Ross Cooper’s blog
The non-adventures of Ross, Sally & Boo
Filed underweb
...and possibly the weirdest video ever
Be sure to watch in 1080p! Carnivorous star-fish eat a baby seal - trippy!
This blog has moved!
Wondering about the spiffy new look of the blog? We've moved from Blogger to Posterous, which was surprisingly easy... well done Posterous. You can still read the blog at http://www.blog.rosscoops.com or you can also find it at http://rosscoops.posterous.com. Enjoy
Also, due to the all round awesomeness of Posterous, my old music blog is now incorporated into the main blog! You can view and listen to all my songs by using the music tag, which takes you to http://www.blog.rosscoops.com/tag/music
Kasabian Football Hero
A cool english band (Kasabian) showing how to really play guitar hero ;-)
How Many Solar Panels Would It Take to Power The Entire World?
How many solar panels would it take to power the entire world? The entire surface of Africa, maybe? Actually, it's surprisingly less. Just 496,905 square kilometers. That's really nothing compared to the total world area: Less than the surface of Spain (504,030 square kilometers) covered with solar panels, distributed across deserts and areas with almost 24/7 sun, all year around.
And the T.Rex is related to...
Fantastic story from Wired. 68 million years ago a T.Rex died. In 2000 a paleontologist dug up its femur. In 2003 scientists started analyzing it, and by 2007 we had machines powerful enough to track 7 samples of protein in the ancient fossilized femur. 5 of those samples closely matched bone collagen of an animal alive today. And what is the T.Rex's most likely descendent???
The humble chicken :-D
United Breaks Guitars
Sally pointed me towards this fun YouTube video about a guy who watched his beloved Taylor guitar get smashed to bits by the United Airlines baggage handlers. They refused to take responsibility for it or buy him a new one, so he's started writing songs about it, and pretty good ones too... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/08/united-breaks-guitars-pas_n_228062.html
Geeky techy TV fun
We're currently stuck with no option but Qwest for our home phone/cable/internet needs, and unfortunately qwest just decided they were going to switch off their current service and change everything around. At first we were bummed out, but its actually turned into a revelation!
First problem was no more cable, only satellite TV, which our HOA is kind of against because dishes everywhere look ugly. Second problem was our 720p TV and my aging TiVo Series 2 both had analog tuners instead of digital and we have an upcoming digital switchover which meant no more TV at all! The solution turned out to be remarkably easy: a new TiVo HD and a digital tuner. Sure we now only get the basic cable channels but that's mostly all we watch anyway, and at least now it's all in lovely 720p resolution (and up to 1080i if we get a better TV in the future). The TiVo HD also has Netflix and Amazon Video built in too, so it's a one box does all solution!
Today Qwest flipped over to their new internet system which is finally using fiber optic cable, and we jumped from 3Mb to 12Mb download speed - yeah baby! Now we can watch all the Hulu, Netflix, iTunes & Amazon video we want, on demand :-) It's kinda nice to be cable free for the first time in a long, long time.
Look for me on Google Street View!
Driving home from Frys today I notice a car coming in the opposite direction with a little tower sticking out the roof with a ring of cameras around the top. My first thought was "Google Street View!" and sure enough as it drove by I notice a Google sticker in the back window. I made sure I had my best slack-jawed gawp going on as it passed me ;-) I was on 24th somewhere around Van Buren, I'll let you know if I show up...
Pssst... Wanna buy a FREE iPhone app?
And don't forget, if you want to read more comics, check out Kapow as well.
