Monday, March 28, 2005

The ultimate gadget

I've just read a comment on Slashdot.org that made me recall about a NASA project of a autonomous free-flying camera. I know about this device since long time, perhaps since it was tested during Columbia's STS-87 mission. Its goal is basically to help the crew during extra-vehicular activities (EVA), and to perform inspections of the shuttle or ISS from the outside. A pretty useful gadget, I may say. Nowadays, it seems to exist an improved version of the AERCam/Sprint prototype called simply AERCam.

What other gadgets has NASA in their labs?

Friday, March 04, 2005

What's that?

It is white, tiny, cold. Yes, you know it. Snow.

Snow all around. Only white landscape in all directions. It is beatuful. As beautiful as irritating. I'm a southern spaniard, thus I haven't seen much snow before I landed in the Netherlands. Neither the Netherlands gets that much snow in winter. Not in the past four winters.

Since wednesday, we are all enjoying snow and ice. Specially people like me that work in another town. Everyday, I drive about 30km to work on local roads mostly. Those kind of roads that get the least attention from the local authorities and, hence, aren't well maintained.

It is the first time too that I drive in snow. The road gets icy and the breaking distance enlarges out of control. Pretty scary, though. In the first drive-with-snow attempt I almost had a collision. The car glided when I wanted to do a stop at a crossroad. I panicked, by the way, when I felt my car out of my control. Instinctively, I steered the wheel hard to the left to "avoid" the front car. Luckily, the car's rear-right wheel hit the sidewalk border. My car stopped. I got an adrenaline shoot at 10 km/h. Live threatening, indeed. Needless to say that I arrived home completely exhausted due to the tension of driving in such conditions. An experience that I'm interested to repeat anytime soon.

In all, it was an impressive week of snow in Europe.