[link]
This is a good year for Perseids, for two reasons, explains Bill Cooke of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. First, the Moon is new in mid-August; moonlight won't spoil the show. Second, in addition to the usual shower on August 12th, there might be an extra surge of meteors on August 11th caused by a filament of dust newly drifting across Earth's orbit.
...
If predictions are correct, Earth will plow through the filament on Wednesday, August 11th at 2100 UT (5 p.m. EDT). This will produce a surge of mostly-faint meteors over Europe and Asia. Observers might see "as many as 200 meteors per hour," says Cooke, who recommends getting away from city lights to watch the flurry.
...
Later that night, observers in North America can see the "traditional Perseid peak" caused by the older dust from Swift-Tuttle. "Expect 40 to 60 meteors per hour, some of them bright," says Cooke.
Happy viewing! (Try to not have a major black-out this year, East Coast)
Today in history:
1944 - IBM dedicated the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).
Thanks Are Due!
Not going to write down the full list of people, since there are so many of them I'd overload the board, and anyway, I haven't got permission to list names - but for every single one of you who came to play, with money or love or both, on erika's birthday prezzie?
Mission accomplished. Looks like erika and Nilly get to meet in LA after all.
I have edited together and posted Nilly's new Firefly ep "Objects In Space" review and quotage. It resides at the Nilly Site that Gus set up on Shriftweb.
[link]
As of this point, the content is all there. Some tweakage may occur for some small formatting inconsistancies, especially in the quotes areas.
Every time I come by I have to run off for a phone call or some stupid crisis before I get to really say hello to everyone. So hello. I lost my address book during the sad demise of my last laptop, so I don't have anyone's email addresses anymore. I'd really appreciate it if you all could email me at hneal at marksmen dot com so I could add you back to my address book. I'm not here much, but Sumi keeps me up to date on the important things through email, and I'd like to be able to email you guys occasionally.
Hope you are all well. Email me!
Nilly mini-F2F shirts are here (nearly)!
We're experimenting with
not
going through Cafepress this time, as (a) Cafepress doesn't do black shirts, and (b) their sizes are often a little wonky and even their XLs are not really all that L. Deb has kindly passed on a recommendation for an excellent Bayista-local custom shirt company, and I'm gonna call them for a quote today at noon.
The shirts will be (each bit of text, beautifully designed and tarted up by Deena, is a separate little jpg so we unfortunately don't have a single image to show you):
Black tees, hopefully either short or long-sleeved
Front side (in the red/gold/white calligraphic Firefly font):
NillyTour 2004
Back side (again with the Firefly font):
NILLY PAN-AMERICAN TOUR 2004
Los Angeles, CA August 11-18
San Francisco, CA August 19-22
Boston, MA August 23-24
New York City, NY August 25-30
Washington, D.C. Aug 31-Sept 1
Big Damn Shindig, Sir.
A Minearverse/B.Org Joint Production
If you're interested in getting a shirt, please email me at my profile addy to say so and tell me what size. I'll call the shirt folks at noon and report back with prices and such, and hopefully they'll all be ordered and underway by the end of the day today.
Just a quick reminder the registration deadline for the Browncoat Ball in Chicago is just two days away (August 15th) and the special pricing deadline for the hotel is August 17th. Go to [link] for details.
Also there are threads on BCB forums dedicated to people looking for road trip partners and hotel room mates.
Just a reminder that Sunday, August 15th, is the start day for discussion in The Buffista Book Club thread on
The Intuitionist,
by Colson Whitehead. It's a relatively short book so there's still time to cram it in over the weekend if you haven't read it already. Or you can feel free to jump in late.
Also please note next month's selection will be
My Name is Asher Lev,
by Chaim Potok. Discussion is scheduled to begin on Monday, September 13, 2004.
