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I was surfing YouTube when I came across this video. Watch it with the sound off and you might think that what you are seeing is footage of microbes swimming around in a petridish.

Watch it with the sound on and you will realise that it’s actually NASA footage taken from the space shuttle Columbia during a mission in 1996.

It was project STS-75, a collaboration between Italy and the US to determine if electric power could be harnessed from the earth’s magnetic field, via a space tether.

They had hoped to unfurl about 20km of tether, but the scientists had miscalculated. The tether broke after 19km was deployed. That brought an end to the experiment.

That’s where things started getting interesting though. As the tether floated away from the shuttle, unidentified objects started appearing all over the place.

Space debris? Dust motes? Spacecrafts? Lifeforms?

It was strange that no one in the video really gave much thought to these objects as they ’swam’ around the tether.

Considering that most of them were scientists, the seeming lack of curiosity was astounding.

Maybe they were curious the first time they saw it, but after seeing it for the umpteenth time, things became routine.

Maybe it was all ‘hush-hush, keep quiet about it and no one will notice’.

Whatever the reason, I am surprised that none of the ‘interesting bits’ have been reported by the media.

Interesting, don’t you think?

So what are they? And why haven’t we heard more about them?

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I’ve released the latest update of DOM Tooltips (dtt).

dtt basically allows you to add tooltips to any element on your page. The tooltips can be customised with your own HTML and CSS, and also comes with a couple of effects.

The script achieves all this functionality in a completely unobtrusive manner, so using the script is extremely straightforward. You only need to add one line to reference the script:
<script src="$dtt$.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

dtt then automatically searches for the specified elements on a page that has title attributes set, and converts them to tooltips. Simple.

During the process of enhancing the tooltip script, I created a few support/helper scripts. Together they provide a means to dynamically load external scripts, simplify event management, while eliminating memory leaks. I will talk more about these support scripts at a later date.

For now, you can download dtt 1.5 from the Javascript downloads page.

The latest version of KCA is out. Updated default.ini to include a few examples of addons. Now you can also save all addons to default.ini. New variables, %%site_url%% and %%kca_url%% have been added to make it easier to reference certain URLs. There have been many other enhancements made as well.

It will be compatible with the soon to be released Wordpress 2.1.

Be sure to download it.

I came across this 3D animation from a French series created by Hélène Giraud and Thomas Szabo at Futurikon.

Vibrant live-action backgrounds with offbeat storylines involving quirky characters, makes each film a joy to watch.

The short film in this post is about a snail with a dream…

Do snails dream of electric cars?

It’s been a while, but a new release of KIN is now ready for download. There’s been a few changes to make it compatible with Wordpress 2.1, as well as some enhancements and added features.

The US government is urging scientists to develop technology that will allow control over how much sunlight reaches the earth. It says techniques, such as space mirrors and reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere, would help to reduce global warming.

Yeah, good idea. Let’s keep burning the fossil fuels. We won’t have to worry about the green house effect, because those big ol’ mirrors up there will reflect the sun’s rays away into space. Who needs sunlight anyway? Smog is way better…

If you were a farmer you might need sunlight. What would happen if the mirrors malfunctioned? Not enough or too much sunlight and things won’t grow.

How hot could it get if all the mirrors were directed at a certain spot on earth? Did you ever fry little ants with a magnifying glass as a kid? They pop. I’m sure that’s an exaggeration, but you catch my drift.

It’s no use continuing current emission trends and then trying to reduce the damage done with reflective crap in the atmosphere or space. Band-aid policies and stopgap measures only work to a certain point and do more harm than good in the long run.

“The first thing the federal government can do is recognise that climate change is real,” Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd said today.

“Mr Howard’s cabinet still has in it an industry minister who only a few months ago said climate change was a pile of hogwash.”

“We need global leadership on climate change, and instead Mr Howard follows (US President George) Bush in ignoring the Kyoto protocol and ignoring practical programs of action which will help deal with, and turn back, the challenge of climate change.”

The only way to reduce global warming, is to reduce emissions by adopting clean renewable energy.

Articles:

• US bid to block sun to stop warming
• US climate scientists pressured on climate change
• Americans ‘least concerned’ about climate change
• Activists scale Eiffel Tower
• Soaring temperatures ‘unstoppable’
• ‘A disaster for life on earth’
• Scientist’s ‘Russian roulette’ climate warning
• Reef ‘facing extinction’
• Climate alert disturbing: Rudd
• UN report turns up heat on PM
• 2500 scientists, 1200 pages, and one quibble
• Key climate report sparks global call to action
• Australian states commit to greenhouse gas cuts
• ‘Sunshade’ for global warming could cause drought
• Pentagon backs plan to beam solar power from space
• Australia ‘back on the map’ with Kyoto decision