Hobbies

Having a yard of our own for the first time in years, we’ve decided to try our hands at a vegetable garden this year. The past two weekends have been wonderfully productive in preparing the garden plot and planting the first seeds (indoors and out).

What originally was a large pile of sticks and brush has been cleared out and cut back. Some of the leaves from last fall were left to compost over the area. We spread the compost over the whole area to be tilled.

We rented a tiller from Home Depot, and after some trial and error got the whole plot turned over.
    

Sunday started off with building a fence to keep out our friendly neighborhood munchers.

And ended with the planting of tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, and habaneros to sprout indoors. After they sprout and after May 15 (our official final frost date here), they’ll be relocated outside.

This weekend included plotting out where everything will go in the garden, digging the rows and paths, and finally planting the lettuce, spinach, and peas.
Fortunately there was a little something to inspire me on Saturday morning. After only 5.5 days, we had sprouts!

After a full 7 days, nearly all the tomato cells have sprouted. The hot peppers are quite small, but we can see them coming. Still nothing to be seen of the bell peppers. To help balance the heat/light that they’ve seen, we turned the tray around and have added a light (not a grow light, but a regular CFL) to add just a bit of warmth to the hot peppers. We want to ensure they get a good start!!

I don’t have many lifelong goals or a ‘must do before I die’ list. Upon learning that NASA’s shuttle program would be coming to an end, though, I had decided seeing a launch would be something I’d really like to see. If it could work out. Unfortunately there were no launches scheduled for the time we knew we’d be in Florida.
Fortunately those launch dates change and get pushed back frequently. This good fortune pushed the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-131 right into our vacation– and what a great way to start off the week!

Having read numerous sites on viewing, I followed the advice of one in particular on Launch Photography that had great information on locations and taking photos of the launch. With their advice, we ended up leaving the house at 2am to drive just over an hour out to Titusville. Arriving about 3 hours before launch, there were plenty of people already set up. We checked out Space View Park, but found it to be even more crowded. After (standing in line for 20-30 minutes and) using the facilities, we decided to walk South along the road and river to see where we could find a place to set up. We didn’t have to go too far: we were able to find a reasonably clear view behind a hotel just down the road. There was a tent set up and some beach chairs on the slope down to the water, but sitting on our blanket a few feet behind them we were able to see Launch Pad 39 just fine.

Other folks were coming in and setting up back in this nice grassy area as well. Everyone seemed to be leaving a comfortable 3ft or so between groups. Except the family that decided to post themselves in an ‘L’ shape to the left and behind us. Suddenly our little group of 2, laying on a blanket and looking at the stars seemed to be a group of 11, complete with 2 kids who were not dressed warm enough for a 4am Florida morning in April. They did a reasonable job of keeping the kids from infringing on our personal space, although it would have been much easier had they just set up a little away from us- there was still plenty of room available and it wasn’t clear why they had decided to surround us.

My mom had sent me a note that she’d seen on SpaceWeather.com that the ISS would be passing over the launch pad 15 minutes before launch. It would be passing by the moon, which made it easy to find. I pointed it out to J and to the rest of ‘our’ group and, after explaining what it was in more detail than I would expect necessary when one is there to see a shuttle launch, was able to capture this photo of it passing over the launch pad. I was actually amazed when I finally got to process it on my computer because from the camera’s display, I didn’t think I had been able to capture it in the sky. It just proves one point from a photography seminar I attended: don’t delete too often based on the camera’s display; it’s not nearly as fine a resolution as you will see on your computer.  Incidentally, if you cannot see the streak in the upper left of the photo (right), click on it to go to Flickr and see the Large or Original sizes where you may get a clearer picture.

A few minutes later, dawn was lighting the sky, but not nearly as much as what was to come! It was absolutely amazing how brilliantly the launch lit up the sky: it was like watching a life-size timelapse of Sunrise.

The shot below left has had the amber tones cut back. Those on the right above and below are more true to the actual colors seen at the launch.

After all was over, the clouds (contrails?) left from the rocket boosters that had been jettisoned made an interesting pattern in the sky that was enhanced by the rising sun’s rays: a pink heart.

You can check out the few other photos posted over at Flickr, I believe there may be a hidden Mickey, compliments of lens flare, on one of them.

Given a second chance to see a launch (not likely as there are only 3 left now, the next is coming up in less than a month!), I would be sure to have a filter on my camera to take some of the initial brightness down a notch. I’d also have a better idea of where in the sky everything would end up, so would set my video camera up accordingly (it’s just a little pocket camera, so I couldn’t adjust the zoom once it was started and had to pan several times and did not allow enough room where the gorillapod was attached for it to pan properly).

It may not have been a ‘must see before I die’ type of goal, but I am so glad I fulfilled it. This was one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen.

I haven’t read the latest on VoIP on the iPhone, but last I checked, it still wasn’t ‘allowed’. Perhaps this was just GoogleVoice & the news surrounding it. From the reviews, I’m not the first to notice this, but can confirm that as of 28 Dec 2009 (11 am CST), this worked, and I wasn’t in Airplane mode, either.

Today I found myself able to use WiFi to make a call over an hour long, completely free, with my iPhone. I’d downloaded the Vonage Mobile app while in Greece in an attempt to make a call without using international minutes, but alas, could not set it up without sending/receiving a call in the first place.

Over the holidays I’ve been in a low AT&T network area, but with wifi. That low network signal drops to no network signal when in the basement where I was working. I checked the Vonage app (now properly set up and with the initial $1.00 credit they gave me) for rates on US calls and found: $0.00 to land lines, $0.00 to mobiles. Interesting.

I made a 25 minute 800- call with no change in my balance (it gave me a low balance warning at the end of my call, but I see it is still at $1.00). I then talked for an hour to a US-mobile number, which reduced my balance to… $1.00.

Not sure if this is in error or if it’s a gift from Vonage to make up for the silliness of needing a separate account for the iPhone and/or an additional charge for softphones, but it worked for me. I’ll be interested to hear if it works for anyone else.

Most of the time this won’t matter for me anyway. I rarely use the voice aspect of my iPhone, wish that I could get it with a data plan only, and have so many rollover minutes that they are now expiring from 12 months ago. Still- for anyone whose minutes are running short and who would like to give free wifi a try while it lasts, check out Vonage Mobile.

Well, not really, but I like cool stuff and Apple joined the music recommendation party with a fun little favor. A while back they started recommending songs in the music store that somehow ‘went’ with other songs that you had in your shopping cart. Now with Genius playlists, they recommend straight out of your own library. THANK YOU! I used to enjoy spending lots of time working out the perfect mix tape or CD, but just haven’t found the time for it in recent years. I always mean to and lament my shoddy playlists that I scrounge together quickly.
I tested this out last night using Regina Spektor’s “Us” as my initial song. It served up a great list with Beck, Arcade Fire, The Flaming Lips, Joshua Radin, Damien Rice, Modest Mouse, Band of Horses…
I suppose I’ll have to test it out when I’m in a different mood and see how well it does for that one. But for now I’m pleased.

For my second playlist (that I’m sure wouldn’t be terribly different from the first), I decided to try Feist’s “1234″ since it was one featured in one of Apple’s own commercials. I ended up with this:

Genius is unavailable for this song

I think maybe the Genius cloud was down because it gave me the same error for several tries at songs. I just thought it was pretty funny that the first one I saw was for one of Apple’s own.

Of course they also give recommendations from the store of tracks that will ‘complete’ your library (I’m sure it would never really be complete), but as I rarely listen to music radio (Last.fm if I have some time that I’m not at work as they block ‘Dating and Relationships’ sites there), this may bring some new music and artists to me that I wouldn’t otherwise discover.

It’ll be pretty awesome when I pull a Genius list and it starts recommending Chemtail… first in my list, then in the store sidebar…

Ho!!!!! I just picked up the Big Four! I’ve never gotten that before! Signs of things to come? I hope so!

Lifehacker

Remember The Milk

Jott (awesome!)

Tumblr

Hoping this will be a better solution to my thought processes resulting in a more-frequently updated online presence. We’ll see.

This has been a fine and relaxing long weekend.

Saturday I went out Geocaching for the first time in a few years. Agnes came with me and, using the new GPS (thanks Tim!), we were able to find 6 caches in 3 hours. To regular cachers, I’m sure this does not sound like much, but my previous attempts (with a much older and less accurate GPS) topped out at the reciprocal of that.

On Sunday, aside from getting a few things done around the house, the evening brought a Chemtrail show in Manhattan. I’m not sure if its the added adrenaline from being in the city and away from their home locations in Asbury Park, but the band was in top form and played wonderfully. They admitted to a couple of mistakes, but overall were quite pleased with their own performance. In addition, the sound technician they worked with was wonderful. I suppose it’s a luxury that’s only allowed to the first band on the bill (and even then, only when they show up more than an hour early), but sound checks were done on each member individually and then with the band as a whole. This allowed for much better levels across the board. To anyone in the business, I’m sure this sounds quite amateurish (of course they should do sound check on the whole band!), but it wasn’t something I had seen done for the guys before. I look forward to hearing the CD from the soundboard.
Other highlights from the night include my cousin, Marie, coming out for the show, a guy who was at the show who was “losing his shit” over them (read: so excited; called someone and was holding up his phone so they could hear; talked to the guys for about 45 minutes afterwards about his music distribution.. and their ‘image’… ok, so the 45 minutes of talking was more exciting than what actually came out of it, but at least people seem to be responding well to their style of music if not their wardrobes), and finally, to top off the evening, I drove in the city for the first time. Thank God J didn’t have me drive in, but at 12:45am, it wasn’t so bad. There were a surprising number of people still out and about, likely due to the holiday weekend, but I survived and think that I could muster the courage again (so long as I have a good navigator and don’t have to be looking too much at signs and can concentrate on the traffic).

Today we went out to the Tour of Somerville to watch and support our friend Sebastian in his race. I took loads of photos and look forward to downloading them and seeing what I’ve ended up with. There was a nice guy I ended up sitting next to who gave me some tips from his experiences capturing shots at these races. I think I was able to get Sebastian in a few shots, but I pretty much just turned on the multi-shot burst and just let it go while the racers went by. I’ll post something up here if anything great turned out.

In the other free times over the weekend, I’ve finished (well, 20 pages left) Order of the Phoenix and am ready to move on to The Half Blood Prince. Anyone who knows me well knows that each time a new Harry Potter book (and sometimes movie) comes out, I reread all the books up to that one in preparation and anticipation. So I now have (at the time of this writing) 53 days to read 627 pages (UK edition) in preparation for Deathly Hallows. So as long as I keep up these productive and somewhat relaxing weekends, I think I can handle the roughly 12 pages/day.

This was written last month as I flew out to Reno for the USBC Open…

In trying to keep the glass half full (per my purposefully-worn T today), I allowed a smile when I realized I had reached a triplicate.
I was listening to 35000 feet at about 35000 feet (Ok, probably 38000 ft) while watching somewhere around 35000 happy little penguin feet dance on the in-flight movie. How fun! (And now I’ve just reminded myself of all the lotto commercials that say “Fun for some… ” and have the guy dancing around with the turkey. Well, this is my kind of fun. Welcome to my world.)

The nagging empty portion of my glass is the effort it’s taken to get here. Although it was beautiful weather out east yesterday, a weather delay kept me so long in Philadelphia that I missed my connection in Houston. I ended up spending waaay too much money on a hotel (weather related delay, so no free room from the airline), but then woke up often throughout the night as I do when I am worried about missing an alarm (I never actually have missed one). All that time in the airport yesterday, then back and forth to the hotel, and once I get to Reno has put a lot of stress on my shoulders. I keep thinking maybe I’d like to get a nice rolling carry on (J and I both should) but only ever see the reason when we’re in the middle of the pain associated with not having said bags.

The Latest from The Maggios:
Work:
J’s job has finally changed to the field position that has been talked about for over a year.
I got a promotion (no big change in duties).
Both of us came out of our annual performance reviews with ‘Above Target’ ratings (Did you expect anything less?)

Play:
Chemtrail has another show in NYC coming up in May, this time at Club Midway.
I’m in Reno this weekend for the USBC Open with the regular group. Hopefully after this week’s performance in NJ, something awesome will come of it.
We’re finally getting on with the planning for our honeymoon/anniversary vacation (it’ll be our anniversary before we get there at this rate).

No, my friends, not about fish. The other bass. The musical one.

J’s gone and joined a band out here, which we both are pretty excited about. I know how much his music means to him and he was getting into such a great place there in Chicago before we high-tailed it out here. I guess the ‘T‘ in both of us told us to come to New Jersey and still tells us it was the right choice, while other parts of our personalities would love to see what would become of his continued work in music.
While this band, Chemtrail, is quite different from his past bands in style, it still has a wonderful (in my opinion) sound that.. well, it’s hard to describe, but for me, it makes my heart feel very light and warm… so there ya go. A rare ‘feeling’ moment you’ll hear out of me (see ‘T’ above for explanation). So far he’s just been to the tryout and initial practice, but has another practice tomorrow night and will be heading down on average a couple of times a week. Please visit Chemtrail’s MySpace page for a sampling of their music.

iTunes is currently playing Face Me by Chemtrail

I never have been a big fan of the way my hands look. They’re a nice combination of my father’s & mother’s, with dad’s wide thumbs & fingernails & mom’s crinkly skin. It’s the latter that has always been a bit odd. I know mom has the same type of skin that shows every crease like a map of an elaborate tube system, but if hers is the London Underground (somewhat nicely laid out and organized) mine is New York (there’s how many lines??). My friends’ hands always seemed so smooth & perfect, even in the arid winters in Illinois. No matter how much lotion or oils I applied, I would just grease up those subway lines, but never smooth them out.
On a flight tonight, just before dusk settled in, I noticed the lighting and what interesting patterns I could see on my hands. The shadows created in the gullies, the highlights of the tendons and veins, and the way those lines change directions around knuckles reminded me of pink elephant skin. My hands have always been useful, but this was the first time I ever thought of them as beautiful.

I can’t believe this video has been around for a year and I only saw it for the first time today. (Would’ve seen it sooner if I were part of ‘AlmosteveryoneVicknows’ list, but thanks to one who is, I have a new tally mark on my ‘things that make me nerdy’ list: the desire to do something like this, and knowing that it wouldn’t be as bad as it seems– timely yes, but how cool!! Actually, make that two tally marks: I already checked for tickets for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra but all the ones available are really high up in the arenas. Anywho, here’s the link:
Wizards In Winter (hosted @ WonderlandChristmas.com)
The Wonderland Christmas site is one of another guy who does these types of light shows. All of them are really interesting, but (hopefully not because it was the first I saw) I like the Wizards In Winter the best so far. I think this is partly because of the music, but also due to the designer’s use of ‘white space’ or in this case, dark space. Most of the other light shows I saw seemed to have WAY too much going on. The lights would flash to the music somewhat, but there was so much going on, you had to search for what was in time to the music. The one linked above is very clear about what the focal point is and works beautifully with the music.
FAQ answers (the questions I asked and had answered through my browsing today):
Carson Williams, Mason, Ohio
Light-O-Rama Software
Yes, it’s real, not stopmotion or photos pieced together
This year there was an auto accident nearby and, due to the traffic congestion trying to see this house, the emergency crews had a difficult time getting to the scene. As a result, Mr. Williams has cancelled shows indefinitely.

I’ve always considered myself quite nerdy, but do realize I am very much not as nerdy as some… and especially those who would be finding (and taking) a nerd test. Ah, well. Only 56th percentile. I’m going to go back to the TSO website now.

Wow– why can’t I go with something simple– no, I’ve got to go too complex for my current knowledge and have the blog on my own site rather than blogger or one of the other free ones out there. Granted, this is free (well, the hosting is a sunk cost), but I want to be able to personalize and design myself. So for a good long while, this will probably be boring looking and not the most accessible (I want to get comfortable with it and be able to redesign it before making it the home page).
In the long run, I’m hoping it will help me to update much more frequently. We’ll see.