This future is too weird and useless. I want the Jetsons one, you know, where they had flying ca... oh wait, never mind. Picture from over at NASA's APOD. That was one impressive launch the other day, and it was good to see some humor and imagination go into a new-booster test payload mass beyond the usual tank of water or chunk of iron. This Falcon Heavy is a serious rocket for getting back into space in a serious way. Can't wait to see what comes next!
It's off the coast of Mobile. You can read the story at NPR, or watch the half-hour documentary at youtube. Either way, it's informative. There's equally weird stuff all along the Gulf shelf.
There's an extensive selection from England's Secret Historic Hotel Network over at Messy Nessy. Go have a look. The prices are, well, suspiciously reasonable, so do your homework before getting too excited and booking a flight over. Take for example a stay at this castle, at the bargain rate of $22.42 per person per night at current exchange rates. Now that assumes a party of eight staying for four nights, but even so that's still a give-away price. Anyway, here's a panoramic shot of the castle overlooking its bay:
Nice, but my heart's kind of set on the last place listed. Looks comfortable, even familiar. Scroll down, you'll get it.
Hm, looks pretty good, if quite different than the novel. It also seems to include elements from the two sequels, so perhaps it condenses all three into a single movie. That'd likely be for the best. It'll be out in a couple of weeks, expect a full review here then. Makes me just a little bit homesick.
Ugh, spent a good chunk of last weekend trying to get the data-mode front panel display on a new ham radio to line up with what the actual receiver was doing. I'm sure that there are excellent historical reasons for this display offset from reality (probably involving a 1940's standard held over to the "new" ASR 33 tty), but when crossed up with a Yaesu user interface, well, let's say there's a reason some of these new transceivers are going at fire sale prices. WWV and the NIST to the rescue. They pump out time signals in AM on 5 & 10 MHz and a few other frequencies. From there, it was just a matter of setting offsets down in the menus so that the time interval signals all lined up on a waterfall display in AM (reference), then USB, and finally data modes – kind of like balancing your checkbook while hanging upside down from a doorframe while having a neighbor practice keeping a steady beat on his new drum set. Just keep a clear head, take a few notes, and it all works out fine. Aspirin afterwards. Anyway, it's a useful trick in the unlikely even you need to sort out display frequency alignment. Couldn't have taken more than two hours total time, though I was sacked out by 9:30 Sunday night. Until Sunday evening, there was every chance I was going to flip that radio after less than a month and move on. Really would have been a shame, since it is otherwise excellent equipment and (as mentioned above) it came new at a fire sale price. However it does perform, once the UI idiocy was sorted out.
Over at Dirt Rag there's a recent opinion piece: The cases for the one-bike stable. It's short, so go read. I've got a fresh cup of coffee so I'll wait right here. OK, you're back. Funny thing, I've been thinking along these lines myself, and when a friend and colleague stopped by my office last week and saw my CX bike, he started in on how he was thinking of this too. True, nobody's winning a road crit or a mountain bike race on a do-all "one" bike, but how many of us are really serious about racing anyway? It does simplify life, and of course it reduces costs considerably. Everyone's got their own take on the matter of what should be "the one," as it should be. The author of the the Dirt Rag editorial has his (flat bars? oh really?), and the commentators have theirs. I think though if you want mine, just type "CX" in the search window at the top of this page. You'll find all kinds of things: trips to the coffee shop, mountain biking, a double metric road century, even a VHF antenna mount. Here are some nice recycled pictures: So what'd be your one bike, if you had to cull it down to just one?
