Continue reading »]]> You know, normally the absolute last thing I talk about is the weather. But let me tell you that what is happening right now here in the city, is probably by far the worst and most weird weather and storm ever witnessed by the Irish population.

I had a bad awakening last night when I learned that the already heavily affected bus lines I normally take, were completely cancelled, followed by a total shutdown of the bus network at 8 PM. On top of that the City Center was completely void of cars – a sight seldomly seen, except maybe deep in the night (well, cabs always run).

So the local (and free) newspaper picked up on the story. MetroHerald’s front page today, and the article in detail.

And the article.

Continue reading »]]> Nowadays, our entire lives are laid out by the clock. There’s a time to work, to relax, to sleep. They say you should take your time. They also say if you wait long enough (in essence if you let enough time pass), good things will come to you. Time is probably the most important thing in our lives. It progresses only in one direction, every moment that happened will not happen again.

The prospect of time and its unique properties have caused serious research into the field, and shortly after Einstein’s release of the Theory of Relativity, space and time have been merged to form the four dimensional spacetime. Einstein’s assumptions about gravity and time as such sounded promising at the time, but no one was sure. Today we know that time dilatation is a very real thing. It basically means that the faster you go, the more time slows down. But not for you, only for outside viewers. We therefore know, that time is something that is there. We also know that there are Black Holes, which in essence are the remainders of collapsed stars, and so super-massive, that even light cannot escape, and that it bends space to a near unimaginable level. Let’s put it like this: The closer you get to a Black Hole, the more and more time slows down – for an outside viewer. You would appear to go slower and slower, while you yourself would feel nothing of the effect. Eventually time gets so twisted, that the last second in your life, never passes in a billion years (or more).

The Persistence of Memory. Salvador Dali’s most famous painting. The imagery can be read as a graphic illustration of Einstein’s theory of relativity, depicting gravity distorting time.

But why am I telling you all of this? Black Holes, relativity, and all that? Well, it all has to do with a very interesting experiment that is supposed to take place in a time not so far away – and if the theory holds true, we’re probably talking about the biggest and greatest discovery that mankind will ever make:

A working time machine.

You’re probably thinking that I have seen too much Sci-Fi movies and stuff. I know. And it’s perfectly natural to think that because science has always shown us that time travel if it all possible, would only be into the future. And even that would require technology or devices not yet proposed or invented for that matter. So am I nuts? Or what is going on here? Can such a thing like H.G. Wells’ Time Machine really be done?

Ronald L. Mallett is a Ph.D., and professor of physics at the University of Connecticut, who became interested in time travel and the possibilities of practical application, when his father died. For his entire life, he has been searching for possibilities that could make a dream of the entire world come true.

Alexander Hartdegen embarks on a journey that will change his life forever. Scene from the 2002 remake of The Time Machine, directed by Simon Wells

And believe it or not, Ronald has indeed come up with a paper, which works as a blueprint for a working time machine. How does it work? It all has to do with the speed of light. And Lasers. Why Lasers? They can, if concentrated enough, bend light itself. Building on this fact, he proposes a device, inside which there are Lasers, which light beams are reflected in a horizontal 90 degree angle, essentially giving you a Laser square if you will. Now you do the same on top of the square, but with a slightly different angle, but also horizontal. You repeat this again and again, until you get a spiral like tunnel of Laser squares. Such a device is called a ring-laser.

With the help of such a device, Mallett believes to have found the key for time travel into the past.

“In Einstein’s general theory of relativity, both matter and energy can create a gravitational field. This means that the energy of a light beam can produce a gravitational field. My current research considers both the weak and strong gravitational fields produced by a single continuously circulating unidirectional beam of light. In the weak gravitational field of a unidirectional ring laser, it is predicted that a spinning neutral particle, when placed in the ring, is dragged around by the resulting gravitational field. [R. L. Mallett, "Weak gravitational field of the electromagnetic radiation in a ring laser", Phys. Lett. A 269, 214 (2000)

He further explains:

"For the strong gravitational field of a circulating cylinder of light, I have found new exact solutions of the Einstein field equations for the exterior and interior gravitational fields of the light cylinder. The exterior gravitational field is shown to contain closed timelike lines.

The presence of closed timelike lines indicates the possibility of time travel into the past. This creates the foundation for a time machine based on a circulating cylinder of light. [R. L. Mallett, "The gravitational field of a circulating light beam", Foundations of Physics 33, 1307 (2003).

Okay. It is difficult to understand that. So this means: The lasers have gravitation, they have a mass. When inside a ring laser, you will have a measurable amount of gravity. And if you throw in a particle, or visual information in form of energy, or light, what happens is that it will bounce off the lasers, again and again, go faster and faster, in a spiral (it hits each laser), and eventually exceeding the speed of light, without breaking any laws of physics.

With the particle going faster and faster, it will eventually spiral its way down... into the past, and vanish.

What then happens can have some very bizarre consequences, but are definetely in the realm of possibility. The moment the machine is turned on, it is very possible that particles start to show up inside the ring laser, before they were sent away. Because they are traveling into the past. With this, you could also send messages into the past.

However, if you don't believe me, and I know most of you won't, then watch this Discovery documentary, which explains the prospect of this machine, and the paradoxes involved, as well as what it could mean for mankind.

Discovery channel: The world's first Time Machine

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Still think I’m nuts?

Continue reading »]]> So the update finally completed on my good ol’ iMac G5. It took just about an hour, but this is okay considering the amount of files and stuff. Right after the installation it detected my virgin USB drive, and asked me if I wanted to use it for Time Machine. I said ‘yes’. Time Machine activated itself (Flux Capacitor: online!) and started to backup, which it currently still does. And by the looks of it, it’s going to take a good while longer. Try to backup over 80 GB with USB and you know what I’m talking about.

Anyways, here are the very first things I have noticed, in screenshots, and explanations.

The Time Machine part of System Preferences showing, coming up after confirming to use the external drive for backup. There’s only one super-big switch, and that’s all you con configure for Time Machine: The On/Off Switch. Sheer brilliant. Set it, then forget it.

The Build is 9A581, the Golden Master build we have been waiting for. Apart from that, the About This Mac window has not changed at all. Which is good. Sometimes, you just have to keep things the way they are. This is one of those things.

There are always these features that are updated, and Apple does not talk about it because they just take them for granted. If you add the count of these little things to the 317 new features, then you probably end up with over 500 new features or so. When the install completes, the Spotlight magnifying glass has an indicator flashing, telling you something is happening. When you open Spotlight, this is what it looks like. You cannot search until indexing is complete. Which, admittedly, makes sense.

The Finder Preferences have changed. This is the thing for the sidebar. You can set a lot of things, which searches, which devices. It’s incredibly easy, and just plain simple. I really start to like it.

Safari’s new Webclip is now available. Create widgets out of anything you want to know the latest of in an instant. Safari is now versioned as 3.0.4, and it does no longer say it is a Beta release. Maybe Apple will silently roll out an update for Safari. Who knows.

The network settings screen. It is now also accessible via Safari, which is kinda nice. What you see is a slide down window specific for the current active part. The normal part of the window shines through and blurs in the background. Pretty amazing. Amongst the new settings now also is WINS. Just cool.

The new Sharing screen. Not much settings in here anymore. Only one page, clean, and easy. Set what you want. Boom. The original Firewall settings however can be found in Security of System Preferences. So they haven’t disappeared, just moved.

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Tomorrow I will continue on with a detailed test of everything, including screenshots.

Thanks for reading, good night.

Continue reading »]]> Update performed on iMac G5, 1 GB RAM, 1.8 GHz. Updating Log Live as it happens.

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[21:11] Connected new USB Drive. Inserted Leopard DVD. Window appearing to prompt me to restart after doubleclicking the install icon. Restarting.

[21:12] Grey boot screen.

[21:14] Wallpaper is the Aurora. Using English as language.

[21:15] Installer asks me where I want to install. After this, it installs automatically and tells me it will restart when it has completed.

[21:20] Install in progress. Approximate location of progress bar at 5%.

[21:22] Install continues to be in progress. A look at the Utilities menu reveals that a restore from Time Machine would be possible!

[21:28] Still installing. Quick note: I did not have a choice for a clean install or update, the screen simply said ‘Install’.

[21:34] Time remaining is estimated at 59 minutes. Ugh. Waiting… waiting… waiting…

[21:42] It now says 33 minutes, which is more down to Earth I’d say…

[21:47] Standing at 70% or so. It’s definitely doing something all right.

[21:50] Install now says there are 11 minutes left.

[21:55] Install claims 9 minutes left, hard drive still quite active, CPU also having a busy day today.

[21:58] Now getting close to the end. Progress bar close to the right side, I’d say about 90%.

[22:03] Very close to completion. Progress bar almost there.

[22:04] Setup appears to be completing.

[22:08] CPU winding down! It probably completes now.

[22:11] One hour in. It has almost completed. But then again, this is a fairly slow machine, and there’s a lot to be updated. Time required is okay to me.

[22:13] UPDATE COMPLETE

[22:14] Restarting.

[22:15] Hard Drive notably busy.

[22:16] Smooth blue screen now, hard drive does stuff.

[22:17] Desktop appears, now install completion movie. It asks me if I want to use my drive for Time Machine.

[22:18] The new intro movie appears. It flies through galaxies, then there’s the “X”, which then animates into Warp Speed. I then can enter information about me.

This concludes the upgrade log

Continue reading »]]> Short and painless: I got it.

To be honest, I seriously wished my XD card hadn’t broken, so that I would have been able to present you with quite some interesting pictures from the Launch Event over at the Apple Store in Grafton Street. It was simply staggering. You entered the shop, celebration setup. Leopard had arrived. A lot of people inside, everyone happy, all want to see what it is about. Staff had given wine to people, you could grab some crisps and feel welcome. It was a truly inspired scene, you should have seen that.

However. I got the Leopard, I got iLife, and I got a stylish 320 GB drive for Time Machine. I will commence the update on my iMac soon, so stay iTuned for further updates as the day progresses.

P.S.: The hologram effect on the box is seriously awesome.

Continue reading »]]> In a few minutes, I’ll be heading off to the Spectra Shop in Grafton Street, an authorized Apple reseller, who is also listed as a hoster of an “All Leopard, All Night” event. So therefore I will go there, and finally get my hands on Leopard, iLife, and a DeLorean Backup drive (for Time Machine) =D

I am genuinely excited.

Continue reading »]]> So it is official. With today’s release of Leopard, Apple officially drops support for all Classic environments. This move probably comes at no surprise and is understandable when you consider that Apple also migrated all of their products to Intel chips, no more POWERPC. Further, all of Mac OS X is either Unix-like, and with Leopard a real UNIX.

Engadget comments on the end of an era with this.

Of course, Intel Macs have never been able to run Classic anyway, so only like Hypercard user groups and the three printshops still running QuarkXPress 4 will be affected by this. But this does mark the end of the road for the venerable and oft maligned OS, which ushered in the mainstream GUI era with the 128K Mac in 1984 and remained the default boot on all new Macs until OS X 10.1.2 was released 18 years later in 2002 — prompting Steve to stage a melodramatic mock funeral for OS 9 at that year’s WWDC.

Good night and Good Luck: Classic is finally retired with today’s release of Leopard.