Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

autopope's main blog points to Encyclopaedia Astronautica's history of Project Dynasoar.



A fascinating piece on the military implications of a skip-glide orbital vehicle - along with the liquid flourine/hydrazine rockets that could have been used to launch it. Imagine the down-range effects of a trail of hydrofluric acid...

I'm off to Las Vegas in a couple of weeks for a conference, and so I thought I'd buy a guidebook to see what was worth seeing and doing while I'm there. I was amused to discover that the hotel I'm staying in merited its own section.

Then again it does seem to have a copy of the Grand Canal in the lobby...

Linux for the Russian market?

...and so here are some more pieces from the Guardian: a piece on what I think will be the key enterprise IT themes and issues for 2004, some ruminations on the effect of the outcome of Microsoft and Sun's Java lawsuits on developers, a look at how to start building service-oriented architectures, and a look at Microsoft's Small Business Server 2004 and some alternative approaches.

"Knights of the Occasional Table"

Gotta love those purveyors of ambient bleepy stuff, they do have a sense of humour...

Apparently Coca Cola's new bottled water really comes out of a tap...

Watch aircraft taking off and landing at Los Angeles International Airport in near real time (there's a 10 minute delay on the information feed) with Airport Monitor, a rather handy Java application.

There's also a list of other airports that subscribe to Airport Monitor, so you can see what's happening at your local airport (if you're in certain US cities!)