If you ever wanted to be an astronaut, check out the tweets by Astro_Soichi. He’s an engineer on the International Space Station, and whenever he gets the chance to take a picture of something cool on the planet below, he posts an image via Twitter for our enjoyment. If you don’t use Twitter yet, maybe this’ll give you an idea why many of us do. Very cool stuff.

Wiped out this morning, thanks to a call in the wee hours about a customer emergency. Will have to see how long I last today before keeling over.

So I’ve been reading some stuff and talking to people about Star Trek Online. It’s appealing to me in concept.

Eric Burns wrote a nice lengthy article about what Cryptic needs to do to retain the very impressive million players it gained upon release. These thoughts are in no small part based on reading his article, and on my own five years of experience with World of Warcraft, supplemented by several months in City of Heroes and EVE Online.

For a couple years, I was part of the leading PvE progression guild on Aggramar. (Yes, this is World of Warcraft stuff.) We got most of the server-first kills — I think we were beat to only two or three in the time I was with them. Not that it was an extraordinarily competitive server, but for a casual guild with a relatively short raiding schedule, it felt like we were doing pretty well.

When Sunwell was released, I retired from raiding for a while, and eventually took a break from the game altogether. That was about two years ago.

Who knew? Well, I guess that’s kind of neat, too…

At 10:00 AM today, Apple will be announcing the iPoo, a small device that will be fitted, at miniscule cost to local governments and zero cost to consumers, inside the rim of every toilet bowl on the planet.

What does it do, you ask? The iPoo will save us all in three ways:

1. Public Health

Sampling waste in the bowl, the device will monitor the health of the individual using the toilet. Personal health issues will be addressed through the release of nanite-administered medications, while the World Health Organization will be alerted to potential health risks to the community as a whole via wireless connection. This data is anonymized to protect the privacy of the individual.

2. Energy

Nanites constantly manufactured and released into the bowl will break down the waste in the sewage or septic system, converting it into clean-burning fuel, which will be collected from septic systems and waste treatment facilities. This fuel can reportedly be used as a direct replacement for natural gas, and converting systems from gasoline and diesel is intended to be inexpensive. Carbon emissions are expected to decline 30% worldwide.

3. Cleaning Power

When not administering essential medical treatments or breaking down human waste, the nanites controlled by the device will keep the bowl sparkling clean.

You saw it here first, folks. Apple’s new creation is going to live up to the hype in ways people haven’t even imagined.