lego, lincoln logs, google, lagos, lego day
Legos is celebrating their fifty year birthday today and Google is joining in on the celebration by posting a Legos version of the Google logo on Google.com.
According to Search Engine Land, “Google’s culture has always had a special place for Lego. Google’s first servrs were ‘modded’ up with legos.” Apparently “computer ‘geeks’ cant get enough of their Legos.” Lego art is proudly displayed in Google offices and some lego fans have even used the connectable pieces to create the Google logo. Google apparently thought the design was a good idea.
Being a child of the 80's and 90's, there were many, many great toys to chose from. You had your WWF wrestling figures, GI Joe, Captain Power, you know you remember Captain Power, but the ones there was on set of toys that I could never let go of.
Legos. Where to begin? I was 4 when I got my first Lego set, it was a simple plastic box full of them! All shapes and sizes, I instantly started to make planes out of them. I used to do a mean F-16 out of those Legos after I saw the movie Iron Eagle. I used to do a mean F-16 out of those Legos after I saw the movie Iron Eagle. These planes I made had had all types of bombs and missiles loaded on it, all I needed was a long "beam" piece or a few little yellow stub pieces and I had everything from the Sidewinder to a 500lb bomb loaded and ready to go! All that was needed were a few of my green Army men figures some houses made from a deck of cards and I was blowing things up left and right. Unfortunately if I was doing that now, I would probably be put on some medication or sent to a counselor, but back then it was free rain to actually be a kid without someone thinking something was clinically wrong with you!
Now, as far as actual kits went, I was not much for them. I loved being able to create my own masterpiece toys and destroy them how I saw fit! I used to have a space man who would fly around in a one man, Buck Rodgers type space ship, but that was the extent of my Lego kits. I preferred making a whole Army of Johnny 5's! You, know from Short Circuit!?! "Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too? Classic! I made a whole fleet of these babies with their own attached death rays to their shoulders just like in the movie where I would send them to destroy my sisters My Little Pony or Barbie collections!
lego day
Solar Cycle 24
Solar Cycle 24 has been the subject of much speculation due to competing forecasts on whether it will be an highly active or a quiet low cycle. If it is a low cycle, it may very well be a test of validity for some CO2 based AGW theories. Only time will tell. A magnetically reversed, high-latitude sunspot, dubbed as number 981, emerged on the surface of the sun today. Just a few months ago, an “All Quiet Alert” had been issued for the sun. This reversed polarity sunspot today marks the beginning of Solar Cycle 24 and the sun’s return back to Solar Maximum.
The first sunspot region with Solar Cycle 24 polarity was numbered by the Space Weather Prediction Center on January 4 at 2000 UTC (3:00 P.M. EST). The sunspot region was officially numbered as 10981
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This does not mean the new cycle has officially started; however, this is a clear sign Solar Cycle 24 is within sight. Sunspots are tracked because they indicate the level of space weather activity we expect. Solar activity is forecast to reach a peak in 2011 or 2012.
Data used to provide space weather services are contributed by NOAA, USAF, NASA, NSF, USGS, the International Space Environment Services and other observatories, universities, and institutions. More information is available at SWPC’s Web site.
The official Solar Cycle 24 prediction is for Sunspot Number and begins March 2008. The graph shows a simple interpolation from the current date to March 2008
