AstroCamp

Day one of AstroCamp is coming to a close. We had a nice bus ride up here and enjoyed some fun activities. Getting hoisted up about 40 feet in the air and then dropping and flying along a line was a good one although it hurt a bit when the harness dug into my thighs. I got some great pictures of the students doing this one as well as a couple of others. I need to clear my memory cards tonight and recharge my battery so I can take more pictures tomorrow, which should be a long day.

Shouldn't that be "enigmatic"

Another one of those "rush to be first" stories with a strange error. From the home page of SFGate.com, under a picture of Anna Nicole Smith:

Anna Nicole Smith, the pneumatic blonde whose life played out as a tabloid tale, died today at age 39 after collapsing at a hotel. Famous for being famous, she went from being a dancer and centerfold to billionaire's widow and reality TV star. Talk about it in NWZCHIK.

According to dictionary.com, and my own common sense, pneumatic isn't normally used in reference to someone's personality.

Top 5 definitions of pneumatic from dictionary.com:

1. of or pertaining to air, gases, or wind.

2.	of or pertaining to pneumatics.

3.	operated by air or by the pressure or exhaustion of air: a pneumatic drill.

4.	filled with or containing compressed air, as a tire.

5.	equipped with pneumatic tires.

Steve Jobs and DRM

I read Steve Jobs' essay on DRM and iTunes yesterday. Innocuously titled "Thoughts on Music,"it was interesting and certainly not what you would expect from a CEO of two huge media companies, but then I don't think Steve Jobs is the typical CEO. He's the only one I know who laid me off, but that's beside the point. I didn't interpret his essay as a call to end DRM. I don't think that is going to happen. With the pressure from a couple of countries in Europe to remove the iTunes DRM to make the music available to other players, this essay was just a way to deflect that criticism and put it where it should be -- on the backs of the music publishers.

Podcast plus PDF

I knew that iTunes supported PDFs, but I hadn't really used the feature or thought about how it might be useful. Until today, that is. I set up my first podcast on my work blog and went to iTunes to subscribe to it, just to check that it was working. When I did, I also got the PDFs I had attached to previous posts on my blog. Since I am creating materials and making them available in PDF to various people, this is a nice way to distribute them. I only need to figure out how to be sure that people subscribe, but I don't think that is too difficult. At least in theory.

BeeDocs Timeline

BeeDocs Timeline is an interesting program (Mac only). It makes the creation of timelines very simple, so it's a big timesaver. You can use it for free for up to 10 items. We have used it several times for school reports and it works well. You don't really get much more with the paid version other than a much longer timeline. At almost $40, it's a little out of my price range, but today you can get it for $24 at MacZot. I think the developer is working on a new application which will extend the features of Timeline quite a bit, so I'm going to wait for that and continue to use the free version.

PE.com commuting blog

One of the local newspapers recently started up some blogs written by a few of their reporters. One is the Commuting Blog, written by Phil Pitchford. Phil only has a two mile commute, but he does cover transportation, so he knows the freeways even though he is smarter than many of us who still have to use them to get to work.

Phil's not getting the traffic that Steve Lopez gets on the Bottleneck Blog at the LA Times, but commenting on the Bottleneck Blog has slowed down quite a bit since that first entry which got hundreds of comments.

Really hot weather

They should have held the Super Bowl around here instead of in Miami. No rain and it was over 80 degrees yesterday. Today may break a record with the forecast for 87 degrees. Tomorrow it will start cooling down and by the time we leave on our school field trip on Friday, it will probably be cold again in the mountains.

Prince at Super Bowl

For a guy who is getting close to 50 years old, Prince looks good and moves incredibly well. His music was also good and he had a number of guitars including one with that weird symbol he used to use for his name. I thought the halftime show was good, considering it was in the rain and you can't really get good audio from something like that. Is Prince a football fan? I guess he might be a Vikings fan, but he doesn't look like a guy who would have played much football, although of course that has nothing to do with being a fan.

Super Bowl - Colts win

At least this Super Bowl was competitive for a little while. The Colts dominated but the score was close until late in the third quarter. The commercials were typical for a Super Bowl -- beer, cards, GoDaddy.com, and a bunch of other stuff that I don't remember. Nothing really jumped out at me. No Apple/iTunes ad. I'll have to go back and watch them again. There were some funny ones like the Taco Bell commercial with the two lions. That might have been my favorite