Snow Day Feb 2011

Snow Day Feb 2011, originally uploaded by ND Wright.

We got a lot of snow last week!

Sears 10 speed

Sears 10 speed
Sears 10 speed bicycle I found at a garage sale for $1. Needs a lot of work.
Originally uploaded by Nick David Wright

Another great garage sale find. Needs lots of work, but I believe it can be salvaged.

Go Electric: Bike Commuting Made Easy

Exploration

This country has so completely lost its heart for exploration. We went to the moon 40 years ago and we haven't been back since. It's sad.

Those men did a great thing. Going so far. But in the following decades we have been content with barely getting out of Earth's atmosphere. To me that's like crossing the pacific only to come home to play in the pool in the backyard.

A couple things have conspired to have me thinking about these things. First was getting the first couple discs of the show "Defying Gravity" from Netflix.

Great show, humans decide to tour our solar system. It was cancelled before they finished airing the first season. Thankfully they released all the episodes to DVD.

That tells you one thing. Our culture just isn't interested in space any more. Not like it used to be anyway. The second thing was that the show was set in the 2050s. Why should it take so long for us to get back to the stars?

Second I've been watching "When We Left Earth" on the Netflix watch instantly. All about the early space program. I see what those men did and with the extremely primitive -- by our standards -- equipment, and I just have to shake my head. We should be in space now. We should have a real permanent station in orbit. We should have a colony on the moon. And we ought to be halfway to Mars.

The third thing that got me thinking about this was learning that the International Space Station is now visible from Earth. If it's not raining I'll be able to see it traversing my sky tonight about 11:13pm. It shines brighter than the moon. But we're in for more clouds I think.

I grew up dreaming of space travel. Reading Robert Heinlein. Heinlein expected colonies on the moon by the mid-1980s. Ships capable of interplanetary transit in days instead of months. And we could do it, but we don't. We've lost our drive. We need to get it back.

Railroad crossing

Railroad crossing

Originally uploaded by Nick David Wright

Colton and Zara

2008 cherry blossom festival - 6
The Cherry Blossom Festival is held each May in Cherryvale, Kan. These are from 2008.
Originally uploaded by Nick David Wright

This is a photo of Colton and Zara playing at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Cherryvale, KS, May 2008.

Zara worked at the public library in Independence for a bit when Noel and I were living in Independence.

Colton and Zara have an excellent sound that Noel and I have always enjoyed. Tonight, Noel found their web site, and lo and behold they have an album out now! So I popped on over to the iTunes store and bought it straight away.

Check out their web site! http://www.coltonandzara.com/

Jammin with the new guitar

Got a guitar again after many years without.

This is the Ibanez IJV50 JamPack. Purchased for $100 at Guitar Center in Overland Park.

I enjoy playing it very much.

To go with the guitar I also picked up Mel Bay's Modern Guitar Method Grade 1. I am fairly proficient at playing chords and such but I wanted to really learn to play the guitar, for reals. In the video I play a couple of songs from the book.

Oil Spill

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a massive disaster. Here's a widget to keep tabs on it.

Who You Gonna Call?

Life and death

I've decided that I don't believe in death.

Hundreds of my cells "die" each day, yet I do not die.

Could it be that we are just "cells" of a more complex system?