Dyna-Soar style SpaceShipTwo design

Virgin Galactic has unveiled a SpaceShipTwo (SS2) design, created by Scaled Composites, that harks back to the NASA/USAF Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar glider of the 1960s, while Scaled's carrier aircraft, White Knight II (WK2) has been given a twin-fuselage configuration.To be launched on a Lockheed Martin Titan III rocket, Dyna-Soar was for hypersonic flight research but the programme was cancelled before the first vehicle was completed. Some of its subsystems were used in later X-15 flight research and Dyna-Soar became a testbed for advanced technologies that contributed to projects, including the Space Shuttle.

Link

Green Tip: Buy a Thermos

Everyone seems to be interested in conserving water and power these days. Using too much power increases our Co2 emissions contributing to global warming. Wasting water depletes our fresh water supply and does damage to our ecosystems.

Here's a tip; buy a thermos, the kind that can store hot drinks (coffee, tea, etc) and helps to keep it hot for hours at a time. When you heat water for coffee or tea, put the excess hot water or hot drink into the thermos for later use. This way you don't waste as much water or energy when you're thirsty later in the day.

I use a thermos for taking herbal tea to work since we don't have many other tea drinkers. Just one tea pot full of hot water is good enough for 3-4 cups of hot tea.

Mastering C++.Net

I just recently picked up a copy of "Mastering C++.Net." I've been a programmer for over 10 years but the programming world is in a constant state of flux. This little gem is a good reference for keeping up with the latest changes in the C++ world. I'm wondering how long C++ will be useful since we have some new languages and revitalized languages popping up. There doesn't seem to be a week or even a day that goes by that we don't hear about some new methodology or some trick that some hacker has figured out. I like the simplicity of OOP using C++. Managed C++ does take some of the grunt work out of coding. You don't have to worry so much about the memory issues like you used to with C++. C# simplifies things even further. At least with knowing C++, you should not have any problem learning less complex languages like C# and Java.

Trying out a new Template

I decided the old template just was getting a little too old for my tastes. This new one seems similar to Siron's blog so it seems to fit in with the Master of Orion set.