Wow. It's been a long time since I've posted. Turns out that fatherhood is a fairly time-consuming venture. And when you combine it with writing a dissertation, conducting research, and job-hunting...well let's just say my days are certainly full.
I have to say that there were a couple of fairly major events that happened recently that I would've liked to blog about. First was the Perseid meteor shower, which peaked late last week. I guess we haven't totally missed that one, considering that if you live in a region with relatively low light pollution, you can probably still glimpse a few meteoroids per hour. If you're lucky. The other event that I would've liked to have posted on here was yesterday's live streaming video feed of the repairs being made to the International Space Station. The series of spacewalks that took place were undertaken to repair a faulty pump that is used to cool the station and its components. I watched a few minutes of the video feed, and what I saw of it was pretty fascinating. Most of the feed was focused on the ground crew, who we saw conversing idly, as well as eating lunch (I saw one tech eating a sandwich and found myself wondering, 'what kind of sandwich is that?'). But I did get to see some of the live video from the camera that appeared to be fixed to the astronaut's helmet. From that camera, I watched as the astronaut basically just tried to get from one point to another; either trying to reach the repair site or trying to return to the ISS exterior hatch. The really interesting part was how the astronaut made his or her way across the surface of the station using a series of handles. It was slow going, but probably very reassuring to always have at least one hand on something solid.
Anyways, I'm not sure if I'll be back to regular posting or not. We'll see how it goes. I'll try to update at least every week or two, though. In the meantime, I'll try to keep my chops up by continuing to watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos with my son, and as many episodes of Nova as I can.
