The Stuff

In 347 years the earth is going to fall into the sun, and unless you have a time machine, you can’t prove me wrong.

Hey! Time for a new song, I think. The new Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars and is taking photos.

NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars Sunday, May 25th, to begin three months of examining an arctic site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander’s robotic arm. Check today’s story for details of the landing and first pictures beamed back from the landing site.

“So called chosen, frozen.” What do you know, the songs already been written, and by Public Enemy! Maybe Chuck wasn’t taking about water. Hmmm…. oopsie!

Of course my album is still free and available for you to download. It’s about probes, satellites and rovers.

I suppose String Theory and M Theory is pretty boring stuff for most people, but I find it amusing. Right before I fall asleep I watch this stuff — it gives me some wicked dreams. Here’s some videos for you.

String Theory 101:

BBC Horizon’s Super-String Theory M-Theory Origin of the Univers

BBC Horizon’s Super-String Theory M-Theory Origin of the Univers

Spring is Aurora Season.

Gamma Ray burst visible to naked eye. Gamma Ray bursts won’t turn you into the Hulk, but they could wipe out your entire solar system with a single blast. Luckily we don’t live close enough to a super-massive star ready to collapse.

New Solar Cycle, olde Sunspots.

Crafty tricks for finding water on the moon. Just in case you’re hiking on the moon and forgot your canteen.

Update:
A photo of the sunset on Mars.

Will the Martian rovers be shut down? Maybe not!

I made a video for the song Hubble from the Secret Lives of Probes, Satellites and Rovers. Enjoy.

The new and final season of Battlestar Galactica starts in about a month. If you’ve never seen an episode or if you have memory issues, here’s the official summary of the previous seasons in 8 minutes. Even if you have seen every episode, the summary in entertaining.

Paper without corners. Ha!

Sorry about the blob — Word Press does not play nice with the Safari web browser!

It’s Day 24 of the RPM Challenge — just 5 to go. 6 out of 10 tracks are partially recorded, and 4 are just concepts so far. 4 long nights ahead. :-<24 days ago I planned on recording 10 semi-idiotic pop songs, but after a 2 week gout attack, about 60 hours of OT at work, writers block and winter blues all I had by the third week were song titles and some lyrics. I started to panic — but I hate to fail. Around day 21 I was ready to drop kick my DR 880 — I used to be pretty good building loops with BOSS drum machines, but something wasn’t clicking. I lost the funk. I put the 880 aside and plugged in the Electribe and started fooling around. Fairly quickly, I came up with some really strange sounds, and I thought: I can use this; forget pop-songs, I’m going to make an epic ten-part space Opus — Neil de Grasse Tyson Drops Acid and Buys a Casio. There’s been plenty of challenges. First, I don’t have anything like Pro-Tools, just Garage Band. I have a Cubase disk that came with by PreSonus Firebox, but that wouldn’t install. My PC is kind of old, and lacks firewire ports, otherwise, I would have used that instead of my Mac. The Mac is a real bear to work with — every now and then either the OS or Garage Band throws a hearing-shatter POP sound and the speakers go dead. Lots of reboots. Quicktime let me resample wav files, which was nice, because I couldn’t find a way to do that with Garage Band or Audacity (boy do I miss Sound Forge). My KORG Electribe MX (the blue one) is incredible — it sounds great, and I can make great sounds with it, and its pre amp is powerful, so no problems recording with it. My Bass Pod — oi vey — I couldn’t get loud enough volumes out of it to record, probably due to my own ignorance. No matter, the Guitar Pod works fine, and I am a fan of MCA and Dave Ween’s distorted bass sound, so I’m okay with that. My BOSS DR 880 — again problems — this time, probably my own ignorance or oversight, but I couldn’t get the volumes out of it that I could get from my KORG — two different machines, with different purposes, but a real pain in the neck when using both on the same track. The biggest obstacle is trying to record the text to speech reader on the Mac (which is really sweet, btw, so I want to use it) — I get the horrible feeling that I’m going to have to record the Mac with my PC and then copy the resulting files over. A sense a trip to Radio Shack for some cables. I also need to use the Women Take Back the Noise boxes set as an instrument — don’t ask if you don’t know. This will be a Milkshake Daddy album, but no funk, talk show samples or me trying to sing like George Clinton. That said, the music is still stoner-friendly, and I’d like to thank Funkadelic, Hawkwind, Coil, NASA, John Zorn, JAXA, Soulburn and Laika for inspiration. The lineup is on my RPM page, but obviously: the Milkshake Daddy programming and guitar, me Dan Century programming and production and Platinum Destruction on bass (the KLF is right — don’t use live bass; program instead).Anyway, here’s what you have to look forward to on the 29th:Tentative album title: Secret Lives of Probes and Satellites1) Track 1: 0-30.3 (To Serve Man)2) Track 2: 30.3 - 87.2 (Voyager 1 & 2)3) Track 3: 122.3 - 235.2 (USA 193)4) Track 4: 242 - 283.4 (Skylab)5) Track 5: 283.4 - 400 (Kaguya)6) Track 6: 401 - 452 (Satcom 1)7) Track 7: X-X (Aura)8) Track 8: X-X (Hubble)9) Track 9: X-X (Sputnik 1)10) Track 10: X-X (Sputnik 2)

Tiki: Tiki nostalgia is alive and well on blogs like Swank Blather. Viva Polynesia!

Cryptozoology: Mental Floss (publisher of fun fact books and a magazine) has a list of 9 things that might kill you (if they actually exist). Do mind the Mongolian Death Worms.

Music: my friend Pat is crazy for the band Slim Cessna’s Auto Club. You can download 3 of their songs for free on the Alternative Tentacles web site.

Art: 3 Types of Unusually Legal Urban Street Art: colored manhole covers in Japan, murals on traffic signal switch boxes and light post sculptures.

Science: Quirks and Quarks is a CBC Radio podcast about all things scientific in nature.

Autos: There’s an air freshener in every junk car. Have you have seen Repo Man?

Comic books: The Justice League: New Frontier movie looks promising.

Science Fiction: Watch the the Turkish version of Star Wars on Google video. It can’t be be much worse then the Star Wars Holiday Special.

WOW: The Mr. T and William Shatner World of Warcraft commercials are awesome! (Disclaimer: I’ve never played the game.)

Vans from Japan: Tiny versions of classic American vans made in Japan.

Space: Gorgeous space photos from the Hubble telescope.

Comedy, Caucasians: Conan O’Brien and Jim Gaffigan are the Pale Force! Conan and Jim visit Little Canada.

Gaming: The fugliest video game boxes of the year.

Mark your calendar! Take a Sharpie marker and mark it — from the night of Thursday the 13th to the morning of Friday the 14th you will be able to see the Geminid meteors. All you have to lose is a little sleep.

“It’s the Geminid meteor shower,” says NASA astronomer Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center. “Start watching on Thursday evening, Dec. 13th, around 10 pm local time,” he advises. “At first you might not see very many meteors—but be patient. The show really heats up after midnight and by dawn on Friday, Dec. 14th, there could be dozens of bright meteors per hour streaking across the sky.”

More info from the folks at NASA.

JAXA (sounds like some XML module for Java) is Japan’s version of NASA. JAXA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, has released some exciting Earth rise photos taken by their Kaguya (Selene) moon orbiting exploration satellite dealie.

There’s also high-def images and video of the moon. Very cool.

With other countries like Russia, China and India interested in going to the moon (they’re all after the Tritium), and the U.S.A. spending our money on war, the U.S.A might lose the space race. These photos are evidence that we are slipping.