Today I went back to work.  Not really; I have five more weeks of vacation (!), but today I started working on a new project.  Well not really; it's not a new project, actually I've been thinking about it for about ten years, off and on.  And I didn't really start on it today, I've been thinking about it all summer, and thinking counts as work too.  But today I sat down and started putting pen to paper, and fingers to keyboard.  It felt great.  I'll tell you more about it in the days to come.

In case you're wondering, this is not Project Q.  I've wanted to work on that too - have done since April 2009 :( - but this is something else, more urgent or interesting, or something.  I'll call it Project I, since it involves imaging...

Meanwhile it's all happening, a filter pass maestro, if you please...

Saturn weather forecast: rings, with light right from Enceladus.  Good to know. 

Meanwhile: NASA readies Juno spacecraft for mission to Jupiter.  Excellent!  Now that they're done playing with space shuttles, we can give this kind of unmanned spaceflight more attention. 

We saw Crazy, Stupid, Love last night.  Well when I say we saw it, I mean, we saw about 30 minutes of it; just about the time Ryan Gosling starts saying "let's get out of here" to pick up women in bars, I said "let's get out of here" to Shirley, and she agreed.  The target IQ of this movie was about 85, and it wasn't the slightest bit interesting.  I see where it gets a 75 on the Tomatometer, which is amazing.  IMHO no redeeming qualities at all. 

Other recent movies: Change Up (okay, kind of stupid), Arthur 2011 (ugh!), and Arthur 1981 (still excellent!)

Interesting movie concept: In time.  "In the late 21st century, time has replaced money as the unit of currency. At 25 years old, aging stops and each person is given one more year to live. Unless you replenish your clock, you die."  Sounds like a return to the 15th century, except for the 'aging stops' part :)  Actually it looks good, like the filmmakers are aiming high... 

A great explanation of Google+, from Ars Technica.  If your problem is fine-grained control over who sees what post, G+ is a great solution.  Since I have a public blog and make everything I post to Facebook public, this is not my problem.  Hence my reluctance to adopt.  I am tempted by the content of others, however... 

Excellent: Ultimaker, a low-cost 3D printer.  You have to believe this technology will keep on improving, to the point where we'll be able to "print" all kinds of useful objects in our homes.  More faster please. 

Was .NET all a mistake?  Yes :)  The C# language is fine, and the Windows APIs are great.  But the concept of a CLR and "managed code" sucked. 

Meanwhile, the IBM PC just turned 30.  Wow.  I had an original IBM PC, sitting on my desk, cost like $5K.  I programmed it in Basic.  My first real program was a terminal emulator :) 

The One Rule: when working on your computer, context switches are horrifically expensive.  I *so* believe this, it's the basis of The Tyranny of Email, and the corresponding Three-Hour Rule.  Knowing it's true doesn't seem to be enough to keep you from manually switching though... 

Fingers crossed: Rasmussen hopes to get back to the Tour, somehow.  He was my favorite rider, back in 2006-07, and I'm *still* pulling for him to come back.  I suspect he won't be the killer climber of old - time takes its toll - but who knows. 

Celebrating my rehabilitation of my custom Sailing Anarchy feed (sorry for the  l o n g  delay taking care of this!), here's the picture of the day: HarborWing, buzzed.  How cool is that?