Countdown Atlantis!

My blood is in hyper-boiling mode. I'm pretty darn excited about seeing the last space shuttle launch the day after tomorrow. STS-135 blasts off into low earth orbit (LEO) in style. I'll be hopefully watching from Titusville, Fl...from Space View Park...if I make it through the crowds. Im scared of the hordes of people flooding the place. They have already started pouring in....nooooooo!
"Space Junkies show up early for the best show on earth"

Anywayzzz...my tickets booked, car reserved and hotel booked to-be :). Im leaving everything last-minute since there's always a chance of delay due to the mischievous weather. Currently the probability of delay due to isolated thunderstorms, clouds...etc is 60% :S. I hope I don't go there for no reason! The price I have paid is high for this once in a life time event.

Fingers crossed...breath held...and waiting.

Technological Innovations We Got from The Space Program

There's a long list of them - the things that spun off from the NASA Space Program and benefited mankind. For a full list of some of them, check out the following link.

Another list can be found here: link

Camping in the Poconos

Its been years since I last went camping...

This past weekend I took my 10$ second-hand tent, aging second-hand car and a brand new sleeping bag and headed up to the Poconos Mountains. I've been to the Poconos before but under totally different weather conditions. This is me snowboarding down Shawnee Mountain Check-it-out! last winter. This time the Poconos was lush with greenery everywhere!

It's really close to home - just a 1hr 20 minute drive from Somerset, NJ. We got stuck on the I-80 West for about an hour waiting for the police to clear a horrible accident. Someone on a speedbike had crashed and the bike didn't look like a bike anymore...hope their ok.

We were the first of our 9-person group to reach the campsite. The short talk with the receptionist of seeing black bears if your very very lucky set my blood boiling. The thrill was unbelievable. Now I know what that nutcase on "Grizzly Man" was going through :). Shooting ahead in time, I unfortunately didn't see any bears. Black bears are smaller and less aggressive than the grizzly monsters in "Grizzly Man". A more promising vantage point to see the bears was from our raft in the Delaware river the next day. The people at Adventure Sports told us people see them all the time in the corn fields and on the shore drinking from the river. Unfortunately, again I didnt see any.

Anyway, we setup my 10$ tent which I thought was fine but caught lots of criticism from my tent sharer :). It was quite smaller than illustrated on the side of the carrying case. The rest of the group arrived later and I helped them setup their 7-person tent.

After that, we barbecued, lit a campfire, drank tea, setup a hookah, laughed a load and tried to see celestial bodies with my telescope...

The next day we went rafting and canoeing on the high-tide Delaware river. Two of our group got stranded on an island and lost their canoe. The current pushed them into the submerged trees off an island and they were forced to abandon ship. They later recovered it and met us as we were calling for help from a lifeguard's mobile phone :).

Here's some pix:










The temperature dropped a handful into the night.

Definitely an experience worth repeating over and over again. I look forward to going in the coming weeks...

Celestron Nexstar 6SE

So I recently upgraded my Celestron powerseeker to a Celestron Nexstar 6SE. My heart was pounding and mind twirling as I could imagine the scenes this new telescope would reveal to me.

I took it out this past weekend for a trial in the Poconos Mountains. Unfortunately I only had one clear night and I was surrounded by trees so I was only able to see a bunch of stars and nothing more.

Last week before going camping I did manage to get some shots of the moon on a partial cloudy night.





These are much more detailed than the previous images I took using the powerseeker. Click on them to get a full-sized view.

Last Launch - July 8th

The space shuttle program is ending :(. Shuttle Atlantis will do the honor of blasting off from Cape Canaveral on July 8th. There will be a live tweetup with a number of live video streams covering the event from a number of perspectives. Here's a list of the tweetups so far:

The @NASA sponsored @NASATweetup held at the press site:
@NASATweetup/sts-135-launch

Space View Park Tweetup:
@SVPTweetup

NASA Causeway:
@CausewayTweetup/sts135-causewaytweetup

reference: [ref]



Im seriously thinking of going to Florida to witness the last launch. I hope I can make it. The only thing im scared of is if they postpone the launch (which happens all the time) then I will have flown down there for no reason :S. We'll just have to wait and see.

Labeling Egyptians Negatively

I hate it when people label Egyptians as being lazy, lethargic and unfruitful. It is the current regime that has brought about this through their adverse modus operandi. This has caused the diminishing of people's sense of nationalism and self-worth. Along with lack of proper education, Egyptians have to face troublesome hardship, mindless twisted bureaucracy and humiliation every day just to survive and in the end for what? for pay that is below minimum wage. So how can you over-generalize and label the genes of a nation as being apathetic and unwilling to self-improve? Give Egyptians a country that cares for them by representing them and the traits of a backward people will disappear.

What's worse is blaming the people for the country's backwardness. Who arranges for the education of the people? Who manages and organizes the resources of the nation fairly? Who takes care of the people and sees to it that their rights are represented and defended? Isn't it the government who should do this? Isn't it the government who stands at the top of the pyramid to provide for the Egyptian people? Take away the head of the pyramid and you'll have a mindless chaotic mass of people with no sense of direction. Now place a corrupt head atop the pyramid and no fruit will trickle down to the people at the base of the Egyptian society. The latter pyramid represents the situation in Egypt today or to be precise a few days back before January 25th when the people lifted their heads and spoke.

Whoever thought that we would see tens of thousands of people standing up and demanding change to the current rotting and corrupt regime. I would never have expected such a defiance of dictatorship. Never in my thoughts and dreams. I am proud to have witnessed the immense will of a deprived people rising to challenge the oppression. Last Tuesday marked the beginning.



My only hope is that Egypt stays peaceful during these unstable times and emerges victorious, free and controlled by a government representing the will of the people. God keep our families and friends back home safe. God bless the neighborhood watchers who are defending our homes against the dirtiest of all evil-doers: looters and thugs. There is hope and there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Name On Mars

Again, I've been caught up in the spaghetti threads of life and haven't blogged in ages. Now I'm back with a short post about my name being sent to Mars this year!

I was surfin' through the Nasa website when I came across this link that read: "send your name to mars". I instantly clicked on it and voila! My name will be written on a microchip which will be sent to the red planet this year.

I know some might say, "what on earth is this guy thinking?" :) - but why not? I'm delighted to know my name will be up there saved in time on our neighboring planet. So here's the certificate I got to prove that my name will be written on a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover launching into space this year (2011).



If you want to do the same - click here

End of Semester

I can't remember the last time I blogged. It's been ages since I finger-fiddled on the keyboard and produced a post worth reading. Due to lack of popular request by my faithless fans :) I am now escaping the work I have sitting on my shoulders. It's the end of the semester - a hectic time.

All I'm looking forward to now is hitting the snow slopes and getting my shoes icy. Only a few days left and then I'm "free" (almost free..there's still an avalanche of work coming my way). I hope everything goes smoothly.

Stay tuned for more on my post-semester adventures :). Until then it's me writing to you from my research lab...

Take it easy folks...

Quite a surprise!

I was notified by a friend that I was famous...lool and was told to open this link....:D
Click Here!

Twitter - Good bye "In a Petri Dish"

I created a twitter account a long time ago. I used it for a day or two and found it useless (or so I thought at the time).



About a week ago two of my friends (@ghorab and @fk82) assured me twitter was unbeatable and that I was wrong to abandon it. So I gave it a re-shot. At first twittering on the main website was annoying. I remedied this by downloading TweetDeck and it made a hell of a difference! I was able to keep track of posts, mentions, people to follow...etc and learnt the jargon of #'s and @'s fast :).

Twitter is an awesome way of following the news. Its not just the mainstream news that you can follow but everything from political figures's opinions to entertainer's feeds and regular peoples' thoughts. You can follow blogs, websites, friends, activists, entertainers, ...etc.

Twitter is the heart of the micro-blogging world. It's easier to write on since the posts are limited to 140 characters. On the other hand you cant fit a detailed post into the 140. Will this make a difference? Will the micro-way see the 'au revoir' of macro-blogging? Will I stop posting here? I don't consider twitter posts as real "written" blog posts. They are just an update like a facebook status. So I guess I'll continue to populate this useless blog with more useless posts :). If twitter takes anything away from this blog it would be time. I spend a lot of time on twitter keeping tracking of worldly updates.

If you're not on it, give it another shot...and follow me @tgaaly. See you in the twitter-sphere!

One Small Step Closer to the Ball of Cheese

I checked the weather forecast and to my delight found no "scattered thunderstorms". It was going to be clear skies and a bright full moon. I rounded up my telescope and camera gear and headed out to see the full moon clearer than I've ever seen it. It was magnificent! The big ball of cheese we take for granted that sits up there illuminating our night sky was filling up my lens.

I attached the regular 20mm lens and could see the whole moon within the field of view. Then I added the 3x Barlow lens and could see the craters up close and personal. I also tried out the 6.3mm and again got a clear view of the detailed war-like terrain on the face of the moon.

I saw the Tycho crater clearly with its streaks flying out like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. I saw most of the seas (the darker depressions on the surface) and many more craters recording the history of the battered sphere.

After viewing it through the lenses I decided to hook it up to my camera and snap some pix.

Here's what it looked like through the 20mm lens.



and here's how it looked through the Barlow lens:









It's magnificent how man has set foot on this natural satellite (God Bless Nasa - if you don't believe in the conspiracy :)). If you think its a conspiracy, watch the Myth-busters episode on proving whether the moon-landing was a hoax.

The moon's diameter is quarter the size of earths. Its mass is 1/81 of the earth's mass. The average distance between the earth and moon is 384403 km. Despite the distance my telescope has succeeded in showing me it like I've never seen before by my naked eye. Truly amazing.

[My telescope is a 127mm Celestron]

Cmd + ~ = Mac shortcut to switch between windows of the same app

A friend of mine told me that CMD + ~ on a Mac switches you between windows of the same application. I remember trying this before but it didn't work. Maybe I mistakenly did not have many windows of the same application open and expected it to switch between everything (windows of different apps and the same app).

Im happy with this discovery. I just need to get used to using it :D.

Angers, une belle ville

France is a beautiful country. I saw it briefly a few years back but this time round I spent a week in the country. I only spent one day and night in Paris. The rest of my stay was in Angers, a city Southwest of Paris and located in the Northwestern part of France. The train ride from Angers to Montparnasse station in central Paris blew my mind away. I saw endless flat plane fields. The scenery was filled with greenery, sunshine, endless farms. It looked like hobbit land in Lord of the Rings. I saw giant wind turbines moving majestically and towering over small farm houses. It felt surreal.

Angers itself has a population of about 150k. Its not as small as I expected. The bus ride from my hotel to the central area took around 30-45 minutes. I walked around down town, visited the castle, saw the massive cathedral and ate fondue. I'll leave you with some pix that I hope capture the beauty of the place that had me spellbound.

I miss you Alt + Tab!

If someone were to ask me what I missed most about windows. It would be alt+tab. That was the best thing ever. Now on mac alt+tab does not switch between windows of the same application, instead it switches between windows of different applications. This continues to drive me nuts. I've looked for 3rd party apps to help me with this but so far have found nothing reliable. If anyone has any information about this, please let me know.

ISS Flies Over

After missing the longer duration fly over of the ISS (International Space Station) yesterday which was publicized via email, I went out today to see it again. It appeared for 2 minutes and rose from the NW and set in the NNE. It looked like a fast moving medium-bright star. I managed to snap one lousy shot of the thing. You can see it in the image below (you have to click on it to see the tiny spec in the center of the image, just to the left of the trees). I posted a cropped zoom in of the white spec.





This is the actual thing (image source: wikipedia):



The ISS is a joint project by the US, Europe, Russia and Japan. Other parts have been built by other countries but those space agencies are mostly responsible for the construction which started in 1998 and is scheduled for completion in 2011. It is the largest satellite orbiting Earth and currently there are 6 astronauts living aboard it.

Escape from Planet Doom

Our game design course project is up and live. It's a bullet hell shooter (a specific type of shoot 'em up games) with a twist of comic drama.

Try it out (Escape from Planet Doom) and let me know what you think. Use w-a-s-d keys for moving your ship and move the mouse to aim. Beware of the drama ;)!

Here are some snapshots:

King of Kong

"King of Kong: A fistful of quarters", a documentary about the best of the best in classic arcade video games. The story is about the rivalry between Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe over conquering the high score position of Donkey Kong :D.

If you dont want me to spoil it, dont read any further and read it after you watch it...



Billy Michell was the first gamer to get a perfect score in pacman and has been known as "the greatest arcade video gamer of all time". He owns a restaurant and sells a line of hot sauces :). He's quite a unique individual. Steve Weibe, on the other hand is a high school teacher who challenged Billy to Donkey Kong. He also held the record for Donkey Kong Junior but Mark Kiehl stole the title back just yesterday (April 19, 2010).

What the drama of the documentary does not show is that the current high scorer is a third guy - a 35 year old plastic surgeon from new york - Dr. Hank Chien who recorded his score via DVD just last month (April 8th). It also does not show that Billy stole back the position after Weibe took it in 2007.

Just watch it...

Color Harmony

Do all colors go together?

Obviously not, there are contrasting colors, colors that match and colors that don't match. There are primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors and many more hues and levels of saturation. Color theory has long set out to find colors that work well together and appear to be in harmony. Color theory can be traced back to the 15th century with the works in principles of colors by Leonardo Da vinci and Leon Battista Alberti. Sir Isaac Newton started the tradition of color theory with his theories on primary colors in the 18th century.

The color wheel can be traced back to the 18th century. Boutet's color circle/wheel can be seen below. This was drawn in 1708. It depicts hues of primary, secondary, tertiary and complementing colors.



As time passed the color wheel got more detailed. The one sketched below was created in 1908.



From this color wheel, harmonic color schemes can be composed. Here I describe the basic color schemes:

- The monochromatic classic scheme is one that is based on levels of saturation and brightness of a single hue. An example of this is the grayscale which I've seen in games and looks exceedingly soothing.

- An analogous color scheme focuses on colors that are adjacent to one another on the color wheel. Only a limited number of hues are selected.

- A complementary scheme involves colors on opposite sides of the color wheel.

- A split complement color scheme takes an analogous color scheme and adds to it the complementary analogous scheme on the opposite side of the color wheel.

- The triadic takes three analogous color schemes and puts them together so that they form a mercades benz kind of symbol over the color wheel. This can be seen below.



- In addition to these color schemes, there is also the double complementary scheme or tetradic scheme which is similar to the previous one but involves a pair of split complementary schemes over the wheel.

For a more detailed description of these as well as the pros and cons and tips on using each, visit this link.

It is very important to pick your colors, saturation and contrasts well and iterate over your color schemes. The more you experiment and get feedback from others, the more you master this art of producing harmonious color schemes. Color schemes also depend on the art style that you are coloring. Some color schemes go well with certain art styles and badly with others, so think, visualize and iterate.