Ryan & Amanda Keefer's Personal Site: Cycling, Family, Tech, Music, Software & Game Reviews, etc.
// March 19th, 2012 // No Comments » // Space Stuff & NASA, Video
Even with the shuttle being retired for over a half a year, we’re still getting cool media.
Check the video after the jump for an audio and video journey of one of the solid rocket boosters launches, gets separated from the shuttle orbiter, and then descends and parachutes into the ocean.
It’s a compilation of footage from STS-117 (Atlantis) and STS-127 (Endeavour). Very cool.
// March 15th, 2012 // No Comments » // Foo Fighters, Music
When you’re a master of multiple instruments and you have an ultra-successful band, you really get the means to experiment with a lot of musical gear.
A co-worker sent the link below to me the other day. It highlights all of the guitar gear rig and equipment Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl uses.
// March 14th, 2012 // No Comments » // Music
I’ll bet this is going to be crazy — Steel Panther at the House of Blues down in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Steel Panther is kind of like a metal version of Spinal Tap, but doing that isn’t really doing justice to Steel Panther, nor Tap.
While there’s more than a hint of humor, they’re actually great musicians and do tribute on their albums to some of the greats from metal and hard rock including Van Halen, Poison, Bon Jovi and many more.
Check out the video below if you’ve never heard them.
Too bad the Myrtle Beach concert is a Thursday night.
// March 13th, 2012 // No Comments » // Space Stuff & NASA
The NASA shuttle fleet’s Endeavour will always have a special place in my heart, after getting to see it up close and personal in the VAB at the Kennedy Space Center three months after its final flight.
Space Flight now does a great writeup on the last of the shuttles being processed for museum duty — this one destined for Los Angeles.
// March 12th, 2012 // No Comments » // Cycling, Tech
Co-worker sent this over this morning — a technlogy project partnership between Toyota and Parlee. An up or down thought could translate into a gear up or downshift. Pretty cool concept.
// March 11th, 2012 // No Comments » // Tech, TV Talk
So happy I was surfing Engadget’s RSS feed this evening before bed.
For quite awhile now, our 42″ Samsung LCD takes a long time to power on. It clicks every couple seconds and eventually comes on. After Googling it to find out what possibly could be going on, I quickly found others with the same problem, including some pictures of the problematic innards of the Samsung sets.
Turns out Samsung used some crappy capacitors in some of their sets. Visual inspection of these capacitors often shows a visible swelling of the components. While the parts to change out are cheap and readily available, until recently, Samsung wasn’t footing the bill to do it. According to the link below, they’re now acknowledging the problem now after being hit with a class action lawsuit.
I’m now chatting with a very polite Samsung rep to see about getting ours fixed. Will update after I’ve got more info, but feel pretty confident that our TV is going to be covered (it’s the first model number in the list of affected sets and it’s definitely exhibiting the symptoms).
I just hope we get it taken care of before the TV goes further south.
I’m also hopeful I don’t have to solder in capacitors myself.
Only wish the same outcome were in the process for my third red-ringed Xbox 360.
// March 10th, 2012 // No Comments » // Space Stuff & NASA, Video
Nice little video showing the permanent powering down of two of the three remaining shuttles (Atlantis and Discovery) from back in December.
Later this year, they’ll be in their new display homes.
// March 9th, 2012 // No Comments » // Space Stuff & NASA, Video
In a time when the U.S. doesn’t have a way to get humans in space and the budget to reinstate that is dwindling, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s remarks in front of the Senate are appreciated and sobering.
// March 8th, 2012 // No Comments » // Gaming
SimCity recently released this trailer, though its near-the-end disclaimer about the video not representing gameplay means we really don’t know what to expect for the fifth incarnation of the game.
Trailer looks great, but we really don’t know much about the game itself, other than the fact that it will be multi-player.
Regardless, it’s one I’ll look to buy next year, if it’s available for the Mac that is.
// March 7th, 2012 // No Comments » // Internet / Web, Space Stuff & NASA
I’m proud to have been part of that initial group of NASA’s Twitter Tweetups. I was even prouder to see the PR today that they’re expanding and broadening their social programs under a new name:
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