Titan has long intrigued space scientists, as it is the only moon in the Solar System to have a dense atmosphere -- and its atmosphere, like Earth's, mainly comprises nitrogen. Titan's atmosphere is also rich in methane, although the source for this vast store of hydrocarbons is unclear. Given that Titan is billions of years old, the question is how this atmospheric methane gets to be renewed. Without replenishment, it should have disappeared long ago. A popular hypothesis is that it comes from a vast ocean of hydrocarbons.


But when the US spacecraft Cassini sent down a European lander, Huygens, to Titan in 2005, the images sent back were of a rugged landscape veiled in an orange haze. There were indeed signs of methane flows and methane precipitation, but nothing at all that pointed to any sea of the stuff. But a flyby by Cassini on July 22 last year has revealed, thanks to a radar scan, 75 large, smooth, dark patches between three and 70 kilometers across that appear to be lakes of liquid methane.


They believe the lakes prove that Titan has a "methane cycle" -- a system that is like the water cycle on Earth, in which the liquid evaporates, cools and condenses and then falls as rain, replenishing the surface liquid.

Are you happy ? Then mark it on the map of Happiness !

IBM carries an article containing an overview of the current Linux virtualization methods, the techniques used over the years, and a survey of Linux virtualization projects. The different methods are somehow very briefly discussed, eg the part about the now standard KVM could have been described in more detail. QEMU though, looks promising, and I really should give it a try in order to remove VMWare from my system.

Enter the world of flame fractals. Here's enough wallpaper to last for a century. Want do make your own ? Download Xaos, available for Windows and Linux.

Planet ADnD has an online version available of the AD&D Monstrous Manual. Quite handy if you've forgotten your copy on a D&D party, but also a nice online reference book.

AstroWhatsup.com has another 2007 astro calender available for download (23 MB pdf). Very great overview of night objects for every skyhunter out there. The 2006 edition was a great success, the 2007 one looks as promising as the previous one.

I upgraded my XGL/Compiz set from Quinnstorm packages to the new Beryl-manager. The Gimp has an attitude of keeping several windows open, so trailfocus isn't really helpfull there, so I decided to exclude Gimp from the trailfocus module. That can be accomplished to specifying a WM_CLASS in the Beryl-manager, but what has to be specified there exactly ?


On can find the exact name of a WM_CLASS object by typing the command :

xprop 

The cursor then changes to a cross, which enables you to select the application of which you want to know the WM_CLASS.

MacHackers.com has an article online which takes a closer look at ZFS in the upcoming 10.5 OSX release.

I spent the last week in the middle of the English countryside for a course of HP-UX Serviceguard.


Thick fog, Festive Feasants, Badgers, Guiness and heavy head aches. Luckily we travelled by EuroStar, cause Heathrow Airport was rather chaotic due to the fog.


There's a small collection of pictures I took with my mobile phone, so quality is not overall excellent. It offers a good, misty overview of a week with little or no distraction.

Why the Space Shuttle sucks is a clear explanation what's wrong with the Space Shuttle. In short : it was all about money cuts, which lead to a crappy design. Sounds familiar, isn't it ?