Tax Day is coming. If you’re looking for more expenses you can claim in hopes of a higher return, MSN Money notes that a hobby might just do the trick. More »
from Lifehacker
From Lifehacker: Got a Hobby? It Might Earn You a Tax Break
From Discover Magazine: Space Station star trails | Bad Astronomy
One of my new favorite sites is Fragile Oasis, a blog where astronauts write about their experiences in space and on Earth. Don Petit, an American who has taken so many of the amazing pictures that have graced not just this blog but have gone viral across the web, posted a nice description of taking star trail pictures on orbit. This one in particular is surpassingly beautiful:
Siiiigggghhhhh.
You can see part of the International Space Station at the top (I think that’s the lab section, with the node Destiny and the JEM facility, but I may be mistaken). The stars are blurred from motion, with the thickening on the right of the Milky Way, the combined light of billions of stars.
The slight motion blurring makes it look like the ISS is moving at warp speed over the planet. The Earth’s atmosphere is the thin green/brown haze over the Earth’s limb, with the top sharply defined by the aerosol layer. The red glow is interesting. That may be an aurora, but it might also be an internal reflection; Don shot this through the cupola window. Reflections …
from Discover Magazine
From Engadget: Gaikai brings its cloud gaming to Facebook, launches beta application
Gaikai’s certainly grown leaps and bounds since its early days, and today the cloud gaming firm takes another step by joining the largest social networking platform on the globe. For starters, this first beta of Gaikai’s Facebook application is available to North American / European gamers, offering support for browsers such as Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari and Firefox on Windows, OS X or Linux machines. Gamers who’ve fiddled around with the outfit’s previous betasor Walmart’s Gaikai powered Gamecenter will know the drill: streaming game demos in the frame of your web browser.Ready to try before you buy? The setup is serving up samples of Saints Row: The Third, Dead Rising 2, Magicka, Sniper: Ghost Warrior, The Witcher 2, Orcs Must Die! and Farming Simulator 2011. Gaikai CEO and co-founder David Perry told us that while the outfit’s current Facebook rigging is still centered around demos, it’s primed to push full titles if and when a publisher requests it. “Our goal is to get games as accessible as movies and music,” he told us “so games get the chance to compete.” Gaikai v1.0 is live on Zuck’s site now, so click the source link below, pop in your Facebook credentials and you should be all set.
Sean Buckley contributed to this post.
Continue reading Gaikai brings its cloud gaming to Facebook, launches beta application
from Engadget
From There, I Fixed It – Redneck Repairs: Showers Just Got a Whole Lot Hotter
Yes, these shower tiles are thermal sensitive. They change colors based on the temperature. Think of the possibilities!
From Droid Life: Precision X Android App Lets You Overclock Your GeForce Graphics Card Externally
It has been years since I exited the competitive PC gaming world (Unreal Tournament series, anyone?), but from what I can tell, the industry is as big and as advanced as ever. I still remember the painful and sometimes intimidating steps it took to overclock anything on PC, yet today, companies are releasing Android apps that let you do it on the fly. Take this EVGA Precision X app that connects your phone to your GPU via Bluetooth, giving you a view of its performance and the ability to set fan speed, power limits and frequencies. Yep, I’m impressed.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Cheers Rob!
from Droid Life
From Ars Technica: SpaceX considering a new ‘Commercial Cape Canaveral’ in Texas
SpaceX has filed a notice of intent with the FAA, indicating it wants to conduct an Environmental Impact Study for the construction of a new spaceport in Cameron County, Texas, on the Gulf and very near the northern border of Mexico. The site could make Texas a powerhouse in commercial space.
from Ars Technica
From Wired Top Stories: A New Lego Master Model Builder – And He’s Only 23!
There are very few Lego Master Model Builders in the world and only a handful of them are located in the United States. When one of the American builders recently retired there was an intense competition to fill his dream job slot.
from Wired Top Stories