Breaking News & Random Musings on Space, Technology, Sci-Fi & the View From A Writer’s Window
My life this week. Let's see what manner of words I have written, shall we?
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Yes, yes, the formatting is a mess. This is a straight Word-to-ePub conversion. All the prettifying comes later.
Astronaut Don Petit is back on Earth now, but while he was on the ISS, he took thousands of incredible pictures and videos from orbit, and many of them are only now being catalogued and shared. Visit his X feed regularly to see a constant stream of beautiful images.
In his words: “High resolution star trail from the SpaceX Crew 9 Dragon, marked by a fleet of flashing Starlink satellites, glowing atmosphere, soon to rise sun, and arcing stars. Captured over the Pacific Ocean with Nikon Z9, Sigma 14mm f1.4 lens, effective 24 minute exposure compiled from individual 30 second frames, f1.4, ISO 1600.”
Last year, we were finishing the house and getting ready to move and moving, and we missed a lot of the summer. This year, we are making up for lost time!
Last weekend, we went to see Mumford & Sons at The Gorge Amphitheatre in George, WA. 2 hours west of Spokane, 2.5 hours east of Seattle, it's in the middle of absolute nowhere - that happens to be on a ridge above the beautiful Columbia River.
The comparison to Red Rocks Park (in Colorado) is immediate and deserved. Is it a better or worse venue than Red Rocks? Oh, why judge! The important thing is, I used to get to go to concerts at Red Rocks, and now I get to go to concerts at The Gorge!
It bills itself as having the most beautiful sunsets of any concert venue in the world, and THAT may well be true, for the sunset was indeed breathtaking (the clouds cleared enough in time to be an accent rather than a hindrance).
Oh, right, the concert itself. Incredible. Easily Top 5 of shows I've seen, and I've seen *a lot* of shows. 9 band members, with a full horn section, an upright bass, and of course the omnipresent fiddle, and their sound was as crisp, clear and in sync as a studio recording. In person, they sounded better than their released live albums.
But let's be honest. While the show would've been a shadow of itself without the ensemble, Marcus Mumford is the indisputable star. He has a strongly charismatic stage presence that I wasn't expecting, and a perfect voice.
10/10, would recommend.*
*Except the exfiltration system. It was a disaster. Never build a venue that can hold 30,000 people at the end of a 3-mile 2-lane road.
It being summer, some friends took us rafting down the Spokane River this weekend! It was hot and sunny, and the water was cool and delightful (yes, we spent almost as much time swimming as we did rafting).
Since this was our first time, we used a cheap little raft we named “Rubber Ducky.” But we enjoyed ourselves enough that we’re thinking of upgrading to 2-person kayak, which is much, much more maneuverable.
I'm honestly not sure where the consensus has formed on this, but I *really* enjoyed Murderbot!
I was concerned about the slapstick, over-the-top comedic feel of the trailer, and yes, to some extent the humor was over the top (and definitely beyond the books). But I laughed A LOT while watching the show (and I'm not typically easily amused). Sometimes, that's enough. Not every show has to be "Capital M" Meaningful. It can just be fun.
Just an appreciation post for my new(ish) hometown, Coeur d’Alene. I’m so happy to have moved to a place this beautiful, where every Sunday brunch looks like this.*
*Okay, every Sunday 6 months out of the year; the other 6 months it's too cold for the patio.
Ace astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy captured a banger of a photo of the ISS against the sun recently (see it here). Now he’s released an incredible bonus shot from the session. This is one hell of an optical illusion!
P.S.: The title of this post is a reference to a quirky but excellent 2007 movie, “Sunshine,” about a team of astronauts sent on a mission to reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb.
The first trailer for the PROJECT HAIL MARY movie has dropped (and the official movie poster)! It's a surprisingly fullsome trailer, while also being mostly setup for the actual story.
I absolutely loved this book. The odds of any Hollywood adaptation of a scifi IP being worthy of the book are always low, but they managed to do it with The Martian, by the same author (Andy Weir). Accordingly, I'm optimistic! What do you all think?
SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK:
It’ll all come down to whether the movie nails Rocky. Gosling’s character may be the POV and main character, but Rocky is the star of the book.
See the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m08TxIsFTRI
Who's watching Foundation? Talk to me about it.
I bounced off of Season 1 HARD due to its radical departure from the books. I was greatly offended. Now, normally I try to be somewhat forgiving when Hollywood strays from the source material, because I understand that books and TV/movies are different storytelling mediums, with different strengths. But this was FOUNDATION, the series that made sci-fi my book (and ultimately writing) genre of choice, way back when I was a teenager. It was beloved, and it felt like Hollywood took the name and some characters and did whatever TF they wanted to with it.
BUT, Season 2 was well received and popular. And now the Season 3 trailer looks, frankly, fantastic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C53xEOdxz70). And I'm wondering if maybe I should just get over myself and enjoy some cool sci-fi visual entertainment.
Yay or nay?
* whistles right on past 140K words and keeps going *
I guess this is what happens when I leave most of the characters to their own devices for 3 years....
This stunning visual was created by NASA, the Curiosity rover, and photographer Damia Bouic.
The Sun appears slightly smaller from Mars than from Earth, since Mars is 50% further from the Sun than Earth. More striking, perhaps, is that the Martian sunset is noticeably bluer near the Sun than the typically orange colors near the setting Sun from Earth. The reason for the blue hues from Mars is not fully understood, but thought to be related to forward scattering properties of Martian dust.
The terrestrial sunset was taken in 2012 March from Marseille, France, while the Martian sunset was captured in 2015 by NASA's robotic Curiosity rover from Gale crater on Mars.
"This is how the singularity goes: wonders become routine, and then table stakes."
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT), has shared a blog post in which he declares that we are already shooting up the exponential curve of the technological singularity, even if we don't realize it yet. That we're within shouting distance of ASI (artificial superintelligence).
I'm sure some of this is hyperbole and puffery. Altman is a bit of a showman, and it's his job to pimp his company's product. But I also suspect there's more than a little truth to it, if only because he knows he can't be wildly throwing out such claims if he can't back them up.
It's a lovely, poetic little post. We'll see what tomorrow, next month and next year bring. It'll probably be interesting.
I had a booth at Lilac City Comicon in Spokane for the first time this weekend. Doing a “hometown” convention was so nice! I got to sleep in my own bed at night, and I knew where everything was, and I didn’t have to worry about forgetting anything. The Spokane Convention Center is a lovely venue, and I had a terrific time with my booth-mate and BFF, Katie Cross.
On Thursday, Elon Musk shared SpaceX's plans for Mars over the next 8 years (and a permanent moon base, since it's on the way ) - and beyond, to make humanity a multiplanetary species.
It is ambitious, perhaps even audacious. But the suite of technologies Elon has built are, it turns out, all positioned to make this a reality. Rockets, robots, autonomous and hardy vehicles, tunnel diggers, a space-based communications system, battery packs, cutting-edge astronaut suits...it's almost like he had a plan all along.
There will be challenges and setbacks along the way, but I am so here for this.
- First Starship to Mars planned for 2026
- Enlarging future generations of Starship
- Mars settlement in 2030s
- Robotic + human labor used
- Moon Base in planning
- 100s of Mars landings
Here’s the link to the entire presentation, if you'd like to watch it: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1928185351933239641
One of the tools us indie authors use to help in marketing has added a reverse lookup feature. You input a book's Amazon ASIN number, and it tells you what searches the book ranks highest in.
For fun and research, I input Starshine. One of its highest searches?
“wild heroine space opera romance”
They've got Alex's number good, lol.
THERE. Now it’s a first draft!
Midjourney certainly has come a long way in 2.5 years! The first image is a render I did this week - my first one attempting two characters in the same image. The second image is the very first Midjourney render of Alex (back in Aug 2022).
The main feature that isn't there yet is the ability to really fine-tune images once they've been created. MJ and several of the other image generators do have editing capabilities now, but they tend to alter the overall image as they edit, and the quality degrades.
I need to be able to tell it, "now lighten her skin tone a bit, as she should be kind of pale." Then "fix the gadget on his wrist and remove the object that's in front of her forearm." Then maybe "lessen the muscles in his arms just a lttle; he's not a gym rat. ;)"
But, you know, damn.
I am obsessed with this grainy image snapped by Percy on Mars. It’s quiet and contemplative, haunting and lonely, yet stirring to life the string that tugs at your soul and whispers of your connection to a vast cosmos.
From the Perseverance X account: “That bright "star" is actually Mars' moon Deimos. In the hours before dawn, I snapped this long-exposure image with my left Navcam and caught Deimos as well as two stars from the constellation Leo in the sky. It's definitely a mood, as they say.”
Original post here.
If any of you are gamers, you may be aware that a game called “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” has taken the world by storm this last month. It came out of nowhere from an indie studio, Sandfall, employing only 30 or so developers, to drop AAA studio quality graphics, gameplay and story.
So obviously, not wanting to miss “the moment,” I had to play it. Here are my brief, off-the-cuff thoughts:
My opinion only, but I've got to go against the weight of public sentiment here. Clair Obscur is a unique, original story and world with gorgeous art and music...that is ultimately too clever by half.
The big story twist pulls the rug out from under all the emotional investment of the first 3/4 of the game, and the ending that arguably rewards that emotional investment is cast as the "bad" ending. Also, the combat gets very repetitive, but that's largely the nature of JRPGs and a small quibble against the story issues.
I LOVE that a small studio could craft such a beautiful, complex game with many interesting features and mechanics. All the props to Sandfall, and the AAA studios can learn a lot from them. But after engaging me for many hours, the story left me feeling empty and a touch annoyed.
What a remarkably clear, crisp image by JunoCam. It was taken on Jan. 28th, during its 69th flyby of Jupiter. Cassini will always (probably) be my favorite, but Juno has delivered some truly incredible images.
You can download it in high resolution here.
