We covered the cell phone hacking for GI’s- here’s more about installing at satellite…This is how I spent my day today. It took around 6 hours round trip to drive to Sulimaniya, Iraq. This in Kurdistan where we did the install. I learned some stuff, it’s mostly simple labor but it raised some interesting questions in my mind about interception. This is an example of a installing a 1.2 meter dish for uplink with a given satellite using an ODU (OutDoor Unit) and an IDU (InDoor Unit) connected by two approximately 15 meter coax cables (one for TX and one for RX). Cnet has an article about the “geek” trip to Iraq too.

SPOT community site SPOTStop points to the new “How Smart Watches Work” article on How Stuff Works. If you’re curious how SPOT watches work, the specs, service and some of the technical details this is a great article. Awhile back I modd’ed my Sunnto to look a little tougher, and solar charged it.

MrJerm says…“When I went to my local hardware store and showed them the list of materials, they already knew what it was for…the $14 steadicam must be catching on….I added a $10 “fitness set” from Sports Authority. The neoprene girdle is a good thing to wrap around the handle, providing grip and smoother (for me) pans. The jogging weights easily slip on the bottom, making it possible to gradually increase the weight as I become more comfortable with the setup. And when the steadicam is not in use, the jogging weights make good…jogging weights….”.

From Michael’s “Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena…This is pretty freaky, you stare at the green dot in the middle, as the background grid turns the yellow dots will disappear. Steady fixation favours disappearance, blinks or gaze shifts induce reappearance. All in all reminiscent of the Troxler effect, but stronger and more resistant to residual eye movements. Might be cool to make a video game that has this effect.