Mola

MachHolz in Christmas

2005-01-13T19:47:00.000+01:00

MachHolz in Christmas
Originally uploaded by Agnuca.

In Spain, there is another Christmas present day on the night of the 5th of January. The story tell that three Magic Kings followed a Comet to Belem, where Jesus was born, to bring presents.

This year we have a Comet on the sky. Is the Machholz comet, as green as an emerald and very bright even at naked eyes. It is crossing the sky at high speed around Taurus constellation and is a pleasure how it moves every night. DonÂ´t miss it!

Underwater Universe. Scuba Diving

2004-09-09T15:29:00.000+02:00

This summer I though it was about time to chage my aiming. After my whole life watching up and wondering about the secrets of the universe I decided that it was about time for a inner view of the world, so I took a ScubaDiving PADI certificate lessons to be able to explore physically and personally the nearer but really unknown, at least for me, underwater universe.

I belong to the 1st space exploration generation, being lucky enough even to participate in some NASA-ESA space science missions like IUE, Hipparcos and Giotto, so being an astronaut was my dream since the very early stages of Gemini and Apollo missions. But, opportunities, physical conditions really prevent me for approaching this as a reallity, although I have been friend of the 1st Spanish astronaut, Pedro Duque, even before he decided to become one of those when living in Germany.

So diving has been a really dummy opportunity to float and navigate autonomosly inside a new universe. Well, every dive teacher say that, but we all know that diving and flying at zero-gravity is not at all the same feeling. Everytime we jump into de water, get an air bump on a plane or enjoy some entertainment park attractions or you are falling, you are really experimenting zero-gravity, unfortunatelly for some seconds only. But, even you aren´t falling were diving, there is another feeling that I really appreciate underwater and this is floating at wish as a bird. Maybe you are diving around a down or a cave in the ocean, suddently you see another interesting place higher or lower and you have the freedom to float around, balance your weight/flotation ratio with your own breath and you are there. This feeling is really unbeliveable. Total 3D freedom as an astronaut in space!!. Furthermore, not like in 3D virtual reallity, you can really touch every single piece, and feel being surounded by a fish bank or inside a cave or a sunk ship. This feeling is really undescriptable, you need to live it to understand what it's about.

With all multimedia technology around, I'm really pursuing underwater photography, but for the time being, and as the equipment is so expensive, I just bought a single use underwater camera as a companion during my first diving trips, but the results are really promising. If you want to watch the results, I have use the my new anunez.mutiply.com album to store pictures from my new adventure... "1st dive for a man, a big leap for human kind...bip!"

Maestro, NASA Mars Robot Simulator at your finger

2004-06-30T15:22:00.000+02:00

I made a dream come true. I´ve found NASA's Maestro project. Is it yet another simulation software? Really isn´t!! When I was student of Astrophysics, 0x19 years ago :-) I was very focused on applied research with detectors for telescope observation and involved in new ones that weren´t Vidicom but solid-state (first CCD´s on the earth).

At that time, 8bits microprocessor where around namely 6502, 6800, and programming was all about FORTRAN/ASSEMBLER and punched cards, with new mainframe O.S. called "TimeSharing", and Mini´s like PDP-11. Few graphics displays around but static Tectroniks phosphore vectorial ones (do you rembember them?) not bitmap oriented. Ok, many memories...

I was developing some turtle robotic simulation and display them as vector graphics, based on a plan that simulate a hipotetical extraplanetary robot, and every time you need to press the DEL key to erase (similar to Degauss in current monitors) the phosporite display before drawing new pahts...

Today, I downloaded Maestro software, around 40Mb piece, and I´m able to plan mission steps of "replica" of Spirit/Opportunity NASA's robot for Mars in my PC, with real 3D pictures comming from real probes, in 3D with all the digital detectors, spectrometers, microscopes... identical to the real mission. Hey, that´s a dream come true!!! Actually this software that you can download for free is almost the same that current mission scientist use to plan the real one. We (users out here) can experience the same feelings that they do as they are operating a virtual robot, as Mars is far away and with lightspeed delays they cannot also operate the probes in realtime. So We (users again) have the privilege of the most sofisticate lab ever build on Mars. I can be writting about it for days, but I think you had probably click already and being downloading Maestro to taste it by your own. "Huston, here... anywhere at home, roger". :-)

Mola, yet another blog on the wall?

2004-06-22T22:45:00.000+02:00

Yet another blog? Well, might be, but this I hope will help anyone to get fun about what´s cool on the web. In spanish (mother tonge) Cool = Mola, so I´m going to point to anything really Mola on the web.

Today I´ll start by gmail. Well, I was lucky that Santiago Gala invited me to test Gmail, I was really shock by. I´d been all the time looking for really usable services and as always (at least latelly) Google did it again.

Let me explain why:

1st of course and evidently, is its SIZE freedom, not only as a feature (1 Gbyte for free is a lot), but as emotional feeling. They tell you to forget about deleting your all or useless mail. Well, I´m not only lazy enough to accept this proposition but really the power of recalling something that happens time ago, for a short memory person like me is really a good backup proposition.

2nd is the new approach of mail taxonomy (categorization). I have been all the time boucing from sorting mail by topic, by person, or by time, and now I really can forget to do it, as the mail is automatically organized about discussions for you, and even if you lose the thread, your always have the google search power handy, so this Mola

Last, but not least, I like the easy of use. I have been always looking for a good definition of usability until I found Steve Krug book´s title: Don´t Make me Think. That really Mola to me, as I hope that design a web or any other service and tries to really be appreciated by its users should really be always trying not make things to heavy to understand. We (users) are so lazy and timeless that if we need to think about a minor obscure piece of information, we rather go to another place where is easier. Another great example (and obvious again) is Google. Did anyone ever found a web page that need less to read to understand its purpose and use it. Mola