Here are all the geek-y events that happened this week

January 23rd

1970 – OSCAR 5 (Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio), Australia’s first amateur radio satellite, is launched.

1993 – The first popular graphical web browser, NCSA Mosaic, was released with version 0.5. Used mostly for browsing the web it also supported FTP, NNTP and gopher. It was not the first graphical web browser, Erwise and ViolaWWW are little known but came earlier, but it was the browser that popularized the web and made way for the browsers of today.

January 24th

1986 – The Space Probe Voyager 2 came within 81 500 kilometers of the planet Uranus discovering the moons Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Belinda, Perdita and Puck.

January 25th

1978 – The beginning of the Great Blizzard of 1978 which dropped over 12 inches of snow on Chicago and would last for 3 days. Being stuck inside during the snowstorm prompted Ward Christensen and Randy Suess to invent the first Computerized Bulletin Board System, CBBS.

2005 - Opportunity the Mars Exploration Rover – B, lands on the surface of Mars at 0505 UTC in the Meridiani Planum just 3 weeks after the MER-A Spirit landed.

January 27th

1985 – Launch of NASA mission STS-51-C. It was the first dedicated DoD mission therefore it’s payload and many mission details are classified.

2010 – Apple first generation iPad is announced at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco finally succeeding in the failed tablet market

January 28th

1958 – The LEGO Company of Denmark patents it’s interlocking brick design. They are still compatible with modern LEGO bricks.

1986 – A tragic end to NASA mission STS-51-L 73 seconds after launch when the Challenger Space Shuttle broke apart due to a failure in an O-ring seal on one of the Solid Rocket Boosters.

Events and Observances

January 28th – Data Privacy Day is an annual event to promote awareness and education about best privacy practices.

Make sure you come back next week for more geeky history or subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it!

This is something I have been wanting to start for a while since I’m a geek and also a history buff what better to do than comb through the catacombs of technology and find the best moments in technology, science, gaming, sci-fi and fantasy and everything else in or around the realm of geek.

January 16th

1909 - Ernest Shackleton‘s Nimrod Expedition find the approximate location of the South Magnetic Pole, reached by Edgeworth David, Douglas Mawson, and Alistair Mackay.

1969 – The Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 performed  the first ever manned spacecraft docking in orbit. They were also successful  in performing the fist ever crew transfer.

1986 – The first meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force. This first meeting was made up of 21 U.S. Government funded researchers and was chaired by Mike Corrigan.

1995 – Star Trek: Voyager premieres with the double length episode “Caretaker” and starts a 7 season journey of Captain Janeway and crew to find their way back to earth from the Delta Quadrant.

2003 – NASA mission STS-107 launches with the Space Shuttle Columbia, unfortunately this mission ends in disaster 16 days later on February 1st, 2003 when due to a damaged wing the shuttle disintegrates on re-entry.

January 18th

1974 – The Six Million Dollar Man, starring Lee Majors as Colonel Steve Austin, premieres on ABC. The show would run for 5 seasons with a total of 99 episodes plus 6 made-for-TV movies.

2005 – Airbus unveils it’s double-deck, wide-body, four engine jet airliner this A380 in Toulouse, France. The 853 maximum seat, 238.6 foot long aircraft is the world’s largest passenger airliner.

January 19th

1983 – The Apple Lisa is released with a US$9,995 price tag. Specs include a Motorola 68000 processor running at 5Mhz, 1 megabyte of RAM and a 720 x 364 resolution 12-inch monitor. It would sell 100,000 units before it was discontinued 2 years later.

1986 – The first computer virus for MS-DOS, ©Brain, was unleashed on the world. The virus created by the Farooq Alvi Brothers in Lahore, Pakistan attacked the boot sector and contained the following text:

Welcome to the Dungeon
(c) 1986 Basit & Amjad (pvt) Ltd.
BRAIN COMPUTER SERVICES
730 NIZAB BLOCK ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN
LAHORE-PAKISTAN
PHONE :430791,443248,280530.
Beware of this VIRUS….
Contact us for vaccination………… $#@%$@!!

January 20th

1934 - Fujifilm, digital and film camera maker, is founded in Tokyo, Japan.

January 21st

1953 – Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was born in Seattle, Washington. After Microsoft, Paul went on to found Vulcan Inc, invest in SpaceShipOne and purchase the Portland Trail Blazers, Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Sounders.

1960 – Little Joe 1B launches from the Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops, Virginia carrying a female Rhesus monkey named Miss Sam. The flight was as test of the Launch Escape System of the Mercury Spacecraft.

1981 – The DeLorean DMC-12 goes into production in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland. The DMC-12 coupled with a Flux Capacitor will later allow Marty McFly to travel back from 1985 to 1955.

2004 – The Mars Rover Spirit stopped communicating with mission control. On January 24th it was announced to be a problem with the flash memory that caused the rover to be stuck in a reboot loop. It was repaired remotely and on February 6th Spirit resumed it’s science activities.

January 22nd

1968 – The Apollo 5 mission lifted off as the  first unmanned flight of the Apollo Lunar Module. The Lunar module would go on to carry astronauts to the moon’s surface.

1970 – Boeing‘s 747 ”Jumbo Jet” goes into service on PamAm’s New York – London route.

1984 – Apple launched of the original Macintosh with the famous “1984” commercial during the third quarter of Superbowl 18. The ad cost 1.5 million USD and was directed by film maker Ridley Scott.

Make sure you come back next week for more geeky history or subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it!

Earlier today I was wasting time fooling around productively using my phone and decided to have a little fun with SwiftKey’s predictive text. If you don’t know SwiftKey X and you’re an Android user I recommend you go install it … it’ll be the best $4 you’ll ever spend. This is all thanks to my carrier, Videotron, and their Gingerbread update that broke the stock keyboard, and really finding a replacement was easier than trying to fix it. So SwiftKey can connect to your Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and SMS to learn your writing style tries to guess what the next word in your sentence. This was how I was having fun, seeing what it would predict after “learning” me over the last few months with some amusing results.

In Gmail I get,

“I am a beautiful person” (not sure what this says about me )

But in the WordPress app I get,

“The creator of the most important thing is that the use of the addressee”

Then I tried starting with various letters of the alphabet,

“A. Bertram Chandler, AZ, and the other hand, and the other hand, and the other hand…..”(and the other hand just kept repeating)

 ”But I wanted to let you know that you can find the best of the most popular and we will be having a good idea to have a lot of fun. ” (Sound like a bad English translation found on a sign somewhere in Asia)

“Cheers, Nick, put the finishing touches on the Internet. ” (who is this Nick guy, and what touches on the internet?)

“I could not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.” (So I blog)

“He was a great way to get the best of the most popular and we will be having a good idea to have a lot of fun.”

“Just to let you know that you can find the best of the most popular and we will be having a good idea to have a lot of fun.” (Hmm I see a pattern happening…)

“So, I have a few questions.” 

Lastly I tried just some random words that cam to my mind,

Cheese and I have rarely parted with it. (Ask my wife, this is true)

Milk Chocolate is extremely important to us. (I have now started referring to myself in the plural)

Truck Driver Jobs in India. (I’ll keep that in mind when I am out of work)

So I’ve had my fun for the day. SwiftKey X is a great keyboard for Android and I reccommend it to everyone, and not just because I can amuse myself with it. Check it out at the SwiftKey X website or but it in the Android Market for Phones or Tablets.

I remember the day well back in late last September, it kinda felt like an early birthday present. Netflix was coming to Canada. More specifically Netflix streaming was coming to Canada. We’ve had Zip.ca, a discs-by-mail rental company for a few years but we’ve been lacking a streaming service, until now.

I was surprised in the middle of the day receiving an email welcoming me to Netflix. My wife had decided to sign up and see what there was for the kids to watch. I will say my kids instantly fell in love with it finding an Iron Man cartoon and old cartoon’s of Sonic The Hedgehog and Gadget Boy, my wife on the other hand was excited at the start then after a few searches for some newer releases became less than impressed. Needless to say that even though I found the catalog of available titles disappointing in that there were almost no new theatrical releases, there were more than enough old TV shows, 2nd rate movies and Sci-Fi B-movies to keep me in front of the TV for months!

Then the cable bill came at the end of the month and the Netflix shaped stars fell from my eyes; I went 17 GBs over my bandwidth 40 GB quota imposed by my cable company and was charged the maximum overage charge of $50. I quickly ran to my computer and cancelled my Netflix account making excuses about there not being enough new release movies or current content so that I would not miss it. I was already half way through the 3rd series of Red Dwarf and had my sights on watching Jeremiah and Survivors but I admitted that it was not worth the eight dollars a month and having to limit my movie watching or risk paying more overage fees.

All of this made me question how Netflix streaming is so popular and successful in the United States? Did users there limit their watching to only a a few movies a month? Do Americans not mind paying outrages overage fees? After some investigating I found my answer … Canadians have a severely crippled internet experience being limited by bandwidth caps. I compared some of the higher end offerings available for a cable or DSL connection, my cable company Videotron offers as it’s highest end package a 120 Mbps connection with a 170 GB data quota for $149.95 a month. Canada’s largest cable provider Rogers offers a 50 Mbps connection with 175 GB quote for $99.99 monthly. A high end DSL connection with Bell will set you back $54.95 a month for a 25 Mbps line and a 100 GB data cap. Now I will say that the average Canadian probably does not have the most expensive package they probably have something more moderate. My current package is a 7.5 Mbps line, 40 GB bandwidth cap for $42.95 and keep in mind this is the bundled discount for have my television, internet, home and mobile phone service with the same company.

Alternately I checked some prices of US cable and DSL providers and the story was quite different. Comcast’s 50Mbps cable connection will set you back around $100 a month with a 250GB monthly cap. AT&T and Verizon FiOS have no bandwidth cap and have a 6 Mbps DSL line for $40.00 and a 10 Mbps fiber connection for around $140 respectively. So it seems that bandwidth limits aren’t on the mind of American subscribers like they could be with Canadians. I am wondering if many Canadians are like me and think twice before downloading that large file or streaming video.

Now I did end up reactivating my Netflix account, and chose to pay for some additional bandwidth. In addition to the $8 a month for the Netflix subscription I’m shelling out $12 to increase my bandwidth cap by 30 gigs. I still keep an eye of my usage every month because it is still easy to go over and get charged even more with reckless use of Netflix. As Netflix adds more content the $20 ($8 + $12) a month is more and more worth it for me but I wonder if in markets where ISP’s impose bandwidth caps will Netflix see a slowed expansion? I for one hope not for this is the future of television.

Update: Netflix has now added the ability to manage your video quality just for us Canadian with our maple syrup and low bandwidth caps.

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