Posts by Steve West

Killer robots to get silent-running whisper mode

Not choppers... Iridium flares

A silent chopper turning on its searchlight for a couple of seconds... that's exactly what I thought the first time I saw a really bright Iridium satellite flare.

They vary, but the brightest (magnitude -9) are astonishing and can be seen in broad daylight. You can look up the times on the web or get widgets to do it for you. See "Satellite flare" in Wikipedia for links.

OpenOffice builds extensions for v2.3

Mac version

While the official Mac version of OpenOffice.org is still in the works, the NeoOffice Mac port is available from NeoOffice.org. This is currently based on OOo 2.2.1 code, but no doubt they will soon have it updated ot 2.3