NorthStarNerd.Org

The Lake Superior Flyover Experience

Lake Superior and Minnesota is known as "flyover land". However, it seems whenever my Danish relatives or English friends come here for the first time, they exclaim ... Wow! This is much better than the Big Apple, Florida or Hollywood. While obviously this is personal choice, it you enjoy nature and the opportunity to appreciate the outdoors without hordes of other people ... stop in Northern Minnesota!

Here are a few of my favorite blogs which will give you a taste of the Northland and Lake Superior (other than my own!).

Northland / Lake Superior Blogs:

• Mortimer on Lake Superior (Michipicoten, Ontario area)
• The Lake is the Boss (Minnesota Northshore and Wisconsin Southshore)
• Gary of the North’s Photosteam (Eastern Upper Peninsula)
• Universal Klister (outdoor enthusiast blog)

Thus, the next time you're flying from the East to the West Coast, and look down ... this is flyover land!

Slide show: Gary of the North

Created with flickrSLiDR.

And a photo of my own: Fire and Ice at Sunset!

Viewing the Northern Lights

One of the advantages of living in Northern Minnesota is the ability to view the Northern Lights. I have the advantage of being able to easily get away from city lights, and Minnesota is nearer the magnetic north pole that the real north pole. You may wonder what your own chances are to view a beautiful display. Like all things it depends. However, there are ways to use the web to increase your chances, or at least understand what is your liklihood to see the Aurora Borealis.

The first tool you should familarize yourself with is Ovation Aurora from NOAA and Johns Hopkins University. The image given below shows that if it were not snowing tonight, I would have a pretty good chance around 11:00 p.m. (hint: when you hear there has been large sunspot activity, the liklihood of better Northern Lights displays increases). By using Ovation you can determine whether the displays are already large (and pushing south) in parts of the world where it is already night. Just imagine the world rotating, and pay attention to the red line and lines of latitude in the image given below (or on Ovation Aurora)

(click upon the image to view at full size ... post continues below)

Here are some other web sites worthy of your review:

• Tips on Viewing the Auroroa (figure our your relation to magnetic north)
• How to Photograph the Northern Lights
• The Northern Lights as Viewed from Outer Space!

Some of my favorite experiences in life include viewing the Aurora Borealis. Here is just one example ... Two Winters ago I saw a phenomenal display while driving from Marcell to Duluth, Minnesota at 4 am on a cold Winter's night. Although I was on a major US highway, I stopped the car and enjoyed the reds and greens as they danced across the sky. For ten minutes not another car came by. In the distance I could hear the water of a babbling brook. It was magic!

Here are a few photos from Wikipedia. Good luck!

(click upon the image to view full sized)

Engineered in America: Do you have what it takes?!

Normally I never promote commercial ventures on NorthstarNerd.Org, but how can I resist the personal request recently emailed to me from the Discovery Channel. They are working upon a new program named "Top Engineer", and they want you! The creation of television programming which does not assume we are all brain dead needs to be encouraged (yes, I like the Discovery Channel).

Quoting from their "casting" web site: (application deadline is March 7, 2012)

The Discovery Channel is looking for America’s most creative and daring techies, machinists, inventors and engineers to design, build, and BLAST their way to a Grand Prize on their new competition TV show TOP ENGINEER.

A handful of lucky men and women will be chosen to take on exciting challenges from various engineering fields at the state-of-the-art WET design facilities (www.wetdesign.com) in California.

No, you don’t need to have an engineering degree to compete on this show, but you MUST be able to design, build, test and integrate an idea into a final product that WORKS.

Do you think you are creative when it comes to inventing? Why not apply! Perhaps you could become famous like the stars of American Choppers or Deadliest Catch.

I have attached their pdf file to this post if you want more information. As a fyi, I did not receive any pay, or gifts in kind to promote Top Engineer. NorthstarNerd.Org never takes any pay from vendors, or accepts advertisements. 

 

Need an invite to knowledge? StartupBus!

Some of you may not remember last year's post: Highway 61 Revisisted, Innovation at Milepost 23. Here is the quick synopsis. StartupBus is a rolling software factory, and by the time the bus reaches South by Southwest (SXSW), the geeks on board will have created a new product. Imagine ... Diet Cokes, Twinkies and hundreds of lines of code generated as the bus streaks through the night across America. Take it for granted that the bus is connected to the web.

The NorthstarNerd just submitted my own application to ride the bus, and I have a few invites to give away. Comment on this blog post and let me know why I should give you one!

Recovering from a Corrupt Video Header File

Videos have header files associated with your movie which serve like a road map in terms of giving instructions to your computer. This header file has all kinds of technical information which not being present, will prevent your computer from even opening the file (let alone playing it).

Recently I had a problem when one of my video header files became corrupt due to a power failure during filming. Given the header file is the last item written to a video file, if power is ever interrupted to your camera, you will have a major wasted effort. Editing a header file is not for the weak of heart, and even this "nerd" did not want to make the attempt. 

After hours of scouring the web for some means of rescuing my video, I found a great (and free) utility named Fix Player (review and download options via Softperdia). This software package saved me from disaster. I was able to open my corrupt file, view it, and most importantly ... save it successfully with a new header file (use a new file name).