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March 14, or 3.14, is celebrated by many geeks as Pi day.

Pi is a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. A popular pastime is attempting to memorize as many decimals beyond the standard value 3.14159 most high-school students are familiar with. Since Pi is an irrational number, it is impossible to represent its value by a simple fraction and the constant’s decimal representation never ends or repeats. That has made the calculation of as many decimal values as possible a popular pastime for computer scientists – if you’re interested in seeing the first 10000 digits of Pi, check here.

The official Pi Day website may be found here. For a sport with a mathematical slant, and one invented in South Africa, check out the rules for Pi-Ball. And if you haven’t seen it yet, the movie Pi is quite interesting.

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214……………

Unabated, the race to increase usable storage space on devices continues. I was quite impressed with the 16GB SD card I got for the camcorder until I read that the SD Association has ratified the specifications for the SDXC (eXtended Capacity) standard.

SDXC increases the maximum storage from the current 32GB to 2TB. Increasing available storage space is a reasonable achievement, but is of little use if it takes three days to copy data. For that reason, the read/write speed of SD cards will increase almost threefold, from a current 104MB/s to around 300MB/s. The new cards should make an appearance in the coming months.

2TB is the initial size of the SAN I’m getting ready for backup and media sharing. In a few months, I could have all that data sitting on something the size of a fingernail… amazing!

If you have a budding Einstein in the house you may want to get him or her started early with the most important concept of all: the periodic table of elements. The standard version I hated throughout my school career was a rather drab table without a hint of any elements other than black text. Here then is something that should make any study or classroom a bit more approachable and friendly, with the added bonus that the pictures will speak a thousand words (or more):

Each element is associated with a photograph to make the element in question a bit more memorable. At least this way, the young student will get to see what Vanadium or Molybdenum looks like. Rutherfordium and Seaborgium? I doubt anyone will see those anytime soon

The Elements is available as a poster in varying sizes from here.

While the Interwebs are still dallying with components between versions 1.0 and 2.0, the USB Implementers Forum is boldly marching on to USB 3.0. I haven’t seen many devices sporting the latest wireless USB standard, but the USB 3.0 specifications are rather impressive, if cable-bound. Devices conforming to the new 3.0 specification will sport this logo:

Existing devices will be compatible with the new USB hubs that will appear in desktop and notebook computers, though an adapter will be required. The new, super speed USB connector has a different shape and contains a number of additional connectors.

Performance for copying files should be quite remarkable: 4.8Gbits per second, or thereabouts. With those kinds of speeds, it’s unlikely Firewire will survive much longer. Already, Apple has decided not to fit the lower end MacBooks with Firewire ports. Though video cameras are increasingly relying on removable storage, the transfer speeds promised by the new USB standard makes downloading video over USB a reality. USB 3.0 should be available in devices from the second half of 2009.

The next 24 hours may result in the following…

A black hole, if the nutcases of the world are to be believed. Should that be the case, I assume no one will care about the new, colourful range of iPod nanos. Thankfully, we do have the Swiss at the control yoke. What could possibly go wrong?

The scientists at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland are preparing for the first firing of protons in the LHC (Large Hadron Collider). The LHC straddles the border between France and Switzerland and is situated 100m underground.

Billed as the largest scientific experiment ever conducted, scientists hope to recreate the conditions that existed during the big bang. Let’s hope they don’t create a big bang of their own

I’m no follower of the Olympic Games, but the admissions regarding the faking of certain broadcast footage during the opening ceremony is food for thought. Who can tell what we are really watching?

Does it matter that we have 24 hour news broadcasts providing up to the minute footage and reporting when any of that could be fake too? The more science fiction I read and watch, the more similarities I can identify between the real world and the imaginations of the SF creators.

We already have clones, virtual celebrities, cybernetics, AI‘s and now, faked live TV footage. The future is here…

If Shimano has its way, cyclists will no longer need to worry about shifting gears by effectively pulling or releasing wire strands connected to derrailleurs and chain guides.

The new Di2 system introduces solid-state switches and rubber-coated wires in place of the bare, twisted metal wires we’ve all grown accustomed to.

The idea is to provide more accurate and faster gear changes, whilst also minimizing the risk of mechanical breakages and the effects of friction. Not to mention the grit and grime faced by those components during a downpour or a muddy downhill race. Of course, these components won’t be cheap and will be fitted only to very expensive bicycles when the Di2 system launches to the public in 2009.

The entire system runs on electricity, so the inclusion of a rechargeable battery pack is necessary. That 7.4V Lithium Ion battery should last roughly 1000 hours before a recharge is necessary.

Who would have thought that bicycles would go electric long before cars do? A very strange idea. What if you’re on the open road and the battery dies? Call Shimano Roadside Assistance? Or be sure to carry an emergency recharging device in the saddlebag…

My reading of (or more precisely, listening to) Kim Stanley Robinson‘s Mars trilogy has coincided with the Phoenix Lander‘s descent to that planet’s surface and its subsequent investigations. Yesterday, there was some exciting news from the northern pole of the red planet. For the first time, actual water ice was discovered. The Phoenix brought its find to a boil to create steam, possibly enjoying a coffee or whiskey to celebrate the discovery.

The possibility of water deposits on Mars could never be conclusively proven, until now. Water means life could exist, or has existed, on the rather inhospitable rock. Maybe sometime soon, humans will be able to colonize and extract sufficient water from Mars to support life. In Robinson’s Green Mars, Mars is already terraformed to some degree, and the core team of the first 100 is hiding away in an icy cavern under the polar cap. Soon to be fact, or to remain fiction?

Read more about the exciting find here.

It could be the title of the next Stephenson novel, but the Antikythera Mechanism has a story that is many, many pages longer than any of his tomes. Originally discovered by divers in 1901 off the shoreline of the Island Antikythera near Greece, the clump of metal was brought to the surface and given to a historical museum in Athens. By chance, the corroded metal broke apart, revealing 30 tiny, metal gears. Over many years, the inscriptions on the various parts could be deciphered and the mechanism reconstructed. The inscriptions provide an instructional manual for one of the oldest computers ever found. As with many modern computers, not all functions it provides are fully understood or known.

Basically, the Antikythera Mechanism models astronomical phenomena. So accurately, in fact, that the mechanism can be used with a fair degree of certainty to predict upcoming solar and lunar eclipses once certain settings have been made. Considering that this fact only came to light in 2006 shows how long scienctific hackers have been trying to figure out what the mechanism does and how it works. The mechanism also seems to provide evidence of a very complex calendar with 235 months based on cycles of the moon. Using this calendar, ancient Greeks were probably able to determine the duration of years and months. The origin of the mechanism could be Rhodos, though that is not conclusive. There are still many unanswered questions about the mechanism and its functions. See the official site for more details and the FAQ.

HP Labs have a number of detailed photographs available for download in PTM (Polynomial Texture Maps) format.

We were destined to always have computers around us Wonder when Antikythera Mechanism version 2.0 with HSDPA is coming…

Funny how so many things were done in the past, but are never really repeated. It makes me wonder whether the actual events portrayed in history books were just clever photo montages or made up. The moon landing is one. The deployment of lighter-than-air, efficient dirigibles for passenger and cargo transport is another. Siemens‘ initiative CargoLifter to build a huge airship a few years ago failed. Now, Boeing has teamed up with SkyHook International to produce a heavy-lift rotorcraft.

The JHL-40 (Jess Heavy Lifter) is helium-filled and will be used to transport equipment and materials in remote regions. Which parts of the earth are still classified as remote is one question I have. I expect they’re not thinking Midtown Manhattan here. The carrying capacity of the JHL-40 is roughly 35 tons and the range of the dirigible is almost 500km.

Let’s hope the availability of helium has been carefully planned. Another hydrogen-filled Hindenburg incident would probably be a bad idea…

Or is it just an elaborate stunt to promote The Watchmen?

The SkyHook International website doesn’t resolve to a domain name. There’s an IP address only…