Flash Bulbs and Artifact Preservation: Myth Debunked!
I’ve been to a ton of museums that have said flash photography damages the works, but it seems like it’s not exactly true. “300 amateur flashes a day is equivalent to adding five minutes to the display day. In order to actually increase damage by 10% on a ten hour day, one would need to experience 3600 flashes per day. Two large professional flashes would raise the ante a little, they would need 225 flashes a day to add 10%. For museums at 150 lux (15 footcandles) these numbers become 10,000 amateurs, or 700 pros, every day. To actually double fading would need 100,000 amateurs a day. Most museums would kill for those attendance figures!” Sounds like a good MythBusters thing too, Full story here – Link.
With 
Universetoday.com on DIY high altitude photography – “Paul Verhage has some pictures that you’d swear were taken from space. And they were. Amateur Radio High Altitude Ballooning allows individuals to launch functioning satellites to “near space” at a fraction of the cost of traditional rocket launch vehicles. Paul’s balloons have been as high as 35 km, and the photographs he’s taken are out of this world.” Thanks Fraser! 
Peter writes “Korg has kept its OASYS Linux PC – synth hybrid closed, but not Open Labs. Their Windows-based synthesizer keyboard slash DJ/VJ workstation slash home entertainment center (with remote control) has an open hard drive bay, four PCI slots, and hinged access to the PC innards, all with a fully-customizable Windows install. Sure, it’s preconfigured for music production with a 15″ touchscreen and software bundle, but you could go inside the machine and reconfigure it into whatever you wanted. One idea: control games from the music keyboard.” 
Fsteele writes in to confirm you can stream purchased video with the new iTunes – “Thanks for the link; it works just fine with store content. That’s actually how I noticed it. I’ve successfully imported content I captured via EyeTV, as well, but it looks like it only works if it was imported via iTunes 6.02. My wife has a couple of videos she bought with 6.01 that aren’t available. What really makes this cool is that there’s now a video streaming server inside every copy of iTunes, so it will be interesting to see what people can do with that.” 
