I just got Windows Live Writer set up and so far it seems to be a very nice way to edit a blog. It has a great preview function so you can see how the blog is going to look before you publish it, even before you save it as a draft locally to your computer, or publish it on the website.

You can download Windows Live Writer from this link: Download Windows Live Writer.

The F1 Help key can be frustrating because it is very slow to invoke on Visual Studio. I figured out a way to make it faster by having it bring up a browser rather than the MS help. This technique will also work with the currently highlighted word.

Use the following steps to make this happen:

1. Use the Tools > External Tools menu.
2. Add a new tool as shown in the top image below.
3. Use the following text for the Arguments: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:microsoft.com%20$(CurText)
4. Use the Tools > Options menu for and select Environment > Keyboard.
5. Type in “External” in “Show Commands Containing”
6. Select “Tools.ExternalCommandN” (Where N is its order in the External Tools list).
7. Fill out the rest of it as shown in the bottom image below. If the F1 command is already taken by the existing Help then disable it in the Help.F1Help command.

Now your help should come up very fast.

I had previously written on “The Nature of Gravity”. The National Science Foundation is building actual devices to measure gravity waves using laser interferometry which can be viewed in this slide show. Although they haven’t detected the gravity waves yet they have made a discovery about the Crab Nebula.

I previously wrote about how much I like wild rides, and my friend Mike was kind enough to take me out for a fun ride in his newly rebuilt ’72 Nova hot rod this morning. And by rebuilt I mean the engine has been transformed to a monster, as in “It’s aliiiiiiive!!“. The engine’s displacement is 496 cubic inches and horsepower has been estimated at 700 BHP. When started it often sets off car alarms and scares any nearby kids and elderly. When being built I nicknamed it “The Big Dig” (from boring out the cylinders), and it is now known as “Brutus Maximus”. It was a lot of fun to ride in, when he put the pedal down it was like a speedboat taking off as it reared up trying to pop a wheely. I noticed there were some hand prints on the dash from previous riders holding on! The prints weren’t from my hands but Mike says I was holding on to the seat pretty tightly ;).

The Boston Globe online runs an excellent photo blog called “The Big Picture”. It features amazing photographs of various subjects. This particular photo essay features a series of photos about Mars and its atmosphere: Click Here to See Martian Skies

The photo of the earth and moon from Mars is particularly good.

You can see all of the photo essays from this link: The Big Picture

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One thought on ““The Big Picture” Features Martian Photos”

One thing I noticed about the tragedy at Virginia Tech is that the media constantly played the monster’s video and kept mentioning the monster’s name. They were playing right into his hands and should have just left that video with law enforcement agencies. This kind of notoriety only encourages copy-cats and zeros that want to gain a sort of immortality to their name (also see Kennedy’s assassin and the Columbine scumbags for other examples).

I wrote about some of the old rides at Disneyland a couple of years ago. What I hadn’t realized that the classic “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” had been closed at Walt Disney World in Florida back in 1998. That was one of my favorite rides as a kid and it was unique in the Disney World version in that it had two different tracks, each track giving a different experience (same as Space Mountain). The ride is still available in California, but it is only on one track.

This is an update on the XM Satellite Radio that I wrote about earlier. I was able to improve the installation in the Matrix by adding a bracket that mounts it to the right of the radio and angles it toward the driver. Also, I wired the power inside the dash so I wouldn’t have to keep using those bulky power plugs. The Sony dash unit was useful in that it has an Aux input that allows the signal to go straight from the XM Radio into the Sony unit. The direct connection is definitely an improvement over going through the FM receiver. Below is a picture of the XM radio in the cradle and hooked up to the Sony:

The following link shows a cool visual illusion involving the shading of squares A and B that appear to the mind to be a much different shade. It’s hard to believe but they are exactly the same shade of gray.

Checker Shadow Illusion

There’s been an interesting trend lately to turn any adverse publicity into an opportunity to absolve oneself from responsibility by entering into a rehab program. Historically that was limited to drug or alcohol use, but lately rehab has been a “cure-all” for public relations disasters such as rants about ethnicity (Gibson) or sexual-orientation (the guy from “Grey’s Anatomy”). Of course there is still the usual parade of Hollywood stars going to rehab for the classic reasons. The funny thing is that those rehab centers such as WonderLand look better than the nicest spas and let the stars go out running around during the course of their stay (Lohan). The fix is more directed towards the rehabilitation of the image of the star, evangelist, or sports player rather than fixing the actual problem. Maybe after the next Super Bowl they’ll say “I’m going to Wonderland!” instead of Disneyland.