I'm an Olde Pharte that loves to share stories of all kinds. I've recently retired to the old family homestead in Martin County, Florida. Look for me at science fiction and fantasy conventions in the southeast.
Why NASA needs to focus on deep space missions A bit of history After the manned lunar missions, NASA was tasked with creating a reusable spacecraft to support future human exploration and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) projects. NASA engineers came up with several suggestions and shared them with hand-picked teams of post-grad engineering students and … More NoMoNASA
While on vacation, my wife and I drove through Georgia and I made a geek pilgrimage to the MicroCenter outlet in Duluth, Georgia. As usual, I walked out about an hour later, with a bag of goodies and a much thinner credit card. More on this in a later post. We got a hotel and … More Vacation
As most of my readers know, I’ve been using Kubuntu Linux for more than fifteen years. Overall, I’m pleased with the latest 22.04LTS Kubuntu release. However there has been one annoying bug that I have learned has deeper issues. Several times a day, I get a popup from the tray notifying me that the Firefox … More Distro Hopping
Science fiction authors have been envisioning floating cities for years. One was described in Neil Stephenson’s classic, “Snow Crash” as repurposing a discarded aircraft carrier. The latest South Korean plan to construct a 15 acre prototype to hold twelve thousand people will share many of the same problems of a space colony. For example, how … More Floating Cities
I created this in about fifteen minutes with the Free and Open Source program Inkscape. The original painting is “The Silence” by Joseph Decreux 1790.
Copyright 2019 by Anthony Stevens “But first, on earth as Vampire sent,Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:Then ghastly haunt thy native place,And suck the blood of all thy race;” Lord Byron In 1813 to great acclaimThe English poet rides to fameLord Byron’s words in English firstDrip blood to slake the Vampire’s thirstUrban Fantasy … More A Brief History of Geekdom
My mother gave me a science fiction paperback when I was about ten years old. I’ve been consuming books at an average of one a week, ever since. Over the years, I’ve been inspired by many people. Here’s just a few of them. I’m sure I’ll remember others after I post this. Futurists Stewart Brand … More Inspiration
Recently, my wife encouraged me to go ahead and get myself a belated holiday present. I’ve been jonesing to try one of the new breed of NUC computers for some time now. An NUC, short for “Next Unit of Computing”, is a small box-shaped computer that often won’t measure more than a few inches across … More New NUC
Recently, Jay Leno mentioned that a Tesla Model S has very low maintenance costs. This got me thinking (dangerous, I know) and I did some research. My research on Electric Vehicles (EVs) made me realize that in five years, most vehicles sold will be EVs and inside of ten years, only wealthy collectors will be … More The Real Cost of Electric Vehicles
This post is going to be long and bittersweet.My oldest friend passed away from Covid, this week.The news hit me very hard. Let me explain why.Back in 1963, I was on an annual vacation in Mexico City with my grandmother.Her husband was a contractor that built several apartment buildings and we had a small, top-floor … More COVID SUCKS!
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