Looks like I purchased my house one year ago today. And I think I've accumulated at least four or five dollars in equity. At least my tax refund should be enormous...

More or less complete cloud coverage for the entire duration of the eclipse. I caught one glimpse of a partially-eclipsed moon through a veil of clouds towards the end, but that's it. Oh well.

Instead, I watched coverage of our thinly-veiled ASAT test vs. L-21. It was in the interest of public safety, right DoD? Riiiiiight. I like to think that this was part of a campaign to BLOW UP THE MOON, but the satellite just got in the way. Maybe next time, guys.

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That is the SHA1for a piece of a information that is really cool. More later, maybe.

I wouldn't really consider myself a Blu-ray early adopter; or even an early adopter of the PS3. I bought my PS3 in May of 2007, six months after it was released, and only then because I was able to get it at a hell of a discount ($200 vs. the $600 list price at that time). If the deal hadn't presented itself, I would have waited for both a price cut and some sort of assurance that Blu-ray technology wasn't going to go the way of the Betamax.

Still, even at that time, I felt like Blu-ray had more going for it—both technically and in terms of industry support. I'm not a big fan of the DRM hooks in Blu-ray, but that's really my only complaint. I remember, even before staking a claim in this format war by buying into one of the technologies, reviewing both options and deciding that I would rather see Blu-ray emerge the victor.

So, naturally, I'm happy with today's announcement by Toshiba, which is a more official end to the format war than the de facto, if incremental, end heralded by the dropping of HD-DVD support by Blockbuster, Netflix, Warner Bros., WalMart, et al. over the last few weeks.

VHS was with us for the better part of 20 years, DVD for about 10. Will there be another video storage medium? Some sort of UV-laser disc, perhaps, with another terrible name like YouVee or some crap? I doubt it. Before the lifespan of Blu-ray is up, I anticipate that downloadable content will be sufficiently mature to both alleviate the need for a means of physical distribution and to kill off the businesses that rely on it. As companies like Netflix and Blockbuster transition over to a purely digital content-delivery paradigm, the need for Blu-ray discs will evaporate and, along with it, the need for anyone to develop a successor format. This should happen well before Blu-ray technology is insufficient to meet the consumer demand.

iTunes has already proven that the general public are willing to forgo the physical accessories that accompany our purchases of data, even when the digital data is loaded with unwanted DRM, if the interface for doing so is sufficiently idiot-proof. The next generation of content delivery will begin when such an interface is available for watching TV. The PS3 isn't it, nor is the Xbox360, and it certainly isn't that new Apple thing (it's like DIVX, only... well it's exactly like DIVX). Whenever it comes, it won't involve acrylic discs.

Computers had 3.5" floppy disk drives well into this decade, but now you have to buy a USB floppy drive if you really really need to use one. Ten years from now, we'll all have $20 Blu-ray/DVD/CD read/write drives in our computers that are basically unused while we pipe all of our data in and out via the network. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to when it will be difficult to buy a computer that has any removable disc drive of any kind? I'll put my money on 2020.

Last chance to see a full lunar eclipse for almost two years is tomorrow night. If the weather is clear in your area, go have a look. Here's a timetable showing when the relevant events will happen in your time zone.

I'll try to get some pictures of it if the weather is favorable here.

When we travel to nuclear facilities in foreign countries, we tend to bring alarming realtime dosimeters whose job is to start beeping loudly if the radiation dose rate in a given location is above safe limits. They also keep track of the total absorbed dose since they were last reset. Just so you know, mine has never beeped.

So, how much radiation am I exposed to when I visit places like BN-350?

On my recent trip to Kazakhstan, in three days within the contaminated areas of the reactor facility, I accumulated a 12 microsievert dose equivalent from gammas and < 1 microsievert from neutrons. Now for people who do not work with radioactive material on a regular basis, that's probably clear as mud. So to give you a good comparison and sense of scale, I left my realtime dosimeter on while I flew back home. On my 11.5 hour flight from Frankfurt to Atlanta, I accumulated 259 microsieverts from neutrons and 18 microsieverts from gammas.

Interestingly, sending the dosimeter through the x-ray machine didn't accumulate any dose at all, so whatever the detecting medium is in there (anyone know? this is an N2 model), it must have a low-energy cutoff of above 100keV or so.

Anyway, the moral of this story is that working in decrepit Soviet breeder reactors is can be very radiologically safe, though I wouldn't recommend you try this on your next vacation trip to Aktau. Flying, on the other hand—you're getting cooked up there! Do you smell bacon?

[In case you are unaware, the Earth is constantly bombarded by high-energy particles from SPACE aka cosmic rays. These rays interact with atoms in the atmosphere, destroying them, and causing showers of random nuclei. This stuff is happening all the time, all around us. You just can't see it because you need glasses they're very very small. The byproducts of these reactions are mostly absorbed high in the atmosphere, though some of the higher-energy stuff does make it down to the surface of the Earth, wreaking havoc on modern integrated circuits, etc. The higher up in the atmosphere you go, the less shielding it provides against these high energy particles and their only-slightly-less-high energy reaction products. Thus, when you fly in a plane, you're being pelted with RAYS. And occasionally BEAMS.]

First off, I know I said that I'd have pictures and commentary... but jetlag and a lot of work won out so that'll have to wait. I've got a long weekend of recovery ahead... so maybe something will appear then.

In the meantime, this is shaping up to be the longest day of travel ever for me. It is 1:39 Ante Meridiem local time here in Almaty, and I am about to leave for the airport. I will be traveling until 11:45 Post Meridiem local time, Albuquerque, along with 13 hours of time change (in the unfavorable direction). This is due both to a long distance to travel and sub-optimal layovers in both Frankfurt and Atlanta. So you will likely find me updating this post with some whining later.

Bon Voyage!

Update 1: OK, it's been the better part of 12 hours, and I am now in Frankfurt. Local time is 7:40 AM. Time remaining until my flight to Atlanta: 5 hours. Terminal D here in Frankfurt is completely vacant at this hour. I wandered around for about 20 minutes looking for the key combination of a chair, an outlet, and wireless. During that time, I saw maybe three people. Landing in Frankfurt I noticed something interesting: they don't seem to use sodium lamps in their street lights here. Almost all of the lights in town were the bluish-white of halogen or mercury vapor lamps, not the orange lights you see all over the US.

Update 2: Welcome to Atlanta. That was a long flight. 200km/hr headwinds led to an additional hour and a half of flight, for a total flight time of 11.5 hours. It did, however, shorten my 5 hour layover by quite a bit (especially when combined with the unusually long customs processing time). Local time is 8:00 PM. Only two hours before my last (and shortest) flight of the day, and this flight will be in first class. I'm definitely ready for some sleep.