Category Archives: Science and Engineering

Fear of a Black Planet

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Pace Arko

So they’ve found an extrasolar planet 750 light years away that surprisingly dark despite being so close to its sun. The planet is a jovian or superjovian (A gas giant, like Jupiter or Saturn.) only about 4.8 million kilometers away … Continue reading →

Posted in Science and Engineering | 1 Comment

Now, all we need are some dilithium crystals.

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Pace Arko

Considering how long we’ve known that cosmic rays have been bombarding the Earth, scientists have long speculated that cosmic ray impacts with the nuclei of atoms and ions in our upper atmosphere should create small amounts of antimatter. This antimatter, … Continue reading →

Posted in Science and Engineering | 3 Comments

Time travel, relativity and science journalism

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Pace Arko

So last week a friend pointed out a news headline that read “Time travel is impossible” and he wanted my opinions on it. So first let’s explain what the team of scientists in Hong Kong demonstrated. Their experiment showed that … Continue reading →

Posted in Science and Engineering | 2 Comments

Recognizing comment spam

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Pace Arko

Now that my site is back up, spambots are bludgeoning it with comment spam, which was also true in my Movable Type days. Luckily I have things set here to require my approval before allowing them to appear on my … Continue reading →

Posted in Security and Privacy, The Internet | Comments Off on Recognizing comment spam

I've decided I like WordPress

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Pace Arko

It’s been just over a month since I put the mighty, mighty Farlops Industries back online and I love the way WordPress works. To be fair, I loved the way the Melody fork of MovableType worked too and, I’d rather … Continue reading →

Posted in The Internet, Webmastering | 1 Comment

Neutrino detectors and the core of the Earth

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Pace Arko

All the volcanism, seismic activity and tectonic plate movement on the Earth is driven by heat deep in the planet’s core. Until now the source of that heat in the core was thought to be two things: Primordial heat as … Continue reading →

Posted in Science and Engineering | 3 Comments

Some poorly framed thoughts on why I'm unhappy with SMS and social networking tools

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Pace Arko

Now that I have a mobile phone, I’ve decided to rant about this and e-mail. I’ve ranted about e-mail before. I think it was poorly implemented to start with, lacking friendly, easy to use crypto for example, and got worse … Continue reading →

Posted in Security and Privacy, The Internet | 2 Comments

Shades of Algernon

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Pace Arko

The Blue Brain Project requires one of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet to simulate a single cortical column of a rat’s brain. This project of computational neurology has been running since 2005. In my opinion, this project, out … Continue reading →

Posted in Science and Engineering, The Future | 3 Comments

Apply sledgehammer gently to CPU

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Pace Arko

So, I discovered that the import file of my old posts has a lot of mangled markup and incorrect hard line feeds in it. This may be due to: Taking it straight from Linux but uploading it from Windows to … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Support, Webmastering | 5 Comments

Back in the World Wide Web

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Pace Arko

So, after two years, I’ve nearly cut all ties to Facebook. I say “nearly” because I haven’t deactivated my account and do plan to check it occasionally to see what my friends there are doing. What I mean is that … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal, The Internet | 3 Comments