August 09 update

Been pretty busy with family summer activities.
We had a great vacation in Ocean Grove, NJ. Wonderful laid back place. Clean and well maintained beaches. The whole family did some good boogie board and body surfing. The girls are really into ocean swimming. They've become strong and confident in the surf--but that doesn't keep me from staying close by with a watchful eye on 'em.

Writing
The final edit of Skimer has been very difficult to get through, especially as I'm attempting to squeeze a novel's worth of ideas into novella. I'm still working on it, might have to do some drastic reductions. Maybe save some ideas for a sequel. I've promised myself that I get it submitted to Analog by Sept 10th.

Rocketry/Hobbies
Well we had a real blast in Pine Island, NY at the NERRF Rocket festival. Extremely hot at 95 deg each day. Tons of cool people and rockets. My first time at this venue, very scenic and they have multiple racks on two sides to keep things moving, I still miss Higg's farm in Maryland..That venue re-opens after harvest in October ;)
My friend completed his Lvl 1 certification on a very nice Binder Design Galaxy. Guy did an outstanding job and really took it to max by going dual deploy..practically a Lvl 2 flight. Way to go Steve, now for Lvl 2 this fall!


The girls launched their cool Performance Rocketry Little Dogs on Fast Black smoke motors as well as the visually stimulating CTI skidmarks. The launch control officer made some cool comments regarding their rockets. They also launched several ESTES rockets with their friend. The frien's sizzler(which is a small minimum diamter style) did a real high flight on C6-5, was lost but returned by a very nice boy scout.


I did the maiden on my custom fiberglass Binder Design Devastator. Flew perfectly and did 2200 ft on a nice Aerotech J570. Our Rocket club, MDRA will be running fall's Red Glare in October and I have some cool, high power engines planned for the Devastator most likely high power K's and a huge Mogave Green L1390G-P if I get the rocket's GPS tracking stuff all set up.

SCI FI
Saw the sci-fi alien movie, District 9, this month. Was Ok but had some really huge, unforgivable logic holes. Start's off with a huge alien ship getting stuck but the end contradicts some very basic plot premises. Finally the documentary-style part was very cornball. The visual effects were top-notch but those don't equal a good movie for me.
Still holding out for a nice ground breaking SCI Fi flic this year..

July update

hmm. where am I at now?


Writing
Finishing my final edit (hopefully) on Skimmer, a novella and kernel for my first novel. My experience with working with carbon fiber in rocketry has helped me with the details and plausibility for several plot devices in the story. Let keep our fingers crossed I can get this out for Submission to Analog this month. Like any hopeful new author I have feelings it could be a real hit with scifi readers looking for something different and fun to read.

SciFi stuff
Saw Virtuality the other day, a pilot for a new sci-fi series by Fox. I missed it on regular programming but managed to see it on Hulu. At the moment it looks like Fox will not continue the series. I hope they reconsider as it looks VERY promising. I think it's fresh and does several great new things with tv science fiction. It's about a interstellar space flight to a nearby star. Primary plot devices-Virtual reality, nuclear propulsion drive, reality show in space, AI.
I managed to prompt some good discussion from one of my favorite authors, Jame Strickland, on his blog here. James has two excellent book's in print that I highly recommend. Looking Glass and Irreconcilable Differences.

Also just saw on moviefone a Neuromancer movie scheduled for release early next year. One of the BEST scifi cyberpunk novels ever written! Lets hope the movie is at least half as good as the book

Rocketry
Recently completed this nice custom Binder Design fiberglass Devastator Devastator Build. Normally sold as a wood and paper kit, I had Mike part it out in Extreme II spiral wound fiberglass tubing and G10 fins. Originally I planned on flying it at MDRA's Red Glare this past April but didn't get to launch it. I brought the girls and we got to fly several other nice fiberglass rockets that we all built together.


The girls had a real fun time at Red Glare 6 and as usual the crew at the MDRA launch were really cool.

Upcoming I have my family and friends going up to the NERRF 5 rocket festival at Pine Island, NY in August. We are planning on launching the Devastator, several of the girls' projects, and friends' rockets there.

be well!

Nar Level 2 successful

Well it took a bit but I finally got my NAR Level 2 certification on March 14, 2009.

Many thanks to David W, Jim Cox, Peter A, Dave C and all the nice folks of MDRA for their help and support.

Did the certification on my Carbon Fiber re-inforced Binder design Jaguar.






The rocket will now be going through speed trials as I ramp up on Warp 9 engines starting with an I1299 at the

MDRA Red Glare Launch April 16th

Back!

Took a bit of a break... Dallied with some 'other' hobbies however I am steadfast and determined to finish the final edit on Skimmer. I'd like to make the submission before our trip to Florida on Feb 17th.
I've gotten into high power rocketry, found a great group of people at MDRA Rocketry Association and will be going for my NAR Lvl 2 high power certification.

Edit of Skimmer

I'm penciling the second edit on paper now. I realized I needed more show not tell so it's become a fairly laborous edit.
I'm hoping to submit it to either Asimov's or Analog before Halloween.

Skimmer Rough draft complete

Yes! Just finished the rough draft of my novelette, Skimmer. I got juiced up on espresso last night and finished up several scenes that were hanging. I wrote well into 2 AM and feel really great about how the story has shaped up.

The general plot revolves around cybernetic prostheses, neural interfacing with a pre-ai computer program, and the indomitable human spirit. Assisted high speed running is something I've been mentally kicking around for some quite time. The story took several weeks to write--not too shabby considering I have a 'day' job and I'm an active parent of 6 year old twin girls.

While procrastinating these scenes, I had already done some editing so expecting my current edit to go quickly. Skimmer curently weighs in at 13k words so I might have to gut some stuff to meet magazine submission limits.

Like 200 million other Americans I'm trying to look at some way to understand this ridiculous economic bailout bill thats being written. Lawmakers say the public doesn't understand the complexity of the problem, there is an absolute need to give 700 billion in taxpayer dollars to the greed mongers of Wall street who pushed the housing market into the abyss.

My prediction is 700 $Billion is just the tip of the iceberg. Regardless of what conditions are imposed, the gamblers at Wall Street will figure a way to game the bill and maximize their own profit. The taxpayer public will then have to throw more money at the problem until some sort of reform is implemented.

Screw that, let the market correct itself.

Writing on the go with a Blackberry

Although I always believed myselfto be an open minded and technically advanced professional, I didn't quite get the Blackberry. I absolutely hated the device when I recieved my first job-required Blackberry a few years ago. I considered it a toy for the gadget minded. My gripes were:

• The screen was tiny.
• The keys were miniscule.
• The keys & buttons were too small and would cause many typing errors
• Etc, etc

A few years later, well guess what? Despite my over sized monkey thumbs-I'm managing to pound out 400-500 words in a 20 minute bus ride or 30 minute ferry trip-gotta love the free Staten Island ferry. Not to say this occurs every ride or trip but enough to be productive. Approximately a quarter of my 15,000 word novellette was rough drafted on my Blackberry and emailed to my home account for insertion and editing on my home PC.

I do not worship the device like some do, however I finally got the device and can use it for the tool it is. A good indicator of how adaptable we are, especially given time and opportunity.