John dropped in to Atlanta for a quick flyby. We went to the Marietta Pizza Kitchen on The Square for dinner.
That photo of John was a close winner over this image of the parking garage stairwell next to the courthouse in Marietta. I’m not sure why I like this image, but I do.
This is me taking pictures of Psyche while she’s trying to sleep. I like this one best:
Although quite a few people seem to like this one better:
The Nephews were in town, so we went to the aquarium. It’s tough taking pictures inside a dark room with lots of blue light coming out of the tanks, but you can get some cool silhouettes.
I was on vacation, then there was the 4th of July, then I was lazy. Suffice, I am bit behind.
I spent all of last Sunday, and a lot of Saturday watching the U.S. Open Golf tournament. So did our cat.
I received my personal copy of the Saganami Island Tactical Simulator yesterday. This is a game, based on the Attack Vector game engine by Ad Astra Games. It is a true physics-based three-dimensional space naval combat simulator. It uses Newtonian1 physics in the sense that if you’re moving at a certain speed in a certain direction, you will continue at that speed in that direction until you apply thrust to change your vector. f=ma. Action, reaction. Inertia. I love it. No zooming banks like an X-Wing or the Starship Enterprise.
This game appeals to me for several reasons. One, I’m a big fan of the Honor Harrington series of books by David Weber, in who’s uninverse this game is set. Two, it purports to be a reasonably easy system to handle, once you get used to it. Three, it’s true physics! Things take time to move from place to place and you have to vector your thrust correctly to end up on the correct heading. That’s cool.
I started going through the manual last night, playing some of their practice exercises to get used to the way it works. Ack! It would be much easier if there were someone who already understood the mechanics. As it is, I got to page 5 and my brain started to hurt. I’ll work on it more tonight.
This is definitely a niche game, not for everyone.
1 I haven’t gotten through the rulebook yet, but I don’t think the game takes into account relatavistic effects (Einstenian physics). No need to account for the weirdness of relativity when your battle fleet is assaulting another fleet at a closing velocity of 0.8 c. Perhaps that is at the end of the manual.
I was a slacker in many respects this week. One of those respects was that I haven’t pulled out my camera since May 31. Bad Bill…
So, instead, I’ll post one from my Flickr Favorites. This is a pain. I can instantly post one of my own images to this blog, but it is much more time consuming with someone else’s. I have to download the image, than post it to the website, than get the correct Creative Commons tag… It’s much easier if I merely take some pictures!
This image was distributed under a Creative Commons attribution license v 2.0. Some rights are reserved by the photographer, Brooke Novak.
Saturday before Memorial Day had us out at an acquintances place to grill and drink and watch the stars. See my flickr set for more images.
You don’t often look at traffic signals from this angle.
