Wynner's Blog – Ross Wynne on Anything and Everything…

Like I said in suspected in my previous post NASA has approved the servicing mission to the HST.

Well done NASA for having the courage to conduct the servicing mission. Perhaps with the new Wide Field Camera 3 being installed we’ll get ever closer to understanding Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Also it seems that they have considered the retirement phase by anouncing that there will be soft capture mechanism installed probably for a robotic mission to deorbit the telescope.

More details are here from the NASA website.

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I’ve just read a press release from NASA saying that Michael Griffin will announce the decision for a possible forth and final mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope on Tuesday at 10am (EST).

I think it’s a yes for the simple reason that NASA has already setup a follow up “News conference with the astronauts who would carry out the mission” later that afternoon!

Hubble has been at the fore front of space exploration for the past 16 years. Several components have failed in recent years and additionally its batteries and gyro’s are unlikely to last for more than another year or two. It’s replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, is due to be launched in 2013 hence the need to keep this vital science tool up and running until then.

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According to Reporters Without Borders Ireland has done well in it’s ability to let the press continue the tradition of free speach. The US however has slipped further down the rankings to 53th place, behind countries like Chile and Namibia.

Northern European countries once again come top of the Index, with no recorded censorship, threats, intimidation or physical reprisals in Finland, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands, which all share first place.

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Sometimes it can astound you how thoughtless people can be. Take this braille map in the main foyer Arts Block of TCD. Surely the people who put the toner bin, battery bin and direction signs need not have chosen that exact place?

I despair half the time! …and yes this issue has been raised by me numerious times!

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Make sure to go pay a visit to GetFirefox.com on Tuesday for the new upgrade to Firefox 1.5. Look forward to being able to save browser sessions (useful when XP asks for you to reboot after patching or installing a program that requires a reboot) and uses less memory than IE7.

If you don’t believe me read the review at PCWorld.com. They sum up by saying:

“Of the two rivals, Firefox remains the better application. Since IE users will have to adjust to a new layout and interface anyway, this might be a good time to give Firefox a try, then watch IE 8 play catch-up again in five years.”

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Click on the logo to visit the campaign for making the world more accessible to all!

A truely worthy excuse reason to be online on November 14th!

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I’m sure many of you have weighed up the pro’s and con’s already of Microsoft’s latest browser but I’ve found the one thing that makes it personally too annoying to use. Tabs!

Or at least a lousy problem with them. Right click any link on a website and the only options are to ‘Open’ or ‘Open in new window’. Surely ‘Open in new tab’ would have been an idea. Maybe I’m just too used to Firefox, who knows…

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I was delighted by an email by one of the members of the Save Audioscope team yesterday where I have been informed that Audioscope will return.

However there is a sting in the tail in the fact it’s going to be on MW and not on RTE Radio 1. Still it’s something at least. I strongly urge people to still sign the petition located over on www.saveaudioscope.com and still campaign for it to be placed back to it’s usual slot.

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