The $50K Satellite... Launch Included!

Whoa, check out what's going on inthe world of CubeSats. Small, fast, cheap, powerful, off-the-shelf. They're about 4lbs... and "can fly in formation, dock with each other, carry out science duties, inspect other satellites, scan our planet—and might be used to create an actual Earth-orbiting game of Space Pong."

Wow.

There's a particularly cool project going on called KatySat. It stands for "kids aren't too young for satellites." And we're talking K-12 here. These things are being billed as the personal computer of space...

You can start designing your very own CubeSat right now... http://www.cubesatkit.com/

I dare you to try.

Giant Squids On Wikipedia!

Until just recently, nobody had ever seen a live Giant Squid. Everything we knew about them came from dead squid that washed up on shore or were found in the stomach of their main predator, sperm whales.

Yesterday (27 Sept), scientists released photos of a Giant Squid, which were taken in Oct 2004. This morning, I found those photos on the Wikipedia entry on Giant Squid.

Not only is this a big step forward for marine biology and our understanding of these deep-water mysteries, it's one more example of how the Wikipedia approach is superior to traditional encyclopedias.

Any guesses on how long it will take for the Encyclopedia Britanica to print a new edition with this data in it? I figure it'll take at least a year...

The Personal MBA

I just came across a very interesting manifesto on the Change This website.

It's basically an education plan for earning your PMBA (Personal MBA), and it won't cost you $50K per year, or two years of not working, or any sort of active duty service committment... 'cause you do it yourself, by reading some good books (he's got a list).

Whether you find any of the books on the list interesting & useful or not (and there are many I think are both interesting & useful), I think the whole concept of teaching yourself at the MBA level has real merit. And that's why I came up with the PBL reading list...

You can go direct to the Personal MBA site for more information, but I highly recommend reading the manifesto...

Cube-Hacks, anyone?

I'm trying to see if there is any info out there about modifying, hacking or tweaking your cubicle. I'm not finding much (yet).

What I'm looking for is photos, ideas, templates, etc for cool and crazy things (preferably non-destructive) to personalize one's corporate home-away-from-home.

Yosh's shower curtain is a good start, but I want to think bigger.

Any ideas?