Ha ... did I say I had recovered from my cold?  Kidding.  Precelebration is the root of all failure.  Anyway, yesterday was one of those days; I spent the whole day refactoring some code to make it better, only to realize at the end that it was not actually better.  This morning I'm back to the code as it was on the weekend.  Sigh.  I have been enjoying the Iditarod so far, as always (go DeeDee!), and am now deep into the mysteries of SVG ... and making a filter pass.

So this is cool: MIT scientists stunned by scalable quantum computer.  Apparently they have now made five "qubits".  I remain skeptical about quantum computing, but then, Einstein was skeptical about quantum mechanics, too.  Worth watching. 

Apropos: this McKinsey report (!): the growing potential of quantum computing. 

Not all research is equally cool: this paper appears to imply glaciers have gender.  Wow, that's about all I can say.  You almost think this must be a hoax, but then you realize, as a hoax it would be too obvious. 

Here we have Ice fishing in one of the world's coldest cities (Astana, Kazakhstan).  I've been to Astana, but fortunately it was in Spring.  Astana is not only the coldest capital city in the world ... it is also one of the warmest.  I guess the weather in the Kazahkstanian steppes is ... variable.  A good place to be a climatologist!  (of any gender :) 

Brad Feld with an interesting rumination: No one gets out of this alive.  (Where by "this" he means "life".)  "While I fantasize about the singularity and hope I live long enough to have my consciousness uploaded into something that allows me to continue to engage indefinitely, even if it’s a simulation of mortality, I accept the reality that life is finite."  So far ... :) 

The glasses-free technology that made me believe in 3D TV again.  The human factor here is pretty important.  After watching Avatar I was convinced 3D would take over, but it hasn't, not even in movies, and I think that's because of the glasses.  The same problem that will afflict VR. 

Speaking of VR: Leap Motion's Minority Report -style gesture controller gets smarter, faster, and more accurate.  This is way cool, the input side of the VR equation is just as important as the output side. 

And more speaking of VR (and more Brad Feld): Mercy Hospital virtual care center supported by Oblong.  Remote healthcare is one of the most compelling applications for AR/VR, removing the barriers of space and time to bring expertise to people who need it.  Oblong was founded by the people who made Minority Report, and began as a company making gesture controllers; their Mezzanine product now drives rooms with the walls covered in monitors, and supports wands as well as gloves.  Much better for business and medical settings where people are not going to wear goggles or gloves. 

All of which goes to show, you need more NASA technology in your life.  A nicely done post on the NASA tumblr which shows off some of the tech developed for space which later made it into our lives (and no, Tang is not included :)  I think the ongoing research on human bodies and how they are affected by space is some of their most important work. 

NASA also do a lot of research on Solar storms...