One Year

 blather  8 Responses »
Dec 252014
 

In 2013 I contracted bronchitis three times, the last being a truly awful case that I noticed the beginnings of on the morning of December 24 , and was obvious by nightfall, and was full-blown by the next morning. It has now been a full year since I’ve contracted bronchitis (not a full year since I’ve *had* bronchitis… that’ll have to wait until January, and certainly not a full year since I’ve bee free of the side effects of bronchitis… that won’t be until March or so).

While it’s good not to have had bronchitis, the fact is that 2013was so filled with it, and the last case so bad, that instead of just being happy to not have it I’ve been paranoid about getting it again. Bronchitis gave me hypochondria.

The second and third cases in 2013 were preceded by being in proximity to sick people (the third case came with a dose of H1N1, for added awesomeness). Since then, I’ve avoided sick people… and have largely abandoned physical model work. Dust and solvents and such probably don’t help. Nevertheless, I do have some model projects that I’m way, waaaaaaay behind on, so it’s back to the solvent mines.

 Posted by at 11:03 am

8 hours of Orion, blog troubles update

 AARRRGH, blather  3 Responses »
Dec 242014
 

This is a test to see if video embedding is functional…

If you can see an 8-hour video, then yes, it seems to be working.

The Disqus commenting system seems to be back up and running, as is the anti-spam system. While those were down, there were a few valid comments made in earlier posts, a couple troll-posts, and a whole lot of attempted spam posts. *Hopefully* the troublesome posts are no longer an issue, but the valid posts seem like they’ve probably been swept under the rug as well.

And with any luck, here’s a photo of a refinery at sunset, taken from a moving car. Meh. But earlier images wouldn’t upload, so if’n you can see this, it’s another success.

WP_20141208_008

So now it’s 3:30 in the morning again. Yaaaaaayyyyyy….

 

 Posted by at 3:35 am

Star Trek 3

 Meh., news, science fiction  6 Responses »
Dec 232014
 

While the blog continues to be wonky, with plugins for Disqus commenting and YouTube videos and such disabled, here’s this bit of “meh” news:

Justin Lin to Direct Star Trek 3

If, like me, your response to that was “who the hell is Justin Lin and what are his science fiction directorial bona fides,” he’s the director of some “Fast and Furious” movies, a few episodes of “Community” and… not a whole lot of anything else.

FYI.

 Posted by at 7:19 pm

Blog trouble

 AARRRGH, news  No Responses »
Dec 232014
 

Currently some trouble. Being worked on by IT… something to do with the WordPress theme deciding it doesn’t want to play nice with the plugins.

Test:

Test

The video embedding plugin I’ve been using seems to have been a major source of the problem. It was an older plugin and has been abandoned by its creator… no updates in a while, and I guess some other part of the WordPress blog auto-updated past plugin servicability. So I can’t use that one anymore. I can directly embed some YouTube videos, but not all, so for what it’s worth there may be less of that sort of thing in the future.

Irritatingly, since the plugin went down, all the previous embedded videos are no longer embedded. If you’ve got a burning desire to see them, you’ll have to cut-and-paste the fractional links into the youtube & vimeo sites directly.

 Posted by at 1:04 pm

The Plasma Tail

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., photography, spacecraft, youtube  6 Responses »
Dec 212014
 

A camera mounted in the “nose” of the Orion capsule. On the way up, it would look forward, but on the way down, as here, it looks back. And here it sees the limb of the Earth, the plasma tail during re-entry and the chutes.

Now, what I want to see is a joint mission, with two such capsule re-entering next to each other, maybe a few hundred yards apart. Get a view of this from the side, and you’d really have something.

[youtube MtWzuZ6WZ8E]

 Posted by at 12:14 am
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