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for reference…
1/31/2007
1/30/2007
links for 2007-01-30
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“Microfossil Data Show Yucatan Impact Did Not Wipe out Dinosaurs” from the American society for Microbiology. It will be interesting to see what kind of traction this gets.
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And they are unworkable…
(via Eliot) -
“Tad Nichols’ long awaited Glen Canyon: Images of a Lost World. It is a book of black and white photographs he began in 1950, on the first of thirty-some trips through Glen Canyon.” Yep, that Glen Canyon. (thanks, Andrea)
1/29/2007
Edward Abbey, b. 1927
One of my favorite authors, Edward Abbey, was born 80 years ago today.
Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 - March 14, 1989) was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues and criticism of public land policies. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire. Writer Larry McMurtry referred to Abbey as the “Thoreau of the American West”.
I We miss you, Cactus Ed.
1/28/2007
STS-51-L Challenger “Vehicle lost during launch” in 1986
My iCal has a NASA history calendar with this terse entry for today:
(1986) STS-51-L Challenger Launch - Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-B (TDRS-B); SPARTAN-203 - Vehicle lost during launch
“Vehicle lost during launch.” Yeah, 73 seconds after launch. That’s pretty glib about the first time we got to see seven of our Astronauts die in real time. I didn’t happen to see it in real time.
On 28 January 1986 I was on my way to a 9 am meeting with a group of volunteer corporate fund-raisers for the local Boy Scout Council.* When I got out of my truck at the Community College, Leslie, my fellow District Executive, was leaning against her car shaking her head and listening to the local
That’s where our mutual boss found us a couple of minutes later and told us that we had to get inside and give him some support because the group of people we were meeting with were, “distracted by the Shuttle thing.” I said, “we’re a bit distracted by this ‘Shuttle thing’ too.” I’m sure I sounded a bit snotty. That’s how I get sometimes… I got told something about ‘your (my) priorities yadda, yadda.’ I don’t exactly remember, I was distracted with that shuttle thing.
Somewhere during the next 45 minutes Leslie and I got a stern talking to because we were unable (and mostly unwilling) to turn the group’s emotional tide of concern about the Challenger disaster towards fund-raising.
I wasn’t cut out for that kind of work and didn’t last long in that position.
I still get a lump in my throat and my eyes get wet when I see that footage.
* (long story, career mistake in hindsight, we’ll speak of it some other time)
1/27/2007
What Ed White Saw
Back in 1967 I was in 6th grade and quite the aspiring geek. I was a major space flight and NASA geek. The news of the Apollo 1 fire chilled me to the bone.
This is from the Wikipedia entry where there are some pictures of the plaques:
Launch Complex 34 has been essentially dismantled, the cement and steel-reinforced launch platform remains at the site. The platform bears two plaques for the 3 men who died. One reads:
LAUNCH COMPLEX 34
Friday, 27 January 1967
1831 HoursDedicated to the living memory of the crew of the Apollo 1:
USAF. Lt. Colonel Virgil I. Grissom
USAF. Lt. Colonel Edward H. White, II
U.S.N. Lt. Commander Roger B. ChaffeeThey gave their lives in service to their country in the ongoing exploration of humankind’s final frontier. Remember them not for how they died but for those ideals for which they lived.
The other reads:
IN MEMORY
OF
THOSE WHO MADE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE
SO OTHERS COULD REACH FOR THE STARSAD ASTRA PER ASPERA
(A ROUGH ROAD LEADS TO THE STARS)GOD SPEED TO THE CREW
OF
APOLLO 1
I remembered Ed White from his space walk during Gemini 4 and seeing a picture of his family and two kids. I remembered Virgil Grissom from his Mercury mission. I really felt like I had been sucker-punched.
1/25/2007
links for 2007-01-25
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Using wordpress as a cms with a static front page
1/23/2007
Two WordPress 2.1 Tweaks You May Need
Under WordPress 2.1, Ultimate Tag Warrior (for now) is misbehaving, eating tags and such, but Donncha has the centralized info on how to fix things. You should upgrade WP-Cache to version 2.0.22 as well.
Weblog Tools Collection points to Circle Six’s DiggProof your Wordpress which is really about optimizing and tweaking your MySql database for WordPress.
links for 2007-01-23
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The Neil Young Set Lists site, Sugar Mountain run by Tom H., has moved (thanks, Neil Young News)
1/22/2007
WordPress 2.1
Via WordPress’ dashboard I see that WordPress 2.1 is out.
On behalf of the WordPress.org community of commiters, contributers, and volunteers, I’m very proud to announce the immediate availability of WordPress 2.1 “Ella”, named for jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald. [more including listing 19 big new features and over 550 bug fixes]
I only have one question, what’s a “commiter?” Are am you me us one?
[Later:] Yeah, that’s immature and snarky. Unless commiter is someone who commits changes to the the code? I dunno… [Immature and snarky stuff deleted because it was, well, immature and snarky.]
[Later later later:] OK, that makes sense. Thanks, Scott.
Anyway, one blog updated without (apparent) breakage. Thus far.
OK, I did hose my Ultimate Tag Warrior tags, but that wasn’t Christine’s fault. I did that meself, to meself. Oops. And they aren’t important enough (IMO) to me to resurrect them from the backup.
Whoops! Wrong plugin. It seems I was using Andrew Grant’s Keyword Tags so the keywords automagically reappeared.
[Later later:] The various admin pages, most especially the ‘Dashboard’, seem much, much faster to load.