The Viaducts

Downtown Vancouver east arteries. During Canucks games parking lots fill up rapidly. Traffic slows down as the game begins. The sun sets and the city lights up. Telus science world goes off for Earth's hour. Game over: watch the spectacular traffic rush in the end.

Falling Down From Heaven

If you are not good enough to be in heaven, you get kicked out. A Russian space probe learned this the heard way.

On a serious not though, this space craft was heading to Mars but never made it past the Earth's atmosphere. A spokesman of the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces confrimed fragments crashed in the Pacific Ocean.

This mission had a price tag of $170,000,000.00. The space probe weighed 13.5 metric tons, of which 11 metric tons consisted of toxic fuel.

This must be great for the environment. Watch out, you never know what could be falling on your house.

I Can't Wait to go to Mars

Hi,

My name is Curiosity and I am a high tech Geologist.

Guess who's going on a 354 million miles journey? Ouch, that's a long trip. However its certainly worth it. I am going to Mars!

My mission has people saying things like: "the next best thing is having humans on mars". On Mars, I will cruise around with my laser vapourizing tiny segments of rocks. I will take lots of pictures out there, especially in the Gale crater.



Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Care to see me take off from Cape Canaveral? At 7:02 AM PST on Saturday November 26th, watch me here. If only the weather cooperates.

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Optimise Hockey Pool with Microsoft Excel

So, for a hockey pool at work I thought it would be fun to use excel solver to "optimize" my pool. Using last year's points I was able to pick 11 skilled forwards and 5 high scoring defence men. Here are my picks for the NHL Season 2011 to 2012:

Name Team GP G A Pts Salary Position pts/$
Henrik Sedin VAN 82 19 75 94 6,100,000.00 C 15.41
Steven Stamkos TAM 82 45 46 91 8,000,000.00 C 11.38
Claude Giroux PHI 82 25 51 76 2,750,000.00 C 27.64
Ryan Kesler VAN 82 41 32 73 1,000,000.00 C 73.00
John Tavares NYI 79 29 38 67 900,000.00 C 74.44
Matt Duchene COL 80 27 40 67 900,000.00 C 74.44
Daniel Sedin VAN 82 41 63 104 6,100,000.00 L 17.05
Martin St Louis TAM 82 31 68 99 5,500,000.00 R 18.00
Corey Perry ANA 82 50 48 98 5,375,000.00 R 18.23
Jarome Iginla CGY 82 43 43 86 7,000,000.00 R 12.29
Teemu Selanne ANA 73 31 49 80 4,000,000.00 R 20.00
Lubomir Visnovsky ANA 81 18 50 68 5,000,000.00 D 13.60
Nicklas Lidstrom DET 82 16 46 62 6,200,000.00 D 10.00
Dustin Byfuglien WPG 81 20 33 53 4,250,000.00 D 12.47
Erik Karlsson OTT 75 13 32 45 875,000.00 D 51.43
Kevin Shattenkirk STL 72 9 34 43 875,000.00 D 49.14
Total 792.00 1,254.00 65,825,000.00 -

For a total team budget of $69,000,000.00 I hand picked: a frnachise player Alexander Ovechkin, 2nd year with highest penalty minutes (PIM) in the league from Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario Zenon Konopka (Now with the Ottawa Senetors and formerly with the New York Islanders), Jimmy Howard - Detroit Red Wings behind the net and from the greatest hockey team Hockey team, P. K. Subban of the Montreal Canadians.

Lets see what the season holds...

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Tianhe-1A

China, Supercomputer, 2.507 petaflops == 175,000 laptops, Nvidia Tesla, Intel Xeon, $88,000, Cray XT5 Jaguar, HPC 2010, October 2010

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Google is taking over the world !

Yes, as we know it all everything is made easy by Google: Introducing Google TV















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Putin boasts new jet fighter better than U.S. plane

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65G64820100617

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U.S. military create live remote-controlled beetles

U.S. military create live remote-controlled beetles

Posted using ShareThis

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Apple's New iPods

Here are the gadgets Apple dropped yesterday:

Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs took pleasure in introducing the iPod Touch. This new iPod has the touch screen feature and WiFi of the iPhone. Essentially, it is an iPhone with no calling feature. Unfortunately it only comes in 8GB and 16GB. Watch him introduce it here.

Steve Jobs had many announcements for journalist on September 5th, like the price cut on the 8 GB iPhone from US $599 to 399. He also announced Apple will stop producing the 4GB iPhone, because .

Apple presented another version of the iPod Nano. This iPod has a bigger screen and it plays videos. It is available in 4 $G and 8GB.

The other product Apple introduced yesterday is the iPod Classic. This product is very similar to the iPod Video, but comes with an enormous 80GB or 160GB (40,000 songs)storage.

For more take a look at these pictures :
http://news.com.com/2300-1041_3-6206181-1.html?tag=ne.gall.pg




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First Man On Mars ?

1957, Russia sends the spacecraft Sputnik to space. Sputnik was the first unmanned spacecraft from earth to space.

April 12, 1981 Russia sends the first man to space. America, caught by surprise in this race to space took the lead by sending Neil Alden Armstrong in Columbia to the moon in 1969. The landing on the moon marked the pinnacle of American investment in the space program. Ever since, investment in the space program both in the US and Russia has dropped significantly.
The Russian space program went bankrupt. Now it is coming up slowly especially as they're coming up with new initiatives like the space tourism program, offering people flights to space for monstrous amounts of money (about US $ 20 million or so).

Vladimir Putin rekindled the race to space when he announced last week, that Russia plans to send a man to the moon by 2025, and latter on to set up a permanent base on the moon. He also mentioned they will possibly send a man to Mars by 2035. Like I say, only time will tell.

Take note that space programs are not popular because they are very expensive and not profitable. For more click here

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