Comin' In For A Landing!

Regular readers will know just how much I love space, science fiction, and just about everything involved therein.  When I learned today that the Space X Dragon capsule was returning to Earth from their maiden voyage to the International Space Station, it got me hoping I'd see a little streak crossing the horizon on my lunch break.

This was obviously not to be, as an ocean touchdown has always been the most preferable.  Thankfully, from all reports everything in the mission went smoothly.  As long as things can continue to run this well, we can all look forward to many more spaceflights in the future.

Quick comic and a short post tonight, there's some serious yard work that's been piling up for the groundskeepers of the Estate that I'll need to go manage.  We're burning daylight, people!

Punch it, Chewie!

Artistic Fright

As you can probably tell from tonight's comic, we had the chance to check out a decently large arts festival this weekend a few times.  Even though spirits were obviously elevated to observe our memorial holiday, that didn't make the weather any less hot and sticky.

It was a really good walk though, and the items were really awesome to see all the different ways that people try to be creative with paint, ceramics, wood, cloth and metal.  For us here at the Estate, we followed the lead of a good source to check out the festival more than once before purchasing anything.  After the day or so to mull it over, we did acquire a new piece of art for the East Wing.

It should also be said that for every two or three awesome tents that we ran across, there were still a few oddballs mixed in there.  Even with that though, there was a lot of different tents that absolutely drew us in.  If not for the happy coincidence that it was mostly cash business inside the festival, we'd probably have had a few more 'acquisitions' to report.

So, now we're all back to work (unless you've a glut of vacation or personal time banked up).  Now with Memorial Day in our very recent rear-view though, for me it feels very much like summer is finally here.  That makes leaving in the afternoons that much sweeter as all the plans for weekend getaways are beginning to take shape.

Punch it, Chewie!

The Rocket Man Comet(h)!

As is my custom, I'm two months late to the party on the cool internet stuffs.  In this case, there appeared to be a man claiming he could take flight with his kite-like wings.  Jarno Smeets, the Birdman, achieved flight in his video blog that had an obscene amount of hits for being up for only two months.

If the video itself doesn't get you to drop your jaw, the reality of the situation might push you over that edge.  The lovable Jarno Smeets, labeled the Flying Dutchman, was found out to be a fibber not long afterwards.  It turns out that not only does Jarno Smeets not exist, but neither does the technology he made his videos on.  It was all a filmmaker who was trying to see what kind of interest he could get in his story, but didn't bother to tell anyone it was a work of fiction.  Joke's on us then, as every major media source at the time sucked it in and spit it back out of the 24-hour news machine.

The weird thing for me is that I was able to take this fake journey with the man people were now calling the Lying Dutchman which lasted two months in one five-minute burst.  My wonder and awe at his flight was almost immediately replaced with the standard cynicism we've all got a chunk of inside.

It did make me wonder though, what if it could be done? Does it really matter that this was fake, or I should say fictitious?  I have to hope that there's a piece of me that still wants to believe it could be done.

Punch it, Chewie!

Spacial Ignorance

Space X reached orbit this past weekend! It's just one more notch towards the privatization of 'the last frontier' and I couldn't be more in favor of it. Not only will it lead to me possibly floating weightless outside of the atmosphere, but it should also help progress in our society that I feel has somewhat stalled-out.

The last time that there was a real push in invention and innovation was during the last Space Race against the Russians nearly forty years ago.  I think that once the private sector gets involved, given some mild guidelines, that some really interesting things could come out of it.

What really adds an interesting spin to all of this will be the inclusion of a society now fully in the Digital Age. NASA and governments have been using technology to improve their safety and effectiveness in space, but I'm not sure they've really been able to explore their options outside of government contracts for vendors.  There are plans to mine asteroids to help increase resources as well as provide industry off-planet, so the intellect of the people who can afford to dream is beginning to reach outward more and more...

Shake it off, it's not like I'll be suiting up for launch in a few weeks.  However, daydreaming on it could very well help this week fly by.  Join me!

Punch it, Chewie!

Camer-antics!

Goofy night, hopefully it's clear that's a finger over the shutter/camera phone/whatever.

It won't be a long post tonight, I'm feeling pretty tired after a fairly boring/grueling week of work.  The weekend brings some pretty good stuff though, so I'm completely into celebrating getting through it.

I'm watching Breakout Kings from A&E while I write this up, and it's not completely without merit.  If you're interested in checking it out, don't put your hopes high and it may surprise you.  I love the Dr. turned con turned profiler character, he's pretty complex. That and I remember his as a McPoyle brother from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

Alright, tomorrow brings the end to another one.  Collective sigh of relief, go!

Punch it, Chewie!

Missing Nerd Report

Every time I'm in the book store, I always go to the same section.  Without fail, you can find me in or near the Science Fiction/Fantasy sections.  It's just always been that way, the other sections don't interest me enough to want to read words on pages about them.

In the past at our particular chain book store, my section was directly across from the children's section, something that brought the median age down quite a bit.  Luckily, to keep creepers from being near the kiddies (I sincerely doubt that's the real reason why), the store was rearranged and my section got moved.

The bad part is that now instead of being in view of the bank of windows and near laughing children and near the movies and music, we nerds don't have quite that setup any longer.  Now, we get to listen to boxes being moved in the storage areas and we are placed in the farthest corner in the store, without windows, music or youthful joy.  The really ironic part is that I end up feeling more comfortable in that situation since my professional nerding used to be a very private thing for me.

Either way, I'm ripping through a fantastic fantasy series by Steven Erikson, The Malazan Book of the Fallen.  I've read the Lord of the Rings books before, but I've never read something in the Fantasy realm that got this dark and kept me this captivated.  I'm not sure the Hobbits would fare too well on Genabackis or in Raraku.

Ah well, we're already through a good chunk of this week folks! Let's keep up the pace, as if our attitude will truly help the passage of time at work!

Punch it, Chewie!

Under A Starry Projector

Short and early posting tonight, I'll be heading to the theater for Avengers round 2.  I'm just as excited to see it for a second time!

There's not much to mention, other than the latter stages of the transition to Ink & Pixels are in process.  If you haven't already, you can un-follow or cancel the direct emails.  We'll be working on setting up a similar RSS feed for I&P in the coming weeks.

Well, in the absence of much content and my head in a completely different space, let's wrap this up!

Punch it, Chewie!

Coffee Broken

I wish that this were a true story. That would mean that I work with bears. I was trying to get a play on words using 'bear' but for some reason kept coming back to this one, which was obviously not the right phrase.

Free comic book day was Saturday, and from what I've heard we were just a few minutes behind seeing some guys from the 501st Legionnaires show up at my local comic book store.  If you aren't up on who they are, it's a group that designs, builds and wears different kinds of Star Wars stormtrooper armor out in public. If I had the space to store a full suit of armor I'd love to figure out how to do something along those lines someday.

Anyways, after getting our regular dose of comics and whatever free ones we wanted to grab, it was time. The Avengers! The movie was honestly everything that I had hoped it could be.  I'll most likely be heading out to see it again in the extremely near future. To my knowledge, this was the first time there'd been a franchise movie of this kind.  There were movies that introduced all of the characters before we saw the first image, so there wasn't a need to spend time on that, which was very refreshing. Having seen all the previous movies, I thought it did a solid job keeping the individual tones set while still feeding into one story.

I can't wait to see the movie again and to start hearing about the other movies coming out in the near future.  I've said it before, but this is going to be one amazing summer!

Punch it, Chewie!

Mispronunciation

Anyone up for a cleverly meaningless holiday?  Tomorrow is Star Wars Day, as in May the Fourth Be With You (yes I know).  While the creator of that fictional universe is less than accommodating to his fan-base in general, the idea of it bringing like minded nerds together the world over is a pleasant thought. I'm sure that the Imperial 501st will be out in force, wearing the Stormtrooper armors they've all personally made to be part of that group.

For myself, I accidentally scheduled a grilling session with some friends, so in a way we will be celebrating the day together. The majority of our conversation will probably turn back towards comics and The Avengers that we'll go out for the next day, but it still counts.

Not much more to cover, it's been a fairly productive yet quiet week at work, leaving my plenty of time to relax in the evenings and catch up on my reading or League of Legends.  Enjoy the weekend and try not to get swept away by all of the additional Avengers tie-ins that I'm sure will be out there.

Punch it, Chewie!

Nerds And The City

Oh no! With all of the beta goodness this past weekend with Guild Wars 2, I hadn't thought at all about The Avengers movie this coming weekend.  Monday morning, it hits me like a ton of marketing bricks though.  I'm so excited for the movie, I'm even going to see it in 3D!

The motion picture has to my knowledge been extremely well-received overseas, bringing in a lot of money.  I'm sure they're doing just fine though, with the amount of marketing tie-ins that I'm seeing crop up everywhere they were going to make back a good deal of their money even before I gave them my hard earned cash.  Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to give them my money; I'll always support something I really like so that more of that thing can be made.

Speaking of things I liked, the Guild Wars 2 beta weekend was really great.  Even though people confused the difference between testing a game to find bugs and balance everything for a smooth release and early game access.  The game is not being provided so you can play a completely finished product, if that were the case it would just have released.  That being said there weren't many bugs that I ran across, mainly some graphical issues and being placed on overflow servers way too often.  All in all, it was a great time and when the completed game is out for everyone to play it's going to be an awesome time.

I'll try to find something to do with myself until Saturday afternoon, but I make no promises I won't whine until I get to see Cap the Hulk beat up on Loki.

Punch it, Chewie!