My personal glimpse into the first half of the 21st Century for some yet to be known future
Thursday, March 25, 2021
Exploration of the Milky Way Galaxy - Elite Dangerous
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Avoided disaster - active shooter in Boulder
This isn't how we found out about the unfolding crisis. At first, we didn't think too much of it. Active shooter alerts happened before. Sometimes, it's a mistaken report, or just someone wielding a weapon in public, or targeting a specific person, such as a love quarrel gone bad.
We quickly found out that this was so much worse. There's really nothing I can say to sum things up or even make the story more personal. The worse we had was a rescheduling of an appointment, avoiding the situation ourselves by a couple of hours. Allie and I are OK and unaffected by the crisis.
Of course, Allie had a couple of family members contact her within minutes of the incident making international news. Several coworkers also checked with me the next day during meetings that I attended.
Thankfully, we avoid the whole situation. Others were not lucky. Their families are suffering, such as one Erika Mononey, who gave a tribute to her father on Twitter (backup link).
Here's the link to the Wikipedia article for sourced information about the horrific event.
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Elite Dangerous: Rescuing inhabitants of Lave Station after the Nine Martyr's Attack
Full walkthrough of one mission to rescue inhabitants Lave Station after the Nine Martyr's Attack. Runs from launch at the rescue ship all the way through collection of rewards for successful mission completion. Includes some pointers a long the way for an easier journey.
Sunday, March 07, 2021
Up and up building, or that's no murder!
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Some photos from running around town
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Pay it to Payphones or don't
So, I went down a short rabbit hole when I saw a payphone in a movie review for Secret Obsession. Of course, payphones aren't common any more, so seeing one featured in a new movie was a bit of a surprize.
So, first, Secret Obsession is a really bad, in my opinion. I tried to watch, but had to stop. This movie review does a good job at explaining why:
If, by some weird series of events, you end up needing to call 911 but your #cellphone isn't available AND you happen to be near an archaic #payphone (in the US), you can still use that payphone to call 911 without the need for money nor a phone card. #psa #themoreyouknow
— fcsuper (@fcsuper) February 23, 2021
That wasn't the end of it, though. I remembered that there's still some payphones in service, so I looked it up. That's when I ran into the fact that there's still over 100K payphones in the US, and that each payphone can still earn a profit with as few as three 50¢ calls per day.
Was that the end? No. I remembered that I somehow ended up at the movie theater to see Phone Booth back in 2003. It's about this guy of questionable morals who is trapped in a phone booth by a sniper out to prove a point. The guy is played by Colin Farrell. The movie was made near the end of the payphone era. Had this movie come out just a few years later, it would've already been too dated for people to relate to it.
So, that brings me back to start. Secret Obsession was released in 2019. The entire plot is built upon the conflict that starts with the main character who gets out of her car while being chased to run to a payphone in a phone booth to call 911 (emergency services in the US). She doesn't have change, so the phone doesn't work. It's 2019. Why doesn't she have a cellphone? Even if that option was somehow not available, all payphones in the US allow 911 calls without payment, as noted in my tweet (and the movie review shown above). For who was this movie made? ...in 2019?
Friday, February 12, 2021
Recent news tour of our Solar System from Mercury to FarFarOut
Some recent news tour of our Solar System:
- Mercury: Study Reveals MESSENGER Watched a Meteoroid Strike Mercury - Combing through data from NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission to Mercury reveals it likely watched a meteor slamming into the planet.
- Venus: Life on Venus? The Picture Gets Cloudier, doubtful - After a sensational announcement about the possibility of life on Venus, new doubts arise.
- Earth: Astronomers Think They've Found Another Trojan Asteroid Lurking in Earth's Orbit - A recently discovered object sharing Earth's orbital path around the Sun could actually be a trojan (shares a planet's orbit) asteroid, astronomers have found.
- Mars: Mars Mission From the U.A.E. Begins Orbit of Red Planet - U.A.E.'s probe arrives to Mars soon.
- Asteroid Belt: The Asteroid Belt: Wreckage of a Destroyed Planet or Something Else? - Samples of asteroids that have fallen to Earth reveals that the Asteroid Belt likely wasn't formed from planet that was smashed a part.
- Ceres and other Dwarf Planets:Top 10 Giant Facts About the Dwarf Planets - "Despite being the smallest of the five dwarf planets, Ceres was the first one discovered."
- Jupiter: Jupiter Is Bigger Than Some Stars, So Why Didn't We Get a Second Sun? - Jupiter and Sun have a lot in common, so how did Jupiter end up not being a planet?
- Saturn: Saturn's moon Titan: Largest sea is 1,000-feet deep - "Far below the gaseous atmospheric shroud on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, lies Kraken Mare, a sea of liquid methane. Cornell University astronomers have estimated that sea to be at least 1,000-feet deep near its center -- enough room for a potential robotic submarine to explore."
- Uranus: 35 Years Ago: Voyager 2 Explores Uranus - 35 years ago, Uranus was examined by Voyager's 11 instruments.
- Neptune: Next-generation planetary missions could hunt for gravitational waves, say astronomers - "Spacecraft heading to Uranus and Neptune in the next decade could be used to investigate gravitational waves as they venture into the outer Solar System."
- Pluto: Pluto's atmosphere gets its blue haze from icy organic compounds, study suggests - "The haze shrouding Pluto might be made up of ice crystals possessing cyanide hearts, a new study finds."
- Quaoar: How 50000 Quaoar changed the way we look at our solar system - "The ball-shaped planetoid, approximately half the size of Pluto, is the largest object found in the solar system since Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930."
- "FarFarOut": Astronomers Just Confirmed The Most Distant Known Object in The Solar System - "The most distant known object in the Solar System is now confirmed. FarFarOut, a large chunk of rock found in 2018 at a whopping distance of around 132 astronomical units from the Sun, has been studied and characterised, and we now know a lot more about it, and its orbit."
Sunday, February 07, 2021
Public Service Announcement from SNL
Saturday, February 06, 2021
3DEXPERIENCE World 2021 (Virtual Event)
February 6 to February 11 with Kendra Wardlow, Todd Blacksher, Kristen Wilson Syrek, Christopher Saller, Chinloo Lama, Alice Caspari, Daniel Ferrucci-Herzberg, Casey Gorman, Ed Gebo, Rachel Diane York, Eric Beatty, Mark Johnson, Kirby Downey, Dan Riffell, Robert Jost, Jonny Harrison, Karen Daley, Luke Daley, Mike Buchli, Cami Florence-Fredock, Rachael Naoum, Betty Baker, Jim Holtz, Will Gill, Matt Schmotzer, Mike Puckett and many others.
Due to the 2020 pandemic, 3DEXPERIENCE World 2021 was a Virtual Event. Fortunately, it garnered virtual attendance of over 35,000!
Friday, January 29, 2021
How to find your US representatives and tweet them
Twitter is a fact of life in politics these days in USA. Fortunately, that gives us an opportunity to contact our representatives on an open platform in a manner that is sorta like an open letter, with a limit of 240 characters. Contacting your representatives at both the state and federal level is fairly easy, and can even be grouped together into one tweet. The information below is meant for both experienced users (who can skip over comments on how to tweet) and new users.
All you need is a Twitter account and the Twitter handles of your representatives.
Once you have a Twitter account, get the names of your representatives.
- For your representative in the US House of Representatives, goto the Find Your Representative website.
- For your representatives in the US Senate, goto the Senate state map and click on your state.
- For your representatives within your state, do a Google search for "find my legislator [your state here]", without the quotes and replacing "[you state here]" with the state in which you live. One of the first two links in the search results should get you to the websites to find both your local state Representative and Senator. Although this step is optional, it is still important to let the political parties know at all levels where the people stand.
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Bitcoin (cryptocurrency) Mining in Iran causes blackouts and smog?
2021, things will get better, right? Well...
In a strange dystopian twist last week, a story has been developing in Iran. Massive power disruptions have been sweeping across Iran. Apparently this has been an issue since January 13. At the time, the cause was unclear, as reported by GardWorld.
The dystopia is worse. Due to the demand on power over the past month, power plants in Iran have been forced to switch over to burning low-grade fuels oil, causing massive "toxic" smog around the capital city, as reported by Bloomberg. Other reports about increased smog go back to January 3.
Here's what makes the whole thing even more surreal. According to Iranian officials, a major contributing factor (in addition to the unusually cold winter) is apparently illegal cryptocurrency mining operations, as reported by the Washington Post. However, this is may not be a major cause, as cryptocurrency miners state their operations have nothing to do with the current power crisis.Iran reportedly cracked down on cryptocurrency mining operations on Sunday by confiscating 45K machines. Supposedly, these machines were consuming 95 megawatts per hour, while paying a reduced rate on the electricity. However, the crackdown may not be about power consumption, as other reports suggest power consumed in cryptocurrency mining has only a minor role in Iran's current power crisis, as reported by coindesk. In July 2020, "Iran penned a registration directive forcing [cryptocurrency] miners to disclose their identities" and "the size of their mining farms".
Sunday, January 17, 2021
Saturday, January 16, 2021
Friday, January 15, 2021
Deadly Decoy in CSGO
Sometimes, just sometimes, it's a bad idea to ignore a decoy in CounterStrike: Global Offensive (CSGO)