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WEEK 6 2007

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Saturday 10 February 2007

Saturday - went in to work for a few hours - I'm going to take a day or two off next week to visit Dad and decided to 'comp' it. Mostly I just fooled with Pro/E - datum planes today. It's half intuitive - I've spent years generating 3D meshes by hand - and half just ... different.


Book #9 was The Hills is Lonely, by Lillian Beckwith. This is the first of the Bruach books, so it introduced for the first time some of the characters in last years'  A Rope, In Case. Entertaining, but a little rougher than that later book.


Heh. W.R.T. the Lisa Nowak astronaut story, over at Voyage to Arcturus Jay Manifold wrote a post entitled: Think This Will Be A Movie-of-the-Week?

That was on the Fifth of February. This morning, on Yahoo news:  Producer Options Astronaut Kidnap Tale.

I had an astronaut sell me a used, broken, TIVO at a yard sale once. Do you suppose I could sell the rights for a made-for-tv movie?

Friday 9 February 2007

Friday - a bit tired, it was a long day. But I did get something done on both my current projects, though it was a tough slog. Did a bit of work with Pro/E - it was actually sort of fun, in a frustrating sort of way.


Since creativity seems absent tonight, here is a list that's been going about: The 50 Most Significant SF Books (according to the SF Book Club).

Those in black I've read. I think I've read the PKD book, years ago, but am not sure.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Neuromancer, William Gibson (this is on my 'get to someday' list)
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Thursday 8 February  2007

Thursday - I'm clear of jury duty selection for another year! Yay!!  Day after day, starting last Sunday, I had to call, to find if I had to go in to the court. It wasn't bad at first, but by this evening I was dreading picking up the phone. It was the prospect of freedom I suppose, so closely juxtaposed with the chance of not  evading the boring, frustrating and pointless (in 23 years of AV residence I've never been seated on a jury) court slavery.


I'm thinking that I'll wait a week to see Dad. It'll be a three day weekend then, because of President's Day ( which is wrong wrong wrong because Washington and Lincoln deserve their own unique days of remembrance, separate from the rest of the presidential hoi polloi) and the weather might be better than that projected for this weekend..


SuperBowl ads were pretty bad this year. I actually liked the Grand Theft Auto ad. The rest were pretty stupid, but the GTA was a fun send up of a popular game. The It's Hard to say Goodbye promo and the K-Fed ad made me chuckle.  Mostly it was juvenile disappointment. [via Betsy Newmark]

On the topic of SuperBowl: Corporate Jets leaving the SuperBowl. Wow. Wish I could afford one of those. Wish I could afford to go to the SuperBowl... [via Instapundit]

x
Magenta is a Corporate Jet.

Wednesday 7 February 2007

Wednesday - the weather continues  yucky. If I am spared from jury duty I'll try to head up and see my Dad, weather permitting.

I was looking at foul weather gear the other day, Gill and Henri Lloyd at West Marine. They do think a lot of themselves and price their stuff accordingly. I also looked at offshore life jackets - the same hold true there. There are thin and low profile jackets that inflate either manually or automatically, but they want hundreds of dollars for them. A standard kapok jacket is a few tens of dollars - and I already have them. But they are clumsy and uncomfortable, particularly on a nice Southern California day, and so people tend not to wear them...

We were talking about the crazed astronaut lady over lunch. The conclusions were probably the same as the rest of the world: (1) good thing she didn't lose it in orbit, (2) don't these astronauts have to pass psychological screening?, and (3) well, they're just people after all.

Tuesday 6 February 2007

Tuesday - went out to dinner with some friends at Coach's in Rosamond. Their Tuesday Tacos' are pretty good, as advertised.

Heading west on Rosamond Boulevard there was a black streak of cloud across a hazy sun. It looked a lot like the visible image of the Sombrero Galaxy before Hubble's close up. Actually we've had nice sunsets for the last few days.

 Monday 5 February 2007

Monday - back to work, feeling a little tired.

Blogger has switched over to a new version, I've noticed that a lot of the blogs are messed up, with the most common error being that the home page is from years past. How annoying that must be for the blogger, and how terrifying the thought that years of writing might be gone.

On the other hand, Blogger is free.

Sunday 4 February 2006

Sunday - not a lot to say. Watched the Superbowl with my brother - those stupid Bears cost me $1.25. As usual the best games were the playoffs, not the SB itself. So it goes.

Picture of the Week
bird

Photo Notes: Desert Bird.

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