Firefox 2 Released

Firefox 2
Highly-anticipated Firefox 2 was released on Tuesday. Although this release does not have any earth-shattering new features, it does consolidate some features that previously required extensions (now termed add-ons), like better tab and RSS feed management, built-in spell checking, a session restore feature, and an improved search box. This new release is faster and rock-solid stable, allaying some of the previous complaints of memory leaks. Check out this review of the new features that also includes screen shots of some of the streamlined UI changes.

To coincide with this release, Mozilla has revamped its Add-ons page, making it easier to navigate and renaming “extensions” to “add-ons” to make their purpose a little clearer for users skittish about customizing their browser experience.

This upgrade is most definitely worth it, and if you haven’t yet tried Firefox out, there’s no better time than now.

Awesome Space Shuttle Image

Europe terminator from Space Shuttle Columbia
aspiration posted this awesome image taken from the Space Shuttle Columbia during its last mission on an unusually cloudless period over most of Europe:

Note that the lights are already on in Holland , Paris , and Barcelona, and that’s it’s still daylight in Dublin, London, Lisbon, and Madrid.

The sun is still shining on the Strait of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean Sea is already in darkness.

In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the Azores Islands; below them to the right are the Madeira Islands; a bit below are the Canary Islands; and further South, close to the farthest western point of Africa , are the Cape Verde Islands.

Note that the Sahara is huge and can be seen clearly both during day time and night time.

To the left, on top, is Greenland , totally frozen.

Very nice…

Update: Upon doing some further research, it appears that this image has been circulating for some time with improper captioning. Snopes.com reports that it is most likely a digital composite of several satellite photos, which frankly makes more sense considering how unlikely it would be for almost all of Europe and some of Africa to be cloudless at once. Oh well, that’s what I get for trusting a post without a source…

Ruben’s Tube

Ruben’s Tube (YouTube video) is a:

classic physics experiment involving sound, a tube of propane and fire. Created for Flash Forward 2006, but useful in any case where you are not allowed to have fire. I push through the tube 449 Hz then higher frequencies, then some jazz and then some rock. This is real life sound visualization.

Pretty cool…

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