By Andrew - Does your wireless internet suck? Do you constantly loose that weak signal? Are you trying to get on to your neighbor’s un-protected internet from a short distance away (whether they are aware or not)? Does your MacBook/MacBookPro/PowerBook’s wireless signal seem like a tin can with a shoe lace compared to the massive transmitting power of the Echelon Project?

The QuickerTek Quicky is a very useful device to really boost the strength of your wireless signal (and sex appeal and testosterone and manliness). QuickerTek advertises that it boosts your ‘Book’s wireless strength from a wimpy 30 miliwatts to a sexy 500 miliwatts (basically, you boost your signal range to half a mile). This slender aluminum transceiver is also compatible with wireless standards 802.11b, g, AND n!!! The package contains the transceiver, the connecting cable, an installation CD, and user’s guide. It is so easy to set up that a trained monkey with a basic knowledge of quantum mechanics and an affinity to smashing things with a sledgehammer could do it.

The drawbacks are that 1) you cannot use the Quicky and the built-in Airport at the same time, 2) the Quicky heats up pretty quickly and is painful to the touch, 3) since the Quicky hooks on to the back of the ‘Book, it might cause damage to the screen in the future, and 4) it drains the battery very quickly, so the laptop should be plugged in while using the Quicky.

Overall, this is a great little device, especially if you are in an area with a free, weak WI-FI signal where service providers charge exorbitant amounts for slow service. Within a short time, the QuickerTek Quicky really proves its value.

By Helene - Have you ever tried to take a look at the composition of your food, moisturizers, shampoos, toothpaste, cleansing gels, etc? I know, lots of barbaric and alien words. But I really encourage you to do so!!! Let me illustrate this for you. Grab one of your everyday lotions or soaps. Do you see ‘parabens’ listed on it? If you don’t see it, you can consider yourself very lucky! Unfortunately, I have the regret to tell you that pretty much all the products you buy for everyday use contain some form of PARABENS.  Now, you may wonder what on earth are parabens. Well, parabens are a group of low cost and very effective chemicals widely used as preservatives.  Historically considered safe for daily use, they are becoming increasingly controversial. Recent studies have shown that parabens could be associated with breast cancer, infertility, DNA damage, etc. For some of you scientific aficionados, you can easily find all these studies listed in the scientific search engine website pubmed (entry: parabens).  I don’t really want to scare you, but keep in mind that parabens are just one example among many other unsafe chemicals used in daily products. So, be sure to pay close attention to what you are eating and putting on your skin!

This one will be a great addition to my sleek 96′ minivan. A Back To The Future Flux Capacitor Replica - Unlimited Edition for only $220.00. Isn’it awesome ? I will mount it between the train horn and the hawaii belly dancer….oh ! hold on a sec’…Doc Brown’s Flux Capacitor needs the Delorean to reach 88 miles per hour to make the time jump…noooo…my mini-van barely makes 65 MPH downhill…I’m screwed dammit !

Ok that’s Apollo 13 mission to the moon…Wanna spend $9,500 for Christmas ? Sure…why not…then you can treat yourself with an Apollo 11 spacesuit replica. Nice don’t you think ?  It features: the space suit, the helmet with the outer gold sun visor, snoopy cap, front / back pack, space gloves, space boots…So you can look awesome for any kind of situation: shopping at Walmart, Halloween or just to be ready when the evil aliens will finally take over earth and suck-out all our atmosphere…spooky…

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After having a great time flying for many years there is a place where planes come to die. Those boneyard are filled with carcass scattered everwhere. One of the good place to find amazing parts like cockpits, etc… is at Aviation Warehouse (El Mirage, CA ). One of these day I will treat myself with a full B747 cockpit.  Oh yeah ! I’m sure it will look awesome in my living room… ….hint for a Christmas gift for you guys : A full cockpit of a F14 tomcat so I can seat in there and watch Top-gun with Maverick saying “You don’t have time to think up there. If you think, you’re dead.”….hahahahaha !

a link with some great photos of aircrafts in a boneyard by Troy Paiva

A photo I took last January during a trip to Yosemite with my very close friends . A stunning sunset above the clouds.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is currently selecting 4 new astronauts. Almost 10 000 people originally registered as astronaut candidates, of which 8413 fulfilled the initial application criteria. Out of 8413, only 918 have been invited over in Hamburg (Germany) for the first batch of tests. ESA gave each of the 918 selectee a special gift box with a DVD of ESA activities and a little book about the 2008 ESA astronaut selection. Now we can see this special gift popping out on eBay. Perhaps some guys got pissed off for being kicked-out of the selection program…come on cheers up guys ! The cube thing was tough huh ?…I know, it was a tricky one  There are currently only 192 remainder candidates. Good luck to you guys and keep us posted.

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I stumbled upon this today: I just found out that Spotlight (in MacOS X for you people using OS from the darkside) can do some maths on the fly. Awesome…

I’ve been trying different noise cancelling headphones but none of them gave me a good satisfaction. During the summer I finally got the QuietComfort 3 Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphone from bose. The main reason was that I had to fly long routes often between august and october and sitting in the back of a noisy and cramped coach for 12 hours is no fun. Honestly it is so noisy, especially in an old B747 or 767, that it is painful to listen to something else that the loud ambient noise of the plane racing in the sky at M0.85 . The QuietComfort 3 from bose dramatically reduces the ambient noise and it renders the sound from the iPod very clear. No need to jack-up the volume so high that slowly but surely you’ll be deaf.  Since it cancels much of the ambient noise, you can listen to your music at a volume level quite low. The QuietComfort 3 is freaking expensive, but being in a haven of tranquility with a crystal clear sound in a noisy environment is priceless. I use it almost daily in the lab and it cuts down all the background noises like AC and fan noises. It is a truly amazing headset. Beside its price, the main drawback I can find is that it tends to put a little bit too much pressure on the ear. No big deal…really !

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X-ray crystallography : The “gold standard” in structure determination. Yep ! Sometime, it is a lot of pain to solve a structure…but no pain no gain right ? But the result is awesome. Science is art !

…instead we had some great teriyaki chicken thighs cooked on the barbecue along with some yummy sweet mush potatoes and asparagus. A couple of bottles of Bordeaux and some unknown, strong but yet delicious home made liquor from a remote village somewhere…helped to get everything down the hatch smoothly. Happy Thanksgiving holiday !

Davis is definitively a quiet college town with no much going on but I like it very much and I will definitively miss it when I will have to leave. I love Davis for many things: the bike lanes everywhere, the feeling to live in a small village even though Davis is not that small. I like also running west Davis around the fields, the airport. It’s only a few blocks away from my house and it is just great for an easy run.

It was this last sunday (11/23/08), a nice afternoon for a sweet flight to the San-Francisco bay with Miriam and Frank. Masayo was there to take great shots of the take-off.

11/23/08 C-172 N711PG Take off runway 34

Among all the MacOS X releases, 10.5 (leopard) is definitively not the most stable. It’s getting better update after update though. In my experience 10.3.x was the most stable.

If for some reasons you get the infamous grey screen which last for ever during the boot, or if the mac keeps on doing loops during the boot, here a solution to your problem by booting in single user mode.

1- reboot the system or force reboot the system if it is stuck by pressing : ctrl+apple+start button

2- immediately after the starting chime, press and hold apple+s

The mac will start in a single user mode which is just a hoardcore unix terminal mode. At this stage, be very careful because you will have full privileges on the system.

3-  type:   fsck -fy  then press enter. fsck command will check/repair your hard-drive.

4- type:    mount -uw /  then press enter

5 –  type:   chmod 775 /  then press enter

6 – type:    reboot   then press enter. The mac will reboot and the glitch is gone…(hopefully)

It was on March 15th ’08. Nice clouds over Davis.