My personal glimpse into the first half of the 21st Century for some yet to be known future
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Da-m80XjgFR/ When I first moved to the Denver area, the location struck me as a place with geology and weather that would serve as its own evidence against flat Earth concepts, with a mountain range that extends beyond the horizon in two directions, no visibility beyond the horizon when looking Eastward (even when looking over the Great Plains from Front…
Savery Savory Mushrooms was a real company as this site, but now the only remaining structure is this water tower. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbo8_RvjLfg/?img_index=1
To travel to Hobbiton from Auckland requires a car rental or a tour bus, similar to our previous tour to Rotorua . My choice was the tour bus option . Unfortunately, the drive on the tour bus to Hobbiton was rather annoying due to another passenger who was a know-it-all that disrupted the tour guide's chatter with an endless series of inane questions (apparently, to which this person already knew…
Flying my Type 8 through a deep red hued cloud with exobiological lifeforms at a Notable Stellar Phenomena in Elite Dangerous. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbo0eirDrAf/?img_index=1
Video: Brand new in Elite Dangerous, my Nomad landed on the slop of a moon's crater with the casted shadow of a Caspian in the background! Music "Cloud View" by Matthew Lorono. Image: Exploring Sanguineous Rim. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/DaVU2UIHKQZ/ & https://www.instagram.com/p/DaO8y6_OUUA/
On December 12 , Allie and I took mass transit over to Auckland Zoo . The Zoo has a lot of good exhibits with many animals. It's a small zoo, but well organized. We got to view lions, tigers, zebras, meerkats, lizards, eels and so many other critters. However, it was disappointing that so many of the exhibits for New Zealand native animals were either closed or had the animals unavailable.…
Allie's cousin (who has lived in New Zealand most of her life) planned a day trip tour for us to Rotorua on December 11 . This required a long three-hour bus ride from Auckland aboard a small tour bus. Along with others on the tour, each person had their own outing scheduled for the day once we arrived in town. The first tourist to arrive at their destination was at the Māori Cultural Center.…
Due to delayed travel plans, we had to reshuffle several major items on our schedule for our actual arrival in Auckland, NZ . Our Hobbiton Movie Set tour was pushed off to much later in the week. We also moved our harbor cruise to December 10 . First, Allie and I did a little shopping in the morning, confirmed our cruise tickets and then did a little more shopping. We found one tourist shop that…
Malarkey is a colorful and punchy term for nonsense or foolishness. It can also be used to describe insincere or exaggerated talk. It is a word that carries a specific weight when you use it to dismiss claims or excuses as hogwash . While it has become a staple of American political discourse, it remains an informal, playful and expressive way to call out empty rhetoric. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The origin of…
A right triangle is fully defined by just two of its measurements. Enter any two known values, such as sides or angles, into the calculator below and it will instantly calculate everything else: the hypotenuse, both acute angles, the altitude from the right angle to the hypotenuse, area, perimeter, and the radii of both the inscribed and circumscribed circles. Right triangle calculator — enter any…
A bird that appears to be a Say's Phoebe was jumping from fence post to fence post ahead of me and Joie while we walked, until it finally flew onto a nearby bush, on a Mid-Spring morning. It kind of seemed like they wanted us to follow, but maybe they were just keeping an eye out for any bugs we might stir up as we walked along the trail, a behavior for which Flycatchers are known. Instagram:…
After over a full day's delay, we finally landed on North Island of New Zealand in Auckland a bit late in the day on December 8 . After settling in, Allie and I took a running start on December 9 for our exploration of the city. Sky Tower is within walking distance of our hotel, so we headed over. Sky Tower is tall enough to view everything in Auckland from high-up. Many of the places we will be…
After enjoying a few days in Queenstown and surrounding region , we were excited about travelling to Auckland on December 7, 2026. We took the morning easy in preparation for our flight to Auckland. Unfortunately, our flight from Queenstown was cancelled due to high winds after we arrived at the airport, and after we checked our bags and went thru security. So we had to retrieve our checked bags…
Allie and I arrived in Queenstown on December 3, 2026 in the afternoon (local time). We left California our previous day of December 1, 2026 (local time). We lost a day to travel and another day to the International Date Line. We also lost a portion of one day to a long stay in Auckland Airport on our way to Queenstown. The following are my journal entries from the first few days. Tuesday,…
While exploring the Galaxy recently, I made several incredible discoveries. This first image was taken in a newly discovered system of a white dwarf (DC) as the primary star with closest planet being an Earth-Like World (ELW) and the second planet being Water World (WW). Both planets are under 60ls from their star. This is a very rare configuration, even taking into account all white dwarf types…
Escape velocity is the minimum speed an object needs to break free from a body's gravitational pull without any further propulsion. The formula is simple: v = √(2GM/r), where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the body, and r is the distance from its center. The result tells you how fast something must be launched to escape that gravity well entirely with no engines required after…
I am not sure where I saw most theatrically released movies in 2017. This list is put together from memory. One fact I remember is that the only reason I saw Star Wars: The Last Jedi was because The Disaster Artist was sold out when I arrived at the theater. I think this may have been the point where I stopped doing walk-ups and started to regularly buy my seats ahead of time. Movies I saw in the…
The Collatz Conjecture is one of mathematics' strange unsolved problems. The rule is deceptively simple: take any positive integer, and if it's even divide it by 2, if it's odd multiply by 3 and add 1. Repeat this process and the sequence seems to always eventually reach 1. Always. This is true for every number ever tested! Even still, no one has ever been able to prove it, though some attempts…
2018 was likely the year I really started using my AMC membership. At some point that year I joined the AMC Stubs program and later upgraded to AMC A-List. Before then, I had never used an elevated membership to go to the movies. I think I had the equivalent of the free Insider level since 2016 or 2017, but I was not using it regularly during those years. Since 2018, I have watched most of my…
There were not as many movies to watch in the theaters in 2021, but more than 2020. Even still, I did get a chance to watch more than one per month. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Venom: Let There Be Carnage Black Widow Eternals No Time to Die A Quiet Place Part II Ghostbusters: Afterlife Free Guy Dune: Part One The Matrix Resurrections Godzilla vs. Kong The Suicide Squad The Conjuring:…
The year was 2019. This was arguably the peak year for going to the theater to see movies. Even still, I saw a surprising 33 movies. That's more than one movie every two weeks! I was definitely using my AMC A-List membership to its fullest. This was a great year for quality of movies too. I don't remember trying hard to justify my membership by seeing a bunch of movies just because I could see…
It is 2026, but I am going to look back at the movies I actually saw at the theater in 2020. That was a tough year for movies, of course. Even still, I ended up going to the theater a bit more than one might now guess. I really started to use AMC A-List in the prior year, but clearly it did not get much use when everything shut down in 2020 and the program was suspended. I actually watched Tenet…
Has there been a return to form for movie theaters to pre-pandemic levels? No. However, I found myself going to the cinema more in 2025 than in 2024. The nature of movie-going has fundamentally changed with the dominance of streaming. Patrons now see fewer films in theaters, opting to wait for many of them to arrive at home. This is especially true for movies not designed as a spectacle or an…
The movie Project Hail Mary touches on a topic about which I recently wrote. That being the ability to reach any point in the Universe within a human lifetime using relativist travel. Time Dilation Visualized is an excellent video that helps visualize both the movie itself and the general discussion as well. Have fun watching and reading about this fascinating exploration. Also see: Earth's…
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUv2xaFAcJV/ Allie and I on a cool Winter Sunday morning from the tree tops in Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory