Thoughts being thought

So the bandwidth is at work again, streaming the live (in 43 mins) commencement of the lunar landing. I’m having a ball at work with the guys – a very partisan crowd either for or against the moon landings. A thought occured to me during preparation for the WWW conference (which came and went this weekend) that perhaps as a generation we’re just no longer familiar with good ol’ science and technology. Personally, whether right or wrong, I’d like to believe that the landing is in fact being commemorated now, rather than being re-fictionalised. Seems like at least 30% of South Africans disagree with me, but I just can’t believe it.

Discovered that an F2 race driver, none other than John Surtees’ son died of accident injuries after the race at Brands Hatch yesterday. Discussions will of course start about the safety of motor racing, but having been watching F1 for 10 years, this isn’t an everyday occurence. It’s tragic, and it was quite disturbing watching him climb from the car via youtube, knowing that hours later he was dead, but accidents are accidents – wheel-tethers or not. Yeah. Depressing.

Work continues to keep me busy. Our weekend conference in Hermanus was a great affair – good content, good fun and good fun. Eventually found ourselves doof-doofing in a club in Hermanus and felt VERY young again: The lengths one goes to, to fratenise with one’s staff! Today saw some great discussions around our upcoming RAMP Fun Event – The Apprentice, and I think we’ll get down to recording all our media tomorrow. It’s next Friday afternoon, and I’m planning on redeeming my role with flair!

Last but not least, it’s Jan’s birthday this Thursday. I’m taking a bit of leave, planning a bit of spoil, and I hope she has a great day. Happy Birthday to you!

Spacetime Continuum

Launch attempt 6. Record held by two other missions which left on attempt 7. Pretty sure they’re not going for records at this point. Definitely feels a little like dejavu since Monday. I’m trying to complete several presentations for Friday’s White Wall Web (Back to the Future themed) conference, but uh… well,  Rome wasn’t built in a day… (which is about all I’ve got left…)

For those interested, @astro_127 is tweeting from this mission, and will continue to tweet from orbit. Also confirming my space-week having started watching Battlestar Galactica last night (wrestled it off for presentations…). I couldn’t help noticing distinct similarities to the Wing Commander games – the sweet smell of childhood a fitting accompaniment to my homemade icecream.

Updated: Funny thing. Several work guys all appeared on MSN and we sat watching the launch. Guess that firms up the “geek” classification…

Head over to NASA for more STS-127 information.

We choose the moon

I feel like I’m having a space-week. A few days from now, the world will celebrate the Apollo 11 Moon Landing – the famous “Giant Leap <space-induced-static-fluff> for Mankind“. Whether you’re a conspiracy theorist or not (and this surely goes down to what you choose to believe!), this re-enactment site should be of interest: http://www.wechoosethemoon.org.

Not only is it well executed, but this surely takes the web to a new level of interest – almost time-machine qualities…

Plan is to re-release all the radio, video and related media at the right time to completely replicate the history. Follow the radio on twitter, get the desktop widget and enjoy history in the re-making.

Late night stuff

It’s nearly way past midnight, and I’m sitting wasting bandwidth watching NASA TV because something in me (probably the geek DNA) convinces me that watching a shuttle launch is worth it. I guess I do have an affinity to this stuff, having kept up an interest since being a junior. Little-known fact is that I tried to enroll to an astronaut training program while at university, along with various other pilot scholarships etc. NASA declined on account of my citizenry, which felt a little like a snub – it being the International Space Station and all.

Bygones. Having been following @Astro_127 (Astronaut Mark Polansky) for a few weeks, I’m now completely emotionally invested. I’ve been up and down the roller-coaster of preparations and cancelled launches… so I do hope it launches tonight. Attempt #5 I think.

Other news – it’s a heavy week as we prepare for the White Wall Web Mid-Year Conference this Friday. We’re out in Hermanus, and it should be a fun day. I’m also trying to readjust my life to accomodate cycling training, having madly accepted a challenge to do the Double Century (2 x 100… yes. 200+ kms) ride in November. Time to get a road bike…?

Updated: What lark. Launch aborted with 10 mins to go. I’ll try not to dwell on the vast proportion of my bandwidth cap which has just been abandoned. On the upside, I did have plenty of time to research my odds of contracting the H1N1 now-pandemic. Not too worried at this juncture. Just tired.

Bad parking

My co-conspirator @timmyprice recently pondered how many great business ideas got shelved because The Ultimate Domain was parked. This was sadly not a random and hypothetical thought, but one established by our joint sub-consciousness over the last few days as he and I have struggled to find anything particularly compelling which wasn’t already defaced by some inarticulate, search-aggregating page-o-nonsense.

“Parked”… they read. Translated: “Hoarded”, and probably ultimately wasted.

OK. So we can’t get the domains we want. Bad luck I guess. However I’ve been entertained nevertheless inventing new words (the logical way around parked domains). Some of the sites I’ve been playing with are here – simply because they’re interesting. To me.

• Write Express (Free online naming tool… useful for rhymes and word-joins etc.)
• Morewords (Lists of words starting, ending, containing etc.)
• Dot-o-mator (Higher-grade word joining with domain lookups)

But don’t get your hopes up. ALL the cool word concoctions in the world appear to be parked. Fun seems to be the best currency in this game.

In the extremely unlikely case that you didn’t find any of that interesting, you might be needing some perspective. I can suggest a very interesting perspectivator (see… look what’s happened to me!) – peruse yourself over to the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs – especially some of the Greatest Hits posts. Genius wit. Uncensored. Now disclaimed.

Update: Found this about an hour after I wrote this happy little rant: http://www.stopdomainparking.org/

Emerging from an upgrade

The procrastination has been defeated! Here is a new version of WordPress, a new theme, a new integration to flickr, some other integration to twitter, a new blogger and a new day. Geewhizwow. Let’s hope some folk actually come and read this blog!

If everything works as advertised, there should be a handful of pictures up there – a few glimpses of June. Notably, my fatherhood was celebrated again, and I enjoyed some Noel-Time. Much appreciated. Since it is obscenely late/early, I will be retiring now.