Great looking lenticular cloud

Wow, was just browsing Panoramio when I found this. A spectacular lenticular cloud over a volcano (I believe) in Kamchatka.

Photo location (see this area):

Imagery ©2007 NASA - Terms of Use

56º 4' 55.20" N 160º 35' 15.01" E

here's a smaller one - the pic, not the cloud, which is, if anyting, even more impressing - with some explanations from the wikipedia:

Lenticular clouds, technically known as altocumulus standing lenticularis, are stationary lens-shaped clouds that form at high altitudes, normally aligned at right-angles to the wind direction.

Where stable moist air flows over a mountain or a range of mountains, a series of large-scale standing waves may form on the downwind side. Lenticular clouds sometimes form at the crests of these waves. Under certain conditions, long strings of lenticular clouds can form, creating a formation known as a wave cloud.

Power pilots tend to avoid flying near lenticular clouds because of the turbulence of the rotor systems that accompany them, but sailplane pilots actively seek them out. Although the clouds can produce heavy turbulence they also show a sign of precipitation. This is because the systems of atmospheric standing waves that cause "lennies" (as they are sometimes familiarly called) also involve large vertical air movements, and the precise location of the rising air mass is fairly easy to predict from the orientation of the clouds. "Wave lift" of this kind is often very smooth and strong, and enables gliders to soar to remarkable altitudes and great distances. The current gliding world records for both distance (over 3,000km) and altitude (14,938m) were set using such lift.

They have been mistaken for UFOs (or "visual cover" for UFOs) because these clouds have a characteristic lens appearance and smooth saucer-like shape.

I am LinkedIn

Linked in the great social network of Web2.0: here's my profile.

It's been a surprise t discover how many of my gmail contacts were already in it.

I thought I'd be one of the first one, instead two of my PhD supervisors seems to be aready there.

I wonder if it will be of any use for my future career.

Working on my Thesis

big mess. corrected one table before realising what it did talk about. this can only mean that the section which contains the table isn't clear about it.

back to square one.

Some more piccies on MY Panoramio

I've uploaded some more of my Sardinian holidays pictures on my own Panoramio. Completed with GPS coordinates and shown on Google maps.

Go and have a look.

I am definitely going to get a GPS enabled camera, although GPS tagging isn't that hard and it's fun enough.

Can You say GATTACA?

World's First Personal DNA Analyzer goes on sale today - for only 15K US$.



I loved GATTACA, the 1997 movie describing a world where everybody had to pass a daily or even more frequent DNA test to access work, and only "able" person with genetic defects engineered out could access to the middle and upper class.No, I am not fans of eugenetics, in fact I loved the character who tricked the system, and shows that he can do as well and better than his near-perfect companion. As the tagline says, "There's no gene for human spirit".

If you fancy, now you can sequence the DNA of your boyfriend/girlfriend, s Uma Thurman does in the movie, to make sure he/she is a match. So, what are you waiting for? Break your piggy-bank and send a 15K US$ check to Spartan BioSciences.

read more | digg story

'Day One' for Safari for Windows Becomes Zero-Day Nightmare

Apple provides a "secure" browser for Windows? Really? Ehr, not...



It took security engineers perhaps less than two hours yesterday to introduce Apple's surprise entry in the field of Windows browsers to the big, cruel world of exploits and vulnerabilities, following its introduction yesterday morning at WWDC. As a result, much of the clout Safari had received as the secure browsing alternative to Internet Explorer and Firefox -- as long as it was on a Macintosh -- was burned off like fire to a flash fuse.

read more | digg story

Go With the Flow

The Economist has a nice piece on an innovative way to know where people come from, are and go to. Using GSM location data.

At least in metropolitan areas, the method seems to work well, and offers undeniable advantages compared to classical methods to assess traffic - primarily, extensive coverage, and historical depth, since we don't get one snapshot, but for every mobile phone we can know time-dependent position, therefore origin and destination.

This will allow traffic planners to know where exactly are the weakest links in their network.

Of course this data will not come out of the companies for free, it will rather have to be well paid and will provide another source of revenue now that growth is stalling - in Austria, says the article, there already are 112 phones per 100 people - who would buy new ones?

The initial research was performed by the MIT SenseLab (or something like this) using data from Telecom Italia and an austrian GSM operator.



read more | digg story

Axis of Time

Just discovered this nice ucronic series:

Axis of Time by John Birmingham.

Back in 1980, Kirk Douglas starred in a light SF movie called The Final Countdown in which the USS Nimitz was flung back in time to World War II, where the crew encountered the forces of Imperial Japan, and the dilemma was whether it was wise change their own history. John Birmingham -- who has apparently never seen the movie -- has the same basic premise for this work, but that is where the similarities end.

well, if you want to know more just read the rest.

You're my Favorite Waste of Time

I mean, google thingies...

google maps, photos, and so on...

5 Cool Linux-Powered Phones

Yeai...Five linux powered phones, although I am not sure how accessible the operating system will be on the motorola.certainly, the Qtopia seems to be nice, albeit with rather meager specs.



read more | digg story
more piccies from the article:



Trolltech’s Qtopia Greenphone is a Linux-based, quad band GSM/EDGE handset that boasts a QVGA touch screen display, 1.3-megapixel camera, 317MHz XScale processor, 128MB ROM, 64MB RAM, Bluetooth, and a miniSD card slot.

OpenMoko’s FIC Neo1973 is the world’s first Linux-powered, open source phone. It features a 2.8-inch (480×640) touchscreen display, Samsung s3c2410 SoC, a Global Locate AGPS chip, 128MB SDRAM, 64MB NAND Flash memory, and a microSD card slot.

No, You Have Not Seen a Lot of Snow! And This Is Really a Lot [pictures!]

Damn...now this is ALOT of snow!



read more | digg story

A fungus becomes the Largest Living Creature on Earth

Until August of 2000 it was thought that the largest living organism was a fungus of the same species (Armillaria ostoyae) that covered 1,500 acres (600 hectares) found living in the state of Washington. But then mycology experts surmised that if an Armillaria that large could be found in Washington, then perhaps one just as large could be responsible for the trees dying in the Malheur National Forest in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. Researchers were astonished at the sheer magnitude of the find. This most recent find was estimated to cover over 2,200 acres (890 hectares) and be at least 2,400 years old, possibly older.

Hold off on the purchase...

...of that new digital camera, boy, and wait for one with integrated GPS.

I had the same idea some days ago: "wouldn't it be nice to have a GPS integrated in my camera, so that every time I take a picture and upload it on picasa or flicker, I can get an exact location of where it was taken from? and viceversa, looking for pictures taken at a certain longitude/latitude spot?"

Wouldn't that be cool? well, of course it would be, and it indeed is. It turns out that some cameras do already include the thing: the Nikon D2X is a 5000 $ camera, so it's a little bit off-the market for me. But the Ricoh 500SE, at 1000$, isn't too far off. I'm sure next year this will be the craze - after all, many new ones already have wireless download to the PC/Printer, so it will be standard feature next year. And the megapixel run is over (thank God).

In brief, what are the good thing of this? For a start, other people will be able to look up your picture in the case they want to get there. conversely, they will know where exactly (with an approximation of some meters) that spot is. And once the mass of pictures in it reach a critical mass, other things may become possible, just think of a police officer looking for data on a person, or an event: knowing the location and time you (may) find the right picture and Bam!!! Case solved.

Organising such a vaste amount of data will be challenging, I bet. But once we pull it off we'll have an incredibly powerful tool at everybody's disposal.

Want to get back to an hotel who promised marvels and turned out to be dreadful? there you go, snap a picture of the bedroom, tag it with the hotel's name, geo-localised with GPS data and they're doomed.

As it happens, I'm way behind... Panoramio already offers this with Google maps, and Google has announced the intention to buy it.

Panoramio Announces Planned Acquisition by Google

Today, we are pleased to announce the planned acquisition of Panoramio by Google. This acquisition is a great opportunity for Panoramio uploaders to leverage Google's reach, increasing the exposure of their photographs to photophiles around the world and for viewers to choose from a larger universe of photographs as Panoramio becomes more widely known. We hope to close the acquisition in mid to late June of 2007. Got questions? Go to Q&A to learn more.

(Update: registered to panoramio as gufodotto, and uploaded three pictures. Check them out)

Welcome to the transparent society.

Wikipedia Post of The week: Closed Timelike Curves

Or, how to travel bacward, forward and sideways in time.

Inspired by Stephen Baxter's book, which I'm close to finish.