Beautiful Video Of The Progress MS-09 Soyuz Rollout

I absolutely love the look of R-7 derived rockets – Soyuz, Molinya, Vostok, Voskhod, all of them look amazing to me. To think this is one of the oldest designs still in use – over 60 years old – and the core design is, quite literally, a converted nuclear missile, is something else. It’s a …
Continue reading Beautiful Video Of The Progress MS-09 Soyuz Rollout

Coming Soon: An American Look At The BBC Computer Literacy Project

The 1980’s was an amazing time for computer technology – this was the time frame the concept of the microcomputer came into its own, bringing the ability to own a fully functional computer system into the average home. Computers however are strange machines, compared to what we normally have around our houses. Everything else we …
Continue reading Coming Soon: An American Look At The BBC Computer Literacy Project

WordPress Doesn’t Make It Easy Sometimes

Some of you might have noticed that I had to basically re-publish my article earlier on the NASA film “Skylab – The First 40 Days.” This was due to WordPress, the blogging software used on Xadara, being a bit of a pain in the ass due to me having to edit a few things around. …
Continue reading WordPress Doesn’t Make It Easy Sometimes

Skylab: The First 40 Days – 1973 NASA Film

Yesterday, June 22nd, marked the 45th anniversary of the end of the Skylab 2 mission, a 28 day stay on America’s first (and so far, only) space station. As I covered extensively in May, Skylab was heavily damaged during its launch, and the Skylab 2 mission had to be delayed for 10 days while a …
Continue reading Skylab: The First 40 Days – 1973 NASA Film

Rosetta’s Final Images From Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko – ESA Video

Here we have a rather beautiful video the European Space Agency published today, showing a montage of the final images from the Rosetta mission, an orbiter – lander combination  which operated on / around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for 12 years, from 2004 to 2016. These images are from the ending of the mission as Rosetta began …
Continue reading Rosetta’s Final Images From Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko – ESA Video

The Xbox E3 2018 Briefing In Under 3 Minutes

Every year I make it a point to only halfway care about E3. The event is generally just a concerted hype show and nothing more at this stage, about as outdated to me as many consider newspapers and the like. That being said, I’m still a gamer, and still have to pay some attention to …
Continue reading The Xbox E3 2018 Briefing In Under 3 Minutes

New Old Computers, A Week Off, And More – An Update

Oh, hi. You might remember me. My name is Chris, and I’m the guy who used to write an article a day here at Xadara, but over the past 6 months has cut back on this, much to his own displeasure. As much as I’m trying to get back to heavy writing, I wind up …
Continue reading New Old Computers, A Week Off, And More – An Update

So, Postimage Might Not Be As Good An Image Hosting Solution As I Thought

I apologize that I don’t have more time to go into this in this article, but I wanted to throw this out there quickly enough for what it’s worth to other bloggers and those interested in the subject. Last year Photobucket began charging for the ability to hotlink images – something bloggers have been using …
Continue reading So, Postimage Might Not Be As Good An Image Hosting Solution As I Thought

YouTube Is Tracking Users By Default Via Embedded Videos

Something I’ve never once understood over the past decade or so of being online has been the absolute love that people have for Google — not just the “oh, they have neat services” aspect, but the fact that people will go out of their way to ignore their constant begging for user data (as the …
Continue reading YouTube Is Tracking Users By Default Via Embedded Videos

You Probably Want To Reboot Your Router – The VPNFilter Malware

It seems like every year now we’re getting another major malware scare of some kind. Last year it was WannaCrypt. This year it’s VPNFilter, a piece of malware designed to infect routers. The malware apparently is designed to capture data transferred over the network for whatever use it may be to those behind the malware, …
Continue reading You Probably Want To Reboot Your Router – The VPNFilter Malware

The Xbox 360 Has Its First System Update In 2 Years. Yes, Seriously.

Last night I fired up one of my Xbox 360’s for a little bit of gaming before bed. I was rather surprised when I did turn the console on to discover I had a system update waiting. This would be the first update in 2 years, to a console that’s well past end of life …
Continue reading The Xbox 360 Has Its First System Update In 2 Years. Yes, Seriously.

Saving Skylab – The Skylab 2 Repairs

The first manned mission to Skylab launched on May 25th 1973, carrying astronauts Pete Conrad, Joe Kerwin, and Paul Weitz on a planned 28 day stay on the United States first space station. The first thing the crew would need to do, however, was make Skylab livable. Skylab was heavily damaged during its launch on …
Continue reading Saving Skylab – The Skylab 2 Repairs

Our Privacy Policy Has Been Updated (AKA The “GDPR” Article, Short Version)

Yesterday new data privacy laws took hold in the European Union. These laws, known as the “General Data Protection Regulation” or, GDPR, very basically, and I do mean in a very basic form allow European Union residents to demand a company they have data with get rid of said data at that users request (or …
Continue reading Our Privacy Policy Has Been Updated (AKA The “GDPR” Article, Short Version)

45 Years Ago: The Launch Of Skylab 2

On May 25th, 1973, the first manned mission to the United States first space station, Skylab, launched from Launch Complex 39-B at Kennedy Space Center. Originally scheduled to launch 10 days earlier, on May 15th, the launch was delayed when it was discovered that Skylab had suffered major damage on its way to orbit; the …
Continue reading 45 Years Ago: The Launch Of Skylab 2