Spore candy: It's the small things

The best thing about Spore is the little added touches like this: a meteorite that I found while flying around a planet. Sure, if you've played Spore at all this is no surprise, but its one of the things that really makes this game great.

Retracing the Steps of Apollo 15

From the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera: follow link to read full article.

Retracing the Steps of Apollo 15: Constellation Region of Interest

In this image you can see where astronauts (and the lunar rover) disturbed the lunar surface on Apollo 15 at Hadley Rille.

Image credit: [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Ash and Lightning Above an Icelandic Volcano

Another Astronomy Picture of the Day link:

Ash and Lightning Above an Icelandic Volcano

A pretty pheonominal photo worth an extra click to view.

Saturn's Moons Dione and Titan from Cassini

Astronomy photo of the day link:

Saturn's Moons Dione and Titan from Cassini

Q. What would it be like to see a sky with many moons?

A. Totally awesome, it'd be like playing Spore, but I'd still want my terraforming tools :)

Link to Cool Video of Volcanism on Io

Neat image animation of a volcano erupting into space and debris falling back to Jupiter's Moon Io: http://www.planetary.org/image/tvashtar_051407_loop.gif

Springtime Avalanches on Mars

Springtime dust avalanches on Mars caught in action with the HiRISE camera.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.

Original Posting: Springtime For Avalanches

Space potato

Just for fun, a link to the Astronomy Picture of the Day from April 5:

Prometheus Remastered

Q: What does Saturn's shepherd moon Prometheus really look like?

A: It looks a lot like a giant, grey space potato. But still, a very dramatic pose.

SimCity for iPod update

A quick (hardly exhaustive) internet search to follow up on my question about the maximum possible population limit in Sim City for iPod/iPhone has shown that the largest number floating on the surface of the internet is about 350,000.

Some handy tips for gameplay can be found here: http://www.iphonestrategygames.com/strategies/simcity-guide

Some cheats here (not that you'd want to use them, wink, wink): http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/01/13/simcity-for-iphone-cheats-tips-tricks/
And here: http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/03/07/simcity-for-the-iphone-%E2%80%93-more-cheats-tips-tricks/

I'll have to try again and see if I can beat 350,000!

Venus hotspot

Hotspots on Venus detected with the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer on Venus Express may be active volcanoes. This would be a first for the terrestrial planets in the inner Solar System besides Earth.

Image credit: NASA/JPL

Funny Face Craters on Mars

Not very scientific, but here are some Mars emoticons. Image taken with the HiRISE camera. The smiley and frowny features are explained as dunes on the floors of the craters.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona, more info at: http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_017020_1620

Saturn's PacMan

The so-nicknamed PacMan on Saturn's moon Mimas imaged with Cassini is just temperature variations over the surface possibly due to different surface materials.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/GSFC/SWRI/SSI

Today's Candy (Copernicus Crater)

This is a portion of a publically-released LROC (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera) image of Copernicus crater.
It's a bit of the central peak, a central mountain that forms during the impact that formed the crater.

Follow link to view the whole image; I just grabbed a low res screencap from here:  http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc/view_lroc/LRO-L-LROC-2-EDR-V1.0/M109365462RE

They've also released an Image of the Day about Copernicus crater here: http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/?archives/160-Fresh-Copernican-Crater-.html

Space Race Victory Now Running Windows 7

Space Race Victory has finally made the switch to 64-bit Windows 7 from 32-bit Vista! Now we have a whole 'nother 32 bits to play around with.

Do we like Windows 7? Yes, we do! It feels a whole lot better.

Why and how, you ask? I dunno, I reply. It has a certain ineffable, indescribably better quality of some kind, or at least a general feeling of overall improvement in a sort of qualitative way.

In function and design, Windows 7 is not really all that different from Vista, but yet maybe it is. The taskbar is really great. It seems to run faster, too. It's a bit more organized. Plus, it just looks nice. Now (the real question), do games run better?

Spore-Candy of the Day

No words necessary. Just looking. (and drooling...)

SimCity for iPhone pop cap?

Is there some sort of theoretical population limit for my small patch of land? I can't seem to top approximately 250,000 people. If this were any decent urban center, they would keep packing in there. I've let the game run on super-speed for many hours but the population never goes up. This requires some research...

New gaming addiction

Quick, easy-to-play games for the iPod Touch have great appeal to me at the end of a long day.
Pictured is a sceencap from SimCity for the iPod/iPhone. You get a small patch of land to start with and skyscrappers soon follow ...

Revived?

After 3 years, will this site be revived?
The suspense is heavy.