NorthStarNerd.Org

Lego Engineering and Robotics

Last week I posted about the Google Lego Engineering and the Lego Engineering initiative at Tufts University. Although not strictly Legos, Stanford has an undergraduate robotics course which is worth a look for your advanced First Lego League student. The course is offered via Stanford's Engineering Anywhere initiative. I also added the robotics course to my Lego Robotics Educational Search Engine.

Football in Outer Space (NASA Engineering at Play!)

It's Thanksgiving weekend 2009, and if you've overdosed on the more run of the mill standard football fare shown on TV, I invite you to experience Football in Outer Space! See NASA astronauts play their 1st annual Thanksgiving classic at the International Space Station. Thus, while they were the visiting team, and therefore playing the ultimate road game, you'll enjoy some classic flying tackles ... both literally and figuratively! Make certain you watch the full Atlantis STS-129 mission highlights. It was while watching the Day #5 Highlights from NASA Television I first saw this football game. The technology on the Space Station and the Space Shuttle never ceases to amaze me.

In case you're interested in more than NASA's football prowess, here are a few great technology links:

• NASA Technology Gateway
• NASA Langley CTO's Tweets

MIT and Split Personalities

For a number of months, I've occasionally tracked the progress of the Personas project at MIT. Inspired by a LinkedIn status update by Francois Gossieaux where he wondered whether his MIT profile was accurate, I decided to perform a test of my two web personas. The results are shown below. Interested in seeing your own web persona? Here is the MIT link.

Click upon either image to view full sized.

• MIT Personas Test #1 (profile: Northstar Nerd)

• MIT Personas Test #2 (profile: Rich Hoeg)

Nordic Fashion Show Forces New Channel!

Ah ... this is what vacations are made for ... enough of Web 2.0 for now. The response to the Northstar Nerd's Nordic Fashion Show has been so positive, that I created a new category for this blog, Nordic Skiing. Thus, for better or worse you now can easily pull up all my cross-country skiing posts. Here are just a few highlights from the past few years (now the Nordic Skiing Category):

• 2010 Nordic Fashion Show and Cross-Country Ski Review
  (this post has it all .. from high fashion to a video of skiing's Chinese roots)
  .
• Project Polar Bear
  (ski with a scientific expedition north to Hudson's Bay)
  .
• 2009 American Birkebeiner
  (videos, animated slideshows and even Google's Marissa Mayer)
  .
• Lost to 6 Swedes .. Beat 11 Swedes!
  (one of the eleven was Sven-Ingvar Svensson: age 73)
  .
• One Armed Skier Builds Dorm in China
  (skiing for a cause)

and finally, the classic

• A Skier Cooks His Cast

You can link to the Nordic Skiing Category to read all the posts. I promise some new, and unique content this Winter! Stay tuned.

Nordic Skiing Review (cross-country skiing in Minnesota)

It's Thanksgiving Week, and the forecast includes snow for the Upper Peninsula, which means we should all be able to hit the trails soon. More than likely the first stop will likely be ABR near Ironwood, Michigan. Given my excitement over the impending snow, I give you my Nordic Ski Review for this year including my first ever Northstar Nerd Fashion Show!

While you might find the idea of a fashion show crazy, given the HUGE difficulty I had finding some "retro" ski wear this Fall, I want to insure my readers don't have the same difficulties! As always, it's important to point out that the NorthstarNerd never takes money to review any product. Good or bad, my opinions are my own.

(Make certain you see my Nordic Skiing Section of this site with a custom X-Ski Search Engine, Garmin measured ski trail distances ... and more via MinnSki)

Trails:

• Minneapolis St. Paul Metro Area
• Northern Minnesota
• Northwestern Wisconsin

Trails via SkinnySki.Com (North Central States / Western Ontario)

• Trail Listings
• Trail Reports

commentary: I'm a paying member of SkinnySki.Com. If you are from Minnesota, please consider support for Bruce Adelsman's site. He does a great job.

And now ... what you've all been waiting for ...

1st Annual Northstar Nerd Nordic Skiing Fashion Show!

In this show I will review ... (scroll down for the embedded video .. both videos require a YouTube connection to work properly. The fashion show will display w/o a YouTube connection, but you won't hear the yodeling!)

• Bjorn Daehlie Ski Wear (found at almost any ski shop)

commentary: Bjorn Daehlie Ski Wear provides good wind protection and is good for all around training and touring. The jacket allows the skier full upper body movement for pole plants. For the serious skier, unless it is extremely cold (-0F), you will overheat during hard workouts.

• Cross Country Skiing Men's Knickers (via the Sportsman Guide)

commentary: Finding good knickers for the serious "retro" skier is hard. I finally stumbled across these knickers from the Sportsman Guide. Although the knickers are used, you will be purchasing some fantastic German Army Surplus Knickers. My seamstress said the quality of the construction and wool was very high. However, that leads me to one other point. I am 6 feet 2 inches tall and weigh 175 pounds with a 36 inch waist line. Even though I purchased "large sized" knickers it was necessary to let them out for comfortable skiing. It was worth every penny!

• Cross Country Skiing Men's Knee Socks (via Bergland Trachten)

commentary: Christel at Bergland Trachten Imports defines customer service. The search for men's knee socks via Google was a HUGE challenge. You don't want to know what often comes up in search results ... unless I was trying to outfit my wife for a different kind of exercise in the bedroom. Although one can find lots of socks online, finding cross-country ski socks that come up all the way to my knees and have color (snowflake patterns like yesteryear) was almost impossible. The key to a successful Google Search was to query "socks" and "trachten". Apparently Tracht defines folk wear from Austria and Bavaria (Wikipedia entry).

• Cross-Country Skiing Race Uniform (via Exos Medical)

commentary: Thanks to Exos Medical who rescued my racing season last year when I broke my thumb and tore a ligament during a bad Fall, I am now outfitted in the latest racing uniform.

• Skis! (via Oregon Mountain Community)

commentary: Due to my own stupidity and a dishonest person, I had some skis stolen at the end of last ski season. After a very hard 25k workout, I entered the warming house to get some water. Still being tired, I went to my car and left my skis in the rack next to the chalet. When I returned later ... my skis were gone. Thus, this year I will be skiing on two new pairs of Atomic Classic Skis (Pro Classic for training and Pro Race Classic for races)

Thus ... without further adieu ... Happy Holidays from the Northstar Nerd!

Nordic Fashion Show on PhotoPeach

Retro Cross-Country Skiing Roots!

Finally, if you really enjoy cross-country skiing and the retro look, visit Wood N Skis! You'll find great commentary, instructions on how to pine tar your skis, wood skis for sale ... and this great video on visiting the birthplace of cross-country skiing ... and guess what, it's not Norway! You'll be visiting the Altai Mountains in central Asia (China).