All posts by kleucht

Nature, Photography, Videos, Science, Space, Technology

STS-120 Lifts Off

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I was at the NASA Press Site yesterday for the launch of STS-120. What an amazing launch that was to witness. I’ve seen a lot of launches, and this one was the loudest I can remember. I imagine the extreme loudness can be attributed to either the heavy humid air, or the wind direction, or the low cloud deck, or probably a combination of these atmospheric conditions. I took these photos of the launch while at the same time helping to make sure people didn’t “loiter” in front of the big countdown clock. When people stand directly in front of the clock, it has a tendency to annoy most of the TV stations who are using the footage from the countdown clock in their live launch feeds. Click on a photo for a larger version in my photo gallery.

.STS-120 launch .STS-120 launch

BLOG CONTEST: I will give one dollar via PayPal to the first person who can identify the white haired man in the white shirt in the second photo. Anyone that I know and have already told is obviously not eligible! Also, anyone who was actually at the NASA Press Site yesterday is not eligible. To enter, you must email me (Kurt only) via the web based email form on my website and tell me your name and your email address so that I can PayPal you the money. If you enter using this method, your email address will only be seen by me and nobody else. If you don’t mind sharing your email address with the whole world, you can enter by adding a comment to this blog posting. I promise I will not use your email address for anything other than sending you the one dollar.

Computers, User Interfaces, Miscellaneous

Dare I put down blogs in my own blog?

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I’m noticing that many of the Internet Blogs that I come across fall into one of two categories … neither of which seems to me to be of much value in the grand scheme of things. My own blog that you’re reading right now is no exception.
There are the “all about me” blogs which simply tell the world about the author and the author’s family and the author’s life and things that the author has done and accomplished. (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=32) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=35) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=38) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=41) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=43) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=53) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=67) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=74) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=77) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=88) (http://leucht.com/blog/?p=112)

Then there are the “this is cool” blogs which simply tell the world about cool websites or cool products or whatever. (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=7) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=8) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=103) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=107) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=110) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=114)

Huh, I just realized that I have about twice as many “all about me” posts as I have “this is cool” posts. Guess I’m a little more vain that I was hoping.

What’s the real benefit to society of an “all about me” blog, anyways? Our families and friends might get a kick out of reading them, but we could really take care of that by sending them emails and calling them more often. Don’t we really publish “all about me” content just to make ourselves feel better?

And don’t get me started on all the “this is cool” blogs out there. I could spend 24 hours a day looking at all the cool sites that bloggers try to get me to check out. And I agree that many of them are very very cool. But the Internet is not getting any smaller last time I checked, while at the same time my waking hours still remain constant. It’s a losing battle. I need a larger and larger filter to keep me focused and to minimize my time online. It’s hopeless for me to try to check out all the cool sites that are out there and to add the coolest ones to my ever expanding list of cool bookmarks.

How huge and how watered down will the Internet have to get before the general public starts losing interest?

Kurt

Art, Graphics, Woodworking, Nature, Photography, Videos

Get your Leucht.com merchandise right here, folks!

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I found this really cool website called CafePress.com. It’s a site that lets you set up your own store with your own merchandise. You upload your own designs to be professionally printed on said merchandise and let people buy the stuff! Very cool. I threw together a quick Leucht.com T-Shirt design in about 5 minutes and it is now on sale for under 10 bucks. I designed some other stuff too.

.leucht.com magnet .Lemon Blossom Clock .leucht.com shirt

You can let people purchase the stuff at cost, or you can actually mark up the merchandise and make a little bit of cash in the process. This is a very cool idea. Check out the official Leucht.com online store now!

Health, Home, Property, Safety

My first 5K run: KSC InterCenter Run

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This evening I ran my first 5K race. I’m not counting the one in January where Sam and I walked and pushed both boys in their umbrella strollers. This time I actually ran. 🙂 I guess I performed okay for my first race. I wasn’t studying the clock when I finished … guess I was just happy to finish … but a couple coworkers who were paying more attention than I was told me that I was somewhere in the neighborhood of 32 minutes.

Below is a poor quality photo from my cell phone. It was pretty hot and sunny and also very humid during the race, which started at 5PM. There was a pretty good turnout of KSC employees … probably around 400 people. They had choices of a 2 mile, a 5K, or a 10K. It was a well organized race and I definitely plan to do it again next year.

. Kurt after his first 5K race

September 27th update: The official race results are in and I came in 115th out of 149 runners in the 5K race with an official time of 33:00.17. I’m happy being in the front of the last quarter of the participants for my first race. My goal for my next race will be to be smack in the middle of the whole crowd.

There were 330 total participants between all the different race choices: 71 in the 2 mile walk, 58 in the 2 mile run, 149 in the 5K run, 48 in the 10K run, and 4 rollerblade entries.

Computers, User Interfaces, Science, Space, Technology

We can all help search for missing avation pioneer Steve Fossett

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Over the past few days, I’ve spent most of my lunch break looking for missing aviation pioneer Steve Fossett. Did I hop in a jeep/plane/helicopter and go cross country searching in the Nevada desert? No, I looked for Steve Fossett from the comfort of my office cubicle. If you want to help with the massive online search effort, just visit Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website, sign in, and start looking at the newly released satellite images: http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=9TSZK4G35XEZJZG21T60

. Looking for Steve Fossett