The Station Fire in the hills behind the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Photo by Bill Westphal.
One year ago, this is what the hills above my workplace looked like.
Even though I lived through it, it's still hard to believe such a monster fire was so close.
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The MESSENGER spacecraftt took that shot of the Earth and the Moon on its way to Mercury. It's hard to imagine that I'm sitting on that dot, writing a blog post.
]]>Millin began his apparently suicidal serenade immediately upon jumping from the ramp of the landing craft into the icy water. As the Cameron tartan of his kilt floated to the surface he struck up with Hieland Laddie. He continued even as the man behind him was hit, dropped into the sea and sank.
Millin was surprised not to have been shot, and he mentioned this to some Germans who had been taken prisoner. They said that they had not shot at him because they thought he had gone off his head.
Rest in peace.
]]>The previous release was back in February, so this one has quite a few bug fixes and some new features. Freebase was added as a data source, which is rather useful. Freebase has tons of info available, and is constantly being updated. It even has some limited comic book information, too.
I messed up some of the links on the download page, so embarrassingly enough, for a few days after the release, the links were broken. Those should all be fixed now!
I also jumped off the deep end and downloaded Choqok and registered on identi.ca which is something like the open source version of Twitter. Much less popular, so by definition, much cooler! Software nerds use it a good bit, I've heard. Anyways, I took the handle stephero.
One of the primary features I'd like to work on for the next version of Tellico is better statistics. I'm looking forward to working with the KDE plot widgets.
]]>And Goddard actually invited the Jimmy Fallon crew to come in and see the information about the James Webb Space Telescope. Sheer awesomeness!
Check out all the details of the visit and previous videos from Jimmy Fallon over at
Geeked on Goddard.
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I think this is great. The NBA has the worst officiating of any sport in the world. Inconsistency, allowances for "star" players, home crowd influence, and so on. It drives me insane sometimes. If a game were called consistently, you'd either have no fouls or 100 fouls. Players are constantly pushing on each other and then they get called for a foul when they hand-check? What?
]]>Other collection management software allows management of these items but GCStar has jumped out ahead of competitors because the software allows you to catalog your favorite television shows directly from TVBD channels and allows you to catalog mini vehicles. Cataloging mini vehicles will require some manual efforts but the detailing offered is priceless.
GCstar is a fantastic bit of software. In my opinion, one of its biggest strengths is the sheer number of websites that it can scrape for info. Tian, the primary GCstar author, even added a feature for using GCstar as a standalone data fetcher. As a result. Tellico can use any of the GCstar data sources directly. The interface is a bit slower, but it works pretty well. I'd like to make Tellico as modular and useful in return, but haven't been able to yet.
Congratulations to GCstar!
]]>So starts the blurb about Space School Musical
This weekend, May 23! That's pretty crazy...
]]>(b) With respect to any such person who is arrested, and suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the following: (1) Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanent resident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall not be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date and place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding documentation to indicate his or her legal status.
I guess since California never enforces that, there's no need to boycott CA along with AZ. I'm amazed that so many people are offering opinions and criticizing the law without even reading it. There's enough to criticize there in the law already, why resort to making extra stuff up? It just makes you look horribly ignorant.
]]>The Album, Counting Stars, evidently won't be out until mid-summer.
Andrew Peterson is one of my favorite artists, and one of the few whose albums I still buy on CD. Go ahead and listen to the new song, it's rather awesome.
Andrew even posts a comment on Justin's post...
]]>This clip is raw from Camera E-8 on the launch umbilical tower/mobile launch program of Apollo 11, July 16, 1969. This is an HD transfer from the 16mm original. Even more excellent footage is available on DVDs at spacecraftfilms.com.
The camera is running at 500 fps, making the total clip of over 8 minutes represent just 30 seconds of actual time. Narration is provided by Mark Gray, Executive Producer for Spacecraft Films.
You should really watch it in HD full screen...
]]>The 2010 JPL Open House will take place on Saturday and Sunday, May 15 and 16, 2010, 9am-5pm both days.]]>This popular event celebrates JPL's accomplishments with exhibits and demonstrations about the Laboratory's ongoing research and space exploration. Many of the Lab's scientists and engineers are on hand to answer questions about how spacecraft are sent to other planets, how scientists utilize space technologies to explore Earth and how researchers are searching for planets beyond the solar system.
The Open House is a fun and educational experience for children too, with special hands-on activities designed for kids. Admission and parking is free.
Dave and Ryan and families are friends from church. Kim and I love going over to hang out at Jameson Brown since it is less than a mile from our place. We just don't make it there as often as we'd like! But we love the coffee...
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