and wanted to show the world that we’re a nice bunch of people. And with people like Jack Thompson running around it’s nice to have such a public way to be able to prove him and others wrong.

The beneficiaries are children’s hospitals. You can donate cash (they accept Paypal) directly to the charity, but if you donate toys, games or movies via one of their Amazon wishlist links you can choose which hospital to donate to. Either way you can get a tax receipt.

They’ve got hospitals in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Egypt. The items on the wishlists start at only a couple of bucks.

Over the years Child’s Play raised over $5,000,000 dollars for sick kids. It’s pretty much the expectation now that they’ll raise $1,000,000+ each year, so here’s to the previous high score of $1,400,000 getting beat this year!

If you’re interested in donating, or want to know more, head over to ChildsPlayCharity.org, or read the below quotes taken from both the Penny Arcade site and the Child’s Play site:

It’s back! The ultimate in friction-free, ultra-lightweight charity engines is here, ready to transform the slightest movements of your finger into much-needed respite for young people. Here’s what’s up:

We’ve got New Hospitals this year, a tender cross-section of facilities you’ve directed us to over the past year. Focus your Charity Beam on Dayton, Cleveland, Colorado Springs, Boise, Memphis, or (for Canadian readers) Victoria, Ottawa and St. John’s. The Sponsors you see on the main page have gotten the ball rolling to the tune of two-hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Not a bad take before the thing even starts, huh?

Don’t forget our annual Charity Dinner and Auction, which is reliably fun, productive, and delicious. We’ve also spun up a Twitter feed (@CPCharity) to keep you up to speed with the community’s unstoppable charitable assault.

Source: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/11/6/

11-02-09 Child’s Play 2009 is Under Way!
We wrapped up the 2008 drive in January with an amazing 1.4 million dollars worth of donations. Many thanks to everyone who helped make that possible!

This year, we’re proud to be adding seven new hospitals in the States and Canada to the Child’s Play network, so please have a look at the map to see if your local children’s hospital has come on board. Every hospital has a wish list full of gifts, and is hoping for your support. If you would like to learn more about getting a new hospital involved, please contact us to find out how.
We’re starting off the drive with a healthy total, thanks to the year-round support of the gamer community. Supporters have held gaming marathons, dinners and other fundraisers to get us started, and if you have a Child’s Play event that you would like us to add to our Event Calendar, please let us know.

We’ve also seen incredible support already from corporate and group sponsors. Many thanks to Harmonix, Microsoft, Wizards of the Coast, Amazon, MTV, The Bohemian Foundation, Sony Online Entertainment, the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, the Super Mario Marathon, Penn State University, the Multiplayer Marathon, Internet Brands Inc, BenHeck.com, 8 Bit Vintners, Nerdapalooza, There.com, Google, and LoadingReadyRun for their support.

Also returning for 2009 is our annual charity dinner auction on Tuesday, December 8th, at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle. More information and ticket sales will be available soon!

Source: http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

Well, I’m back with another Snow Leopard post.

If you plan on upgrading, do not under any circumstances do so without wiping your drive clean first. If you go the upgrade route, you may very well find yourself in the same position I and many, many other upgraders found themselves in: With a neutered computer where the internet connection has slowed to a crawl, where the DVD burner no longer can burn new discs, where certain applications stop working, where some expansion cards inside your Mac stop working, and with system crashes making you so paranoid you set the autosave feature of your favourite program to save every 3 minutes.

I know, I know, it’s silly to do a system upgrade without starting from scratch. It’s a rule I’ve always obeyed and should’ve obeyed this time around. I didn’t for two reasons:

1) It’s a Mac. I’ve heard, read and been told that Macs are different. That you don’t need to format the drive for upgrades. That you don’t need to restart the computer after installing a new program. Blah, blah, blah.

2) I was in the middle of a project and couldn’t afford the downtime, but I needed the upgrade to get a new plugin package to work.

So I took the plunge.

After a month of discovering annoyance after annoyance I decided to take the time and do it right. Only, since Apple’s removed the “Erase and Install” options from Snow Leopard, reportedly to protect users from accidentally erasing all their data, I had to first figure out how to do it.

After some searching online I found out it’s pretty straight forward. Here’s how:

1. Backup everything
2. Put the Snow Leopard disc in your DVD drive
3. Reboot the Mac.
4. At the beginning of the new boot, hold down the C key on your keyboard
5. Once you see the loading wheel (not the rainbow coloured one, but the black bars) you can release the C
6. After a few moments the computer will boot from the Snow Leopard install DVD
7. From the menu bar at the top, select Utilities->Disc Utility
8. Using the Disc Utility, erase your hard drive
9. Quit Disc Utility when the erase is complete
10. Proceed with the install of Snow Leopard. It should take maybe 30 minutes.

If you need more hand-holding than the above provides, you can check out this article:

http://www.brighthub.com/computing/mac-platform/articles/48174.aspx

Oh, and for those that don’t know: NPD is a consumer sales stats tracking group, and each month they publish sales statistics for video games, both hardware and software.

Here’s the September 2009 figures:

Hardware
Nintendo DS – 524,200
Playstation 3 – 491,800
Wii – 462,800
Xbox 360 – 352,600
PSP – 190,400
Playstation 2 – 146,000

Software
Halo 3: ODST (360) – 1,520,000
Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 442,900
Madden NFL 10 (360) – 289,600
Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (Wii) – 258,100
The Beatles: Rock Band (360) – 254,000
Madden NFL 10 (PS3) – 246,500
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 (360) – 236,000
Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3) – 212,500
Guitar Hero 5 (360) – 210,800
The Beatles: Rock Band (Wii) – 208,601

Software by Platform
Xbox 360 – 2,510,400 games
Wii – 909,601 games
Playstation 3 – 459,000 games

Comments
The Playstation 3 price drop gave it a nice boost on the hardware side, but it’s a little surprising to see it not making much of a dent in the software side. Did people not buy games with the consoles they bought? Odd.

Although the same is true for the Nintendo DS month after month. It’s been on top of the hardware sales chart for quite a while now, and when it’s not on top it’s not far from it. Yet it’s very rare to see any Nintendo DS games crack the top 10 of the software sales. Also odd.

While the Wii found itself in the unusual number three spot, there’s no doubt that it’s still selling. Much to my surprise and dismay. Here’s to hoping Microsoft and Sony aren’t planning to neuter their next-gen consoles and release Wii-esque abominations of their own.

Source for NPD data: http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_September_2009