Harry Houdini was and still is an iconic figure of the magic, escape artist and debunking societies. Harry set the bar for future magicians and skeptics by regularly showing frauds to be what they were: charlatans, thieves, and ultimately failures.  To try and take his debunking further, he had an arrangement worked out with his wife. They shared a secret word that was to be used during seances attempting to contact Harry after his death (seances were all the rage at the time in the 1920′s).

In this manner, no matter who led the seance and what trickery was used, his wife had the key to whether it really worked. Of course, it never did. Despite claims and showmanship, no one ever held a seance where the proper magic word was revealed.

photo via Flikr

This Halloween a star studded cast, including magician Teller (of Penn and Teller), famed author and biologist Richard Dawkins, and all led by what is no doubt the most famous debunker of 20th and 21st century, James Randi, are coming together on Halloween to try contact Harry from beyond the grave.

I can only begin to imagine what an awesome event this would be. You’ve got the top minds in magic and skepticism in one room.

The comedy value alone would be worth the time and cost of travelling to this event. The showmanship will undoubtedly by priceless.

Luckily it’s supposed to be broadcast live over the internet around 9:00pm. Hopefully the kids will have collapsed from their sugar comas by then and I can catch the ‘cast.

Some of the most violent phenomena in the universe that we’ve observed and studied are supernovae.

To put it into perspective, something that is billions of miles away can, upon exploding, outshine anything in our night sky – even bright enough to be seen in the daylight.

That’s pretty intense, and just the beginning of the awesome that is astronomy.

Besides being amazingly beautiful objects to photograph after they explode, supernovae provide a very essential element to our existence - they sow the universe with raw elements (think periodic table) like some suicidal galactic farmer.

Crab Nebula. Photo courtesy of NASA at www.nasa.gov

When a star goes supernova it blasts out elements at fantastic speed, pushing out giant clouds of super-hot gasses. This produces some pretty sights like the Crab Nebula above, which you can see with your naked eye on a very dark night.

While a supernova is bad news for the local solar system (kiss those planets goodbye) it’s great news for things that will form millions of years from now. The things you see and use today are made up of the elements blown out from supernovas billions of years ago, including your very own flesh and bones. Indeed as Carl Sagan said,“We are star-stuff”.

Eventually our very own Sun will go supernova, our sun will grow  into a Red Giant, which will consume most of  the inner most planets, and literally melt away most of the outer planets  before its core implodes and vaporizes most of our  solar system in one titanic blast before settling down as a White Dwarf star*.

By all accounts that’s still a few billion years away, hopefully by which time we’ll have populated other solar systems. Yet another reason to have a solid space program. Sooner or later we need to get off this rock.

*Duh on my part. Our sun doesn’t quite have the mass to go supernova.

A while back Google announced it was developing a new way to communicate and collaborate with people. A redesign and new vision of email if it was newly deployed today.

Thus Google Wave was born. Right now it is out in limited Beta. If you listen to a lot of tech podcasts or read a lot of tech websites you’ve already seen the screen shots. Basically it pulls a number of communication avenues (chat, email, etc) and threads it together in a wave. What makes it even more useful is that you can have multiple people collaborating on one wave. If you want to see a detailed breakdown of the service check out Google’s video.

What makes Google Wave even more special is that you can program various widgets and bots to add and expand functionality. This will go a long ways into making it an incredibly powerful resource. Given that the beta is mostly filled with tech and nerdy types it was inevitable that people started to use it for gaming – D&D style.

Yes, no longer do you have to pay monthly subscriptions to MMOs, nor is distance a barrier to getting your hack-n-slash on with friends. Once Google Wave goes public dust off those D&D books, grab your 20-sided die and get ready to kick some kobold ass!

Tech is awesome.

In what has to be one of the best interviews on Colbert in forever, Brian Cox gives a quick overview of Relativity. Brian was so good Colbert forgot his usual stick of talking over his interviewees and actually talked to Brian. The exchange was brilliant.

All this further confirms my theory that Doritos are actually military experiments in Relativity. A few bags does all sorts of messed up shit to one’s own personal gravity well.

I have a long commute.

My sanity is barely held in check thanks only to a variety of quality podcasts that keep me distracted from the urge to throttle the life from my fellow commuters.

I should preface this with I’ve used varios Apple products for 15 year with almost no trouble. That’s an impressive track record.

On the otherhand when things go South there are fewer resources to go to in order to figure out a fix.

So imagine my horror as I pulled onto the highway only to realize no sound was coming from my iPhone. A quick check of the iPod app revealed an empty library, yet 15 gigs were still showing as used on the disk.

Somehow that 15 gigs of music, books, and podcasts became unrecognizable. A quick web search reveals that this isn’t the only occurrence, others have mysteriously lost their whole music libraries as well with no warning.

Worse, the only fix seems to be reconnecting to the computer the iPhone is synced to and re-downloading the complete library. That does me no good when said computer is sitting 54 miles away.

So get your shit together Apple and get this patched… or I’ll be forced to write more whiny rants until my two-year contract is up and I can purchase a phone on the Android platform (with actual Java and Flash support. Hurray!).

Meanwhile, I can look forward to a long commute home devoid of the one thing that keeps humanity safe.

You’ve been warned!

The demo for the PC went live today and it lives up to my expectations. Score another win for Valve.

A new city to fight in. New weapons (including a large variety of close combat weapons), new characters, and lots of new zombies and boss types.

It’s fast, gory, and offers up a lot of , “Oh Shit!” moments.

Checkout the trailer and the screenshots. Only a few more weeks before it goes fully live (reanimated?).

Again I wish they’d link Xbox 360 and PC servers. I’ve got far too many friends stuck on inferior consoles that I’d really like to play co-op with or eat their flesh in the versus mode.

Yay! Exciting space news. The Ares 1-X has successfully completed its first test flight.

Photo courtesy of NASA at www.nasa.gov

The Ares rockets are slated to replace the Shuttle program which is planned to have its last flight in 2010.

On one hand this is great as the Ares rockets can push larger payloads into space. On the other hand it’ll involve recovery operations for the rockets themselves and ye old plunge-back-to-earth capsules. It does feel like we’re taking a couple steps backwards in the Space program. Worse, there could be a five year gap between the Ares program going fully live and the Shuttle program ending. This means having to rely on other countries to get our payloads into orbit.

There’s got to be a smarter way to do this. Whether its pushing funding toward private ventures ala the X prize, or some other alternative – we need to find a reliable way to explore space and get humanity off this one rock.

NASA is woefully underfunded. That’s sad considering what space exploration and study has brought us. A highly visible, highly successful Space program not only inspires the imagination, it creates high-paying, high-end jobs, and a slew of support roles. It can also revitalize manufacturing when it’s at a level no other countries can handle.

Tech and science is the future folks especially in a country that can no longer compete in low-end, mass manufacturing. So why can’t we get a smart sensible discussion of it by the talking heads and our political leaders?

November is National Novel Writing Month. I had a neighbor that participated in the write 50,000 words in a month challenge last year.

This year he’s tossed down the gauntlet and challenged my wife and I to participate. Did I mention he’s 16? How do I let a challenge like that go unheeded (curse him!).

So I’ll do my best to drag everyone down with me. Go sign up at the their site and see what kind of story you can churn out.

People actually do get published thanks to the start they receive from this contest. So who knows, maybe this is that inspiration you need to write that best seller.

It’s not like you have anything better to do!

Several years ago I received a Harmony 880 universal remote from Logitech. It worked great in tying together my mish mash of home theater equipment.

Moreover, you could program it to do all kinds of things like switching to a specific input and one-button to turn on (or off) a slew of items. A great feature for those in the family who aren’t tech savvy and just want to watch some TV without destroying the set-up by mashing every button on the TV, then every button on the Tuner.

Like many other owners of the 880, one day the remote stopped charging. This happens because the contact material on the handset and the charger wear off. Luckily there is a rather cheap and easy fix.

First up is a trip to your local hardware store to purchase a soldering iron and some electric solder.

Once you’ve acquired those materials set-up a little work area with your newly aquired tools, the Logitech 880 handset and charging station.

Get a nice stripe or blob of electical solder onto each contact

Do the same with the charging station. A nice stripe or blob of electic solder on each contact.

At last what we want to see, a full charge!

Some customers have been able to get Logitech to send them a new charging station. However, I found this method to work just as easily – and there was no wait for shipping! As soon as the solder had set, I had a working charge in 1/2 hour. Now it’s as good as new!

As soon as weapons are installed on this thing, it’s game over for humanity.

I welcome our robot overlords (please don’t kill me, Titan).

***Update***
As Drew pointed out in the comments, there is someone inside the suit. This actually makes it even more compelling for me. That’s freaking exo-armor! A veritable IronMan suit! At worst, it’s the best Halloween costume evar.

Do Want.