Geekgasm

What an amazing day I had mining the internet! From the tech minutia of Formula One aero-developement (with great spy photos!) tweeted LIVE from Mugello in Italy's Tuscan countryside, to enough snarky tweets to sprain my funny bone, via some web radio, and some baseball blog fun, it sadly unraveled as the Junior Seau news unwound. Godspeed Junior. I hope his death spurs on the concussion studies of NFL players.

There's been a bunch of tech stuff streaming this week. I think it's so cool that SpaceX streamed the rocket engine test LIVE from Cape Canaveral Monday. The test went perfectly after one quick delay, and SpaceX will send their first Dragon capsule to the International Space Station later this month. Private spaceflight...I've been waiting for this since I was a kid listening to NASA space shots on a cheap transistor radio!

It's been a bad couple of weeks for offshore sailboat racing in California. The Slow Speed Chase ran afoul of shoals at the Farallones on April 13th, leaving one dead and four missing. On the morning of April 28th, the Agean went missing during the 65th Annual Newport to Ensenada Race with four souls aboard. Early speculation had the Agean tangling with a large ocean going ship.

The SoCal yacht racing deaths have been explained. Tech holds the answer. After lunch today, Latitude38 posted to Facebook the rest of the Agean story. It looks like no other vessel was involved. Agean's SPOT Messenger GPS track shows the boat was on a constant course and speed for more than three hours before crashing into North Coronado Island.

This SPOT Messenger GPS is a pretty cool gadget. A hundred bucks for the SPOT and $100/yr for the service looks reasonable to me for people who spend their time out near the edge. I haven't seen any SPOT coms on my Facebook or Twitter feeds...yet...

Jeez, SturgeUrge and I have been planning another Tomales Bay Dungeness Crab Hunt for a week now...the wind, weather and tides just won't cooperate. we're looking at after Mother's Day now...

The winds have turned blustery, and the skies have been darkening since noon today. The Monterey/SFO AFD said there was an 80% chance of rain on Tomales Bay tomorrow, with just a chance of precip here in the Inland Valley. My eye says it could rain here before morning.

Regular readers will remember Bruce Lee, the AT&T Park Red Tail Hawk. Bruce is on Twitter now. Not to be out-maneuvered, the AT&T Park Seagull signed up this week too. I expect an epic, dare I say Iconic, SnarkFest should ensue when @HawkBruce and @ATTSeagull start to tangle!

Finally, the numbers on the 2011/2012 Ski Season are coming out, and they're not good. Truckee's Local Fishwrap has the numbers from Northstar and Heavenly Valley. The two Vail-owned resorts report a 24.2% hit to skier visits from the slow starting season. How'd I know about the Sierra Sun story? They're in my Twitter feed.