ShowMeBlog

North Texas Balloon Project

  See North Texas Balloon Project web page for more information.

NTBP 19
Summer 2011, September 17, Hillsboro, Texas
Backup or Second Flight, September 24

Flight Announcement

NTBP is a group of amateur (HAM) radio operators from Fort Worth and has launched balloons from Cleburne, Clifton, and Hillsboro Airports since 1991. This is the first launch during this last year and is funded by the amateur radio operators associated with the NTBP.  Follow us on Twitter@NTEXBP for in time information on launch day.

Saturday's Launch 9.17.11 will show on APRS as W5SJZ-11

Please send an email to [email protected] for further information or to make reports during or after the actual launch. The back up date will be September 24, 2011.

NTBP FLIGHT 19, “Salute the Shuttle, Thirty Years in Space”
Hillsboro Airport, Exit 3 on Interstate Highway 35W
9 am, Sat, Sept 17, 2011
APRS 144.390 MHz, W5SJZ-11
HF Launch Net on 7260 +/- 5 kHz, LSB and 1430 +/-
Crossband Uplink is 445.800 MHz and downlink is 147.560 MHz
2 mtr Beacon, 146.560MHz
10 mtr Beacon, 28.274 mhz
Launch Net will be Friday September 16^th at 8pm on 147.28 and carried on Echolink at K5AMM-R (Area 5 US). Live broadcast will be attempted on (www.batc.tv , member streams, K5PHD).
Tommy Davis, W5TCD Launch Director
Larry Westmoreland
K5PHD

Firefox 6.0

  I been using Chrome but I have Firefox and IE on my computer.  I use them from time to time just to see if they are working or need an update.
  I have had Firefox 6.0 ^beta  on my computer.  Today I ran it and it did two updates and it is no longer a beta.  So now I have Firefox 6.0 on m computer.

A day early, a sneak peek at Firefox 6.0

‘First Website’ Celebrates Its 20th Birthday

  Yes I am going to rant again.. rant warning on…
No I am not going to say that I invented the Internet, the world wide web or even the blog.  But the stories like “Not So High-Tech Anymore: The First Website Ever Celebrates Its 20th Birthday” piss me off.

  

 

“On August 6, 1991, the first website was launched on the Internet, forever changing the way we browse. (And thankfully, web design has improved just a bit in the past two decades.)…”

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/08/06/the-first-website-ever-celebrates-its-20th-birthday/#ixzz1UJft1kV6

 

  So in 1991 you could type in a url and go to a site.  Well Howard’s Notebook began in 1982.  It was written up in a national magazine (“Link-Up”), in 1984,  and I am not sure of the date but about 1984 you could click on a link at Howard’s Notebook and HNB would dial out on my second phone line and connect you with another bulletin board system.  If I remember correct you could not type in the link you had to hit the link that I had in the text.  Now for sending an Internet email you could on my system type in the email address but I had a number of email addressed written out that you could just click on because people did not know how to write email addresses at that time.  I had to explain to people how to address an Internet email.

  So I am not knocking Tim Berners-Lee or whatever site he had or whatever in the hell he was doing but there were a lot of people doing a lot of things back in the old days.
  So he did something online in 1991 and good for him.  Many of us were doing things back in the early 1980s.

OH NO - Virgin Mobile is selling the Motorola Triumph

  I use the Virgin Mobile phone service and I am happy with the service and the price and I been happy with my cell phone until now.   VM is now selling the Motorola Triumph.  It is an android phone with a 1 gHz processor and a 4.1 inch screen and a 5 MP camera on the black and a front-facing VGA.  It is a 720 p HD camcorder! 
  OH bummer.  I am playing $25.00 a month for unlimited data and 300 minutes.  I see the price they have listed for this phone is $35.00 a month.  I do not know if I want to pay that extra $10.00 a month.
  The price of the phone is $300.00.  I want the phone but I would have to sell some of my blood to come up with $300.00 for the phone right now.  I am getting, next month,  a little over $100.00 from Google AdSense commissions. 

 

The above is part 1 of her review.  Here is the link for part 2. 

The last launch

  I watched online the launch of Atlantis.  Ken, my son, saw the launch up close.  He was at the closest point that you can get to the launch.  He was in a kayak.  He said it was amazing and a awesome view.

  It has been 30 years for the space shuttle program.  

  But I been following man in space since the launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957 by the USSR (now Russia).  I tracked some of satellites using my shortwave radio and I wrote about them in a printed publication.  It is has been a long time.

  We need to be in space and reaching out.  With budget problems we still need to be going into space but I fear for right now it maybe to costly to send men into space until we want to do joint project with other nations.  I do not see how we can afford to do it alone.

Engadge has review of Google+

 Engadget has a review of Google+.  It looks like a winner.  I think Google will have success with it and I think they will win people over from Facebook. 
  I do not like Facebook but I use it because my family and friends are there.

  The Huffingtonpost also has an report:  “Google+ Unveiled: 9 Things You Need To Know.” 

Google+ Insane Demand

“The new social network by Google, Google+, made a beta launch last Wednesday evening. The launch was said to be very successful that they needed to shut down the invite program.

Google’s new social network is an exclusive site that not many have access to yet. Since it is made and designed by Google, people expect for it to be nothing less than great and spectacular. But the sad part is, not everyone can come inside Google+. Google has made it a point to limit the persons to have access and join Google+; just like an exclusive party, you’ll need to have an invite first before having access to get in.

Last Wednesday night, Google allowed current users of Google+ to invite whomever they wish. This is where all the mayhem started. Upon broadcasting this throughout the internet, many people started coming to the site in hoards. Then a few hours later, Google shut off the invite program because of this onslaught.

Vic Gundotra, social media head of Google, was the one who shut down the (invite) mechanism. He said, via his plus profile, that the demand of people to get inside Google+ was insane. He also said that they (the Google social media team) will need to do this kind of invite program again but more carefully than of the beta launch.

Just like any other site, there will be usually some loopholes. This is also what people are expecting from Google+. There are many websites posting different ways to get into the site, some are successful and some aren’t.

One loophole to get into Google+ is a procedure wherein an existing Google+ user will share a photo, link, message and etc. to a non-Google+ user by entering the email address. The non-Google+ user will receive a notification and can get in Google+ by clicking the link below the said notification.

There is also a waiting list that Google has established for people that want to get in Google+. For people that don’t want to get in using loopholes, this could be the one for you. Don’t expect to get in right away, there may be thousands or maybe millions already listed before you.

In this paragraph is the summary of the article. The invite program of Google+ was shut off just hours after it was introduced to people. According to reports, it was because of the large amounts of people coming to the site. After the said event happened, people are still trying to get in Google+ via loopholes; and these loopholes can be found in different website postings online.” 

   New Jersey News

 

  If you have access try that loop hole so I can get signed up.  Send me a link or photo. Use my Google email:   [email protected]

RandomFactors: Take Control of your Facebook Wall!

As a FaceBook user, you’ve likely noticed it’s very hard to go back through your wall posts and remove them! If you’ve been there any amount of time this means you have pages and pages of posts that can only be removed by clicking the X, then remove this post then possibly a step or so more for confirmation and repeat this time consuming procedure time and again for each post! They want to keep and reuse them forever so they make it very difficult to do maintenance on them!

There is finally a great script available that allows you to predefine a number of posts to leave behind going downward in increments from a total of 20, It’s called Clean my wall and as you might suspect is available at CleanMyWall.com

Go there, drag the button to your toolbar, log into your FaceBook account and goto your profile!

Click the clean my wall button and select the number of posts to leave and watch it go! This may take a vey long time to complete if you’ve been there for years.

Note this will not remove comments you’ve made on other’s posts!

You may see older posts pop up after cleanings but the utility informs you of this after each run.

The ongoing advantage is Facebook can’t regurgitate your old  posts to your friends or others and search results won’t show them to friends or (others).

I run this once per week. This way if/when I decide to deactivate my account I can run it at 5 posts then remove those  manually, delete photos, emails, etc. then set everything else in privacy to customized at me only and rest assured there’s nothing left for their oft changing settings to expose in my absence because I know they will otherwise never delete anything in my account if/when I tell them to deactivate it!

Joe

Random Factors: FaceBook & Google's Auto Facial Recognition.

Jim gave me guest author capability long ago and this is the first I've used it. Hope it doesn't surprise him too much!

Google has recently revealed its plans to release an app that will allow anyone to use a cell phone/camera and data capability to snap a picture of you and get your name and by extension, any publicly available info about you from the web! Google Facial Recognition App

Facebook has also been building automatic face recognition via its wealth of user submitted photos! It may find and tag you in any photos it NOW believes to be you. The article claims users will be allowed to OPT OUT via Privacy settings but no word on how you'll be able to report and/or fix errors and it's purported to be only used in aiding users in auto tagging friends in pics they upload but... Facebook Facial Recognition

I find (especially the Google app's) potential intrusions into our real lives to be something worthy of concern. Naturally one can clean out their fb profile and deactivate their account (it won't be deleted so that's another topic I'll cover!) but Google is trickier. What do you think?

Joe Taibi

de orbit burn now for shuttle Endeavour

  They are doing the de orbit burn for the shuttle Endeavour right now.  There will be only one more launch and landing of a shuttle.

I been listening to space craft from the start of the space age.  I even did a space communications column each month for a long time.  Tonight I am following the landing by watching streaming video from NASA TV.