Right Minded Online

This absolutely fascinates me:

For the first time, an image of a memory being made at the cellular level has been captured by scientists.

The image shows that proteins are created at connections between brain cells when a long-term memory is formed. Neuroscientists had suspected as much, but hadn’t been able to see it happening until now.

Every time I read something like this, it makes me appreciately what an amazing Creator God really is. Evolution simply cannot explain it.

First Image of a Memory Being Made – Yahoo! News.

In the book Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, the protagonist, invents a motor that runs on static electricity. That’s all well and good, but it’s fiction, right? Well, Nokia has invented a cell phone that recharges itself by turning radio waves in the air into usable power. You gotta love this stuff.

Pardon the cliche, but it’s one of the holiest of Holy Grails of technology: Wireless power. And while early lab experiments have been able to “beam” electricity a few feet to power a light bulb, the day when our laptops and cell phones can charge without having to plug them in to a wall socket still seems decades in the future.

Nokia, however, has taken another baby step in that direction with the invention of a cell phone that recharges itself using a unique system: It harvests ambient radio waves from the air, and turns that energy into usable power. Enough, at least, to keep a cell phone from running out of juice.

Prototype Nokia phone recharges without wires : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech.

My pro bono research assistant Brad, who remembers the birthday of every single person he has ever met in his life (while changing his from year-to-year to prevent others from remembering his), send me the YouTube link to a video on Project Natal for xBox 360. It’s billed as controller-free playing. At first, I thought this was some sort of spoof, but it appears to be the next generation of entertainment technology. Absolutely fascinating.

I’ve got Johnny Cash singing in my head after writing that headline.

Anyway, my son was given an xBox 360 for Christmas, 2007. Thus, the Microsoft 90-day warranty is long gone. His xBox 360 recently fell victim to the dreaded red ring of fire. Those of you who have experienced the three blinking red lights know what I’m talking about. Those of you who don’t, well, this post isn’t written for you, anyway. Suffice it to say, the system isn’t usable at the moment.

I got online and immediately ran into a plethora of websites that deal with the red ring of fire and how various xBox 360 owners have fixed it. For about $30 you can purchase a manual that shows you very simply how to fix the red ring of fire without having to ship the thing off to Microsoft and pay them $140 to do the same thing. It’s a guaranteed way to repair the system, and I have no doubt that it works.

I even watched a handful of YouTube videos to see people actually taking the thing apart, then found a website that showed step-by-step how to at least open the xBox 360 up.

So I started to tear into the xBox 360. After all, the warranty is kaput, and the thing doesn’t work, so what did I have to lose?

I didn’t get very far. When it came to removing the main casing, I just couldn’t get the thing off, and I feared that if I tried to force it open, I’d break something.

I called Best Buy. They don’t repair xBoxes.

So I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to ship the thing off to Microsoft and pay them $140, or whatever it costs, to have the xBox repaired.

I went onto the official xBox website to begin a troubleshooting procedure when, lo and behold, I discovered that Microsoft has extended a special three-year warranty to cover the dreaded three red-light ring of fire. Thank goodness I didn’t go so far as to break the warranty seal when I was trying to crack it open.

I jumped through all the necessary hoops on their website, and yesterday a UPS package arrived so I can ship the thing off and have the warranty work done.

I’ll let you know what transpires.

UPDATE: We got our repaired xBox 360 back on May 28, just a week after sending it off.

Hubble Photographs Cosmic Fountain.

U.S. News & World Report says that Americans are driving their cars farther than ever before, and gives some tips on how to squeeze every possible mile out of your set of wheels. I’d love to wind up in this club.

Can Your Car Last A Million Miles?- Yahoo! Autos Article Page.

Ever since I realized that you could listen to XM Radio via an Internet stream, I’ve been waiting for them to make it accessible via iTunes. My wish is close to being realized.

Financially struggling Sirius XM Radio Inc. is planning to stream its subscription radio service to the iPhone and iPod Touch devices from Apple Inc. beginning this spring.

After narrowly avoiding a filing for bankruptcy protection last month, the nation’s only satellite radio provider wants to step up sales directly to consumers. New car purchases — which had been Sirius’ best source of customers — are way down.

Sirius XM also said in a call Thursday to discuss its fourth-quarter earnings that it’s ramping up efforts to reach buyers of used cars with factory-installed satellite radios.

“We’ve been testing a number of initiatives to make the Sirius XM content and experience more ubiquitous,” said Jim Meyer, president of operations and sales at New York-based Sirius.

Sirius now has 19 million subscribers, up 10 percent from a year earlier.

By streaming its music, sports and talk channels to users of the iPhone and iPod Touch, Sirius can give its existing subscribers another way to access content and let new customers sign up without buying new radios, CEO Mel Karmazin said.

Yahoo! News – Sirius XM Radio planning to stream to iPhone, iPod by AP: Yahoo! Tech.

Apple has just released its third generation of iPod Shuffle, from the stick of gum, to the clip-on, to the talking iPod.

Available now for $79, the new Shuffle (announced this morning on Apple’s Web site—did someone heed Chris’ call for fewer Apple events?) is billed as the “world’s smallest music player,” and indeed, it looks tiny—just 1.8 by 0.7 by 0.3 inches, or (as Apple helpfully notes) a little smaller than a AA battery.

Gone is the circular navigation pad from the last-generation Shuffle; instead, you get a new in-line remote on the earphone cord, which includes volume up/down buttons, plus a center control that lets you pause and skip tracks. Not bad, but here’s the only problem: Third-party earphones won’t work all that well with the new Shuffle, or at least not until someone makes a pair with a compatible in-line remote.

Also new: VoiceOver, an intriguing attempt to replace the Shuffle’s missing LCD display with a computerized voice that tells you the track name and artist of the song you’re listening to. Just press and hold the center key of the Shuffle’s in-line remote to hear VoiceOver speak.

New, smaller iPod Shuffle gets the power of speech : Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech.

Tape measure: X-rays detected from Scotch tape – Yahoo News

A reader has passed along the link to Watts Up With That?, a science and technology blog that uses facts to refute the global warming hoax.

A French voice recording from 1860 predates Edison’s first recording by 17 years.

Ben Cunningham points the way.

There is actually a website out there called “Everything USB” that shows you all the various things you can do with a USB port.

My friend Brad, who is self-employed in the computer business, passed along the tip that you can use the website http://www.primopdf.com to convert files to PDF. I haven’t tried it yet, but if he says it works, it works.

A God who can create this out of nothing is certainly worthy of worship and praise from a pipsqueak like me.