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I'm a novelist and have an interest in space science and physics. I've been a programmer for more than 40 years and I like reviewing new and up-and-coming authors. I have become a committed member of the OpenSimulator community.
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2022-07-30 Fix Website
Update to site software breaks something.
Coffee Blog: 2022-07-24
Update: Profile H tested, see below
I've been creating roasting profiles, and recently changed from a numeric system to an alphabetic. I don't know why, perhaps the numbers were making me depressed at how many times I'd done it and still not reached a particularly good roast other by accident.
Anyway, I decided to do two roasts this weekend. One I called 'Profile G' and the other 'Profile H'. Here's the first one:
Jezero Weather Data
The Perseverance Rover has been sending back weather data. Now that InSight has officially retired from the weather business, I'll be collecting the weather data from Perseverance in Jezero Crater.
It'll take me a while to get setup, and the data being returned is quite different. The InSight weather page will be renamed so it can still be accessed.
InSight's Final Selfie
The InSight lander is in the final stages of of its extended mission. This image, taken on April 24th 2022, is it's last selfie.
There was a possibility to keep going until the last operating science experiment had to be turned off, and then InSight would keep operating on safe mode until it eventually ran out of power.
There's always a push to keep an experiment running as long as possible. It tests the experiment to extremis, and it keeps people employed. By running it as long as possible, they also discover the limits of the engineering in the harsh environment. This time though, they decided to turn off safe-mode so the seismometer can keep operating until the end.
2022-07-10 A New Laptop
I bought a nice, shiny new laptop, which unfortunately came with Windows 11 on it. I immediately installed Linux Mint and some of my favourite apps.
As you can see from the screenshot, it looks good. It runs well too, taking just 12 seconds to boot from cold to login box, and another 3 secs from login to the desktop.
It's all setup with Wireguard so I can VPN into my home (although that's not needed if I use my phone as a hotspot). Being Mint, I can also use bluetooth (to my phone) to VPN, so that's even neater.