Crew Dragon Launch Day Timeline: From Suit up to Docking with the ISS
NASA has a new ride to the International Space Station for its astronauts and it’s SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Capsule. So I wanted to give you a super quick rundow…
Geeky
Geeky stuff!
May 27, 2020
Man, do I wish I could see this one live. Perhaps in June or later in summer when, purportedly, the first operational launch will be.
NASA and SpaceX prepare to #LaunchAmerica
Together with SpaceX, NASA will return human spaceflight to American soil after nearly a decade. SpaceX will launch people into space for the first time ever…
Pixel 4 Review
I came from the iPhone X, but I generally alternate between iOS and Android devices with every upgrade.
I am absolutely loving vanilla Android 10 in the Pixel 4. My last Android device was a OnePlus 6. And, while Oxygen OS is lighter on the mods than the likes of Samsung, I still couldn’t get past that it wasn’t vanilla. That’s when I switched back to the iPhone X.
I really love the customization of how the lock screen behaves. I turned off “Always On” pretty quickly–I don’t need to know every second that a notification is sitting and waiting on my device, and it was good that I could ditch that at-will.
Camera is as good as I’ve seen in many reviews. This is, actually, my first Pixel device (having had Nexus devices before), and it’s refreshing to see the vanilla devices with what I perceive to leading cameras from my initial usage over the day that I’ve had it.
Maybe it’s that the iPhone X was particularly smooth, but 90Hz doesn’t really wow me. I mean, interactions are QUITE smooth with the Pixel 4 and I certainly appreciate that, but it wasn’t a complete “wow” to me.
Overall, so far, battery has held up really well. I attribute some of this to the P-OLED display–that particular kind of panel was built with diminished power consumption in mind. Also, I tend to turn off all notifications (social media, etc) except for those directly related to communication–I think I tend to be miserly with my power consumption, so maybe I’m a “best case”.
It’s only been a day, but it seems to be the best Android device and experience I’ve had to date.
Terminator: Dark Fate
So, there’s another new Terminator movie coming out. This one is a bit different, as it features the return of James Cameron. Presumably, it wipes out all of the sequels since Terminator 2–kind of like how Disney wiped out the Extended Universe of Star Wars after they acquired the property.
It’s “Sci-Fi” in that it’s a good “What if?” story, though most of its soul is wrapped up in action since the time travel stories are all a bit mangled and tired given that this particular trope is replete throughout them all. They get time travel about as “right” as Rick Berman did in all of Star Trek (e.g., the only way we’ll truly find out how time travel works is if we ever master it).
I’ll probably see this one in theatres–there’s always a hope that this will turn the whole series around in a way that the others hadn’t.
The Mandalorian
It looks good…but, I think I’m looking more forward to the Kenobi series…
The Mandalorian | Official Trailer | Disney+ | Streaming Nov. 12
After the stories of Jango and Boba Fett, another warrior emerges in the Star Wars universe. “The Mandalorian” is set after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order. We follow the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic.
Thrawn: Treason
This series Zahn has constructed has been a wonderful one. It has been a true pleasure to delve into the world and thoughts of Grand Admiral Thrawn.
While the scope of this particular trilogy doesn’t seem to hold, for me, the same scope and grandeur as the tales of Thrawn pre-Disney, and I also knew of his ultimate fate (to this point) in Star Wars: Rebels, the overarching trilogy was a great origin tale for he and the Chiss.
This particular trilogy holds the interesting distinction of being exclusively from the perspective of the Empire. Despite knowing it was headed by a despotic dictator in Palpatine, I got the feel of Thrawn and company as being the “good guys”. Definitely an odd, and fascinating, position to be in after reading everything Republic/Rebel/New Republic in perspective.
He showed loyalty towards the machine, but he also showed loyalty towards his crew—and the Chiss—at the same time. I didn’t get the impression of him as being one of the “boot-lickers” that was described in the original trilogy novel adaptation of “A New Hope”. Fitting for his character, as becomes obvious over the course of this trilogy.
I hope this isn’t the last we see of Thrawn.
Star Trek: Picard
This looks like it has potential, though I know very little about it except for the titular character and that I haven’t seen any of the other co-stars before.
In the 21st Century…
Holy. Cow. Just enabled sudo via Touch ID on my MBA. This. Changes. Everything.
All I had to do was edit /etc/pam.d/sudo and add the line
auth sufficient pam_tid.so
Awe. Some.
Now all they need to do is add in something you “know”, and they’d have some relatively robust security going on there.
Another Year, Another Star Wars
As with most teasers, especially from Disney, it’s purely meant to bring on the feels with flashes of imagery and soundtrack. The most intriguing thing, besides the Palpatine cackle, is the title–seems to be a dig on The Last Jedi (e.g., arguably the worst Star Wars to date).