March 2008 Archives

Supposedly my Freedom Keychain GPS device that I picked up last year while I was still using my Samsung i760 will work with the Blackberry Pearl. I know the GPS device does work because I have gotten it to partner with my computer as well as my old cell phone, but for the life of me I can't seem to get it to work with my Blackberry. It's not a hugely important detail in the grand scheme of things, but I have spent several hours off and on over the last week trying to get the thing to sync up and just can't do it. I am at a loss right now and seriously considering getting something else. The idea of having a GPS receiver and being able to use it with mapping programs is just really cool.

Something else that's pretty cool are the devices that Land Air Sea produces. Their GPS Tracking Key is a small device that picks up signals from the DOF GPS satellites and records the location every second. It's pretty cool that it can get your location within about eight feet. Eight Feet!

You download the data by plugging it into the USB port of a computer and using something like Google Earth you can see where someone or something has been. Since it's small it's easily concealable and the magnet is strong enough to be placed under a car. It's also water resistant as well.

Last year the GPS Tracking Key helped to solve a murder. George Ford's wife thought that he was having an affair and placed on in his car. Originally he had been charged with reckless endangerment but after getting the data from the GPS Tracking Key the Chenango County Police charged him with murder.

There's other reasons to have something like this besides cheating husbands. Three words. Teens with cars. That's enough to make me want tracking devices, cameras, all kinds of stuff on a car. I can also see where it would come in handy if you have a fleet of cars or trucks as well. The device records how fast you travel, the directions you are facing, how long you are stationary and the route you travel. Using just those four things you can extrapolate all kinds of other information as well. Pretty cool if you ask me.

A huge unmanned European transport ship capable of delivering several tons of cargo to the ISS has been cleared to launch on Sunday. The Automated Transfer Vehicle has been named Jules Verne and will be blasted into space from a modified European Ariane 5 rocket which is going to launch from Kourou, French Guinea.

The various space agencies are hoping that the ATV will be able to take over many of the supply runs that bring water, food, fuel and spare parts, particularly after NASA scraps the space shuttle program in five years.

Depending on the life span of the vehicle, the European Space Agency plans to build a total of five of them

You may have noticed on a couple of posts at my other site that I have added something called Buzzfuse to the bottom of those posts. What Buzzfuse does is to give me a place to market my posts and drive traffic to each of my sites. It's easy to sign up at Buzzfuse.com and it's nice to find another way besides trackbacks to bring new traffic to some of my work.

Go check it out, sign up and submit your own work to see how it goes!

Any good geek should know who Gary Gygax was. Along with Co-Creator Dave Arneson he helped launch the fantasy gaming genre by creating a fantasy game called Dungeons & Dragons in 1974.

My dad picked up the game in 1976 and introduced it to us. I was immediately hooked and was heavily involved in gaming until the early eighties and then still played off and on until the last decade. Now I just don't have the time. I must have 300 books, Dragon magazines and modules packed away in my basement dating from the seventies until the early nineties.

Gary Gygax had been suffering from health problems for several years including an abdominal aneurysm according to his wife. His death was caused by those same problems.

Funeral arrangements for the man who died today are still pending. Along with his wife he is survived by six children.