Music, opinions, and portfolio of Mark Eagleton, musician and web developer in Northern CA.
This is where I tell you what I really think. This website doesn’t support comments by design, that is what your blog is for!
Last week’s transit of Venus made for some big scuttlebutt in nerdy astronomy circles. What’s the big deal with Venus’ orbit bringing it between us and the sun? After all, from Venus’ perspective, it’s just business as usual. Well, it’s our perspective that makes the event so interesting. It is, after all, the story of how we learned the scale of our solar system.
On June 5, 2012 (or June 6th depending on your location), Venus will pass between us and the sun, obscuring portions of it sort of like a tiny eclipse. This is called a transit, and the next time Venus does this, everyone you know will be dead. So take a few minutes out of your afternoon check it out. Here is a super-easy way.
There is going to be an annular solar eclipse today! That means the moon will cast a shadow on the earth as it passes between us and the sun while it is at apogee (the furthest distance it gets from earth in its eliptical orbit). This results is a big, black ball with a ring of fire surrounding it. That ring is called an annulus, which is why we call it an annular eclipse.
It’s called the application frame, and if you are a Mac user, you probably hate it.
To turn it of, go to Window > Application Frame (click it to uncheck it).
I found this exchange between a former fundimentalist Christian and Answers in Genesis pretty riveting. Follow along in order for maximum enjoyment:
Now that more craft breweries are canning, the bennifits of canned beer vs. bottled are finally starting to trickle into public awareness. Many of the articles I’ve read on the subject, however, seem to pride themselves on outlining “just some of the benifits.”
This is an insult to the cause. Bottles are bad for beer and bad for our planet. It’s time for a comprehensive list of why bottles should go away completely and cans should be the default packaging vessel for beer.
Vintage Park Community Church in Sacramento put a reminder on their marquee this week that April 1st is international atheist day. This is a popular Christian joke this time of year. They are referring to Psalm 14:1.
My apologies for the broken image links and any spammy redirects you may have encountered here recently. My shared server was victimized by some bot hacking, and I’m still tidying things up.
I love a good mash-up! When two or more of your favorite things collide, there is amazing potential for awesome. In this case, two of my favorite scientists/science advocates mildly butt heads on the topic of science and religion.
Rather than give up something frivolous for the sake of paying tribute to an extremely self destructive act performed thousands of years ago by a person who claimed to be an omnipotent sky monster, why not take on something useful instead?
There wasn’t much to go on on the YouTube when I was trying to learn this tune for the Pleasant Valley Boys, so I slowed it down for other bass players out there. In the name of more bass and banjo duets!
A friend of mine who has recently gotten back into the double bass, asked me about gut strings the other day. Like most bass players, I struggled (and still do) with choosing strings for my instrument. I don’t know if classical or jazz players struggle as much with this issue, but for Americana music, string choice can directly affect what styles of music you can effectively play on your instrument, and how long you can physically endure playing it.
The International Space Station (ISS) is cool. It’s a multi-section science lab in low Earth orbit (about 240 miles up), constructed and manned by personal from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency(JAXA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). It travels at over 17,000 miles per hour, completely circling the globe every 91 minutes.
See? Cool.
About a month ago, I tendered my resignation at ground(ctrl). The experience has been surreal. I contributed a good portion of my life to the cause there. While I’m extremely proud of the team we assembled and what we were able to accomplish in five short years, it has been a relief to have a few weeks off to reflect and decompress without the pressure of what has to be done when I get back.
A hero, contrarian, and defender of free speach is gone. We knew it was imminant, but this makes it no less easy. These are my thoughts on the great man which I regret not making public before his death.
Stephen Colbert interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson. This is worth every second of your time. 5,082 seconds of your time specifically.
Lots of people site Mail.app as one of the best new features of Mac OS X Lion. I agree, but it seems to be for the opposite reason.
I discovered a bug with Safari 1.5 (7534.48.3) that effects text color of block level elements that have a double border with an rgba color value that has an alpha setting lower than 1. Video inside!
New advancements in pro audio suddenly blow me away. I forgot how useful electricity could be when applied to musics.
I made a video of my AeroPress. Music by the West Nile Ramblers.
I made myself a canned response to long-winded email messages with multiple recipients that contain one or more non-disclosure email signatures. In the name of efficient communication, I encourage you to copy, modify and reuse this message liberally.