A fortuitous orbit of the International Space Station allowed the astronauts this striking view of Sarychev volcano (Russia’s Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan) in an early stage of eruption on June 12, 2009. Sarychev Peak is one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain and is located on the northwestern end of Matua Island.

Prior to June 12, the last explosive eruption had occurred in 1989 with eruptions in 1986, 1976, 1954 and 1946 also producing lava flows. Commercial airline flights were diverted from the region to minimize the danger of engine failures from ash intake. This detailed photograph is exciting to volcanologists because it captures several phenomena that occur during the earliest stages of an explosive volcanic eruption.

The main column is one of a series of plumes that rose above Matua Island (48.1 degrees north latitude and 153.2 degrees east longitude) on June 12. The plume appears to be a combination of brown ash and white steam. The vigorously rising plume gives the steam a bubble-like appearance; the surrounding atmosphere has been shoved up by the shock wave of the eruption. The smooth white cloud on top may be water condensation that resulted from rapid rising and cooling of the air mass above the ash column, and is probably a transient feature (the eruption plume is starting to punch through). The structure also indicates that little to no shearing winds were present at the time to disrupt the plume. By contrast, a cloud of denser, gray ash — most probably a pyroclastic flow — appears to be hugging the ground, descending from the volcano summit. The rising eruption plume casts a shadow to the northwest of the island (bottom center). Brown ash at a lower altitude of the atmosphere spreads out above the ground at upper right. Low-level stratus clouds approach Matua Island from the east, wrapping around the lower slopes of the volcano. Only about 1.5 kilometers of the coastline of Matua Island (upper center) can be seen beneath the clouds and ash.

Here’s a closer view:

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• Volcano Eruption – Pacific ocean – west – Philippines(hisz.rsoe.hu)

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One of the major gripes about Windows 8 is the fact that Microsoft put all their eggs into the touchscreen basket. They gambled on computer users getting more touch-enabled monitors and devices to use Windows 8 with, but that didn’t pan out. Therefore most people using Windows 8 are using an interface that was not optimally designed for use with a mouse and keyboard. This has been Microsoft’s major failing when it comes to Windows 8.

Microsoft is preparing to reverse course over key elements of its Windows 8 operating system, marking one of the most prominent admissions of failure for a new mass-market consumer product since Coca-Cola’s New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago.

“Key aspects” of how the software is used will be changed when Microsoft releases an updated version of the operating system this year, Tami Reller, head of marketing and finance for the Windows business, said in an interview with the Financial Times. Referring to difficulties many users have had with mastering the software, she added: “The learning curve is definitely real.”

Read the article from Financial Times to learn more.

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• Windows 8 Update: Gates: Windows 8 is about the iPad(computerworld.co.nz)

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• Windows 8 six months in: 100 million licenses sold, 250 million app downloads(arstechnica.com)

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• Windows Blue: Microsoft promises changes based on feedback and a holiday release(theverge.com)

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• Windows 8: As cheap as Win7, if you’re building your own PC(reviews.cnet.com)

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Slow motion Shaolin Warrior Monks: A human special this week on Slow Mo, as Sam and Si reveal what sets us apart from other primates, with some acrobatic help from the shaolin warriors. With limited time, and a new camera to play with, can they capture the lightning fast moves of the world’s most successful animal? Find out more about human anatomy.

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Take a fresh approach to home cooking with the revolutionary new HomeCooker from Philips and Jamie Oliver.

The Philips HomeCooker is a first-of-its-kind, multi-functional device, giving you complete flexibility to prepare homemade meals on your busiest days.

The HomeCooker has been specially designed to achieve authentic home cooking with ease. It can stir, steam, sauté, melt, simmer, stew, boil, and even fry whilst cooking unattended – giving you some quality time back.

Currently you can find it at JohnLewis.com for $400 or £249.95.

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Speaking of adding video content, since previously I was using Flash Video (.flv & .f4v) for all my videos on this site and Mattplays.com, that means I’ll have to convert all of said videos to different formats to ensure that different browsers and mobile platforms can view them. Those formats are H.264 (.mp4), OGG Video (.ogv), and WebM (.webm). Each video has to be converted three times, and since I had well over a hundred videos to convert, it took days even on a fast processor that I’m on, which is an Intel i5-3750K processor overclocked from 3.4GHz to 4.3GHz.

Then all those converted videos, over three hundred of them, has to be uploaded to the server, which takes just as long.

Finally, the code of the site has to be updated to reflect the use of HTML 5 to harness the different formats to be used by different browsers and mobile platforms. There would also have to be code to identify what browser is being used, and serve up the right format that browser supports in order to play the video the visitor wants to watch. PHEW!

The tools that I’ve used to accomplished all these tasks are:

• Any Video Converter – converts OGV and WebM (can also do MP4 but I prefer Handbrake)
• Handbrake – converts to MP4
• FileZilla – FTP client to upload videos to server
• VideoJS – Javascript package that identifies the browser being used and serves up the correct format

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iPhone 4 owners who filed claims over the so-called “antennagate” have begun receiving their settlement checks. Posts about the checks began popping up on Twitter in addition to sites like 9to5Mac, where several readers confirmed they had received their $15 payouts.

iPhone 4 “antennagate” settlement checks arriving in the mail | Ars Technica.

Now those who signed up for the class action lawsuit can get their $15 coupon good for an Apple Store near you while the lawyers involved (who really like their Blackberries) get to buy a couple of mansions and that yellow corvette they’ve had their eyes on for days. Hooray for class action lawsuits!

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Maroon 5 – Payphone & Disney – Some Day My Prince Will Come Mashup w/ Felicia Day! – YouTube.

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I’m amazed at how great the game is. It’s been a while since the last game that made me grin and have so much fun. Although the QTE’s have soured the experience, the rest of the game is well-done and a great testament to a fun adventure that the original two games brought to the table.

I’ve recorded a couple of unedited videos, which you can check out below (click on each picture to watch):

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Amazon has changed their policy in regards to their Cloud Player that now gives unlimited storage to upload all your MP3′s to their service, as long as they don’t have DRM on them. This means that if you bought songs on the iTunes Music Store then they won’t play on the Cloud Player unless you strip the DRM from them using an app.

However with these new services people will have to pay close attention to the terms of service to see what happens when they copy over their data to these services. Already there’s some apprehension about Google’s copyright policy when you upload pictures to their Google Photos service. This article outlines those issues.

With this in mind, why use these cloud services at all? There are a number of good reasons, namely as a backup source, to protect your precious photos, music, home videos, etc. in the event of a hard drive failure, fire, or other means of losing your data. Another reason is for convenience; to access and share them across multiple platforms. For example, listen to your music on any device without taking up space on your device’s limited drive, or show friends your photos without having to load them on your laptop.

There’s no set definition on what exactly the cloud is. To numerous people it means different things. One of them is basically storing your data on the internet using the variety of services such as YouTube and Flickr, for example. By uploading your files to these different services, you’re no longer constrained to having to access them on your own computer but can access them from anywhere, using any device, so long as you have an internet connection.

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