Party starts at 6PM

I just learned that The Armory, the original GeekHaus - one of the first co-living places that had full time dedicated internet access - was having it's 15th anniversary party this evening - my best to them - Belal - and johnd - whose' b-day it is - and especially "da Elf" - who I haven't seen in a while.
  ¶ 5:28 PM 0 comments

  Californial Appeals Court - "DeCSS ban violated free speech"

This is just one happy day for and a whole bunch of people coming down to my place to celebrate Feb 29th as "Asteroid Appriciation Day".

This was the letter I sent the EFF yesterday:

"(or will be, whenever I get out of the car and back to my sent mail")

This just in - two SCO folk will be coming tonight, with blast shields set at full.
I anticipate that ought to spark a few conversations.

I have been playing "A solstice carrol" for the deluge of kids upstairs, after they started wedging coins into my keyboard. The dimes don't screw up the playing, as it turns out, but the nickel is wedged between E and F on the 6th octave.

Back to prepping for the Party. Hope you make it.

  ¶ 2:27 PM 0 comments

  Preliminary Event Schedule for Asteroid Appreciation Day Party in Felton, CA

Saturday, Febuary 28th

8AM-6PM Setup - if you arrive early please be prepared to enlist in getting the place prepped! and Please feel free to arrive early. Video/sound recording/production setup for performances and food and camping preparations
2PM - Start BBQ - Food available
4PM-8PM Basement Open Jam Session, BYOI (Bring your own instrument, although keyboards will be present)
9PM Rebecca June and Gary Parks will be performing songs from their upcoming cd
including their first single - "Working", and favorites like "Sexy in socks", "World in his pocket" with Dr. Tate on bass and the haunting "In time".
10PM Ken Sumrall (of "/dev/noise") and friends
11PM Claire Machado and Open Jam with members of the Rick Ednie Band
12 MIDNIGHT - A little speech about asteroids... some stargazing, and maybe some more music
1AM - til? Open Jam

Sunday

8-11:58AM - Cooking breakfast, cleanup and prep for rest of day
  -11:59AM - Bicycle and Technology Discussion/Demos

2:00PM - Beach and nap time

11:00PM - Private Party

Security provided by Mye Laande, the Cubic Dog, and Raging Network Services.

Asteroid Appreciation Day Asteroid Email list hosted by Eruditium.org

Filmed by Virtual World Studio.
  ¶ 5:18 AM 0 comments

  Known attendees for the Asteroid Appreciation Day Party, February 28, 2004 at 5:00am

A lot has happened for the Asteroid Appreciation Day party in the last 24 hours.
There are 55 confirmed reservations. The weather is looking GREAT.
Today Feb 28 Sunny 59°/39° 0 % chance of rain
Sun Feb 29 Partly Cloudy 61°/43° 0 % chance of rain
Mon Mar 01 Light Rain 58°/42° 60 % chance of rain

At last count there were 8 children coming, ages 2-8. Just two dogs. Is there a
way to bungie them all together?

Claire Machado and I are working in shifts, I plan to take a nap in a few minutes. I am hoping the Cubic Dog can pick up the load at 5AM PST.

There are a few people coming that still are children at heart.

Dr Andrew Abarbanel, author of "Quantitative EEG and Neurofeedback"
Martin Krieg, National Bicycle Greenway Mayors Ride 2004 , author of Awake again"bringing two bicycles and packing a sleeping bag."
Dr. T
John Draper "who plans to bring his laptop and sleeping bag because he couldn't drive all the way back and stay awake." with Daniela and an original Home Brew Computer club member
Claire Machado C.A.M. Engine C.A.M. Engine MP3s
James Davies, bassist, Jimmy Chickenpants (bluegrass)
Brianna Machado (8) and Wade Trombetta (5), Child Ambassadors
Faye Saunders, Apple
Skot Pascal, Math Teacher and NBG Rider
Rick Ednie, Rick Ednie
Jeff Stram, Chordwood Music
Rebecca and Gary Parks
Ken Sumrall, /Dev/Noise


  ¶ 4:48 AM 0 comments

  Asteroid Appreciation Day Party - FEB 28th-29th

Dear Readers:

I'm having a party I hold once every four years. It starts at 11:59 AM, Saturday, Febuary 28th, and extends until 11:59AM, Monday, March 1st.

I call it Asteroid Appreciation Day.

My place down in Lompico Valley, near Santa Cruz, Ca - has room for about 250 at a time, if the weather clears up, and 80, if it doesn't. That's not big enough for all the people I'd like to invite physically, but the Blogosphere is big enough for all the people I'd like to have attend.

It is shaping up to be a wacking good party! Members of five known bands, hosted by CamEngine (with additional instrumentalists welcomed) will be jamming in the basement all day and all night.

Whatever coherent emerges from the jam will be performed upstairs (or outside, given weather conditions) - and broadcast to the Internet.

The lovely Rebecca June Parks and her talented hubby will be performing some songs from their next record. Martin Krieg, author of "Awake Again" will be talking about the upcoming National Bicycle Greenway Mayors Ride, and Gnome Girl and her jacket will be here if someone can give her a lift from Alameda...

and I might spend a few minutes ranting about space policy. Apologies in advance for that.

There are probably quite a few surprise musical appearances in store, and there will be some interesting new technologies passed around in addition to food and drink.

If you are interested in attending, there are still 22 slots available for the indoor version of the party. I'll give preference to my dedicated readers and bloggers, and free software developers and EFF members -

Please rsvp@picketwyre.com to indicate if you are interested in attending this Feb 28th and/or 29th, 2004. A small donation (for the bands and various worthy causes) is requested.

I look forward to having y'all over. - and if the weather improves I'll grow the thing to it's full scope.

If you maintain a blog, and read mine, I would love a backblog entry for this. I would really, really like to know if flash-crowds really work.

Sincerely,


_________
Mike Taht
CEO, PicketWyre Labs
  ¶ 6:23 PM 0 comments

  NEOX vs the Comanche

Want to see me get mad about money misspent? Read on. I want to talk about the incredible cost-effectiveness of NEOX based space missions after I get done being pissed off about this:

Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Army plans to cancel the Boeing Co.-United Technologies Corp. Comanche helicopter program, according to people familiar with the plan.

The program has been overhauled six times in its 18-year history as the cost per helicopter grew. The U.S. Army was ordered in 2002 to reduce the number of Comanche helicopters it planned to buy to 650 from 1,207. Initially, it planned to buy 2,000.

``The Comanche program was overtaken by new threats and new technologies,'' said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst for the Washington-based Lexington Institute. ``After 20 years of development, it had yet to produce an operational helicopter.''

The value of the contract was raised to $6.6 billion from $3.2 billion under a revised development contract awarded in November 2002. That contract calls for the venture to deliver nine Comanche helicopters in 2005 and 2006 for test and evaluation improvements through 2011, according to United Technologies' annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The program's total budget for the Comanche is $38.3 billion [bold by yours truly]. The Army has spent $6.8 billion through Sept. 30. The fiscal 2005 budget asks $1.2 billion for research and development and just $12 million for procurement. The procurement request is $2 billion in 2009.

38 billion dollars spent over 20 years to not produce a single operational aircraft. That kind of money would pay for roughly 5000 NEOX missions, each visiting 4 asteroids, or more, in a quest for raw material, and information, laying the groundwork for a network of telescopes, radar and observing stations well beyond earth's orbit - and potentially opening the solar system to human colonization. Each impact probe would give us so much more detail on what conditions were like...

The thing I am maddest about today - is that the only thing the press seems to pick up on is the one in half a million chance that one rock will hit earth - it's not just that -

It is in the 0 chance that I will ever get to live on one of these rocks - hitch a lift past earth, through the Belt, up to Jupiter, and back to Venus. It would be a wonderful 4 year trip - it would be a wonderful trip to make multiple times...

I see each of the thousands of near earth asteroids as opportunity - as real estate on the hoof - as a place where greenpeace isn't running around in little rubber boats - I see the former swamplands of florida in only 70 years of development covered with retirement homes... and I see Toutatis: Toutatis - where I want to retire. While it isn't much to look at now, neither was the swampland in florida 70 years ago. See that cute little dimple in the center? That is over 600m in diameter - right on the edge of that, I think, would be a good place for a near-zero-g-hottub with an everchanging view.... The pictures may be small, but we are talking about kilometers of land, and billions of tons of raw material here.

The only way to get there is to make it pay, to make it possible to bring resources from space - and the only way I can think of to do that is to bootstrap it with an enormous number of tiny spacecraft launches each on a mission to survey a different set of asteroids, to find sources of water, metals, and the essentials of life - and to establish an effective relay network for communication between all these craft - and... and... I start to sputter about stupid and wasteful it is to spend money on a helicopter designed to counter a non-existent threat - I rant about how if we only just took a step back and looked at the solar system, as a whole, from space, rather than from earth - we'd understand that the answers were already in our grasp -

It is not science fiction anymore, and, compared with most government programs - is cost effective with a potentially astronomical rate of return -

From the article that started all this matrix-y thinking:

``The most directly competing programs in the Army are Apache and Comanche,'' Aboulafia said. ``Which would you rather have - 100 percent of a proven machine with good profit, or 50 percent of a risky venture?''

you can have A, or B -

but if you start jumping up and down crying out for another option, a risky venture with an incredibly high rate of return...

just look up, on Asteroid Appreciation Day, February 29th - and visualize looking back on this green marble from the front porch of your very own digs on your own chunk of land.

Labels: asteroids, comanche, nasa, neox, retirement, space, space04

  ¶ 11:19 PM 0 comments