Shawn Mariani

Adam Curry made around $500 Million in recent years finetuning what you and I know as the podcasting platform.  He was recently on Stern’s show – the clip below (20mins) runs through Curry’s history and success – pretty interesting.  I also didn’t know he created AskJeeves.com – that’s kind of embarrassing.

Listen as Curry impresses Stern with how much money he could be making:

I’ve followed Tremont Electric for some time now and I’m excited that their nPower PEG has recently entered the market for sale.  The device runs $149, is made in the USA, and was invented by Tremont resident (U. of Toledo engineering educated) Aaron LeMieux.  Great to see this type of innovation in Cleveland and happy for their success – good things to come!

Aaron’s recent talk at TEDxCLE is inspiring and definitely worth watching.  Check out Tremont Electric (located next to Edisons!)

TEDxCLE

Gov. Strickland visits Tremont Electric

Great slow speed video of the launch of Apollo 11:

Shits getting pretty crazy when Google Earth starts 3D mapping EVERYTHING.  This has been in play for some time – but I find it interesting they’re mapping more than just the main structures.  They’ve even 3D mapped parts of Tremont and Ohio City.

The Caxton Building
Click for full-size

I uploaded a video from my personal collection to YouTube that I find to be very interesting.  An Americana/Post-War propaganda video filmed exclusively in Brook Park, Ohio in the early fifties.  The American Dream is in full effect – the good life of making an excellent product and earning a decent wage.

The music, film, machines, industry, and culture are all captivating.  It shows highlights of workers from Cleveland Heights and surrounding cities, participating in the birth of the middle class.  It portrays Cleveland as a power house in the industrial movement.

How things have changed:

Check out this time lapse, it’s fascinating.

60 seconds in length, best viewed full screen.  Enjoy!

Very interesting: Twenty-four years after the Challenger disaster, new footage of the shuttle’s catastrophic explosion has surfaced, depicting the space shuttle’s disintegration over the Atlantic Ocean.

I find America’s space programs fascinating – it will be interesting to see how the recently planned budget cuts may affect the  upcoming Constellation program.

The shuttle program is being phase out early 2011 and only a handful of missions are left.  I’m planning a May trip to Cape Canaveral to witness this large piece of America history.

This may be the ultimate geek-out, but I thought I’d write a bit about the recent shuttle mission and why I find it so interesting.

• There’s less than 8 missions remaining for the space shuttle before NASA transitions to their new vehicle.  It’s hard to watch a launch or follow the shuttle in orbit and remember that the shuttle and much of it’s technology is outdated by decades.  The coming of NASA’s new program is exciting, but I think with these last few missions comes a bittersweet feeling of all the history and strides the shuttle program made through the years.  It’s something to stop and think about.  Also, I need to get to FL to watch a launch and witness history.
• STS-125′s extended mission lasted 14 days, much longer than normal since they attempted to wait for Florida’s weather to clear to avoid landing in California (which they ultimately did).  Landing at Edward’s Air Force Base in California costs 2 million dollars more than the standard landing.  Even NASA is watching it’s spending in this economic environment.
• Michael T. Good, STS-125′s Missions Specialist 1 was born in Parma, Ohio and graduated from Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School in Broadview Heights, Ohio.  This is something Cleveland should be proud of – and I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about Good in the news these past few weeks.
• This was the final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope – again, really interesting to think about all of the strides the Hubble made and to think that this is the last time human hands will touch the telescope.  Astronauts performed a series of spacewalks to upgrade the telescopes components – I’m looking forward to seeing what these upgrades are capable of since previous images produced by the Hubble are nothing short of amazing.
• Shuttle Endeavor sat on it’s launch pad awaiting a possible mission (STS-400) to rescue the crew of Atlantis in the event of mission failure.  STS-125 was a high risk mission and there’s only been a few times where another shuttle has been on a launch pad standing by.  This was really a Bruce Willis movie about to happen in real life had something gone wrong with STS-125, but thankfully he was never called.  In any event, twin shuttles makes for a cool picture.

Atlantis STS-125 and Endeavour STS-400

Carina Nebula Panorama from Hubble (from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day)

Amateur Astronomer Thierry Legault made this one of kind photograph from the ground of the Space shuttle Atlantis as the shuttle was passing between the sun and the earth.

Michael T. Good talks about his first job, a garbage man in Cleveland, Ohio.

Recently I installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) as the main OS on my HP Mini 1000.  With no optical drive, I was forced to boot from a flash drive, something I hadn’t done before.  The .IMG file was too large for my old 2GB SanDisk Cruzer Titanium, so I picked up a new 8 GB SanDisk Micro for $14.99.

Using Windows XP, the following procedure outlines how to extract an .img file and create a bootable USB drive with a few simple commands:

1. Download the latest daily release of UNR 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope:  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-netbook-remix/daily-live/current/
2. To prep the drive, perform a Quick Format on the flash drive, use FAT32 as the file system.
3. Download flashnul: http://shounen.ru/soft/flashnul/
4. Run flashnul with a -p flag (take note of the number of the recently formatted flash drive):
5. In this case, my 8GB flash drive was number 2.
6. Next, run flashnul with the -L flag followed by the path to the downloaded UNR .img file:
7. Enter the word ‘yes’ to begin the process:
8. The extract and transfer should complete in under 5 minutes.  Press Enter to exit:
9. Note – the extracted files won’t display in a Windows environment.  In fact, it won’t even display the proper drive capacity:
10. This drive is now ready to go!  Remove it from your windows machine, connect to your netbook and select it from the boot menu while starting up.  Most modern machines will display the USB drive if bootable.  Enjoy UNR!

I’ve bought and a built a number of computers in my time, and recently decided to go down the path of ultra-mobile computing and purchase a netbook.  I would be classified as a power user; I work on a powerful full-size laptop everyday at work and also own a gaming PC with just under a TB of media.  I sold my IBM ThinkPad T60 (loved that thing) last week in attempt to lessen my computer footprint in my apartment and to also make back some money on it since laptops depreciate very quickly (bought in late 2006 @ $1,199, sold early 2009 for $450).

Not a week went by before I found myself missing the ease and joy of couch browsing without pulling out my massive work machine or sitting at my desk using a mouse.  I had a $100 gift card for Best Buy and suddenly the idea of a cheap and super small device used for nothing more than surfing the web appealed to me.

I settled on the HP Mini 1000 against the cheaper and higher capacity Asus Eee PC and the new Inspiron Mini by Dell (ugly).  The HP had a bigger keyboard and screen, sharper display, a solid state drive and an overall more attractive look.  I choose a small solid state drive since I won’t be using it to store any bulk music or software; just a handful of albums, a movie or two, and some “lite” apps.

It’s an overall great device and I really have no complaints about it.  I just need to accept that this isn’t a real laptop and should only be used to mobile computing and when I don’t feel like sitting in an office chair.  Part of me when buying a new machine wants to use it as much as possible.  It should be understood that netbooks are not a laptops but simply an extenstion to normal computers.  I like this idea and am excited to be evermore attached to the internet at all times.  This will hold true until I have some crazed Ted Kaczynski meltdown.  Actually, a cabin in Montana sound’s good right now, and a perhaps a perfect place for some mobile blogging.

HP Mini 1000 – Best Buy $349, bought 3/9/2009

• Intel Atom N270 @ 1.6GHz
• 1 GB Ram
• 16 GB Solid State Hard Drive
• 10.2 Inch Screen, 2.5 lbs
• Ethernet, 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth
• Graphics – Intel GMA 950 Chipset
• Chipset – Mobile Intel 945GM Express
• 2 USB 2.0, SD card reader, eSATA port
• Webcam, Stereo speakers, single headphone/microphone jack

Pros

• The HP Mini is a 10 inch built a 8 inch chassis so it’s super compact!
• Very fast when browsing, even with multiple tabs.
• The whole case is very shiny including the screen.
• The keyboard has a nice feel also, touchpad works just like a full-size laptop.
• It’s dead quiet (solid state drive helps).
• It’s super light!
• Built well, lid hinges are strong and has a nice feel when opening and closing.
• I was originally against the whole artistic design on the lid, but it has grown on me.

Cons

• The lid doesn’t open a full 180° like most laptops.  This isn’t a big issue, but noticed it a few times while trying to get the right angle.
• Obviously it’s light on hardware, so the max resolution of 1024 x 600 is of no surprise but still worth noting.  I run a super high resolution at work, and it would be nice to see a bit more since it’s a smaller screen – but no biggie.
• The Home / End / PgUp / PgDn keys have been moved from the upper right of a normal keyboard to child function (fn) keys on the arrow keyset.  I actually use these navigation keys all the time, so I just have to get used to their new location.
• Runs a little hot sometimes.
• The gloss finish is great, but shows hella finger prints.