I was flicking through the channels the other day, and I ended up on Sci-Fi. Boy have they really gone downhill. What are they doing showing Moon Hoax stuff? Oh wait, science-fiction.

I just caught the end of the program and four claims it made of the Moon landings being fake.

1) No stars in the photographs.

Well, ask any photographer and he or she will be able to answer that one. Basically the stars being so faint take a lot of time to register on film. This is why if you go have a look at my gallery you'll find the astro photographs will have an exposure of at least several seconds to pick up any stars.

You can test this yourself, take your camera go outside and just try and capture some stars, if the camera is automatic it'll probably try and exposure of may be half a second, may be a quarter, and it will probably pick up zero stars.

Now imagine the camera is set to a really short exposure like 1/125th of a second, because after all the Sun was up and the objects they were imaging like astronauts the lunar surface were all really bright - so they'd have even less time to register on the film. The only thing I could see imaging even at a push would be Venus or may be Jupiter.

There should be no stars in the image. The evidence (tens of thousands of photographs) backs this up. In fact having starry backgrounds would be evidence of the images being fake or doctored. Not the other way around.

2) Objects in shadow aren't black. Due to no atmosphere to scatter the light objects in shadow must be completely black.

Wrong. Go outside, look up at the Moon and note how bright it is.

The astronauts or whatever was in the shadow at the time were also being illuminated by the lunar surface. Just look how bright it is! Now imagine being close to the Moon and how bright it is. In fact it's been compared to the Sun reflecting off ice or snow. Shadows on the surface, where nothing can directly reflect much light at them are pretty dark, but where that shadow is up high - like behind the LEM, where light can be reflected it's lit up. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that light reflects off things.

We can make a little model to test this. Get a bright light, place it at one of a room pointing at a table with a white surface, paper for example. Put a box on the table, and note how the surface in shadow is actually being illuminated by the surface of the table. You can even put a little Lego man behind it and he'll be quite easy to see.

3) Shadows aren't parallel, one light source should result in parallel shadows.

That's wrong too, go out on a sunny day and just look at shadows of sign posts, you'll find some that aren't parallel with each other, this is because of the angle of the ground, the Moon isn't completely flat, and any features of the terrain will make shadows not appear parallel.

Again we can create a little model to demonstrate this. Create a lunar surface with two hilly place something on them to cast a shadow and get yourself down to a position of a camera - they won't appear parallel. You'll note the photos with shadows in two different directions only happen when one shadow is being cast over a hill or similar.

The really dumb thing here is they claim it's because NASA used multiple spot lights when they filmed it - if you had multiple spot lights you'd have multiple shadows!

4) NASA murdered Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Ed White and others because they were going to speak to the press.

That's just insane. The Apollo 1 fire was a tragic accident that was a serious set back to the Apollo program. Even if NASA wanted to kill them why burn up millions of dollars worth of hardware when a simple helicopter crash would do just as well. Yes a lot of astronauts did die in the period between 1965-1968, about 15% of NASA's astronauts. But that's just space travel and NASA was willing to push things to the limit.

Claiming NASA murdered them with no evidence is just grasping at straws.

Landing humans on the Moon was one of the greatest scientific and engineering achievements in our history, this is something right up there with Sputnik!

If anybody believes they have any evidence to disprove the Moon landings, I'd love to see it. Come on just look at some of this footage, how can you say that's fake?

The Windows Mobile 5 powered Xda Mini S, also sold as the SPV M3000, MDA Vario, K-Jam, Qtek 9100. Built by HTC and codenamed the Wizard.

We'll kick things off with the specs:

Screen
65k Colour Transflective LCD Touch Screen (240 x 320 Pixels)

Imaging
1.3 Megapixel Camera
Zoom
Flash
Night Mode
Video Record (MPEG4)
Video Player (MPEG4, H.263, Motion JPEG AVI)
Video Indicator
Video Download
Video Calling
Photo ID Contacts

Messaging
SMS (Text Messaging)
MMS (Multimedia Messaging)
Picture Messaging
Instant Messaging (MSN® Messenger)
Email
Email Pocket Outlook
Predictive Text

Sound
MP3 Player
Polyphonic Ringtones
Voice Recorder
Voice Dialling
Voice Notes

Entertainment
Java™ Games
Embedded Games
Downloadable Games
Organiser
Phone Book (500 Entries)
Calendar
Calculator
Clock
Alarm Clock
Tasks
Notes
Dictation
Themes
Personalise Alerts
Microsoft® Windows® Mobile™
Handsfree Speakerphone

Connectivity
Bluetooth™
WIFI
WLAN
GPRS
Infra Red
USB Cable

Network
Quad Band (GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800 & GSM 1900)

Internet
WAP
HTML
WML

Memory & Talk Time
128 Mbytes Memory plus 64 Mbytes Mini SD™ Memory Card
5 Hours Talk Time
200 Hours Standby

Weight & Size
160 g
109 x 58 x 23.7 mm

OK so that's all well and good. This device is however fitted with a 195-200Mhz OMAP dual processor CPU, so that is a little sluggish compared to most Pocket PCs today, but that's the price you pay for the much smaller form factor. How much smaller? Well here it is stacked up against the SPV C500 (HTC Typhoon):

Much smaller than typical Pocket PCs. Yet not lacking key features like Wi-Fi. Some firmware only allows 802.11b connectivity, but some allows 802.11g too, many have had success using different providers firmware to get the extra speed, although realistically it's highly unlikely a portable device like this could reach 54Mbps even if the firmware used does support 802.11g.

How does the slower CPU impact the performance of games though? I've tried the following games, and have had no performance issues:

No, they don't all come bundled with the device, mine came with Bubble Breaker and Solitaire.

One feature that has surprised me is Microsoft Reader, which can be downloaded for free. I wasn't expecting much with readability given the small screen and QVGA resolution (VGA is now common on full size Pocket PCs). However with ClearType I was very impressed with how easy reading was on the device, I've since moved all my eBooks over.

One of the key features that is always mentioned when talking about this device is the slide out qwerty keyboard. Personally I usually use the onscreen keyboard, but it is handy for when you really need to enter a lot of data quickly; or entering cheats for DOOM 1, 2 and Quake.

Video, and performance for media in general is fine. It probably won't handle video not encoded for the device (ie down to QVGA resolution) very well. I've not had any issues either using Windows Media Player 10, or the DivX players with any of my content at 320x240. I generally use Windows Movie Maker to encode WMV content using the Pocket PC profile, Windows Media Player 10 can also automatically sync over content and convert it as needed. The device has a Mini-SD slot, although not up to its bigger brother with capacity 2GB Mini-SD cards are now pretty common and can handle a lot of media and applications.

The device certainly isn't as snappy as the latest high-end Dell Pocket PCs, but some people have had success with overclocking the device, 240Mhz seems to be an average speed people achieve. Personally although it can be a little sluggish with a lot of things running - and when changing the screen orientation. For me performance is acceptable and doesn't interfere with what I'm doing on the device.

Battery life seems fine. Wi-Fi use does really eat into battery use, if you're using Wi-Fi expect to have to charge once a day, other wise from my usage it should last several days. Generally this isn't a problem for most Smartphone or Pocket PC users as the machines are connected with a PC and charge themselves over USB.

Overall I'm very impressed. An excellent replacement to my SPV C500 and highly recommended.

A not so recent blog post by Mr Wester, uses the term fixed function to describe, well I believe it's being used to describe school.

All (around) 100-200 days of the same God Damn banalistic nonsensical cycles that don't even appear to be autonomously aware of the fact that they're so into the, as I like to designate it as, "fixed function" reality that they're nil to a movie, a setup, a counterfeit as a matter of fact that is a braggart and vaunts its "impressive" features, something I only appear to see the fulcrum of (and how it ceases to abstain from stopping), or more or less, the errors of. Not a lot of sense there that coheres well together, right? Wrong. No, I'm jeerably incorrect, because it is all a matter of perception... or so I say? No, don't take it from me, but I should really rerail this blog entry before wafting out into some incessantly inane philosophical rant, right? Right.

What is this fixed function reality? Previous conversations with Wester lead me to believe that he means the natural world.

So I would like to ask him what's wrong with the natural world. It is after all by definition the only world that we know of, or could have any effect on us.

your lower level of reality, biologically and physically human fixed-function tests that only calculate things from a certain perspective.

The natural world is a lower level? Compared to what, astrological nonsense which I've already debunked?

but I should really rerail this blog entry before wafting out into some incessantly inane philosophical rant, right? Right

Wrong, I wanna debunk the rant.

Adam sent me the following images a couple of weeks back. I think they're great they really do show the sense of scale much more than just using circles.

The Earth compared with our rather warmer, greenhouse of a twin, Venus. The baron, yet once water covered Mars. Mercury which was smashed to bits by an impact leaving a large iron core, and Pluto, which we don't know much about.

Next up we bring in the gas giants, Jupiter and my favourite Saturn as well as Uranus and Neptune.

The Sun makes even the gas giants look like ping pong balls.

Think the Sun is big? Think again, it'll get pretty big in the future, swallowing Mercury and Venus, perhaps the Earth, when it becomes a Red Giant like Arcturus shown here.

But it will never get anywhere near as big as the Super Giants, which live very short lives, and end in the most catastrophic way imaginable, in a massive supernova explosion, throwing its ashes throughout the galaxy, the very atoms we're made of was made in these massive stars and thrown across the galaxy in the explosion, the shockwave probably causing clouds of gas and dust to collapse and create solar systems. The core of the star will be a super-dense neutron star or a pulsar, if the star was massive enough it may even form a black hole.

Nearly one million people cancelled their AOL accounts last quarter and it looks like AOL are now desperately trying to hang on to every customer they can.

Check out the couple of videos on the article:

Two weeks ago, Vincent Ferrari tried to cancel his 5-year-old account—he'd heard from others in the blogosphere that AOL customer service could be awful. So he recorded the conversation with a representative named John. Here is the transcript of the conversation:

AOL: Hi, this is John at AOL. How may I help you today?

Ferrari: I want to cancel my account.

AOL: OK. I mean, is there a problem with the software itself?

Ferrari: No. I don't use it. I don't need it. I don't want it.

John disputes Ferrari's claim that he never uses the account.

AOL: Last year, last month it was 545 hours of usage.

Ferrari: I don't know how to make it any clearer. So I'm just gonna say it one last time. Cancel the account.

AOL: Well, explain to me what is wrong.

Ferrari: I'm not explaining anything to you. Cancel the account.

It goes on like this for 5 minutes.

Ferrari: Cancel my account. Cancel the account. Cancel the account.

Man and I thought AOL was terrible before all that, incidentally it doesn't seem to be a one off an NBC reporter also tried to close an account, first time he was disconnected and it took another 45 minutes on the phone to cancel the account.