OK, I feel all rested up from the busy weekend.
My Memorial Day Weekend was all about history...looking back if you will...WWII Battleship USS Iowa...70th Monaco Grand Prix...96th Indianapolis 500.
Even baseball brought the history. On Monday, San Francisco Giants left fielder Melky Cabrera passed Willie Mays' 1958 record of 49 hits in the month of May. Wednesday night the Melk Man knocked his 51st hit, tieing the all-time-any-month Giants record that goes back to 1918.
When SturgeUrge and I were on San Francisco Bay Saturday, the boat traffic became so crazy that SturgeUrge's head looked like it was on a swivel...call it Combat Boating. Well, Skipper 'Urge brought us back to dry land in one piece to float another day.
This evening, I feel like it's my head on the proverbial swivel. My world is all on the up and up tonight...after watching the Giants lose 4-1 to the Arizona Diamondbacks, my twitter feed was suddenly full of spaceflight tweets...
As I write, I'm keeping an ear on the SpaceX Dragon and the International Space Station's LIVE ungrapple and departure stream. The Dragon Capsule will leave the ISS tonight on it's way back to Earth. As it turns out, all this spaceflight stuff is history too...SpaceX's Dragon is the first commercial spacecraft to visit and dock to the ISS. The Dragon will shuttle people back and forth from the ISS after some more test flights and NASA approval.
SpaceX aren't the only private outfit building commercial spacecraft for the ISS delivery market either...
Orbital Sciences Corp. is developing their Antares rocket/ Cygnus capsule system to serve the ISS, too.
Another company, Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic received the necessary permits from the FAA to test their SpaceShip Two with full rocket motor power. Virgin who call themselves the "First Commercial Spaceline" (as opposed to airline), is going after the Space Tourist Trade...short sub-orbital rides into space, complete with the dramatic, firey atmospheric reentry.
I'm so grateful to these companies picking up NASA's slack. NASA seems to be dithering lately, and time is running out for me to see earthmen walk on Mars. When I was a kid watching NASA blast off into the New Frontier, it was a given that men would be on Mars sooner than later...now it's been forty years since we last landed on the Moon! NASA gets it budget slashed every year while the Feds run up World Record deficits...
You know, all this internet/smartphone/Facebook/Twitter/iPad stuff is all the product of kids who were inspired by the Space Program and it's offshoots. Back in the day, we all felt like we were helping the astronauts...willing them higher, farther, longer...to the next unbelievable breakthrough, milestone after milestone, until Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface in 1969. We all carried astronaut lunch boxes to school, scores of toys and commercial tie-ins exploited our space mania. Is Tang still on grocery store shelves?
Well, in the Internet Age, pandering is as easy as click, click, click, only in the 21st Century they're giving it away. Here's some SpaceX Dragon fun that's free save the price of printing it on your home printer:
Print and build your own paper Dragon Spacecraft
Have fun kids!
Showing posts with label smartphone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smartphone. Show all posts
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Friday, February 25, 2011
Holy Whiteout Batman!
Settle down, Boy Wonder, it's only Winter's encore...did you flick your BIC? Whatta tired cliché...today's Hipsters just hold up their Smartphones with the brightest screen they've got.
What a difference a day makes! The forecast got the snow and wind right, but muffed the timing. According to Reno's AFD, it started snowing twelve hours early. It was another good night before the ceiling dropped onto the deck, and the visibility went to pot.
It started innocently enough...gentle flurries...but still beneath the cloud deck, the seeing was excellent. Near Hero Snow reigned again, and though not lightning fast, grooming was fast enough.
Last night's List was back to reasonable, and aside from one equipment glitch, we enjoyed a Cakewalk in the end. My tractor's parking brake wouldn't release. The Prinoth/exBombardier E-Brakes are electric over hydraulic. It turns out the driver's door switch failed...It wouldn't allow the Safety Interlock to release the E-Brake, and the Dome light wouldn't come on when the door opened. My beautiful snowcat, ready to jump over the Moon...but I couldn't get her outta the barn...sigh...fortunately, the park groomers were on top of things, and I could run one of their cats, so I didn't have to run a winch for and hour or two and then get in snowcat #3 for my shift!
Instead, I ran the BisonX. It's a nice tractor, but it's not my fave old BR350...we dispatched the List, and were off the hill at 0815!
SturgeUrge and his girlfriend, the Doña of Aragon, were in town for Ski Week...I called them while I was warming up the pickup. I told them they'd best flee before the roads turned into parking lots. Westbound I-80 was moving at 10MPH when I crossed over it. I advised SturgeUrge and the Dutchess to demure, and go over the Summit on Old HWY 40...much better visibility, much less traffic.
Back at the DaveCave, I put the pickup in the garage, and cooked up some Hot Buttered Rum. I make my own Hot Buttered Rum Batter, from Emeril Legasse's recipe.
That wind is positively Arctic! Outside, the wind is howling, but it's cozy warm in the DaveCave's Inner Sanctum...thanks Emeril! Bam!
I'm watching the early Trainwreck News on my DVR, and watching the LIVE coverage of the launch of NASA's STS-133 the Space Shuttle Discovery's last mission into space online...it doesn't launch until 1:50PM PST Spaceflight Now is my Go-To Manned Spaceflight Website...all the LIVE Intel you want...thanks Internet Age!
OK, this is gonna be a good trick...my eyelids are heavy....sleep beckons...I've set my alarm for T-Minus 5 minutes...Godspeed Discovery...in case I don't get up for launch!
What a difference a day makes! The forecast got the snow and wind right, but muffed the timing. According to Reno's AFD, it started snowing twelve hours early. It was another good night before the ceiling dropped onto the deck, and the visibility went to pot.
It started innocently enough...gentle flurries...but still beneath the cloud deck, the seeing was excellent. Near Hero Snow reigned again, and though not lightning fast, grooming was fast enough.
Last night's List was back to reasonable, and aside from one equipment glitch, we enjoyed a Cakewalk in the end. My tractor's parking brake wouldn't release. The Prinoth/exBombardier E-Brakes are electric over hydraulic. It turns out the driver's door switch failed...It wouldn't allow the Safety Interlock to release the E-Brake, and the Dome light wouldn't come on when the door opened. My beautiful snowcat, ready to jump over the Moon...but I couldn't get her outta the barn...sigh...fortunately, the park groomers were on top of things, and I could run one of their cats, so I didn't have to run a winch for and hour or two and then get in snowcat #3 for my shift!
Instead, I ran the BisonX. It's a nice tractor, but it's not my fave old BR350...we dispatched the List, and were off the hill at 0815!
SturgeUrge and his girlfriend, the Doña of Aragon, were in town for Ski Week...I called them while I was warming up the pickup. I told them they'd best flee before the roads turned into parking lots. Westbound I-80 was moving at 10MPH when I crossed over it. I advised SturgeUrge and the Dutchess to demure, and go over the Summit on Old HWY 40...much better visibility, much less traffic.
Back at the DaveCave, I put the pickup in the garage, and cooked up some Hot Buttered Rum. I make my own Hot Buttered Rum Batter, from Emeril Legasse's recipe.
That wind is positively Arctic! Outside, the wind is howling, but it's cozy warm in the DaveCave's Inner Sanctum...thanks Emeril! Bam!
I'm watching the early Trainwreck News on my DVR, and watching the LIVE coverage of the launch of NASA's STS-133 the Space Shuttle Discovery's last mission into space online...it doesn't launch until 1:50PM PST Spaceflight Now is my Go-To Manned Spaceflight Website...all the LIVE Intel you want...thanks Internet Age!
OK, this is gonna be a good trick...my eyelids are heavy....sleep beckons...I've set my alarm for T-Minus 5 minutes...Godspeed Discovery...in case I don't get up for launch!
Friday, September 3, 2010
Gadget Guru?
Well, Apple's done it to me again. Yesterday Jobs and Co. showed off their revamped line of iPods, their new iTunes, now featuring "Ping" musical social networking, and their updated video/internet streaming box, AppleTV.
Typical...I grabbed my iPod touch back on Black Friday 2009. I wrote about my search for internet in my Groomer last fall. after considerable research and soothsaying, I chose the iPod Touch because it was the best handheld solution for my needs, hands down...until yesterday...
Apple's added a new, more beautiful touchscreen, iOS4 multitasking, a faster processor from the new iPhone4, a built in microphone and finally, a pair of cameras. A 3 megapixel still camera on the back, and a frontside videocam for video chat. Like Steve Jobs says: "It's an iPhone without the phone" The microphone makes it a phone, as long as you're within range of a WiFi Access Point and have a Skype Account!
Prices went up about 10%
It looks like my ideal handheld device...damnit!
You may remember the last Apple Big Show back in June. The iPhone4 was introduced to wide acclaim. Tech junkies lined up around the block at every Apple Store in the country to get the new device. It was another fairly large step forward, and almost as if on cue, AT&T's cell phone data networks groaned under the strain of all the newbies surfing the net everywhere. (In America, the iPhone is still exclusive to AT&T's cell network) Within weeks, major carriers announced the end of their "All You Can Eat" Data Plans, and the coming of Tiered Data Service. I was a little troubled, I hadn't forseen the end of "Unlimited" Data Plans...in fact, I was waiting for aggressive bundling to drive pricing down before I took the Smartphone leap.
All the furor over data plan billing quickly took a backseat to widespread reports of iPhone4 antenna design problems that threatened to take the shine off the apple...so to speak, and the whole wireless sector faded away from the spotlight.
Never out of the limelight for long, Apple's Jobs, debuted the new music and media gadgets in time for Holiday Shopping Season again, Wednesday.
Not to be outdone, Verizon announced Thursday that they will offer Pre-Paid Data Plans on all their Smartphones starting in late September, including an "Unlimited Plan" at $30/month on top of your voice plan, and a 25Mb plan for $10/month. Back in November, I decided to wait on a Smartphone, and go with the iPod Touch. I opined that the price of the Data Plans would come to me. Nine months later, I'm looking like a swami...or semi-swami.
As with all things tech, there are tradeoffs to consider. Smartphones cost an arm and a leg. You can spread the misery a little when you sign on to a Data Plan. Buy a rich enough Voice/Data Package, and the carrier will "subsidise" your new phone, usually knocking about $300 off.
The Pre-Paid Data Plans don't subsidise your phone, so you pay full pop, or buy a used device...perhaps you've noticed, I'm the King of waiting out a bargain!
So, I'll still be biding my time...the newest whiz-bang tech will come to me in time...and at my price.
Typical...I grabbed my iPod touch back on Black Friday 2009. I wrote about my search for internet in my Groomer last fall. after considerable research and soothsaying, I chose the iPod Touch because it was the best handheld solution for my needs, hands down...until yesterday...
Apple's added a new, more beautiful touchscreen, iOS4 multitasking, a faster processor from the new iPhone4, a built in microphone and finally, a pair of cameras. A 3 megapixel still camera on the back, and a frontside videocam for video chat. Like Steve Jobs says: "It's an iPhone without the phone" The microphone makes it a phone, as long as you're within range of a WiFi Access Point and have a Skype Account!
Prices went up about 10%
It looks like my ideal handheld device...damnit!
 |
| FaceTime the iPod Touch Video Chat App |
All the furor over data plan billing quickly took a backseat to widespread reports of iPhone4 antenna design problems that threatened to take the shine off the apple...so to speak, and the whole wireless sector faded away from the spotlight.
Never out of the limelight for long, Apple's Jobs, debuted the new music and media gadgets in time for Holiday Shopping Season again, Wednesday.
Not to be outdone, Verizon announced Thursday that they will offer Pre-Paid Data Plans on all their Smartphones starting in late September, including an "Unlimited Plan" at $30/month on top of your voice plan, and a 25Mb plan for $10/month. Back in November, I decided to wait on a Smartphone, and go with the iPod Touch. I opined that the price of the Data Plans would come to me. Nine months later, I'm looking like a swami...or semi-swami.
As with all things tech, there are tradeoffs to consider. Smartphones cost an arm and a leg. You can spread the misery a little when you sign on to a Data Plan. Buy a rich enough Voice/Data Package, and the carrier will "subsidise" your new phone, usually knocking about $300 off.
The Pre-Paid Data Plans don't subsidise your phone, so you pay full pop, or buy a used device...perhaps you've noticed, I'm the King of waiting out a bargain!
So, I'll still be biding my time...the newest whiz-bang tech will come to me in time...and at my price.
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