Out in the desert tonight, 50 miles or so northeast, celebrating at a nice, recommended restaurant in a Western style, unincorporated area called Acton.
Got out near the railroad museum just as the sunset was finishing up. With LA to the south, Santa Clarita to the west, and the Antelope Valley to the northeast, I wonder how dark the skies get here. They’ve got to be better than in the San Fernando Valley, right?
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography
There were critters about, despite the heat!
This guy wasn’t so much scared as he was annoyed. He had been in a nice, sunny spot out on the back wall at the lip of the hill and when I had the gall to walk by in my own yard, he felt compelled to hop down, jump up onto the sidewalk, and glare at me. And I do mean “hop” and “jump” since he did both. I’m not sure I’ve seen other lizards do that, usually they just run and skitter and slink and scramble. But this guy I’ve seen jump several times, including twice today. He’s not much on height, so I’m not worried about him going for my throat, but he’s pretty good on distance.
These were the surprise of the day. They’re about 40% to 50% the size of the normal mourning doves, so I’m guessing their fledgelings. They didn’t fly away or even try to fly, but they also didn’t seem too upset about me being just a couple of feet away. I guess they missed that “OH GOD RUN FROM THE GIANT HUMANS!” lesson. I think that the nest is low to the ground in the hedges behind them that separate the yards, so I’m not surprised to see them here. I just hope one of the neighborhood feral cats or a hawk doesn’t see them as well.
Chicon 8, the 80th World Science Fiction Convention, will be held in Chicago on September 1-5, 2022.
For the first time in a bunch of years, it looks like we’ll be there, barring some kind of (waves hands and does hopeless Kermit flail indicating everything) catastrophe.
My first science fiction convention was Iguanacon II in Phoenix in 1978. My first trip out of North America was Seacon ’79 in Brighton, England. My honeymoon with Janet (my first wife) was a cross-country road trip to Noreascon Two in Boston in 1980.
We went to Denvention Two in Denver in 1981, Chicon IV in Chicago in 1982, and ConStellation in Baltimore in 1983.
In 1984 we were touch and go at LA Con II here in Los Angeles. I was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Fanzine but Janet was about 8 1/2 months pregnant, so we could have been forced to bail at a moment’s notice. I did not win the Hugo and our son arrived two weeks after the convention.
After attending seven years in a row things got spottier. We didn’t get to Australia in 1985, Brighton in 1987, or The Hague in 1990.
Even for the domestic conventions, we only got to about a third of them. But we were also taking all of the kids – they got brought up in fannish culture. Noreascon 3 in Boston. ConFrancisco in San Francisco. LACon III in Los Angeles. Chicon 2000. ConJose in San Jose. Torcon 3 in Toronto. LACon IV. Denvention 3. Anticipation in Montreal.
Over the past dozen or so years it seems that a lot of Worldcons have been overseas, and with my career and CAF time commitments causing quite the pinch to my available time, we didn’t get to Australia, Helsinki, London, Dublin, or Wellington. Of course, we didn’t get to Chicago, Kansas City, San Antonio, Reno, or Spokane either. Hell, we didn’t even get to San Jose.
Recently, of course, there’s been COVID. So while we really, REALLY had plans to get to Washington, DC last year, that ultimately didn’t happen.
I had forgotten that the last one we actually got to was in 2009, Anticipation in Montreal. It’s been thirteen years. Time flies when you’re… Never mind.
Next year Worldcon is in Chengdu, China. As much as I enjoyed my one trip to China, I don’t realistically see us getting to Chengdu Worldcon 81st. For the 2024 Worldcon there’s only one bid, Glasgow, Scotland, so I’m guessing they’ll win the vote. We might actually give that a shot, it sounds like a great trip. 2025’s only bid so far is Seattle, where 2026 has bids from Los Angeles and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
In summary, while the future looks good for at least a couple of domestic bids coming up and at least one realistic overseast trip, this year’s Worldcon in Chicago is where we’re focused. I think we’re going.
We have memberships, hotel reservations, and now plane reservations. Everything’s refundable if the world collapses (again) but we’re hopeful. Over Memorial Day weekend we went to Baycon up in San Mateo and it, while much smaller in size that in previous years (“Thanks, COVID!” ) was still enjoyable. I have no idea how big Chicon 8 will be compared to what I’m used to as a Worldcon, but I’m hoping for a fun convention and also some good sightseeing around Chicago. Maybe a Cubs game at Wrigley.
It’s about time to catch a break and get a little bit back to normal, if we can.
I’ve been thinking a lot these days about music, both in the philosphopical sense and in the more practical sense.
Philosophically, I’m always surprised by folks to whom music is a take it or leave it proposition. Sure, they like having something on the radio in the car and they may go to a concert here or there, but, you know … whatever! Where for me it’s much more of a passion, a daily presence, something that I’ve got on or available or involved with hours and hours a day.
Practically, I still like my physical media. I know that the world is going to streaming services and content on demand and storing everything on the Cloud. And I’ll most certainly take advantage of those conduits, listening to Sirius satellite radio all the time, storing copies of my music online, listening to Pandora stations centered around favorite groups. But the foundation is always a closet full of CD’s and even records and cassettes. The Cloud can go offline, the streaming services can get into pissing contests with the artists, satellites can fail, even music (and video, and books, and everything else) that you’ve “bought” digitally can all get taken back without warning. They’ll only take my CD’s (and DVD’s and books and tapes and laserdiscs) when they show up with a warrant and/or an army.
Paranoid, much?
Have you read the freaking news recently?
Gotta have my music! And books!
Filed under Music, Photography
Two months ago these flowers surprised me.
Today I was again pleasantly surprised, but this time I looked up what these are.
They’re bougainvilleas.
No clue why some of the blooms seem to have one of these little white centers while others have two or three.
This is why I got degrees in physics and business, with minors in astrophysics and computer programming.
Biology seems to just bounce off my brain and vanish into the ether.
But I know what I like and what I think is pretty, and this is it. And I know that I like sharing that, so here it is!
Completely lost in real life and the small thumbnail images are the long stamen sticking out of these flowers, but you can see them in these pictures!
They’re almost the same color as the bright magenta petals, just a shade or two more red.
I hope your Monday and the upcoming week are spectacular and fun, but I also know that the world can be “interesting” for so many of us these days, so if “sucks less than average” is an acceptable substitute for “spectacular” and “painless” is good enough to stand in for “fun,” I hope you get those. And if looking at incredibly bright flowers helps, take these!
Filed under Flowers, Photography
We’re apparently operating a full-service spa resort for squirrels now.
Not only do they feed on all of the free bird seed that they can eat, I found this one waiting patiently for its full-body massage.
I’ll admit, there was a second when I thought that it might have eaten too much bird seed and died, spread eagled, content to have died doing what it loved most.
Then I saw the other one similiarly splayed out a few feet away. I’ve never seen other squirrels lie like this, but it must be comfortable because both of them do it on every hot day now.
Whatever! They’re weird. Sort of goes with the job description for “squirrel” I guess.
At least in this yard.
Filed under Critters, Photography
As expected, the late ISS pass tonight was very low in the sky.
There’s the Big Dipper up there again, but instead of passing through the “bowl” of the dipper, the ISS path just barely passes above the trees.
Better yet, click on the image to blow it up to full sized – look at all of those planes, especially right down by the horizon. That’s all of the big jets coming into LAX from the Bay Area, the Pacific Northwest, and Asia.
No joy on seeing Dragon. With docking only about eight or nine hours away I figured that it would be close, but I didn’t see it at all, even watching for about ten minutes after ISS went by.
Finally, the other screw up was forgetting to check the camera battery. Instead of catching the ISS going just barely above those trees all the way to the far horizon, I just saw it for a few minutes.
Keep watching the skies!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
It’s been a while since we did this.
(Final image compiled from 68 images using StarStaX)
Aside from it simply being great to see the ISS pass over, with the launch of a SpaceX Cargo Draon less than four hours ago I was hoping that I might see the Dragon following the ISS.
I didn’t.
The reason that Dragons, Cargo and Crew, have an “instantaneous” launch window is because they launch into the ISS’s orbital plane as the instant that the orbital plane crosses over the launch pad. Getting high and getting fast are critical to rendezvous with an orbital target, but you’re maneuvering in three dimensions. Going “sideways” once in orbit, switching from one orbital plane to another, can be expensive in terms of fuel. But that orbital plane will cross right over you twice a day, so if you launch right then, you just have to go high and fast, not sideways. Restricting your chase to two dimensions simplifies the rendezvous considerably in terms of both complexity and fuel costs.
Because of that, when two objects in the same orbital plane pass overhead, you’ll see them playing follow-the-leader. If you see a set of Starlink satellites within a day or two of launch they’ll look like a string of pearls sailing across the sky. Similarly, if you see the ISS just after a Dragon, or Soyuz, or Cygnus has just left, or just before it arrives, you’ll see the bright ISS with the dimmer, smaller spacecraft following the same path.
It’s math. Physics. Orbital Mechanics!
Tonight, alas, the Dragon probably isn’t close enough since it just launched and won’t catch up to ISS until Saturday morning. Dragon will be in that orbital plane and will be cruising along that same path, but by the time it happens it won’t be in sunlight above Los Angeles. There’s another pass tomorrow night at 22:01, but it will be low to the horizon and might not even get above the level of those trees. But we’ll see what we can see. For now, enjoy tonight’s pass!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
As we know, the Moon’s orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle, but an ellipse.
So while we get a full moon every 28 days, sometimes it’s closer to Earth, sometimes further away.
When it’s closer, it’s slightly larger and brighter than average. Tonight’s full moon is the closest, and biggest, and brightest of 2022.
Rising through the costal clouds and LA’s smog and haze, it looked a little on the orange-ish side, although not as orange as it got during the lunar eclipse a couple months ago.
As it got a little higher it got a little brighter and much more it’s normal white color.
The media loves to go off with clickbait terms like “SUPERMOON!!!” and we know how I feel about that.
It finally cleared the trees. What amazes me is the quality of the iPhone image – look at the top, just to the right of the trees and you can see the stars at the “head” of Scorpius, even in the bright moonlight.
Time to go out and howl for a bit, joining with the coyotes down in the canyon.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
Okay, maybe not entirely random…
Yesterday’s spectacular first image from JWST and today’s additional images and spectra and data of course had me thinking about my 2015 NASA Social in which I got to be one of the first to see the Hubble Space Telescope 25th Anniversary image as well as visit NASA Goddard where JWST was being assembled.
To see my full posts and pictures of that trip, either enter “NASA Social For Hubble25” in the search box at the upper right, or use the “Archives” box in the lower right to go to April 2015.
It was a fantastic trip!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space, Travel
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