Are we alone? The Arecibo Message

Well, I recently discovered an interesting event. In 1974 the Arecibo radio telescope was used to send a message an interstellar message. After a number of modifications had been carried out to the transmitter, enabling it to broadcast signals at a power of up to 20 terawatts (1 terawatt = 1 trillion watts) and as an inaugural test of these improvements it was decided by SETI to transmit an encoded message to the heavens. This signal was aimed towards the globular star cluster M13, some 25,000 light years away and consisting of some 300,000 stars in the constellation of Hercules.

The message was actually transmitted on November 16th 1974 and consisted of 1679 pulses of binary code (0's and 1's) - which took a little under three minutes to transmit. It was transmitted on a frequency of 2380MHz.

And it seems on in August 2001 we might have received a reply in the form of crop circles in Chilbolton, England. The crop circles depicts a slightly altered information sequence in comparison with the orignal message sent.


You can find more information about the original and "received message" here , here and here.

As far as I can gather these crop circles haven't been proved or disproved as a hoax. This provides for some interesting questions. Could this actually be a reply from an ET? Maybe... maybe not...

The question if we are alone to me is a no brainer. Personally I don't believe that we are. There's just too much possibility of live out there. The real question is if/when we will make contact. Perhaps it's already happened and we just don't know it!

Even Worse News

This just hasn't been my week. Since my Maxtor drive gave up the ghost, I decided to see if it's still under warranty. Checked Maxtor's site, and to my amazement it was! I contacted the PC shop I bought the disk from, they said I could send it to them and they'll see what they can sort out.

Later today I got a call from a guy at the PC shop. They informed me that both they and the suppliers only provide a one year warranty on the Maxtor drives, and the remainder of the warranty is between me and Maxtor. Best of all there is no Maxtor factory in South Africa, so if I want a replacement drive, I'll have to send it overseas!

In the end it might be easier (and cheaper!) to just let the crappy Maxtor drive die, and perhaps use it as an expensive paper weight. So much for extended warranties!

DOA (Dead on arrival)

Well, after a seemingly long time, the new Hitachi drive I ordered arrived. Couldn't wait to get home so I can get my PC up and running again. Alas it was not to be.

I installed the drive, switched on the PC and nothing. The PC couldn't detect the drive :( Tested it in another PC, and still it didn't work, so it seems that I've got one fine example of a DOA disk.

Now I have to try to sort out a replacement for the drive, and then it's gonna take another week before I can get the new drive. It's times like this that I really get pissed off, but oh well. So all updates to the wallpaper site will have to be delayed for now. Let's just hope that the new drive isn't DOA on arrival too...

Oops!

While fiddling with some of the code in the template I accidently messed up the layout without noticing it. So to those people who tried to visit the site during the period it only displayed a very profound "-->" as content, I'm sorry. Everything should now be sorted.

News from the Final Frontier - The Ultimate space wallpapers

It's going pretty well with www.finalfrontier.za.net . I've seen some rise in traffic in comparison with last month. 1,806 uniques as opposed to 1,499 for the same period. I know it's not much, but for me it's a decent enought increase.

The site also went from a PR 2 site to a PR 3 site. Slowly but surely the site is gaining some traffic.

I'm planning to finish adding the wallpapers created by Greg Martin within the month. Just as soon as I get my PC up and running again I'll get started on that. So be sure to check in from time to time. He really is one of the best space artists I've come accross.

I'm also in discussions with some other space artists to allow me to provide their works for download. Watch this space for updates!

One dissapointing fact is that I don't get anyone registering on the site's forum. I can't really explain the lack of members, but I really rely on the users of the site for feedback, and at the moment I'm not getting much of that.

I need all the promotion I can get so if you have a Blog or site of your own, and you enjoy what the site has to offer, please spread the word!

Tradegy Struck

After some severe power failures, my main PC's hard disk drive failed. In the process I lost over 4 months of work, including around 40 images I wanted to add to the wallpaper site. This is the second Maxtor drive that gave me problems and now I'm switching brands.

After a lot of research I've decided on getting an Hitachi Deskstar 7k250 160GB SATA drive running at 7200 rpms.



I'm hoping that I'll find the time to write a review on the drive as soon as I get my hands on it. (Which should be within 3 days - and of course after I've got my PC back up and running.

The Maxtor drive just won't spin up anymore. The drive is still supposed to be under warrenty so I'll have to see if I can get a replacement drive as well. Not that it will help the data that I lost, but at least it won't be a total loss.

All about Final Frontier

Well, first things first. Let me tell you all you need to know about my website Final Frontier
One of my hobbies is astronomy and I love to have an new and exciting space image as my wallpaper. After some extensive searches I realized that most of the wallpaper sites out there are more interested in "celebrity wallpapers" and offer a "huge selection" of space wallpapers consisting of about 8 images!

This prompted me to start my own site, and so Final Frontier was born. The site has been going strong for over 7 months now, and I'm still trying to get it "out there" as I really believe that this is one of the best space wallpaper resources out there.

The site currently offers over 240 wallpapers, and new wallpapers are added as they become available.

I must admit the site takes a lot of time and work, but in the end seeing someone enjoy your hard work is well worth it!

Welcome to the Leading Edge!

This will be the place where you can come and read more about the latest happenings at Final Frontier my space wallpaper site. Furthermore I'll be posting some rants and raves on web design, PC hardware, PC games and basically anything that comes to mind!

So stop back often to see what's going on in the Chaos that is my life.