I have moved into my new house!
It's bountiful, the dogs are happy, and I have a great office now.
Full speed ahead! :D
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I have moved into my new house!
It's bountiful, the dogs are happy, and I have a great office now.
Full speed ahead! :D
Congratulations!
We moved into a new house back in April, and we've planted an herb garden, a bougainvillea, some birds of paradise, a couple of hibiscus, a Japanese maple, citronella, lavender, and a bunch of other stuff. The whole backyard is beginning to take shape. :-)
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The company I keep...;)
Have been walking a lot. Today we went out rather late this afternoon, to avoid the heat & humidity, and I was a little skeptical about the dark clouds gathered overhead. Until, on our way back home, in a wedge of horizon under that undulating grey cloud, the sky just illuminated in lemon yellow and peach. It was so pretty!
It was definitely a you-had-to-be-there moment; I took a picture of it, but the camera never does sunsets justice.
That sounds beautiful...
This morning BBC TV is focussing on the contribution that the Jodrell Bank radio telescope made to the Apollo 11 mission. Actually I find all the nostalgic use of superlatives at this time somewhat boring. I was 24 in 1969 and probably too busy getting on with my own life to be that concerned about anyone else landing on the moon. Certainly I have no memories of the occasion and can never even remember in which year it happened. Fifty years on all that the anniversary raises in me is a desire to watch again The Dish, the top ranking Australian film of 2000 about their radio telescopes assisting that NASA mission. It is in typical Australian style a very amusing tongue in cheek portrayal that only partially reflects the true events, so brings it all very much down to earth. All I can say about this anniversary carnival is God bless Australia!
There's another myth that everyone remembers where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had been killed. Er, remind me please - which year was that? Sorry, I'm British. Now the Queen's coronation, that's different. Yes, I remember watching that live on TV with that fairy tale coach and all those horses and hearing the stirring chorus "Vivat Regina" and the respectfully hushed commentary by Richard Dimbleby. Of course I also know about the Queen's Beasts, replicas of which are now in Kew Gardens. In comparison Apollo 11 is just a good story to me although Apollo 13 is a far better one.
P.S.
Oh no! I just heard a distorted voice on the TV saying "It's one small step for man ..." so I turned it off before he finished whatever he was going to say.
There was a programme on radio four about it yesterday while I was driving, made me think of the discussion about 'elsewhen' I was having in another thread after you used 'elsewhere' in a temporal context. We talk about sunlight and moonlight, but the moon was eclipsing the sun and one of them was saying "The earthshine is bright enough to read by", not earthlight. You have done it again, can you really say the Australians brought the mission 'Down to earth' ? :)
Right with you on Kennedy and the coronation. Remember they gave us all a book? There was Hancock's line, "They gave us all a book and a bar of soap, still got that". In terms of mythologies The one I liked was that when he said that about 'One small step ...' he was actually still on the ladder talking about the step he was about to take and the first words actually on the moon were "It's kinda soft and mushy and I can kick it about a bit." . I have watched recordings of that a few times, never heard that phrase, but the thing is so obviously edited as well it is hard to tell if he is actually on the moon, so I don't know which were the real 'first words on the moon'. The latter one sounds much more human and likely though.
Yes "earthshine" does seem to be a strange word to be used in that context by anyone from a nation that wouldn't consider moonshine to be an aid to reading, quite the opposite in fact as I understand that it can ruin one's vision if drunk in any quantity.Quote:
Originally Posted by Olly Buckle
You need to watch the film to understand the relevance of my remark about "down to earth", but I don't want to provide a spoiler by explaining it here.
At lunchtime the BBC redeemed themselves by reporting from the Parkes radio telescope site in Australia that featured in The Dish.
The Australia Telescope National Facility actually has a webpage on the subject.
"The Dish": Fact versus Fiction — a quick comparison
How did my day go yesterday? Well, I experienced a backup flash drive failure 2 days or so ago and have lost many of my critical files. Thank God not most of my poetry and writing from what I can tell. I had dumped what I can tell all of those onto my hard drive which backs up onto the cloud all day, but had files on that flash drive that I hadn't put on my new laptop because of a concern for space on my smaller hard drive. Stupid. I'm not usually that sloppy, but of course it only takes that one time and invariably the unthinkable happens just when you get sloppy. So anxiety levels are peak. I won't really know everything I am missing until I go looking for it and it's not there. I have many of my essential older files on other flash drives and my laptop, but it's the newer ones that I am missing. That and long extension file names of photographs. Those have been disappearing that I hadn't noticed over the past years and they were on that flash drive. Eh, enough. I think you guys can get the picture.
So my day yesterday? Trying to figure out what files are gone and calling people to get copies of lost documents......... This will take a while......