Taking a Little Tour
Published on Nov 19, 2012
In her final days as Commander of the International Space Station, Sunita Williams of NASA recorded an extensive tour of the orbital laboratory and downlinked the video on Nov. 18, just hours before she, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency departed in their Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan. The tour includes scenes of each of the station’s modules and research facilities with a running narrative by Williams of the work that has taken place and which is ongoing aboard the orbital outpost.
How To Start A Blog
Over Before It Started
Capping one of the shortest 30-day winter vacations in memory, we arise before sunrise for breakfast, then pack the Pathfinder, and Kim and Ivi are off by 8am to return Ivi to L&C.
Who Knew?

Today, on Ivi’s birthday, we discover that exactly 75 years ago to the day, Benny Goodman made history by performing the first ever jazz concert in Carnegie Hall — January 16, 1938. So what else to do but pull up the music and play it throughout the day. (Couldn’t entice Ivi to get her own clarinet into the mix, though.)
Ivi on Her Twentieth
Avoiding Paparazzi
Landfill Harmonic
Gravity-Powered Lighting
A Sandwich With Your Bach
A few months ago, I learned of the Open Goldberg Project. Being massively fanatical around the music of J.S. Bach, with the Goldberg Variations being possibly my favorite work, I immediately seized the moment and downloaded Kimiko Ishizaka’s open source project files (in high-res 24-bit/96k lossless FLAC format, but you can get them in WAV or lossy MP3 as well). From time to time, I revisit her site to see what her next project might be (seems to a Kickstarter project to fund performances of the Well-Tempered Clavier), and today I found a video tribute:
I highly recommend this music, and welcome you to drop in for a listen in its entirety.