Monday Links from the Bench vol. XC

[NickFitz]

Just added this one to ReadItLater...

I bought the book Getting Things Done in April 2006, according to my Amazon order history. Still haven't read it

[Freamon]

Grey and cold out Best to stay in with this lot:
[LIST][*]Later: What does procrastination tell us about ourselves? - "The term itself (derived from a Latin word meaning 'to put off for tomorrow') entered the English language in the sixteenth century, and, by the eighteenth, Samuel Johnson was describing it as 'one of the general weaknesses' that 'prevail to a greater or less degree in every mind,' and lamenting the tendency in himself." Insert joke about how long I've been meaning to post this article by James Surowiecki...

Just added this one to ReadItLater...

[NickFitz]

A wee question - the footage from the ISS- was that taken by NASA astronaut Don Pettit ?

I don't know - the YouTube page just says the images were downloaded from NASA's astronaut photography site, but as that includes images all the way back to Mercury in 1961 it's a bit unclear exactly which set of photos he used

[AlfredJPruffock]

Great Stuff NF !

A wee question - the footage from the ISS- was that taken by NASA astronaut Don Pettit ?

I ask since Don has done some similar footage before whilst on mission on the ISS - I met him back in April at the European Astronaut Training Cnetre near Cologne and was lukcy enough to have lunch with Don as well.-

Don will re-join the ISS from a flight from Bakinour on a Soyuz launcher - you can see some great Sciecne he has done on the ISS on YouTube.- he specialises in Microgravity research ... . he is scheduled to spend six months on the ISS.

Not only is Don a great Scientist and Astronaut - but a really great guy and a credit to NASA and the International Space Station.

[NickFitz]

Grey and cold out Best to stay in with this lot:

• Later: What does procrastination tell us about ourselves? - "The term itself (derived from a Latin word meaning 'to put off for tomorrow') entered the English language in the sixteenth century, and, by the eighteenth, Samuel Johnson was describing it as 'one of the general weaknesses' that 'prevail to a greater or less degree in every mind,' and lamenting the tendency in himself." Insert joke about how long I've been meaning to post this article by James Surowiecki...
  
  
• Seventy Years Ago This Month at Bletchley Park: September 1941 - Considerably more interesting than most blogs written seventy years later. "Hut 8 at BP are now reading the main German naval Enigma key, Dolphin, regularly and with ever reducing delay. During September they are breaking Dolphin within 36 hours on the first of the paired days, and within a few hours further work for the second day when the wheel order would be unchanged. Admiral Karl Dönitz was always fearful that his submarine cyphers might he broken, so he had been planning to give them a separate key, and since April 1941 he had done this but in the first place with a trivial change in that if Dolphin had a ground state, say ABC, then the submarine key, called Shark at BP, would be the reverse, CBA, which created more work but not a significant problem for BP."
  
  
• Password Secrets of Popular Windows Applications - "In today's Internet driven world, all of us use one or other applications starting from browsers, mail clients to instant messengers. Most of these applications store the sensitive information such as user name, password in their private location using proprietary methods. This prevents hassle of entering the credentials every time during the authentication." This article explains where and how a number of common applications store your online passwords, and how to get them out.
  
  
• Ten Years with HIV - "I still remember my utter disbelief at the result and the appalling way the woman in the clinic broke the news to me. Her exact words were (at a mild shriek) 'You pick it up!'. It was almost comical and my first reaction was to want to tell her that she needed to go on a course to learn how to deal with people. Her English was pretty ropey and I'm not sure she would have understood. Fortunately there happened to be an NHS doctor there on a routine visit (private clinics have to be licensed and supervised thank god) and she took me away and was far, far better." Peter explains what it's really like to live with HIV now we have effective medication.
  
  
• What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth? - "A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night."
  
  
  
  
  
• What People Don't Get About My Job: From A(rmy Soldier) to Z(ookeeper) - "Over the summer, The Atlantic gave our readers a simple prompt: Tell us what people don't get or appreciate about your job. The response was so eloquent and overwhelming, it was practically encyclopedic."
  
  
• Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit - "Silly me. I thought flying on 9/11 would be easy. I figured most people would choose not to fly that day so lines would be short, planes would be lightly filled and though security might be ratcheted up, we’d all feel safer knowing we had come a long way since that dreadful Tuesday morning 10 years ago... But then armed officers stormed my plane, threw me in handcuffs and locked me up." Shoshana Hebshi found that being an American citizen doesn't count for much if your complexion is the wrong shade.
  
  
• ....and then there was silence - "Two cars had collided head-on and one car still had the driver in it. The two occupants of the other car were uninjured barring the usual minor grazes from air-bag deployments. I called in the update and then went to see what I could do to help the trapped driver of the first car... It was at that point that I noticed a smell. It was faint at first, but soon got stronger. I thought it might be the residual smell of an airbag or of hot rubber from skidding tyres. It wasn’t." Remember this story next time you're held up because the emergency services are dealing with an RTC.
  
  
• Time, technology and leaping seconds - "Soon after the advent of ticking clocks, scientists observed that the time told by them (and now, much more accurate clocks), and the time told by the Earth's position were rarely exactly the same. It turns out that being on a revolving imperfect sphere floating in space, being reshaped by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and being dragged around by gravitational forces makes your rotation somewhat irregular. Who knew?" Christopher Pascoe explains how Google's Site Reliability Team ensure that leap seconds don't cause synchronisation issues for their global network.
  
  
• Photos of TV - Mike Sacks takes photos of TV:
  
  
  

Happy invoicing!