When I saw that shuttle take off at dusk, it was the most unbelievable experience. I got tears in my eyes; my heart pounded. I was proud to be an American, to see that we could do something that awesome.
Quote from William Parsons, Ninth Director of the Kennedy Space Center. From a display at KSC.
I get tears in my eyes, too. Tears of joy. Tears of awe.
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Who is that sharp-dressed man standing in the blazing Florida sun?
It’s Bill Nye, the Science Guy!
Yesterday was the second time I watched a rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center. United Launch Alliance was sending up a rocket. That simple fact was enough to attract me to KSC … I didn’t know what the payload was. The MC informed us that a classified plane was being sent up, along with a Light Sail and a few cubesats.
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My beagleboard-xM wifi router is almost a year old; old enough to take on more responsibilities. Most recently it became the new home for my installation of tracker, which I migrated from a publicly accessible linode server. Soon I’ll be giving it the task of acting as an iTunes server.
After using tracker in it’s new home for a few months, I realized that disk operations on the beagleboard were quite a bottleneck.
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Last week I received my first box of Soylent. It’s a beige-ish shake drink that would be a perfect source of nutrients on a long space voyage. Just add water! Sometimes I refer to it as Shake Weight since you’re supposed to shake it for 30 seconds to mix.
Soylent is now the first thing I eat each day. It’s great for other meals too, but it really solves the “breakfast problem” for me.
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A month ago, Amazon and Sling TV had a deal for $50 off an Amazon Fire TV box if you paid for 3 months of Sling in advance (the promo is still running). Since I was curious about Amazon’s box and Sling as well, I went for it. Luckily, Amazon was offering an extra $15 off the Fire TV box at the time, so I ended up paying only $35 for the box.
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Recent thoughts to self:
A snazzy-yet-sinister-looking poster for my new office, from a band I continue to love? Gimme! [purchased]
A re-mastered version of The Ugly Organ that includes tracks from 8 Teeth to Eat You that I somehow lost long ago? FUCK YEAH! [purchased]
Much love to Cursive.
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My podcast rotation has expanded a bit lately. Here are the ones I’ve found particularly enjoyable:
Isometric
A gaming podcast featuring 3 ladies and only 1 guy. They discuss games and pay particular attention to:
Did the game creators lazily fall back on stereotypes or create a well-rounded, believable characters with history, motivations, feelings? Are we forced to play as a male lead? Extra points off if we have to rescue a damsel in distress.
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Back in 2004, companies weren’t fighting over NASA contracts and nobody was selling tickets for suborbital space flights just yet. The commercial space industry was still in its early stages …
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Woah, there’s a Tesla charging station in my city! Click the title of this post to see where it is. In a few years I hope to own one of their vehicles, so this is great news.
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A recent scroll through my blog posts got me thinking about the personal projects I’ve worked on in recent years. Last month I built my own wifi router over a three week period. It was invigorating. Similarly hardware-related, I came across a three-year-old blog post from when I built my current desktop PC. It still meets my needs quite nicely so I’ve no need to upgrade, which is a nice feeling.
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