I am about 90% through Andy Weir’s The Martian book, and I gotta say, this is one fantastic read. Written in large part as log entries by an astronaut named Mark Watney, it is different enough from the average SF (Sci-Fi) work in that regard alone, but then Andy includes enough geekery to really make things interesting. I won’t go into any more detail, but if you are a geek (check), who is into spaceflight (check), and Mars exploration (check), then this is one book you need to read.

Sat up last night to watch another great launch from the crew over at SpaceX. This time they used the Falcon 9 rocket to launch a pair of satellites (ABS 3A and Eutelsat 115 West B) into their initial orbits. From there, the satellites will maneuver themselves into their final orbit over the upcoming months. As usual, the launch broadcast featured little in the way of fanfare as would a NASA launch, but they certainly got the job done, and for most of the 20 minutes or so there were approximately 30,000 viewers listed on the LiveStream feed.

The Perth Mint in Australia are releasing a series of ten coins featuring (five of each) captains and starships from the various Star Trek series. The coins are 99.9% pure silver, and while collectible, are also legal tender in Tuvalu, in case you happen to be down that way. The biggest downside is the price: At the AUD to USD exchange rate today, they are running approximately $82 US Dollars each, a pretty hefty markup given that silver is currently trading at $16.

Numerous Icon Back with a few more numbers for the Numerous app. This time, they are astronomy related. I have followed with some interest the string of planets discovered over the past decade or so, and the other day I was wondering how many they had found thus far. Well, after a bit of snooping, I found several sites which have data related to exoplanets. Of course, finding the data on the web is nice, but I figured if the data are available, then it must be tracked in Numerous.

As the band Rush once wrote: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. This blog started out in 2002 using the MovableType blogging engine. That was probably the best-of-breed at the time, and since I was a Perl hound, it just seemed to work best for me. Sometime later, however, I got tired of the problems of moving it from one machine to another, and trying to get installed all of the various modules it required, so I moved it to Wordpress.

After seeing CWirc listed in the Freshmeat updates several times, I finally decided to give it a closer look. Having read the description on FM and perused the web site for awhile, I installed it: The install is fairly straightforward – the program is a plugin for XChat – and took all of three minutes. After firing it up, you are presented with a very nice (separate) window which contains all of the controls and configuration options.

Ever had a craving for something simple? Was sitting at the computer awhile ago and had this sudden craving for pretzels, go figure. So… I now sit here with a bag of pretzels and a glass of Spaten Oktoberfest Ur-Marzen. Not the greatest Oktoberfest to be had, but certainly not the worst. At least it complies with Reinheitsgebot. Enjoy!