*The* astronomical event of 2003 is the Mars opposition of August. That month, Mars has never been so close to Earth in the last 20 years. One good reason to send a load of Mars robots to the red planet, but also to observe Mars from a telescope. If you really want to know what you're going to see through your telescope, Mars Previewer II may be of interest : it's a Windows program which was distributed with a copy of Sky and Telescope, and shows you the current visible details of the red planet. I didn't managed to get it running under Wine, so for the Linux and Mac OSX folks, the next link may be of interest : this site simulates the rotation of Mars, so you''ll have a good impression of the possible visible details.
In 2001, NASA launched the Mars Odyssey, to map the Mars surface. The result is depicted on the Themis site, with high detailled pictures of our neighbour planet; 1 pixel equals 20 meters. The climax on the site though is this magnificent inzoomable Mars chart.

'The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord seems a funny list the first time you have a look at it, but actually it's a modern version of 'Art of War' to me. Apply it to your job if you like strategy and politics in your everyday life.

I'm leaving Seti@Home for what it is. No more searching for little green men. Instead, I''m devoting my CPU time now to more down-to-earth science : Folding@Home is a distributed computing project which studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases.

Since proteins play such fundamental roles in biology, scientists have sequenced the human genome. The genome is in a sense a "blueprint" for these proteins -- the genome contains the DNA code which specifies the sequence of the amino acids beads along the protein "necklace." However, only knowing this sequence tells us little about what the protein does and how it does it. In order to carryout their function (eg as enzymes or antibodies), they must take on a particular shape, also known as a "fold." Thus, proteins are truly amazing machines: before they do their work, they assemble themselves! This self-assembly is called "folding." Understanding protein folding may lead to a cure for protein related diseases.

Most IT people know about VMWare, an environment that lets you run another operating system on your PC. VMWare will allow you to run eg Win 98 and associated software on your Unix/X11 workstation, displaying a window on your workstation, simulating a monitor on a PC. It's kinda strange seeing bootmessages appear in a window. But VMWare is pricy; you can use a VMWare copy for about a month with a temporary license, but after that, you are considered to pay for it.

Bochs is an open source implementation of VMWare. I was surprised about the maturity of the project. It's still not that advanced as VMWare, or as userfriendly, but if you have a minimum of geek capabilities, you can run an OS in it. I had to fiddle a bit with the virtual disk parameters, but finally got it working, and at this very moment, I'm installing FreeBSD in a Bochs cage.

The California Coastline Project is 12,000 photos into documenting the entire coast of the state with two people, a camera, and a helicopter. Public response has varied from the interested to the psychotic, and Barbra Streisand is suing.