Teknoviking

I am definitely a child of the TV age, distinctly remembering watching the Apollo 11 moon landing from our black and white set in the living room. I discovered my love of SciFi movies and shows in the 80s with Star Trek and Dr Who.
So, it was with some trepidation this week that I canceled our cable TV subscription. On Tuesday [...]

Well, I am impressed with my upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 (LTS). I really loved Karmic but this distro seems even better. I must admit that I do miss the earth brown tones in Karmic, the purple theme is just not really me. I’ll have to see if there is a way to use the 9.10 [...]

I am not a web designer, but I enjoy a little coding now and then. Last year I built Jess’ website (jesshartley.com) using the open source project, Joomla. It came out very nice despite a bit of a learning curve, mostly due to Joomla’s specific nomenclature. Once I got through those concepts, it has turned [...]

Spent a bit of time last night out in our back yard with the telescope enjoying the crystal clear skies from this altitude. We have the most amazing night sky here. The only place I have ever been that was more impressive, was the heart of the Mojave Desert in winter.
At times the clarity is so dramatic, that you [...]

My Valkyrie loves animals. When we moved out from New England to The AZ, we spent several extra days on the trip just so we could stay over extra and see both the St Louis  and the Denver Zoos.
Not only does she love animals, but she is also a very talented artist and is always [...]

Our house in Bisbee sits at just about 5050 feet on a south facing slope about five miles from the border with Sonora. Its a beautiful view, with panoramas down deep into the mountains of Mexico. On a clear day I swear you can almost see to the Sea of Cortez (You can’t, but it does seem that way!)
Bisbee [...]

I have been tinkering with some small simple robots from  a wonderful book  called “Junkbots, Bugbots, and Bots on Wheels”. They are easy to build and lots of fun to play with. They are cool on a completely different level than my first generation “Lego Mindstorm” gear and I am really enjoying the scrounging, found art-aspect of the [...]

One of the advantages of living in the high-desert is that at 5000 plus feet, we have incredibly clear night skies.  The only place I have ever been where the stars have been brighter is the middle of the Mojave.
I am breaking out my little 4.25″ Newtonian reflector this week to gaze upon the heavens. I wonder whats [...]

Just received a National Weather Service warning here at work that the County is under sever weather watch until Thursday afternoon.
Seems the snow level is at 3000 feet ( I live at 5020 feet…) and that we are supposed to get 1-4 inches in the valleys and 6 – 10 inches in the mountains.
So far the NWS [...]

As you probably already know from reading past posts, I really enjoy going to the target range and shooting. Well I recently ran across a series of targets from Law Enforcement Target Inc. that are designed to be life size (or is that undead size…?) Zombie silhouettes.
They are inexpensive and very high quality. I can’t [...]