Current position of the ISS

Make Your Desktop Come Alive with GeekTool Mac.AppStorm This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on April 19th, 2010. GeekTool is a really neat preference panel that allows widget-like functionality on a highly customizable level. Unfortunately, if you aren’t particularly geeky, this app can be a bit confusing to get up and running. Luckily enough, here at AppStorm there’s definitely no shortage of geeks such as myself to help you out! I’ll take you step by step through finding and installing scripts to make your desktop the envy of the office. Final Result Just to get a feel for where we’re going, here’s a preview of the final result. Final Result As you can see, this is a simple setup that utilizes only two scripts: date and time. The text that you see is live and updates automatically based on intervals you set. Getting Started GeekTool Website GeekTool Interface Groups

Visualizing Light at Trillion FPS, Camera Culture, MIT Media Lab Home | News | Join Us | People | Projects | Publications | Talks | Courses Femto-Photography: Visualizing Photons in Motion at a Trillion Frames Per Second Team Ramesh Raskar, Associate Professor, MIT Media Lab; Project Director (raskar(at)mit.edu)Moungi G. Bawendi, Professor, Dept of Chemistry, MITAndreas Velten, Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Media Lab (velten(at)mit.edu)Everett Lawson, MIT Media LabAmy Fritz, MIT Media LabDi Wu, MIT Media Lab and Tsinghua U.Matt O'toole, MIT Media Lab and U. of TorontoDiego Gutierrez, Universidad de ZaragozaBelen Masia, MIT Media Lab and Universidad de Zaragoza Elisa Amoros, Universidad de Zaragoza Femto-Photography MembersNikhil Naik,Otkrist Gupta, Andy Bardagjy, MIT Media Lab Ashok Veeraraghavan, Rice U. Abstract We have built an imaging solution that allows us to visualize propagation of light. The device has been developed by the MIT Media Lab’s Camera Culture group in collaboration with Bawendi Lab in the Department of Chemistry at MIT. References A.

18 | Print These 20 Things You Don't Really Need And Your 3-D Printer Pays For Itself On Thingiverse, a site where anyone can share their 3-D digital designs for others to use, you can find the blueprints for printing a world of oddities: a scale model of a great white shark skull, Star Wars cufflinks, and the “Monster Cube” puzzle, to name a few entries among the 60,000 open-source designs that Joshua Pearce, a researcher at Michigan Technological University, estimates live on the site. But among the curiosities are also a growing number of common household items that can be made on a 3-D printer and are actually pretty useful. So Pearce decided to do the math. In a study published in the journal Mechatronics in July, Pearce discusses 20 common household items he found on Thingiverse, and how he then searched Google Shopping to calculate a range of what it would cost to get these items shipped to his door. His conclusion? That means a 3-D printer could pay for itself in as little as four months and at least within two years. This all seems exciting on the surface.

Wind Map An invisible, ancient source of energy surrounds us—energy that powered the first explorations of the world, and that may be a key to the future. This map shows you the delicate tracery of wind flowing over the US. The wind map is a personal art project, not associated with any company. We've done our best to make this as accurate as possible, but can't make any guarantees about the correctness of the data or our software. Please do not use the map or its data to fly a plane, sail a boat, or fight wildfires :-) If the map is missing or seems slow, we recommend the latest Chrome browser. Surface wind data comes from the National Digital Forecast Database. If you're looking for a weather map, or just want more detail on the weather today, see these more traditional maps of temperature and wind.

Learn the Basics of Coding Allowing remote access to your home computer is not the best advice, especially for someone new to programming and security. However, we all do it. Just be aware that you are risking all the data and probably all the other systems on your home network in doing this. Secure web programming is hard, really hard. If you are writing code for your own internal use, working code is the goal. When you write code for others, it needs to work with strange inputs. Possibly the most important item to learn is that just because something works, that doesn't mean it is correct or secure. End User Programming If you are on MS-Windows and want to make your PC do things, check out PowerShell programming. If you are on Linux or OSX, check out bash programming. Power User Programming If you want to create cross-platform programs that can have GUIs and aren't CPU intensive, while learning simple and advanced programming techniques, check out Python. Web programming requires a multitude of skills.

11 cheap gifts guaranteed to impress science geeks Science comes up with a lot of awesome stuff, and you don't need a Ph.D, a secret lab, or government funding to get your hands on some of the coolest discoveries. We've got a list of 11 mostly affordable gifts that are guaranteed to blow your mind, whether or not you're a science geek. Click on any image to see it enlarged. 1. Aerogel Also known as frozen smoke, Aerogel is the world's lowest density solid, clocking in at 96% air. Aerogel isn't just neat, it's useful. Price: $35 2. Inside these sealed glass balls live shrimp, algae, and bacteria, all swimming around in filtered seawater. EcoSpheres came out of research looking at ways to develop self-contained ecosystems for long duration space travel. Price: $80 3. NASA has been trying to figure out how to get a sample of rock back from Mars for a while now. Every once in a while, a meteorite smashes into Mars hard enough to eject some rocks out into orbit around the sun. Price: $70+ 4. Price: $150 5. Price: $110 6. Price: $80 7. Price: $15 8.

Scientist creates lifelike cells out of metal Scientists trying to create artificial life generally work under the assumption that life must be carbon-based, but what if a living thing could be made from another element? One British researcher may have proven that theory, potentially rewriting the book of life. Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow has created lifelike cells from metal — a feat few believed feasible. The discovery opens the door to the possibility that there may be life forms in the universe not based on carbon, reports New Scientist. Even more remarkable, Cronin has hinted that the metal-based cells may be replicating themselves and evolving. "I am 100 percent positive that we can get evolution to work outside organic biology," he said. The high-functioning "cells" that Cronin has built are constructed from large polyoxometalates derived from a range of metal atoms, like tungsten. The metallic bubbles are certainly cell-like, but are they actually alive? The early results have been encouraging.

29 Free Websites To Learn A New Language Learning a new language is tough, specially if you are not using it on a day to day basis. In addition to lessons and tutorials, one also needs interactive tools and a conversation partner to fully grasp the concepts of a new language. There are a tons of resources online that will help you to learn a new language but only few offer an interactive and real-person approach. These web resources include lessons, tutorials, multimedia tools, foreign language games and some very good language exchange networks that allow you to converse with native speakers: 1. Busuu offers free online language learning community to its users. 2. Learning language has become more fun and interesting because of My Happy Planet. 3. To enhance the learning and teaching abilities of institutions, Pod Network ( Professional and Organizational development network) has played a vital role on the web. 4. Babbel is an online platform for the language lovers to learn English, Spanish, German, Italian and French. 6.