First test flight for WhiteKnightTwo a success!

WhiteKnightTwo, the mothership / carrier for SpaceShipTwo flew successfully this past Sunday for an hour. SpaceShipTwo is the commercial plane er spaceship that will allow normal everyday joe's like you and me go to space for only $200,000! I know what a steal.

This is another big step for the commercial space industry.

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Blu-ray disk to hit 400GB capacity by 2010

Not really useful as so much as just interesting. I get the feeling that film studios aren't even filling up the 50GB's that is provided to them with current generation disks what are they going to do with 4x the space? ...and if that wasn't enough supposedly a 1TB (1000GB's) is ontrack for 2013.

What this really does is provide "options". Movie piracy is so prevelant because what is provided currently by the film studios is easily copied and distributed. If 400GB's of high def interactive goodness was provided with every purchase of a blu-ray movie it would be difficult to distribute all of that.

Also what does this mean for Sony's Playstation 3. Metal Gear Solid 4 was said to use every bit of space on the blu-ray disks. Can we expect more epic games that would approach the current or even future 400GB barrier? Or is that just too much work for the game studios for too little return?

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HDMI going wireless?

I'm a big fan of "clutter removal" inovation. When the HDMI cable came out it it consolidated a fist full of video and audio cables into one. Well Tzero Technologies has figured out a way to take HDMI into the wireless realm. Looks like it works alot like bluetooth does today but higher bandwidth.

Here are the quick specs:

Range - 20+ meters

Bandwidth - 480Mbps

Latency - 16ms

Audio - 7.1

Video - 1080p @ 24/56/30/60fps

All at a projected cost of $50 per device you wish to connect up wirelessly. Seems pretty cool especially for people who need to run cables thru walls, under carpets, etc. ...and at a reasonable price too!

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HTPC on the cheap

HTPC (stands for Home Theatre PC), basically you can create a mp3, movie, tivo, bittorrent server that you can then run to any tv/computer in the house for cheap. I'm looking into doing this for myself.

First and foremost is the case for the little guy. I wanted something that I could fit in my entertainment cabinet that didn't look like a computer. A quick look at Newegg and I discovered tons of cases for cheap, some not so much. It looks like you get what you pay for, like this little gem.

Next step will be to gut out your old PC that is taking up space in your closet and install it in your newly bought case. Then you need to install an O/S and all the software you'll be using. Bit-tech.net has an excellent article on installing Xubuntu (Linux) and the software needed. After reading it i'm convinced its so easy my mother could do it, and best of all its free!

Since I have a PS3 I'll be installing a "Media Server", just google it and you'll find it online, so my PS3 can read the mp3's and movies I have on my server.

Honestly i'm a bit jazzed up about this, just need to figure a cool way to turn on the unit remotely (i'm sure the higher end cases can have that handled) and then I think i'll have a nice addition to my entertainment center.

Unreal Engine 4.0 exclusive to consoles

As a gamer I recently bit the bullet and bought a PS3. It was only 4 years ago you could hear me say that gaming on the PC will always be superior to any console. Well I was wrong, or perhaps my tastes have changed. Consoles now a days are so superior to PC gaming in so many ways. Comfort (couch), Graphics (HD TV's), Sound (7.1 surround sound), and cost ($500 for the most expensive console on the market) all seriously out weigh anything you can do with a PC. When you look at it the console is the cheapest way to get a very descent gaming system in your home. So it was after opening my eyes and seeing this I decided instead of continueing to upgrade my computer so I could play the latest and greatest games i'd rather get a PS3 and benefit from having a blueray player.

Well one of the most successful software backends for games (Unreal Engine) recently stated that they were going to focus their efforts exculsively on consoles before considering PC's. This is big news in the gaming community because Epic (the makers of Unreal and its Unreal Engine) has had a huge presence in the PC market thanks to its lisceseing of the engine out to quite literally hundreds of game developers that then use it to make games for the PC market (as well as consoles). However from now on their engine will be optimized for console use.

This move is most likely due to the development cycle for a console system is shorter. The PS3's hardware is set in stone it doesnt change, same with an Xbox 360 or a Wii. A PC however, has lots of different hardware in it. Not 2 PC's are a like, this means that developers have to program for these slight changes in expected harware, as they make the software more suitable for a larget audience it is less efficient and thus graphics are not as refined, physics are lacking, etc.

One could argue there is a lot wrong in gaming in general and PC gaming specifically. People have been saying PC gaming is dead for years, however this might just be the first nail in the coffin.

High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Sea

What do you do when your ship full of 4,703 Mazda's is tilted to one side, taking on water and is about to capsize? You call these guys. Wired has written an excellent article about this anything but normal salvage crew. It's a must read.

150 miles per gallon car for $22,000

Man I love my '05 Ford Mustang, but everytime I head to the pump I cringe. My car slurps down gas, like its going out of style and this bothers me. I love the performace of my car, I enjoy having all that power beneath my right foot, but I feel guilty for not having a more fuel efficient car.

The new Loremo has plenty of fuel economy, 150 miles to the gallon kind. Thats rediculous! You can travel from New York to Los Angeles and only stop for gas 3 times. ...and its affordable at $22,000. However there is no performance, with stats like 0-60 in 15 seconds i'm unimpressed (they will be releaseing a GT model that has more performance 0-60 in 10 seconds for $30k). I really want to jump on the fuel economy band wagon, really I do. ...but I gotta wait for something that has the same feel as driving my Mustang.

It does make me wonder though how will hybrids and hydrogen fuel cars affect the muscle car. Mustangs, Corvette's, etc are known for the purr of their engines, the way the car vibrates. The muscle (or simply sports) car manufacturers spend lots of money to make sure that when a Mustang owner opens up the throttle they are rewarded with the roar that everyone is familiar with. Will the performace of current sports cars be able to transfer over the fuel efficent technologies of tomorrow?

More HD woes

I'm not sure now if its the TV or my cablebox that is causing all these problems. This weekend i'm going to borrow my dad's ps3 and watch a blueray movie like spiderman or something and see how it looks. ...because last night I was watching all night on it and had no real eye strain. I was watching a Terminator 3 which clearly has a lot of action sequences and didn't have any of the stuttering I thought I saw on Monday, though it was a low def signal. Also on the hi-def side I didn't see any real problems watching mythbusters, other then that it seems that after a while watching a saved show on my DVR the video will freeze up but the audio will continue. Also sometimes when i'm in guide view, the preview window in the top right doesn't expand to full screen when I leave the guide (that definitely sounds like a bad box to me). Could these problems be a sub par HDMI cable? Hmm I dunno. Hopefully some of these questions get answered this weekend?

My new HD TV

So this past weekend I bought a 42" HD 1080p (with lots more acronyms) from Costco. It was on sale for $950. Last night I setup the HD box from my cable provider, so I started getting in a true HD signal and I’m unimpressed.

I kind of feel it’s the TV’s fault. I can feel my eyes are straining, sometimes my eyes feel like this before I get a migraine so I dunno perhaps that’s going to happen and it’s not the TV. ...however Brighthouse (my cable provider) has lots of HD content on demand, so I started watching the live performance of the Gorillaz in 1080p and well thinks just didn't look as crisp as I was expecting. ...and then of course there was that eye strain. ...and as I was fiddling with the menu for the TV it froze. The menu froze on the screen and I couldn't get rid of it. I couldn't even turn the TV off I had to pull the power plug out the back.

I'm getting together with my mom who did a ton of research before buying her TV, and I think I’m going to need to borrow a blueray with movie to see what the TV really can do. Normally I’m a pretty frugal guy. It wouldn't bother me that I’m not getting the best picture in the world. ...but if I can’t watch my TV cause it gives me headaches, well its useless to me and I may have to upgrade to a better TV. Luckily for me, Costco offers a 90 day return policy.

Toshiba calls it quits, HD-DVD loses Blueray wins...Felix rejoices!

As reported here. Looks like Toshiba is finally calling it quits. They've had way too many "partners" jump ship over to Blueray. Off the top of my head I can think of Warner Brothers, Walmart & Bestbuy. This will most likely boost PS3's importance in the home of tomorrow. As its the best bang for your buck, being both a blueray player (that is updateable, and a next-gen console).

In related news...i'm buying a PS3 soon. Costco is bundleing the 20GB version for $500, comes with an extra controller, the movie remote, Spiderman 3 Blueray (who cares), and the new Ratchet and Clank (which I just love that series).

Edit:
BBC's take on it.

Flash Drives getting so big its going to change the way we share information

...well at least I think. I just read an article that is talking about how flash drives are about to have a serious jump in capacity. Just so were on the same page i'm talking about all sorts of flash drives, from solid state drives (flash memory for your pc, replacing your hard drives), to SSD cards (memory for your cellphone, camera, etc) all the way down to usb flash thumb drives.

This is a huge deal. Right now you can go to bestbuy and buy a 16GB thumbdrive for $186. Just think about this, 16GB's is a lot of space. Hell at work I still have computers that have only a 20GB hard drive in them. Now this article doesn't go into detail about how this will affect the usb flash drive market but there is definitely going to be a trinkleing effect. ...and with everything now a days having USB ports we wont be reliable on things like ipod's, dvd/hd players, or even current computer storage mediums.

Lets take the maximum I could find (16gb's) and double it, what could I do with that? Well for one I could carry a complete operating system install on it. Get to somebody's house want to check my e-mail, just boot off of my USB drive and then check my e-mail. Or maybe i'd have a couple high def 1080p movies that I want to show one of my friends. Take it over to his house, plug it into his PS3 and start playing the movie. Or I could have an entire ipod's worth of mp3 music and just plug my USB drive into my car stereo and bam i'm listening to Shiny Toy Guns.

USB flash drives are going to become the new way for people to share information. Easily portable, cost effective, speedy. There are just a ton of reasons why this medium is going to do for information, what mp3 did for music.