Verbosities

My discoveries and associated ramblings

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Heavens-Above
This is a fun site to explore. Even if you're not into astronomy, you really should experience a good Iridium flare at least once. Just make sure that your watch is set correctly because they only last a few seconds at best. In order to calculate the flares, heavens-above will need fairly precise measurments of your lattitude, longitute, and elevation. You can use TerraServer to find your lattitude and longitude. The USGS will be happy to tell you the altitude of a nearby landmark.

Monday, March 08, 2004

DARPA Grand Challenge
The US Government is offering a one million dollar prize if a robot can drive from Barstow, CA to Las Vegas, NV in under ten hours. The official rules state:

"The Route will include surfaced and un-surfaced roads, trails, and off-road areas. Man-made and natural obstacles—both above and below the surface of the average terrain—are likely. Examples of obstacles include ditches, washboard, open water, rocks, underpasses, construction, power line towers, barbed wire fences, and other vehicles. All obstructions on the route can be either accommodated or avoided by a commercial 4X4 pick-up truck."

This is a lot more interesting to me than an episode of Robot Wars. I really hope that someone will report some technical details of the contestants.