Category: Personal Posts

Gene Cernan RIP: Speaking To The Last Man On The Moon

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[audio:http://archive.org/download/sxswbaby_20150319_19_LastManOnTheMoon/sxswbaby_20150319_19_LastManOnTheMoon.mp3] Gene Cernan died today. He was the last man to walk on the moon, an astronaut from a time of heroes, a pilot from a time where best friends didn’t come home. He also drew his daughter’s initials in the moon dust. They’re still there…   I was very lucky to speak to him in 2014 as he promoted Mark Craig’s documentary/biography ‘Last Man On The Moon.’  I’ve posted it above, and I’m going to listen to it again. Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and

The modern day grind of a blog writer

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TechCrunch’s John Biggs on what he has learned after writing 11,00 blog posts. There’s a lot here that I can relate to: Nobody cares. Nobody will read you. The only way to make them care is to keep doing it, day after day. Write 1,000 words a day. Don’t stop. This holds true in everything. Can you write more words per day? You can, but start at 1,000. Once you do that, day after day, people will notice. Then people will read. Then people will come back. Then you’ll gain a following. You probably won’t make any money but you

Nostalgia is typing everything exactly as you see it printed

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Usborne computing have released two new books for children to learn about computers and programming (they are Key Stage 1 level, if that means anything to you). ‘Lift The Flap Computers and Coding‘ and ‘Coding For Beginners Using Scratch‘ may be popular in school libraries in the next year or two, but it’s what Usborne released for free download next to these titles that excites me. The full range of their early 1980s Computer Guides… some of the books that started me programming on the ZX Spectrum. Including the classic ‘Computer Spacegames‘, which was the first of the guidebooks I remember. The full

Disney’s Cowboy Bebop

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It’s taken me a while to get round to Disney XD’s Star Wars animation ‘Star Wars: Rebels‘, partly because I’d ignored the Clone Wars series, but also because there was another Star Wars episode to see last year all the focus was on that. So it was a delight to settle down with Rebels and discover a almost piratical crew led by rough-edged Jedi with amazing gun control and close-quarters fighting skill, a heavily muscular ‘Second Mate’, a feminine sharpshooter, a street-wise urchin, and a cute puppy-like droid that knows far more than it tells. That crew sound awfully familiar