Time-Lapse Auroras and Flyovers

Sometimes capturing things on video is the only way to truly express their beauty and magnificence.

And sometimes, its the only way to express the extent of their AWESOME!

This time-lapse video shows how circling the planet looks from the International Space Station:

The next one is a time-lapse of an aurora (my fav, as you all know) over Finland:

Aurora Borealis in Finnish Lapland 2011 from Flatlight Films on Vimeo.

The awesome is just…too much sometimes :)

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Talk To Your Kids…About Star Wars

Thanks to all my dedicated readers who have stuck with me through this dry-spell of posts.

I’m going to start ramping back up to roughly a post per day. Where better to start than a Star Wars-related YouTube video?

I know its a comedy, but it’s an important issue. Jar Jar Binks is NOT cool!

The Guild = Awesome

So I’m a little bit late getting on board with this show, but I’ve become addicted to watching ‘The Guild’, a web series about a group of WoW addicted nerds trying to get along in the real world.

Coincidentally, Felicia Day is going to be at the Calgary Comic Expo next weekend. Should I go and tell her I’ve developed a nerd-crush on her?

More likely I’ll show up and act really awkward, cause y’know, I’m a nerd and all.

Canadians are the World’s Biggest Net-Nerds

A report released yesterday by ComScore has found that Canadians spend more time online, about 43.5 hours per month in 2010, than any other country! Hurray!

The United States was second with 35.3 hours per month, followed by the UK with 32.3.

Some other notable statistics were that there was a 12% growth in Canadian users in the age group of 55+ in 2010 compared to 2009. Keeping in touch with the grandkids I guess.

And while traffic to Social Networking sites like Twitter and Facebook went up 13%, visitors to blogs went down by 9%.

C’mon people, close down your TweetDeck and drive up the site stats on my blog would ya?

I’m not really sure if Canadians should be proud of this or not. Does this mean we are the most tech-savvy of all nations, or that we have nothing better to do?

Of course it does get pretty cold up here in the winter time, so I’d rather be watching stuff on YouTube than braving the -25C weather in Calgary. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, right?

Why Am I Only Finding Out About This Now?

I’m not sure how many people knew about this, but MIT started a revolution in 1999 when they started posting class notes and lectures online. Free. For anyone!

Now, MIT has course materials from over 2000 courses available on their website for you to download. Some have lecture videos and some even have the class quizzes and exams for you to take.

Apparently many other Universities are starting to get in on this trend too. MIT gained a lot of funding and publicity through their OpenCourseWare initiative, and other schools wish to do the same.

Of course, you can’t get a degree or interact with Professors. But still, free University lectures/notes? How can you go wrong?

I’m currently taking a refresher in Electricity and Magnetism with renowned professor Walter Lewin. Professors like this remind you why science can be so fun.

So maybe if you aren’t a huge nerd like me who misses school, this may not be so exciting.

But if you are so inclined, check it out. Some courses are also available on iTunes U (which I also just found out about) so you can download them to your iPod or iPhone and watch them on the way to work.

Happy learning!

The Last Word (hopefully) on the Jerusalem UFO

I have a Google alert for “UFOs”. I like seeing some of the nonsense that people come up with, and most UFO claims tend to go away within a day.

But this one of a UFO above the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, persisted.

The first video I saw was this one:

Which looks horrible! I was surprised this even got any attention. The blob is clearly CG animated, and the background looked kind of weird.

In fact, as Steven Novella pointed out on his blog, the lights in the video don’t twinkle at all, they are still.

Have a look at this screenshot I took of the above video:

Now, compare that to this photo of the Dome of the Rock, available for free via Wikimedia Commons:

Looks quite similar doesn’t it?

But of course there are a few other videos which “confirm” the UFO, none of which are overly impressive:

Life’s Little Mysteries goes into some detail about why these videos are fakes. First, they point out how illogical it is that someone would report these videos anonymously. People would WANT the attention of discovering something like this, wouldn’t they?

Second, no one else in the area reported seeing this UFO. The Dome of the Rock is a pretty prominent structure. Someone else should have seen these weird lights.

Robert Scheaffer, author of Bad UFOs blog also noted,

Effects of the video processing software are clearly seen. The hoaxer used Motion Tile effects with edge mirroring to introduce camera shake into the video. You can see the mirroring effects along the edge of the video. This proves that the video did not go directly from the camera to YouTube

This ‘motion tile’ effect is illustrated in this video uploaded by HOAXkiller1:

Frankly, the UFO videos weren’t all that impressive to begin with. But the evidence is pretty clear that the videos are fakes.

I do enjoy watching them though. It is pretty interesting to see what new trick these hoaxers will come out with next. I don’t think we’ll have to wait long for the next one…

How To Film The Earth From The Stratosphere…using Duct Tape

Using some duct tape, a helium balloon and styrofoam, Alex Baker and Chris Rose, PhD students at the University of Sheffield, sent a camera and a GPS tracking unit into the stratosphere and captured some pretty cool aerial footage.

They did this on 17 December 2010, (thought it was reported on the BBC today) and the flight time was about 2 hours and 50 mins as stated on their flickr page, which has a cool panoramic photo stitch from their footage from an altitude of about 35 km.

Cowabunga!

A new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (my fav cartoon from when I was kid) called “Fight the Foot” has hit YouTube.

And it deserves all the hype its been getting. Its really well done for fan-film, and just makes me hungry for more.

The last news I heard about a big-budget TMNT movie was this piece stating that Viacom, who recently aquired the TMNT label from Nickelodeon, listed a TMNT movie as a project they would look to release probably in 2012. Its not much, and Michael Bay is attached to the project (who I think sucks), but its something.

With the new Spider-Man reboot coming up, it would be great to see TMNT get a “Batman Begins”-type treatment as well. But we’ll have to wait and see.

A Star Wars Christmas Special That’s Actually Good!

“Obi-Wan already has a brown Snuggie!”

Support Cookie Monster’s Bid to Host SNL

I love Cookie Monster, and I’m on board.

You can join the Facebook group here to support the cause. Pass it on!