Musings of a Babylon Lurker

NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo ?

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

I know one or two people doing the NaNoWriMo ((inter)National Novel Writing Month), attempting to write a novel of 50,000 words in the 30 days of November.

Now, that is a too big mouthful for me. However I found some people doing NaBloPoMo ((inter)National Blog Posting Month), attempting to make one blog post per month in November. Now, for me that is something i might find doable. I looked and found that I could easily find 30 subjects for posting, so I will attempt to make, on average, one blog post per day in the month of November. I have not registered but will see how it goes this year.

So please expect a few posts from me in the month of November .

I know very well that December is a *very* busy month, so do not expect to make the trick in December.

Tags: blogging

Space tourist heard on Earth

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 | space, technology | No Comments

This morning I heard Richard Garriot talking back to the Russian Ground station, in English.

I can now claim to have heard a space tourist talking back to Earth. He was using the standard frequency, 143.625 MHz, for communications between the International Space Station to the Russian ground station.

He was also active yesterday (I was at work so did not hear it) sending Slow Scan Television – still pictures – on the amateur radio frequency of 145.800 MHz. He was heard by several satellite listeners.

I will see if I can get more listening done today, there should be at least one more good pass of the ISS over here today.

If possible (connections) I wil make a recording.

It should be possible to hear the transmissions with a decent quality scanner receiver, so why not try for yourself ?

Heroes on BBC2

Thursday, October 16th, 2008 | film and tv, scifi | No Comments

I found out a little late, not checking the TV listings for a while.

BBC2 shows Heroes on Wednesday nights, I did catch episode 3.3 Yesterday.

Maybe the BBC will make a marathon at a time I can watch , so I can catch the first two episodes of season 3.

Tags: heroes

More space comms

Sunday, October 12th, 2008 | space, technology | No Comments

Today the Soyuz TMA 13 was launched from Baikonur. At the first two orbits signals were heard here in The Netherlands and in Germany on their downlink frequency 121.750 MHz. signals were quite strong for a while.

I did not understand much of it since the comms were in Russian. One word I did recognize the Russian word for “good” (or OK) was used frequently.

The communications can only be heard for about 5 minutes, because the spacecraft need to be “visible” for both my position and the ground station in Russia.

Nils in Germany made two mp3 recordings , with his permission I have uploaded them :

file1 and
file2

Tags: comms, space