Author Archives: joel

Kite #3 – Delta Box Trial Flight

Posted on August 20, 2005 by joel
Here's my third attempt at building a kite stable enough to loft a camera rig. I think this one is a winner. It practically leapt out of my hand when I launched it, and it rose quickly and smoothly. This one seems really stable. I'll have to start building my camera rig soon. I've also got plans to build a few more kites - they are turning out to be really fun to build! Once again, Sean was a little cutie. Look at him sitting up! He's growing up so quick!


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Just a Typical Friday Night

Posted on August 19, 2005 by joel
We took these photos today, during our normal dinner-time routine. Sean is working on feeding himself by grabbing food between his thumb and index finger - this is called a 'pincer grasp'. He's just starting to do it, but he sucessfully fed himself a few pieces of puffed rice. Gotta start somewhere! He's also doing really well getting up to his hands and knees on his own. He can't exactly go anywhere yet, but it's oh-so-cute!


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Scenes from Space

Posted on August 19, 2005 by joel
Enjoy the second installment of "Scenes from Space"!

This image was taken by Hubble in June of this year, when Mars was ~43 million miles from Earth — the closest it's been since 1988. Speaking of Mars being close to the Earth - there is a rumor going around about Mars. There has been an email circulating that on August 27th, 2005, Mars will be so close to the Earth that it will be as big in the sky as the full moon. This is just ridiculous! While Mars will be closer than it has been in a LONG time, The actual difference distance is only about 1%. So Mars will look about 1% bigger in the sky than on a normal approach. If Mars were to actually be close enough to look as big as the full moon, its gravity would throw earth out of its normal orbit and raise huge, terrible tides. So be sure to check out Mars this fall, but don't buy into this hoax!

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Sean the Superstar!

Posted on August 17, 2005 by joel
How do you know when you are finally famous? When you're in the tabloids, that's how! The press has latched on to Sean, for better or worse...

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Deep Impact – My Brush with Fame!

Posted on August 14, 2005 by joel
Hopefully, everyone has heard of Deep Impact - the NASA spacecraft that crashed (intentionally) into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005. If not, here's a link to the Deep Impact Mission home page. The idea was to smash a spacecraft into a comet, and have another spacecraft watch this up close and see what happens. Conceivably, This would tell us a lot about what comets are made of. If they are pretty solid, the impacting spacecraft should make a pretty small, unexciting crater. If comets are loose aggregations of dust and ice, the impactor might plunge straight into the comet's nucleus without a trace. But if comets are something in between - as most scientists suspect - we should get a pretty exciting explosion, and a nice-sized crater.

What you probably didn't know about Deep Impact is that I did a little work on that project. In fact, I had somewhere on the order of a dozen lines of code on both the impactor and the fly-by portion of the mission. While my involvement was pretty minor, I'm still really proud to have been a part of the Deep Impact team, and this is the first time in my professional life that I can tell just about anybody what I do for work, and they have heard of the project. Awesome!

Below are a couple of pictures of the certificate of appreciation I received for participating in the mission. Way cool!


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Jowlers.com – Wacky

Posted on August 14, 2005 by joel
Check out this site I found on the web today. Basically, it's pictures of people taken while they shake their head fast from side to side with their mouth open. Much funnier to see than to talk about. Check it out!
www.jowlers.com

And here's MY version -
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Just Hanging Out…

Posted on August 13, 2005 by joel
We took these photos today, while Sean and I were hanging out in the bathroom while Mom got ready. He was being exceptionally cute, and we wanted to share with everyone!

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Scenes from Space

Posted on August 12, 2005 by joel
Enjoy the first installment of "Scenes from Space". Every Friday, I will post a space-related image and a little description of it. I frequent a lot of space-related websites, and this is a way that I can share some of the neat things I find with you guys!

This first image is one taken during the Perseid meteor shower last August. The photographer is the astronomer Fred Bruenjes. He recorded a series of 30 second exposures spanning six hours during the meteor shower. This year, the Perseids meteor shower will peak in the early morning hours on Friday, August 12 - but can also be seen during the wee hours of the morning on Saturday. If you're interested in this meteor shower, be sure to catch it this year. Next year there will be a full moon during the peak of the shower, making it too bright to see any meteors.

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Kerplunk Radio – Episode 1

Posted on August 10, 2005 by joel
Hey all! Give a listen to episode 1 of Kerplunk Radio! I'm planning to throw together a 20-30 minute podcast of independent music once every 2-4 weeks. Each show will have a theme - this episode's theme is music for kids. I'm hoping to use this as a way to share some great indie music I'm listening to with my friends and family. Let me know what you guys think! Right-click the "download mp3" button and choose "save-as" to save the show to your computer before listening. Here are the artists on this first show;

Bob Brown - Santa Bring Me a Dinosaur
 Bill Crosby - Sleeping in the Car
Brian Waite Band - Bongo Baby Buck Howdy - Skidaddle
Erin Lee & Marci - Grampa and Me Katherine Dines - Goosebumps
Rick Scott - Biggest Ears

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Go Fly a Kite!

Posted on August 5, 2005 by joel
I've subscribed to a something called "Make", which is basically a quarterly magazine full of do-it-yourself geek projects. From building robots, to hacking portable electronic devices, to making potato guns. The first issue had an article on something called "Kite Aerial Photography", which involves using a kite to lift a camera rig to take pictures from the air. This is right up my alley! A couple of years ago, I tried to do a similar thing with model rockets. So I bought a book about kite building, and tried to build a couple. The first one failed miserably - never got off the ground. The second flew beautifully. It's not quite stable enough to loft a camera rig, but it gives me some confidence that the next one will be much better. Sean was looking especially cute that day - less like a baby and more like a little boy!


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