Random Thoughts
At Ventura Harbor
Docking a boat is not the easiest thing in the world. It gets harder when you have to contend with a sea lion taking up of the dock. Part of the dock space we were assigned today at Ventura Harbor (where we had sailed for dinner) was occupied with a rather large sea lion, who completely ignored us until I tried to get a bit too close to him (I had wanted to run a line to the cleat behind him). Luckily he was at the end of the dock, so it wasn't too big an issue. He was gone by the time we got back from the restaurant.
Station Wildfire
I drove up to the JPL area late tonight to get some photographs of the Station Wildfire. While JPL appears to be out of immediate danger, Mt. Wilson is supposedly only getting into danger as of now. Hopefully it'll be spared. Here are a few of the photographs. The flames really aren't quite this bright - this is several seconds of exposure time.
New Old Photographs
I've finally finished looking through my photographs for the last several years and creating entries for all my photography trips. There's also several new posts for December and January for my trip to New York. Because the old photos are backdated, here's a list of them:
- 2003
- 2005
- 2006
- 2007
- California
- Lilac Festival
- Watkins Glen
- Adirondacks
- July 4th Fireworks in NYC
- Trip Across US
- Day 1: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan
- Day 3: Michigan, Illinois, and Iowa
- Day 4: Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado
- Day 5: Rocky Mountain National Park
- Day 6: Rocky Mountains to the Desert (including Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park)
- Day 7: Mesa Verde National Park
- Day 7: Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah
- Day 8: Zion National Park
- Day 9:Utah, Nevada, and California
- Sequoia National Park
- 2008
Site Upgrade
Over a year after Drupal 6 came out, I've finally upgraded. All of the modules I had been using are now upgraded and while I'm still working out some of the bugs, everything is hopefully working. Now I can get back to posting new content.
AAS January 2009
Every January, the American Astronomical Society organizes a conference for all astronomy-related activities. It's considered the biggest and broadest astronomical conference around. Being in Long Beach this year, I spent 4 days there listening to talks and helping man the LISA booth.
The AAS meetings are primarily based on research posters, although some people are invited to give oral talks as well. Along with the posters are a large number of booths from missions, contractors, and publishers. Among these was the new LISA booth that I helped design and a full-size replica of the LISA spacecraft. We had one of the best mission booths there, and the laser pointers we gave out were some of the best giveaways (possibly eclipsed only by SIM's flash drives). I've posted some of my photographs of the exhibits.
