…of balloons to keep him entertained. Actually, he’ll be taking to the air on the 5th, but it makes for a good notification story for today.

Larry Couch, the cluster ballooning lawn chair guy will try to make a 300 mile journey, riding high in his lawn chair above Oregaon and Idaho.

You can track his progress live on his website, locating him with his on chair GPS unit.

“Meep! Meep!” is all the competition hears now….The US Military has the fastest supercomputer now…
And guess what? THe CPUs began their design life destined for gaming computers.

This isn’t the first time the gaming industry and the US Military has put it’s heads together to do something amazing, either.

So, now “Road Runner” leads the supercomputer pack.

Not computer related, but great technology from the medical field, and sadly from something bad, there are doctors and researchers are working on something very good for everyone. Salamander-inspired therapy may aid injured vets from CNN:

By Larry Shaughnessy
CNN Pentagon ProducerSAN ANTONIO, Texas (CNN) — Last week in an operating room in Texas, a wounded American soldier underwent a history-making procedure that could help him regrow the finger that was lost to a bomb attack in Baghdad, Iraq, last year.

Army Sgt. Shiloh Harris’ doctors applied specially formulated powder to what’s left of the finger in an effort to do for wounded soldiers what salamanders can do naturally: replace missing body parts.

If it sounds like science fiction, the lead surgeon agreed.

“It is. But science fiction eventually becomes true, doesn’t it?” asked Dr. Steven Wolf of Brooke Army Medical Center.

Harris’ surgery is part of a major medical study of “regenerative medicine” being pursued by the Pentagon and several of the nation’s top medical facilities, including the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic. Nearly $250 million has been dedicated to the research.
[…]

Amazing, and life changing for all trauma victims in the future.

Amazing…simply amazing.

Gotta hand out a BZ to OnTrack Data Recovery for managing to get 99% of the data off the Colombia’s hard drive.

BZ to the drive manufacturer, too. Freefall through 39 miles (the as the rock drops stright down measurement, btw) of atmosphere, with and IV (initial velocity) of 12,500 mph…and bring back the info. Tough stuff.

Update 5/8/2008: Just pointed out by a friend, but…it’s about the HD that fell from heaven…

A little humor…good for the soul…

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And toss this in for a little more, including a “Star Wars” theme

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What caused the RMS Titanic to sink so quickly?

The gCaptain Blog found something veeerrrryyyy interesting.

Note to those who think they know the “facts” of history today would be well served to know that they can’t possibly know all there is to know on the day things happened…

So, you curious mariners, engineers, and just plain curious people…go read how some archives led us to answering the question!

Graphene. A relatively new discovery, of a material we’ve had in our pencils all these years…cool ideas are in the works!

Do you find yourself a little short on travel funds, gas prices being what they are?

Check this out!

Click on one of those little green dots and get an interactive 360 degree picture of somewhere.

This one is breathtaking!

Enjoy…

And it’s a good one, too.

I wonder if there are slow poke tug drivers out there with your turn indicators on all the time…good thing there aren’t a lot of driving lanes already marked.

Mo’ better way to skydive - without the plane…

Wind tunnels keep getting better and better. I was able to get into the one at Ft. Bragg years ago by special invite and to be coached by the Golden Knights (including one of President Bush’s (41) jumpmasters. Video is on a VHS tape around here somewhere.  Yea…it was a while ago.

Go and Check out the Paraclete XP site…and also watch this video at MIlitary.com.

Trivia: Glenn Bangs was the the commander of the first 82nd Airborne unit to land in Saudi for the very start of Desert Shield (and was the other jumpaster for President Bush).