dewline: Logo: Canadian Spaceflight (Canadian spaceflight)
This morning, I tried to watch the launch of the new space telescope on YouTube, but it turned out I missed the launch time by about seven minutes. I still got to see enough to make me quietly happy for most of the rest of the day.

The household range is having problems. The heating elements on top are still working just fine for frying, steaming and boiling, but the burner box - the oven - is not in good shape. I'd call the process of heating anything "sluggish" if anything. We're not sure what's caused that, and calling for help is naturally Problematic right now. So cooking lasagna was cancelled in favour of relying upon Pizza Pizza last night.

My day job is on hold until after New Year's due to lack of people available to supervise.

*shrugs*

More as it comes to mind...
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
1. The job search continues. As I type this, I'm looking at Indeed and Jobilico. I expect to check several federal commissions, departments and agencies, a couple of crown corporations, GC Jobs, the federal Job Bank, and at least ten temp placement companies (yet again) over the rest of today.

2. I hope to listen to Ontario Today at noon, because Perseverance on Mars is the topic of the day.

3. Downloading new updates for Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher.

4. The Affinity suite is still on sale from Serif.com at half-price as I type this. About C$35 for each of the three programs in the suite.

5. Inkscape and Krita and the like are also still useful freeware, so why not get those too?

6. Listening to The Current right now. The discussion in progress as I type this entry?

Letter-writing. Actual letters through the paper-mail system. Apparently, this is making a come-back among many who have the time and enough other resources.

7. More later today as I think of it.
dewline: Logo: Canadian Spaceflight (space exploration)
Something else that Kevin "Galaxy Map" Jardine brought up recently: there's a "travelling salesperson lab" at University of Waterloo, and they took some of Kevin's work and played with it.

https://twitter.com/galaxy_map/status/1318092187972866048

https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/star/index.html

https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/star/about.html

https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/star/gaia1_data.html

https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/star/kj37859.html
dewline: Logo: Canadian Spaceflight (Canadian spaceflight)
Noting comments from [personal profile] krpalmer and [personal profile] muchado about today's spaceflight milestone...

I admit to being distracted myself by multiple factors:

- solving the printing-from-open-applications issue plaguing me for the last two days, successfully.
- the meeting of my Mac User Group earlier this afternoon via Zoom.
- trying to work up a custom-designed greeting card for a neighbour's imminent birthday, preferably by using new-to-me graphic design software.
- worries about the tornado watch AND warning late this afternoon in my region.
- shopping errands.
- general research and exploration of the internet.
- other stuff to be added later, maybe.

The fact is that this was an important milestone of sorts today. The revival of American spaceflight technologies used from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo with upgraded components, with some success. It's a capability rebuilt to some degree, and yet as someone who enjoyed much of the Shuttle era, I cannot help but see it as backsliding somewhat. Physics and economics and human biology and psychology will certainly have their ways to varying degrees here, and have done so these past weeks.

I do await further developments with great interest and some hope. I want to see human adventure expand its horizons, and not to see this turned into a mere escape hatch for the richest of us.
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
The European Space Agency maintains a Flickr account of its own. Here's one of the things they've been noticing of late via Earth-observation stuff.

Deserted Venetian lagoon
dewline: Text: Additional Investigation Required (journalism)
Something first spotted back in 2016 is really getting attention now.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/record-breaker-supernova-2016aps-exploded-with-the-energy-of-100-billion-suns

How far away would your inhabited system have to be to be safe enough from this?
dewline: Text: Trekkish Chatter Underway (TrekChatter)
Phil Plait takes a deeper dive than I can re: the Aia system from "PIC: Broken Pieces".
And he's right about at least one species that could manage to build something like that. Go read!

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/octonary-stars-and-broken-pieces-can-the-eight-star-system-from-star-trek-picard-actually
dewline: Quotation: "I grieve with thee" (Grief)
I have a book that she and her partner Nigel Henbest co-wrote: The Guide to the Galaxy. Bought it from Perfect Books years and years ago. It was and remains a great read, however much time and new information have dated it. The maps were beautiful works of cartographic art for their time and topic. Sadly, it's no longer in print, but other examples of their work remain available.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51562165
dewline: Logo: Canadian Spaceflight (Canadian spaceflight)
...[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll has uploaded an endorsement to Tor's weblog that you might be interested in.

Go have a look!

https://www.tor.com/2019/05/31/better-science-fiction-through-actual-science/

...and speaking of essays on Tor.com from friendlisters inspiring unexpected finds: [personal profile] mcwetboy just wrote a thing on how fantasy maps might or might not fit into the worlds of the stories they're made to serve:

https://www.tor.com/2019/05/28/fantasy-maps-dont-belong-in-the-hands-of-fantasy-characters/

In the process, he pointed out a thing that I didn't know existed in any nation: Map Reading Week. If anyone knows of a Canadian counterpart, that might get my attention too!
dewline: Logo: Canadian Spaceflight (Canadian spaceflight)
Since the topic came up in in last week's episode of Star Trek: Discovery...thanks to the suggestion of the Emperor Emeritus of the Terran Empire...which was rightly condemned by the rest of the people at that particular table.

https://twitter.com/marsrader/status/1120097175197900801

50-100 lightyears. And that's even before we get into the discussion of subspace effects propagating far faster compared to normal-space damage-waves, as established in Trekkish lore in movies VI and XI.

Noting also this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supernova_candidates

Alpha Lupi, cited in Michael Burnham's backstory in "The Red Angel", is definitely on that list. A good thing that it's about 460-465 lightyears away from us. Eta Lupi/Cerberus is about 150 lightyears closer to us...but still at least as safe, given current theory on supernovae.

(Would IK Pegasi be in Breen territory? Apparently not, going by Geoffrey Mandel and Jed Whitten. More likely, it's on the far side of what the former had pegged as Breen space in 2002.)

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