09:15pm
Jan18, 2005 |
Crossing
over 4000 million kilometres in a period of almost
seven years, the Huygens probe was released into
the atmosphere of Titan for our first glimpse of
that moons surface as its thick and clouded coating
kept the largest moon of Saturn (...and the second
largest moon in our solar system...) an enigma,
at least until now... On January 14th, Huygens
landed safely at 13:45 CET. It continued transmitting
from the surface for several hours, more than 474
megabits of data were received in 3 hours 44 minutes
from Huygens, including some 350 pictures collected
during the descent and on the ground, which revealed
a landscape apparently modelled by erosion with
drain channels, shoreline-like features and even
pebble-shaped objects on the surface (image used
with permission from The European Space Agency)
Where
are Cassini and Huygens now?
This is a great little applet that will show you
exactly where Cassini is at present, you can also
speed-up time to see orbits and close-by passes
yet to come. (more)
Now
it's time for an Abattoir update! Rebuild
/ upgrade of the Abattoir's SuperFTP Server has
taken a good bit longer than anticipated, and for
that we apologize; apparently moving around terabytes
of date can take more than an hour. Here's
where we stand so far... The SuperFTP's front-end
unit of the cluster has been upgraded and is ready,
following in Huygens footsteps, it will soon start
sending data -- we appreciate your patience as well
as your hate-mail, keep it coming. There have
been a few issues in the last few days that I'll
not detail in the LAN Minutes, but you can read
all about the outage issues, updates and such on
the Abattoir.BBs here. (link removed
for archiving) Suffice to say, work has progressed
and all will be back to normal shortly...
Now
we need your input! BTM46 is around the corner
(...and to the left...) but we want your feedback
on the two dates that have been scientifically picked
-- join in on the Abattoir.BBs and cast your
vote for the event date that you most prefer
(link removed for archiving). Due to popular
demand, we're going to start an Abattoir Mailing
List to appeal to those of you who don't feel you're
getting enough SPAM... We do not have a sign-up
page yet, so we're going to play this one on manual
for the time being; if you wish to be informed of
upcoming Abattoir events (...including BTM date
announcements..) send your email address to us at
notice@abattoir.net and we'll add you -- this will
be very handy for those who wish to get in on a
BTM LAN Party, but don't frequent the Abattoir often
enough to catch the date announcements before the
BTM sells out (...Abattoir Supporting Members still
get first crack at sign-up of course...)
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03:30pm
Jan07, 2005 |
Welcome
to 2005, everyone! Regretful I can not say
it was a fantastic New Years in light of the devastating
tsunami that struck on December 26, 2004.
This massive 9.0 earthquake, centred in the Indian
Ocean about 100 miles off the coast of Aceh, Indonesia,
formed a tsunami that flattened 11 countries, wiping-out
entire islands, changing geography and in its wake,
over 160,000 humans perished, most children -- that
number climbs daily. Support and relief efforts
have pushed forward with the same force of the tsunami
as the global community unites like never before
with aid in many forms -- for further information
on what you can do to help the millions who are
in dire need of our help, please check-out the Red
Cross and give generously, every dollar will
help.
As
there's no way to move topic from the above mentioned
to our SuperFTP Server with any eloquence, I'll
not even try. Local happenings we have to
mention involve the building of the Abattoir's new
in-house Media Server -- with the move to High Definition
video, it became quickly (...and painfully...) apparent
that we had to ramp-up our storage yet again, but
this time I've decided a nice little dedicated unit
with Raid5 and a terabyte of storage would be the
perfect box, incorporate four mini surveillance
camera inputs for Abattoir-wide "spying",
HD video outputs, slap a nice 7.1 sound card in
and you have yourself a handy Server for the Media
Room; perhaps just make it a house station on the
big tv for people to check their viagra/mortgage
Hotmail... Either way, Infinity jumped into
action yet again, as he tends to do when you sprinkle
him with hardware and has finished loading and waxing
our in-house Media Server... We're also upgrading
the Abattoir SuperFTP Server, so although this is
rather short notice, the SuperFTP will be off-line
tonight for a period of time (...not long, don't
panic...) and we'll be back faster, stronger and
more absorbent than before; we're shooting for Sunday
evening. We are also planning an outage for
the entire network (...including the SuperFTP, WebPortal
Server, MeatCAMs, WebMAIL, MailServer and another
box which resembles a toaster that none of us claim
to own...) The web site itself and Abattoir.BBs
are not affected of course, since they are being
run by professionals at ExaHost
Inc. (plug) This planned outage of the
entire network is for no other reason than for me
to vacuum the friggin' Server Room; it's a pig hole
for crying out loud! I've already found four
Cheetoz in there and they were banned from the Abattoir
two years ago... Oh, and we're putting in
some heat shedding devices we bought from eBay that
were used on the space shuttle, it should be cool!
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MeatMan
Says:
"If you're new to Abattoir.Net and want to get to know what
we're all about, sit back with a cup of joe or a brew and cruise
through the ramblings of the past"
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