Before I went down to Costa Rica last month I knew they eclipse was going to happen and I knew the Moon was going to be full. But I forgot all about the fact that the do some horse rides down the beach in the moonlight; I knew that from the last trip and forgot all about it. While I don’t really like horses (they’re big, scary and I don’t know how to turn them off or reboot them), down the beach during the full moon sounds pretty cool.

They might have come out better if I’d had a tripod. I think it was brighter the next night (less clouds?) but my pocket camera just doesn’t appropriately show how it really looked. I don’t recall even thinking it was really bright this night, I was actually just scoping out the sky to see if the eclipse would be viewable.

And now I see someone is doing Full Moon Moon-Rise Yoga on Montezuma Beach, how cool would that be?!?

Totally worth going outside for! The eclipse was very cool looking. I’d had a long day so I’d taken a nap and set the alarm to make sure the sky cleared up enough, it did, so I got my gear together and went outside for a while.

It looked much much redder than these shots show (since these show virtually no red). It was actually more of a dark orange with red tinting.

Not that these shots show anything very clearly. Considering that the Moon was now “10,000 to 100,000 times fainter than it was just a couple of hours ago”* it wasn’t a big shock.

And while I saw a few shooting stars, nothing like the meteor show I though that was supposed to be have seen once the Moon was dimmed…

In hindsight, I wouldn’t have brought the camera (or tried to shoot video), so I could have paid more attention. But then I’d have wished I had brought it, right? Actually, the tripod on the SLR probably would have been the best choice. I had it on the video camera but the video just came out too grainy ; plus, the darn Earth andMoon kept moving so I had to readjust.

I was excited to watch but the results were boring…
Click for a larger version of the CNN moon crash Video.

Here’s the animation, which was much more interesting.
Click for a larger version of the CNN moon crash Animation.

I hope the animation is pretty much what happened, we just couldn’t see it. I hope the data that they get is good data. I’d prefer that it shows there is water;ut if there isn’t, I hope the results show there isn’t. No data / bad data means failed mission…

The LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) spacecraft was also passing by a little bit later (90 seconds?) so that should have have some additional data.

LATER: A little more info on this at CNN. They said this was the fifth most watched webcast ever.

I’ve found a new WordPress plug-in that I like. It’s called “A Year Before“.

It’s got options to show a year ago today (or months or days) what you were blogging about. I’m using “anniversary mode” which I think is taking the post from today for as many years back as it can find.

Don’t worry if you haven’t been blogging long it’s got a “range” to show posts near a year ago (or six months ago). I’m running it on WordPress 2.8.2 (as of this writing) and it seems to be fine.

I’ve been using it the last few days at the bottom of my left sidebar, but since I’m blogging about it I moved it to the top of the left sidebar, so you can see what it really looks like. I copied the text here so the links actually work. I’m not sure where I’ll move it to later.

It’s interesting, maybe more to me than you, but they always say you should show links to older posts for newer readers. Without even reading them I’m reminded about a trip to London (and the concert I went to a few days before) and the slideshow viewer that never detected flash properly, a homeland security site (which now appears to be a FEMA site), Google maps adding the Moon, my dreams for a new MacBook and how $5 fixed my convertible roof saving me hundreds of dollars (and save multiple readers the same!).

I mentioned the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing earlier today. Here’s a few other “space” things that caught my eye:

That’s it for now. Please post any recommended links in the comments below.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

On this day 40 years ago Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. I’m not sure what else needs to be added to that statement: “We landed on the Moon”! How amazing is that?!?

Just for some frame of reference: The Moon is 238,000 miles away (384,000 km), if you were driving 75 miles per hour it would take you 3,100 hours. Keep in mind that’s speeding and you don’t get to pull over for any bathroom breaks or snacks!

Actually it took them more like five days to get there, so just dividing that out, that’s around 2,000 miles per hour (assume it took them a while to speed up and slow down).

When I was a kid, my mother purchased me a two record set of the mission. Lots of audio recordings of the launch and landing. I’m thinking there was some insert with a bunch of photos too. I played that a lot on my record player. I don’t have any idea what year she purchased that, but I’d say I was six or seven(?), and it was amazing to me!

It’s still amazing to me. Whenever I can watch a launch of some kind or another, I always turn on the TV and still get thrills and chills. I get chills just thinking about it as I’m writing this…

Photos courtesy of Wikipedia.

At Amazon Unbox they have 4 FREE missing episode of ‘How I Met Your Mother’! At least I don’t think I’ve seen them before. You can download these to your Windows based computer or TiVo for free! The 4 missing episodes cover Marshal and Lily’s honeymoon…

You can get the Infamous “Robin Sparkles” video too!

UPDATE (Sunday evening): So I finally watched these “episodes”. They weren’t real episodes, they were just a few minutes long and they were “videos” of they’re honeymoon. They’re pretty bad too, but then again aren’t home movies supposed to be? I’m not sure what kind of promotion they shot these for, but they end with a still frame with an advertisement for the show. It was the fact that these appeared to be “lost” episodes that made me ask if the show was canceled, since these aren’t much more than some kind of odd promo/commercial I retract the original question.

I’ve got my Christmas tree up! It always makes me very happy to get it up, I was even happy when I got it up last night and didn’t even have ornaments on it, just the lit tree makes me happy. I always dread putting up of it and the decorating, this year I got Mom to come help with the decorating. We got it and the house done. We ate out at the Seahorse Grill (review later). We computed a little bit on her laptop. And we returned my copy of of Living Abroad in Costa Rica which it turns out I had a copy of already by a different publisher (same author) and I purchased a copy of Culture Smart!: a quick guide to customs and etiquette in Costa Rica. And of course, we listened to Christmas songs…

Found this cool 360 degree panorama of Karnak Temple. It requires Quicktime (I was there last year, BTW).

(I was actually looking for something on The Moon Landing which was 38 years ago today….)

So all of a sudden you look out the window and you realize that somehow you, and the building you are in, just got transported to the Moon. Do you:

It’s the Moon!!! How cool would that be?!?

Wow! This is the Astronomy Picture of the Day today! The above link will get you “today’s” picture whenever today is. This link will get you March, 3rd 2007 which is the one I’m talking about. It’s the moon (our moon) passing in front of the sun using ultraviolet cameras.

The extra amazing part is once you go to that page you can watch a short animated movie of the 12 hour transition.

So I was watching a re-run of Grey’s Anatomy last night. It’s the one where the wife has the fork stuck in her neck; her and the husband were being adventurous since she has an aneurism and only has weeks/months to live. So they are traveling and doing all the things they’ve always said they’ll do some day.

This ties back in with the meme from a few weeks ago about what would you do this six months to live. This also ties in with the new show Three Moons Over Milford where the moon gets hit with an asteroid and everyone knows it’s only a shot amount of time before the pieces fall back to earth. Several of the people and episodes are all about living life to the fullest.

So back to my question: “Why wait?”

If there is all sorts of stuff I want to do, what am I waiting for? What are you waiting for? Now I know some of us have responsibilities so that has all sorts of implications. But many of us are single with no responsibilities. Why not quit the job and just travel to those places that I’ve thought about? Go volunteer. Go move somewhere interesting and get a job for a while? I could probably figure something out so I could do some reasonable consulting via the net regardless of where I might live.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. My best friend just keeps waiting for the day I call and say see ya, I’ve off to move to Costa Rica…

I was tagged by RW to do this meme :)

Four jobs you’ve had in your life:
Web Programmer
Computer Trainer
Cook
Camp Counselor

Four movies you could watch over and over:

The Flight of the Navigator

The American President

The Cutting Edge

A Christmas Story

Four places you’ve lived:
Berkley, MI
East Lansing, MI
Haslett, MI
Dearborn, MI

Four TV shows you love to watch:
Gray’s Anatomy
Psych
Dead Zone
Kyle XY

Four websites you visit daily:
Blogography
SlickDeals
The Daily Meme
Google

Four of your favorite foods:
Pizza
Hot Wings
Chicken With Pineapple (Chinese)
Beef With Brocolli (Chinese)

Four places you’d rather be:
The Beach
Costa Rica
London
The Moon

Four albums you can’t live without (for the moment):

Avril Lavign Under My Skin

Anna Nalick Wreck of the Day

Tori Amos Little Earthquakes

Indigo Girls Strange Fire

I’m stopping at four (2 new & 2 old) but I really couldn’t stick to four…

So it’s not a huge change but I was tired of the washed out summer theme that was too bright, I thought I might get used to it, but…

It’s a bit of the same colors, I just got rid of a lot of the bright ones. It’s too soon for a fall theme…

Background image from
CitrusMoon.com

Kyra asked these questions on her blog. She actually asked them two different ways: If you had six months and what if everyone had 6 months.

If you knew you only had six months to live, and the world was guaranteed to end for you – how would you live?

I’m single and have no dependents so that really makes the options easier for me than some people. Sure I’d hook Mom up with some of my savings but she’s probably fine without it so that makes this a lot more fun list for me than it might be for some others.

I’m not going to go the route if it was six months for everyone, I’d have to assume it’d be a bad place to be (chaos and all). But the new series 3 Moons Over Milford (free at iTunes at this point in time) is kind of a end of the world scenario (the moon breaks into three pieces in a degrading orbit) where it’s not chaos, I’d like to think it’d go that way.

I finally hooked up my Oregon Scientific Weather Station and I really like it. It’s got a remote sensor for outside and shows the humidity and temp for both inside and outside (or I guess you could put the sensor inside somewhere else in the house if you wanted). It shows the moon phase and sets itself via the atomic clock. The instructions read as if the atomic clock sends out a signal constantly (I thought it was a once a day thing). I know it took awhile (overnight) for mine to get the signal (and then I had to go set the time zone). It even makes a weather forecast based on the barometer and the humidity and temp. It’s a nifty little device and it’s well worth the money I spent on it.

It’s got an alarm clock and backlit display built into it too. Plus it shows if the temp, pressure and humidity are rising, steady or lowering. You can calibrate it for closer readings based on your altitude too. I think I paid more for just the little temp/humidity sensor I bought a few years ago.

FYI – It starting saying it’s got a connection with the Atomic Clock, I’m not sure how/why…

So with the sales today I bought a few things.

I’ll do reviews for the movies when I watch them. It seems like I bought more but I’m not going downstairs to check…

Four jobs you’ve had in your life:
Web Programmer
Computer Trainer
Cook
Camp Counselor

Four movies you could watch over and over:

The Flight of the Navigator

The American President

The Cutting Edge

A Christmas Story

Four places you’ve lived:
Berkley, MI
East Lansing, MI
Haslett, MI
Dearborn, MI

Four TV shows you love to watch:
Gray’s Anatomy
Two and a half Men
Medium
Veronica Mars

Four websites you visit daily:
Blogography
SlickDeals
The Daily Meme
Google

Four of your favorite foods:
Pizza
Hot Wings
Chicken With Pineapple (Chinese)
Beef With Brocolli (Chinese)

Four places you’d rather be:
Egypt
Costa Rica
London
The Moon

Four albums you can’t live without (for the moment):

Avril Lavign Under My Skin

Anna Nalick Wreck of the Day

Tori Amos Little Earthquakes

Indigo Girls Strange Fire

I’m stopping at four (2 new & 2 old) but I really couldn’t stick to four…

Via Webmiztris via Kimi and Wendy.

What are your Top 5 places you’ve never been to, but most want to visit?
In order that I’ll probably do these:

Have you seen the interactive maps of the Earth that Google has done? They recently added a new hybrid feature.

More importantly: In commemoration of the Moon landing 36 years ago Google has put together some Interactive Maps of The Moon! It goes best horizontally (with minor vertical options) and don’t zoom in too far, you never know what might happen…

This ties in with their hiring opportunities at their lunar hosting and research center in 2007.

Found at Population Statistic.

So it’s been 36 years since we landed on the Moon. I still think that is so cool. I really thought we’d be making field trips there by now but unfortunately that isn’t the case. These days I’m just excited/hopeful that we’ll get the shuttle missions going again.

For my birthday last year (or maybe it was Christmas) I got this Apollo 11 Artifact Kit. It’s got all sorts of cool paraphernalia in it (mission patch, moon map, travel voucher, customs declaration, school photos of one of the astronauts kids and other interesting stuff) and a book too. My mother saw it the other day and commented on how much her dad would have liked it, he’s the guy who got me interested in space and science. I don’t know if he ever knew that. I remember him taking me up to the library and getting books when I was little and I remember getting something to do with space at the same time he was (my version had lots more pictures than his did). It’s that first time that I always think of when people ask me about how I got interested in science and technology. I don’t know what was going on that made him interested, maybe a space mission or the anniversary of some launch or maybe just plain old curiosity.

I really love the Apple iTunes Music Store (some of the links on this page won’t work if you don’t have iTunes installed). In case you didn’t know they offer (for free) Music Videos and Movie Previews. They also offer Audio Books and once in a blue moon they’ll offer the first chapter for free download. This seems like a good marketing scheme but it’s really hit or miss, I mean you can get a free iTunes song every week but you never know when you’ll get a free chapter…

Sometimes they just have something odd for free like some extra interviews at the Academy Awards but you never know when. Does any one know of a better way to find these free items/events?!?

You can definitely see the eclipse and see that it’s RED but it’s just to hard to really see it well. :(

Total eclipse of the Moon tonight. It’ll be 11 PM-ish in the eastern time zone in the US. See Yahoo for basic info, Space.com for Top 10 Lunar Eclipse Facts and this and this guide. This will be your last chance until 2007!

From The Weekly Bit.

From RE: Blogs .

I was looking for a (regular) calendar and I found this.

So I really like the way the background it working out! The moon changing with the phases is pretty nifty. It wasn’t moving very fast at first, as a matter of fact it didn’t match some other moon icons so I think something choked at the US Naval Observatory where I get it from, it seems like it’s sped up the last 24 hours. It wasn’t previously matching some other moon viewers.

From RE: Blogs

So I’ve gone grey. I mean my blog has gone grey. I’ve gone with some dark colors. The moon in the background (it’s almost not there today) is from the US Naval Observatory and should change as the phases change. We’ll see how well that actually works in the next week or so. Here is some more information on moon phases.

At the same time I cleaned this template up a little. Comments/templates should look better and the site should be a little more consistent. I thought I had done some of that already but maybe I overwrote it… Please let me know if you have any viewing problems (especially if the greys are too close together to read). It looks like there is still an issue with the search results page, it’s readable, just not 100% consistent.

Here’s my 100 things about me page. (If you’re looking for my 101 in 1001 days list go here.) To follow the theme that I’ve found on many other sites, partially to see what I come up with and to let others see what I come up with. I’ve broken this down a bit: I like, I dislike, I am, I’ve live in, I wish I understood more about, places I’ve been and before I die…

It’s interesting how many of these things I’ve blogged about so far…

UPDATE: December 2004/June 2005. I just came here to update this. I can’t believe how much it has not changed. The only other things are I’ve been liking my iPod (and listening to podcasting), the Scene It? DVD games and maybe some additional music groups (Katy Rose and maybe a few others) and I won’t add them until they’ve been around a bit longer. Probably “Two and a Half Men” (I laugh SO hard) and Liz Phair (added).

I like:
1. Riding on the train

2. Driving with the top down
3. The Internet
4. MSU
5. Ice cream (Cookie Dough from QD)
6. Rollerblading
7. Sunshine
8. My family
9. Kids
10. Babies
11. Picnics
12. Coca-Cola
13. Gadgets and gizmos
14. Taking pictures
15. Tori
16. Sarah
17. Indigo Girls
18. Liz Phair
19. Jewel
20. 80’s music
21. _Joan of Arcadia
22. Sports Night
23. Roswell
24. The American President
25. The Cutting Edge
26. A Christmas Story
27. Flight of the Navigator
28. Narnia
29. Time Travel
30. Reading
31. Movies
32. Dominoes
33. Scrabble
34. Euchre
35. Sitting by the river
36. Learning
37. Volunteering
38. M & M’s
39. Smarties (the chocolate kind)
40. Prizes in Cereal
41. Soda Pop in a bottle
42. Fun Size Candy
43. Macintosh
44. My i500 Palm Phone
45. Tivo
46. WiFi
47. The Ocean
48. Maps
49. Luggage
50. Books
51. Ice Skating
52. Sleeping
53. Building a fire
54. The Moon
55. Stars
56. Laughing
57. Holding hands
58. Crushes
59. Traveling
60. Smiles
61. Showers
62. Clean sheets
63. Surprises
    
    I dislike:

64. Pickles
65. Mayo
66. Mean people
67. Sauces on my sandwiches
68. Country
69. Being stuck at airports
70. Traffic
    
    I am:
    
71. An only child

72. Smart
73. Tall
74. Curly
75. Goofy
76. A night owl
77. Was born on September 11th
    
    I’ve lived in:
    
78. Royal Oak

79. Berkley (21 years)
80. Southfield (a 1/2 year)
81. East Lansing (7 years)
82. Haslett (4 years)
83. Southgate (1 year)
84. Dearborn (4 years)
    
    I wish I understood more about:
    
85. Astronomy

86. Women
87. Art
    
    Places I’ve been:
    
88. United States (all over)

89. Canada (Toronto 5 times; all over several)
90. England (3 times)
91. Prague
92. Costa Rica (2 times)
    
    Before I die I want to:
    
93. Have kids

94. See Paris
95. Take a cruise across the ocean
96. Find out what is out there
97. See the pyramids
98. Write a computer book
99. Live happily ever after
100. Find out “Why?”

I now have a new item in my Today section on my links column. So with the Sun, the Moon, “my” weather, word of the day there is now the Quote of the Day. As with everything else it gets updated automatically, so if it doesn’t change, it’s not my fault…

You can click the links to go to the main page of the site or click on the author to see other quotes by the Author. Today’s quote was
“Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.” – Mark Twain

PS – I’m always looking for more additions to my “today” section.

Trying out some backgrounds to fill in that old grey space. Trying to make it so it’s easy to change the colors to make ‘skinning it’ easier. Background tiles are from Citrus Moon Patterns.