512 Pixels

My thanks to SheetPlanner for sponsoring 512 Pixels this week. It helps you organize information, manage your projects, and schedule your tasks and activities with unparalleled power and flexibility. A free 21 day trial is available on the Mac App Store.

The technology used aboard most spacecraft always has to be very robust to survive the harsh environment beyond our atmosphere, but often the software and hardware used are rather basic and usually fairly old by the time a launch takes place.

Part of the reason why is that spacecraft take years to develop, but reliability is the biggest reason. If something goes bad on a spacecraft that can’t be fixed remotely, the mission is put into jeopardy.

Recently, ESA launched its Solar Orbiter mission, which is slated to travel 10 million kilometers closer to the Sun than Mercury, the innermost planet. Jacek Krywko at Ars Technica writes about what is required to keep the spacecraft from being cooked alive:

To withstand such temperatures, Solar Orbiter is going to rely on an intricately designed heat shield. This heat shield, however, will protect the spacecraft only when it is pointed directly at the Sun—there is no sufficient protection on the sides or in the back of the probe. So, accordingly, ESA developed a real-time operating system (RTOS) for Solar Orbiter that can act under very strict requirements. The maximum allowed off-pointing from the Sun is only 6.5 degrees. Any off-pointing exceeding 2.3 degrees is acceptable only for a very brief period of time. When something goes wrong and dangerous off-pointing is detected, Solar Orbiter is going to have only 50 seconds to react.

The whole article is fascinating, and well worth a read.

Tim Hardwick at MacRumors:

As expected, Apple has added the seventh-generation iPod nano to its list of Vintage and Obsolete products, officially designating the last iPod in the iconic nano lineup as “vintage.”

I still remember the excitement that would come every fall when Apple would revise the Nano.

Another week; another special episode:

Apple is on the verge of releasing new emoji, so it is time for Federico to try to guess their names.

On Connected Pro, he also shared about his first pet and a favor the universe is going to do for him. It was wild.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• Pingdom: Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code CONNECTED to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2021, and can be used only once.
• Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code CONNECTED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

I’ve been looking forward to this episode of Under the Radar for what feels like forever:

Dave’s app is number one in the App Store! We explore the mind-bending scale and perspective of such a defining moment in an indie developer’s career.

Marco’s opening is perfect.

Apple Support:

When I import a 24-bit image in AppleWorks for Windows when the color is set to 8-bit (256 colors), the image is dithered to 256 colors. When the document is saved and opened with the color set to 24 or 32-bit, the image still appears to be only 256 colors. Can you help?

AppleWorks for Windows does indeed change the color depth of imported graphics. To work around this, set the color depth to the maximum before importing pictures. The image will be imported with correct bit depth. The image will be dithered on those systems with smaller bit depths but will display properly on systems with matching or greater bit depths.

SheetPlanner helps you organize information, manage your projects, and schedule your tasks and activities with unparalleled power and flexibility.

Get organized…

Organize information using the Outliner to provide structure. Populate the start, finish and progress columns to create a schedule and track progress. Add custom, text, number, date, symbol, list and picture columns to track additional information.

Make a plan…

Visualize tasks with start and finish dates on the Timeline. Change the Timeline scope to get a high level view of your project over multiple years or zoom in to weeks or even days for more precision. See the progress of each task in the Timeline. Customize the color of Timeline bars. Preview and print the Timeline.

Get things done…

Use filters to focus on what’s important, due today, due tomorrow, or whatever criteria you determine. View filtered tasks in the timeline, month and yearly calendar. Check items off as they are completed in the outline, timeline, month or year views. Hide completed items to stay focused.

You can download SheetPlanner from the Mac App Store, where a 21-day trial is available.

This time on a jam-packed episode of Mac Power Users:

iOS 14 is here, bringing new features like widgets, the App Library, increased privacy and a lot more. This week, David and Stephen review the release and talk about how Apple could take some of these features farther in the future.

It’s been a long time since Apple radically changed the home screen experience on the iPhone, and I have to say, it’s been a lot of fun exploring the possibilities.

On More Power Users, we pulled back the technical curtains on Relay FM’s recent Podcastathon for St. Jude, and David shares a story of woe.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• 1Password: Have you ever forgotten a password? You don’t have to worry about that anymore.
• TextExpander from Smile: Get 20% off with this link and type more with less effort! Expand short abbreviations into longer bits of text, even fill-ins, with TextExpander from Smile.
• Mint Mobile: Cut your unlimited wireless bill to $30 a month.
• Hover: Make a name for yourself. Get 10% off any domain name.

I remember when this company and its products were in the news a lot more, but I had no idea the story behind it all was so wild. Quinn knocked it out of the park with this one:

Dr. Drang:

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that it took me a year to finally get around to writing a script I’d been thinking about. Today’s post is one whose seed was planted almost two years ago.

In October 2018, Myke Hurley and Stephen Hackett were in Chicago for a Relay FM event that I attended. During the event, they recorded this episode of Ungeniused, their podcast about weird articles on Wikipedia. In honor of the city they were in, the article they chose was " Raising of Chicago," which describes how, in the 1850s and 1860s, the roadways and buildings of the city were elevated as much as six feet to get them up out of the muck and allow decent drainage of both stormwater and wastewater.

An informative post, no matter when it showed up.

Tom Warren at The Verge, writing about some half-finished themes found in this week’s XP source code dump:

One is labeled “Candy” and includes a design that closely resembles Apple’s Aqua interface that was first introduced at the Macworld Conference & Expo in 2000. Although the theme is incomplete, the Windows XP Start button and various buttons and UI elements are clearly themed to match Apple’s Aqua.

My thanks to TextExpander for sponsoring the site this week. TextExpander removes the repetition out of work so you can focus on what matters most. Say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the right thing to say. TextExpander can be used in any platform, any app, anywhere you type.

512 Pixels readers get 20% off their first year.