Happy 10th Birthday Sarah!

The Station Fire

It looks like the Mt. Wilson transmitter sites and observatory have dodged a bullet. The best source for updates about the fate of the structures on Mt. Wilson has been from the folks who operate the observatories. The Mount Wilson Observatory web site that was hosted on a server on the mountain has temporarily been moved to a Georgia State University server here: http://www.chara.gsu.edu/CHARA/fire.php. Their last posting about half an hour ago was extremely optimistic.

Here is a live feed of the fire from CBS. If the video is black or there are color bars, the helicopter is likely refueling. Check back in a bit.
Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

The Earth

Those of you who have Dish Network may have already discovered this. Dish has put up a video feed of the Earth as seen from their Echostar 11 satellite at an orbital position of 110°. It's not really live video but a series of still images updated about every 15 seconds. If you have Dish Network, you can find the feed on channel 212. Click here for a YouTube video of 24 hour sequence from this camera. Near the end of the video you can see the moon passing behind the Earth. Something about seeing a "live" image of Earth from space is simply fascinating.

BlackBerry 9630 "Niagara" Video Review

Someone posted this video review of a pre-release BlackBerry 9630 "Niagara" on CrackBerry.com. The software isn't quite ready for prime-time, but we get a good look at the hardware. Rumor has it that it will be released on Sprint & Verizon sometime in May or June.

Ron Spillers Harp Guitar

What is that freakish monstrosity, you ask? It’s a Ron Spillers harp guitar, played here by Andy McKee. McKee’s effortless leaps to the bass strings complement his lush, finger-picked chords rather well.

My Next BlackBerry

Rumors about the CDMA version of the BlackBerry Bold (code named Niagara) continue to swirl about the net. Several sources have said that this device will be released by Sprint as early as this quarter. This device sounds incredible. Lets just hope the rumors are true.

BlackBerry Niagara (Bold 9030) Specs:

• Full QWERTY keyboard
• 480 x 360 Large Screen High Res TFT LCD
• 128 MB flash memory (maybe more)
• EV-DO Rev. A
• HSPA broadband roaming
• Wi-Fi support
• Bluetooth
• aGPS
• 3.2 megapixel camera
• 4.7 OS platform
• Qualcomm MSM7600 processor

Comcast Faster Fast

Comcast has really beefed up their internet service bandwidth recently. You might have seen their television commercials for "Faster Fast" internet access. Well, it looks like they have come through in the Seattle area. My speed test results are showing download speeds in excess of 20Mbps!

You can test the speed of your internet connection by clicking on the link below: