Things I've learned in the last 24 hours 2010-12-10

What did Tom learn today?

• I learned that posting a recap of every single thing I shared into a single blog post, often with a paragraph about why I thought it was interesting, is way too much.  I guess I need to maybe focus on just the couple of links that were most interesting, maybe by following up on them to learn more.
• I learned that I want a headphone jack on my keyboard for my desktop.  It would be even nicer if it was a Blackberry/iPhone/Android style jack where a single 3.5mm plug did both the audio out and a microphone in.
• I learned that 100km from Earth's surface at perigee is considered "orbit" and that this week's Falcon 9 launch put the Dragon orbiter at around 300km.  I also learned that perigee refers to the closest the object comes to the surface of earth during the orbit.
• I learned that a "Snow Squall" is "A snowsquall (or snow squall) is a sudden moderately heavy snowfall with blowing snow and strong, gusty surface winds^[1]. It is often referred to as a whiteout and is similar to a blizzard but is localized in time or in space and snow accumulations may or may not be significant." Source Link.  I find this particularly funny because it implies that a blizzard is not localized in time or in space, which sounds to me like blizzards are either infinitely huge or last forever... or both :)
• I learned that complicated background images on your desktop can make it much harder to tell how much dust has accumulated on the screen.