June 2003 Archives

I'm in Pasadena at the moment (without family). For Father's day, I decided to take a little trip up to the Mt. Wilson observatory.

The San Gabriel Mountains form a northern barrier to expansion of the LA region. The San Gabriels rise steeply just behind Pasadena. Pasadena is ~270 feet altitude; Mt. Wilson is up around 5700' feet.

I made it up for one of the 1pm Saturday/Sunday docent tours. The tour today was hosted by a retired engineer/amateur astronomer who was quite knowledgeable about all the different activities on Mt Wilson.

Here's a pointer that I can't do any better than just quote. From Boing Boing Blog:

Before Kevin Kelly was the executive editor of Wired, he edited Whole Earth Review. I became hooked when he took over WER, and loved his Whole Earth book, Signal (which was based on an issue of WER that turned me on to Factsheet Five and the zine world). For the past few months, Kevin has been quietly publishing the wonderful Cool Tools email newsletter. It consists of reviews of "cool stuff":

I include any books, tools, software, videos, maps, gadgets, hardware, websites, or gear that are extraordinarily handy or useful for individual and small groups. The best items are those that open up new possibilities. I depend on friends and readers to suggest things. Generally I try something out first if I can. I only recommend things I like and I ignore the rest. Tell me what you love. Suggestions for tools better than what I recommend always welcomed.

I bought a first aid kit for my trip to the islands based on Kevin's review in Cool Tools. You can see all the past picks from Cool Tools on Kevin's Recomendo site. Also, if you email him, he'll put you on the Cool Tools list. Link

Ditto on that. I was a Whole Earth Review subscriber for a number of years back in the 80's. An late 70's issue of WER on space colonies and the like was the inspiration for a my enty in a high school speech contest on the subject of solar power satellites.