A 400,000kg (880,000lb) Marship would be assembled in orbit using the Ares V cargo launch vehicle for a 900-day mission to the red planet, according to details that have emerged about NASA’s new Constellation programme’s manned Mars mission.

Article – FlightGlobal

Heres a flow chart for those of us that tend to procrastinate. It outlines the process of procrastinating. It’s also in itself a good way to procrastinate.

So boys and girls this is why we don’t hold onto explosive devices when we light the fuse.

“Young male was holding a homemade explosive device. The fuse of the device was lit, and the patient was unable to throw it away before it detonated.”

Source – Street Anatomy

In Australia and New Zealand Remembrance Day is always observed on 11 November, although the day is not a public holiday. Services are held at 11am at war memorials in suburbs and towns across the two countries, at which the “Last Post” is played by a bugler and a one-minute silence is observed. In recent decades, however, Remembrance Day has been partly eclipsed by ANZAC Day (25 April) as the national day of war commemoration.

Gunpowder Plot

The term magic number also refers to the bad programming practice of using numbers directly in source code without explanation. In most cases this makes programs harder to read, understand, and maintain. Although most guides make an exception for the numbers zero and one, it is a good idea to define all other numbers in code as named constants.

For example, to shuffle the values in an array randomly, this pseudocode will do the job:

for i from 1 to 52
j := i + randomInt(53 - i) - 1
a.swapEntries(i, j)

where a is an array object, the function randomInt(x) chooses a random integer between 1 to x, inclusive, and swapEntries(i, j) swaps the ith and jth entries in the array. In this example, 52 is a magic number. It is considered better programming style to write:

constant int deckSize := 52
for i from 1 to deckSize
j := i + randomInt(deckSize + 1 - i) - 1
a.swapEntries(i, j)

Source: Wikipedia

I seen this item on TechRepublic, one of the many email subscriptions I find actually usefully and informative. This blog article talks about some generalizations about IT people in an attempt to help IT Managers understand the nerds they have working for them and how they think. Although the entry calls them IT Pros, I don’t believe in being that politically correct when I know myself I’m one of these people being managed. (A nerd, an introvert, a logical thinker, a problem solver, and well I try to be technically creative)

Four Things You Should Know About Your IT Technical Staff

Just for fun I’ve added emoticons to my site, for both user comments & articles. The following table lists each emoticon and the text that triggers it: