amateur

If you want to practice your mixology skills this holiday season but you're overwhelmed by all the choices of cocktail recipes online or can't quite work out what your random mix of ingredients can create, then you need Mixel. This cocktail-making app and recipe database allows you to input what you have and it'll tell you what to make. Mixel is packed full of more than 2500 delicious cocktail recipes. There’s so much choice here. From ways to do the basics right, like shake up a martini or mix up a margarita, to much…

An amateur astronomer in Japan has captured video of a comet crashing into Jupiter. A tweet sharing the video was posted earlier this month, and it shows a bright flash against the planet as a super-bright comet, or bolide as these objects are known, crashes into the gas giant. It’s a quick flash that passes quickly, but it’s still really nice to see it captured on video. Of course, Jupiter isn’t the only planet that these super-bright comets crash into. We also see these fireballs crash into Earth, though…

At most high school reunions, people talk about kids, spouses and jobs. But at a party for 1970s graduates of Lynwood High School, two women on the dance floor were talking homicide. Rose Morales and Cheryl Sanchez Simmons had just learned that, when they were young, a girl their age had been strangled in their hometown. The killing of Jan Marsh, 14, had never been solved. And though the case had unfolded around them, neither woman had heard her story. As a band played ’70s hits inside a hotel near Disneyland,…

The legendary Japanese astronomer Koichi Itagaki made a dazzling discovery recently, capturing observations of a visible supernova so close to Earth that astronomers have been able to spot it with amateur telescope setups. The supernova was found in the galaxy M101 and has been designated SN 2023ixf. This particular supernova is so intriguing because it is so close to Earth, allowing an assortment of astronomers and skywatchers to get a possible view of it without needing expensive equipment to pull it off.…

The spiraling arms of the Pinwheel galaxy.Image: NASA, ESA, K. Kuntz (JHU), F. Bresolin (University of Hawaii), J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Lab), J. Mould (NOAO), Y.-H. Chu (University of Illinois, Urbana) and STScI; CFHT Image: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/J.-C. Cuillandre/Coelum; NOAO Image: G. Jacoby, B. Bohannan, M. Hanna/NOAO/AURA/NSFIn the ever-changing cosmic goo that is the universe, the biggest stars end their lives in enormous explosions called supernovae. These bursts are so bright that they are visibleacross…

Last September, the world watched in delight as NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in a test of planetary defense. The idea of the DART mission was to see whether an impact from a spacecraft could change the trajectory of an incoming asteroid in case such a looming disaster ever threatened the Earth. The impact and its aftermath were observed by telescopes all across the planet and by several in space, including the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, and preliminary data showed that the test had…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Soccer and alcohol is a constant topic in Melbourne and beyond, even between seasons. Players behaving badly on the turps is a standard club issue. Fan culture seems to demand that one must drink in order to watch no matter what. Amateur clubs are no different—perhaps even worse due to being…

The Internet Archive’s latest project promises to expand its capacity to catalog old ham radio communications, but also podcasts, videos, and more communications from the days of the early internet.Photo: Pavel Kubarkov (Shutterstock)As much as some companies like Google are willing to let their cloud-based game services like Stadia perish on the vine, groups working to preserve digital information are only growing more sophisticated. On Monday, the nonprofit Internet Archive said they’re working with a grant to create a…

The is aiming to build up a new library of old content. It's expanding beyond , and (of course) snapshots of websites with the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC). This particular archive, which will be led by tech historian Kay Savetz, will include amateur radio broadcasts and digital material from the early days of the internet. Savetz told that his remit includes just about any kind of digital communications from the 1970s until the early 1990s. While the preservation project focuses on…

When Samsung first announced the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, you, like us, probably expected all kinds of upgrades and exclusive features that would differentiate it from the Galaxy Watch 5 and last year’s 4 series models. That’s not exactly what Samsung is offering though. Even if it wants you to think that. It’s almost to the point that we question Samsung’s choice to call this a Pro watch. Don’t get us wrong, it does make sense on some level.Samsung didn’t want to call this the Galaxy Watch 5 Classic, and it needed a way to…