Good Morning Internet

I owe a lot of my inter­est in sci­ence and space explo­ration to my par­ents. Grow­ing up, my Dad took me on field trips to explore plan­ets and stars through tele­scopes in the dead of win­ter. My first up-close look at the Moon knocked my socks off. We put down blan­kets in the back­yard and counted mete­ors dur­ing show­ers. My par­ents bought sub­scrip­tions for me to kids’ sci­ence and space mag­a­zines, and I once got to spend a sum­mer at the the Mary­land Sci­ence Center’s plan­e­tar­ium in Baltimore.

A few years ago, when Mars and the Earth were closer to each other than they’d ever be in our life­times, my dad and I gazed at the Mar­t­ian polar ice caps through his tele­scope. It was stunning.

Just this past May, I was lucky enough to road trip down to Florida with my sis­ter and father to watch my first-ever space shut­tle launch, the launch of Space Shut­tle Atlantis, STS-132. Right now, I’m beside myself with excite­ment for the NASA Tweetup this weekend.

I’m so thank­ful that my par­ents intro­duced me to space at a young age. Just a few min­utes ago, I got this email from my dad:

The date for the next launch draws near and I’m excited even tho I’m not going! So I thought you might like to see this pic of your space shut­tle toy that I found clean­ing up today. Still in great work­ing con­di­tion!
0:-)

I totally remem­ber this toy. It was one of my favorites. Right now, I kind of want to go home and play with it.

Related Posts:

• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• 13 days until the NASA tweetup
• Video of this morning’s win­ter sol­stice lunar eclipse
• Seag­ull Cen­tury 2010
• The year of adven­ture continues

Here’s the thrilling con­clu­sion to the inter­view with my good friend, Mike Camillo. Alter­nate titles for this issue include “This is Spinal Tap (For Real)” and “The Thing About MS Is…”

Issues dis­cussed:

• Spinal taps and the odd side-effects of los­ing spinal fluid
• The inabil­ity to gauge how tightly you’re grip­ping some­thing and the impli­ca­tions of that impaired judgement
• Yes, includ­ing that kind of gripping
• Yes, this episode gets vaguely graphic
• But it’s also very gripping
• More bad puns

Down­load the MP3 here or just sub­scribe in iTunes already.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Related Posts:

• Ep. 11: An Evening With Camillo, Part One

This after­noon, NASA issued a press release about the tweetup. This just got real! Here’s an excerpt:

Par­tic­i­pants at the NASA Tweetup on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 will tour Kennedy and meet with shut­tle tech­ni­cians, man­agers, engi­neers and astro­nauts. They also will get a demon­stra­tion of Robo­naut, a human-like robot sim­i­lar to the one that will be deliv­ered to the space sta­tion with this mis­sion. The Tweetup cul­mi­nates with the view­ing of the shut­tle launch.

Robo­naut is seri­ously cool. It looks like the miss­ing mem­ber of Daft Punk.

As you can imag­ine, my Twit­ter and Flickr streams will be filled with all the NASA and shut­tle launch good­ness your poor eyes can stand. With a lit­tle luck, I’ll pick up that shiny new cam­era I’ve had my eye on (or maybe a rich bene­fac­tor will anony­mously gift it to me!) and cap­ture some slick video of the event.

Of course, no mat­ter how I cap­ture or doc­u­ment this expe­ri­ence, all the best stuff will end up right here on this blog, too.

13 days! I’m so excited!

Related Posts:

• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• The year of adven­ture continues

I did it! After months of (barely) train­ing and wor­ry­ing too much, I made it across the fin­ish line and com­pleted my first met­ric Seag­ull Cen­tury on Sat­ur­day. That’s 100 kilo­me­ters, or 62 miles. It’s been six or seven years since I’ve done it and, shock­ingly, I think I logged my best time yet, com­ing in just a few min­utes over five hours.

Con­grats to my par­ents, who both also fin­ished the met­ric cen­tury, and beat my time, too!

The weather couldn’t have been bet­ter this past Sat­ur­day. It was a clear, warm day, with no seri­ous head­winds until the last 20 kilometers.

Along the way, I used Cycleme­ter on my iPhone to track my progress and post updates to Twit­ter. It’s an ridicu­lously cool app. It tracked my posi­tion via GPS and gave me reg­u­lar updates about my speed, time, and dis­tance through my head­phones. Plus, any time some­one replied to me on Twit­ter or Face­book, it read the mes­sage to me via friendly robotic voice. I was sure my bat­tery wouldn’t make it the whole way through the cen­tury, but I was hap­pily sur­prised to dis­cover I still had a few per­cent of bat­tery life after I crossed the fin­ish line. I’m not sure if that’s a tes­ta­ment to the improved bat­tery in the iPhone 4, some code magic in Cycleme­ter, or a com­bi­na­tion of the two, but I was really impressed.

More than once, I got hilar­i­ous tweet fed to my head­phones from peo­ple that cracked me up on my bike, undoubt­edly mak­ing me seem like some kind of nut to any­one cycling around me at the time.

At the risk of sound­ing com­pletely sappy, the real-time notes of encour­age­ment really helped moti­vate me. I was sur­prised so many of you were awake that early on a Sat­ur­day, and com­pletely hum­bled by your sweetness.

Cross­ing that fin­ish line felt great. I had a nice cool-down walk around Sal­is­bury Uni­ver­sity, my alma mater, and barely rec­og­nized some parts of cam­pus. That place has grown a lot in the past eight years.

After clean­ing up and sleep­ing hard after din­ner, I was sur­prised at how refreshed and ener­getic I felt Sun­day morning.

I’m feel­ing really moti­vated today. Who knows, if i can keep up this kind of men­tal momen­tum, maybe I can get myself into shape for the full 100-mile cen­tury next year.

In the mean­time, here are some pho­tos and videos from Seag­ull Cen­tury 2010!

Related Posts:

• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• The year of adven­ture continues
• Tom Green at the DC Improv

Here’s a quick video I put together from behind-the-scenes of the photo shoot for the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land Bal­ti­more County’s new “Hero” cam­paign. I think it was a really clever idea and was exe­cuted beau­ti­fully. If you live in Mont­gomery County, be sure to check out the giant ads on the side of Mont­gomery Mall. I’m think­ing of tak­ing a road trip down there just to see it.

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2009 was kind of a rough year for every­one. The econ­omy did a swan-dive into an empty pool and a lot of us lost our jobs.

This year, I declared, would be dif­fer­ent. While watch­ing Olympic hockey and a space shut­tle land­ing (I’m a mul­ti­tasker), I could tell this year would be filled with adven­tures. And wow, yes, it sure has. It’s been bet­ter than I had imag­ined, and I feel so lucky to have had so many expe­ri­ences this year. A quick ver­bal montage:

• Sur­vived the snowpocalypse
• Played a reunion show with Three Track Mind
• Turned 30
• Went to South by Southwest
• Saw the final (sched­uled) launch of Space Shut­tle Atlantis
• Went to MaxFunCon
• Quit an unful­fill­ing job
• Watched the World Cup
• Watched fire­works from my roof
• Met Tom Green
• Found an amaz­ing new job
• Started my sec­ond year of grad school

And now it’s Octo­ber. It’s autumn, my favorite sea­son, and I still have a few adven­tures before the year wraps up. Next week­end, I’m bik­ing 100 kilo­me­ters in the Seag­ull Cen­tury. In Novem­ber, I’m one of the lucky ones going to the NASA Tweetup for Space Shut­tle Discovery’s last trip to space. (That’s right: Two shut­tle launches in one year!) A week later I get to see my all-time favorite band, The Posies, play in DC. And then it’s the holidays.

I feel so incred­i­bly lucky. As I write this, I’m sit­ting at the same table where I was back in Feb­ru­ary, day­dream­ing about all these adven­tures. I couldn’t be hap­pier with how every­thing turned out. 2010 has been filled with expe­ri­ences, friends, and fam­ily I wouldn’t trade for anything.

What was your favorite adven­ture of 2010? How do you plan on top­ping it in 2011?

Related Posts:

• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• I’m lead­ing a panel at SXSW Interactive!
• The Posies at the 9:30 Club
• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• 13 days until the NASA tweetup