The world is a funny place, the Internet doubly so.  About 15 months ago I was browsing around iTunes looking for some short-form video content to put on my 5th gen iPod (iPod with Video).  When I got the iPod, video was the feature that sold it to me.  I wanted to be able to watch shows like “Lost” and “Battlestar Galactica” away from home.  It never occurred to me that ultimately my discovery of video podcasts would be a much bigger benefit, and one that would go far beyond occasional entertainment. As I perused the offerings, I came across what seemed to be a tech-related show called GeekBrief.TV.  It sounded fun, and technology has always been an interest of mine, so I downloaded an episode to give it a look.  When I watched that first show (first for me, #141 by actual numbering), I encountered a friendly, instantly likable young woman named Cali Lewis (Luria Petrucci to the analog world). It seems a surreal way to meet someone who would go on to become one of my best friends, but such is our world. I knew almost immediately that I had to write to Cali and tell her what I thought of her podcast.  I waited until I had seen a week’s worth of new shows, then I wrote to tell her she had a new viewer and how happy I was to have found the show.  That first note began a string of communications that just keeps on going.  Around January, Cali’s husband, Neal Campbell, began to be active on Twitter.  Soon he and I were swapping emails regularly as well.

Last weekend I took the opportunity of the iPhone 3G release, to fly down to Dallas (I live in Seattle) and share the fun with them on a long weekend.  It was a wonderful experience.  In addition to the adventures associated with line-standing for the iPhone, we watched videos, played Wii, had genuine Texas barbecue, and talked long into the night.  Just the kinds of things friends do.  By the time I had to leave on Sunday, we were all sorry to have to say goodbye, but we know before too long we’ll have the opportunity to get together again.

Cali and Neal will probably never live in the same town as I do, so various electronic aids to conversation will always be a very important part of our friendship. Whether it’s email, chat, or the miracle that is  long distance cell calls, the technological world that caused me to meet them will always allow us to keep in close contact.  As private video communication gets better and more reliable, the distance will seem even less significant.

We’ve all heard people dismiss the notion of Internet friendships being real friendships.  Certainly some are closer than others and some are really just slight acquaintances.  But it’s a mistake to think that a friendship that begins online is of lesser quality than one in the “real world”, or that they can’t move into that real world if issues of distance can be solved.  Even if the friends can never meet in person, an online friendship can be incredibly close and rewarding.  I’m just grateful that Cali, Neal, and I have been able to move our digital friendship into the analog world.

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Last weekend, I took my dad to Seattle’s Museum of Flight for Father’s Day.  It’s something we do every year and we both enjoy it.  Since I was very young, my dad instilled in me a love of airplanes and flying.  A major yearly vacation was a trip up to the Abbotsford International Airshow in Canada.  I can remember standing on baking hot pavement with hands clapped over my ears as the Blue Angels roared overhead in their F-4s (I have just dated myself for airplane enthusiasts).  Those were spectacularly noisy airplanes.  But I digress.

The Museum of Flight is an amazing, world-class aviation museum.  A popular myth is that it’s the “Boeing Museum of Flight” or the “Boeing Museum”.  The museum is actually privately operated, although Boeing is a major donor and has supplied a number of planes and other artifacts.

The museum has a number of exceptionally interesting planes.  It has one of only four Concordes on display outside of Europe. Next to it is the first jet to serve as Air Force One (used by Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon), and the next plane over is the first flying prototype of the Boeing 747, named “City of Everett” for the location of the factory where it was produced.  The largest artifact is the original Boeing factory, known as the Red Barn, now a functioning part of the museum.

It’s a sizable museum, requiring a full day or more to see it completely.  If your time is limited, don’t miss the Great Gallery (pictured above), the Personal Courage Wing (containing an outstanding collection of fighters from World Wars I & II), and the Airpark, across the street from the museum, where the largest aircraft are displayed.  If you have any interest in aviation, it’s an experience not to be missed.

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When I was a kid, my sister used to read books to me, like “Lord of the Rings”, and Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles”. That book made a huge impression on me, and to this day is maybe my all-time favorite book. If you’ve never read Bradbury’s masterwork, you should. Classic is a pretty light word for this one. It presents a vision of the human colonization of Mars, through loosely related short stories, several of which were written to stand on their own as they were originally published in science fiction magazines of the 1940s and ’50s. They’re not quite what you’d expect, strangely more like poetry than prose fiction. All rooted in the characters of the people who went to Mars and the people they met when they arrived there. It formed in my mind that Mars was a place to build roads and schools and even the occasional hotdog stand.

In August of 2003, Mars made its closest approach to the Earth in a 60,000 year period. At 2:00 AM, I stood on my deck, my 8-inch Dobsonian telescope perched on a picnic table to give it an all-important extra couple feet of height, sighting over the hill to the south of my house. I looked through the eyepiece and saw Mars as I had never seen it before. Big and clear, with sharp surface mottling and a clearly visible ice cap. It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen through a telescope, and I’ve seen some pretty amazing things.

A few hours ago, on the north-polar plain of Mars, NASA successfully soft-landed the first probe since the Viking missions in 1976 to use retrorockets, rather than than a landing bag. A safe landing by any method on Mars is an elusive proposition. This one came off beautifully, and early reports indicate its surroundings look ideal for its mission of searching for signs of water and life in the Martian past.

Although the Viking missions gave us a different view of Mars than Bradbury possessed when he wrote his stories, I still see Mars as a place people from Earth must inevitably settle. Not just land there, plant a flag, and take some rocks, but establish a permanent presence. For reasons stretching from the human need to explore to the long-term survival of our species we need to follow in the wake of the Phoenix Mars Lander and build roads and schools and hotdog stands in the rust-colored soil of our nearest planetary neighbor.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

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Hey there, thanks for stopping by my new blog.   Some of you might know me from my tech and gadgets blog, GadgetyTech. I’m also a fairly regular commenter at the various sites run by Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell of GeekBrief.TV. I can be found on Twitter.  But some of you may not know me at all, and I’d like to thank you for checking out the blog of a total stranger.   At GadgetyTech, I try to confine my topics to gadgets, technology and the Internet.  Here, I’m planning no real agenda, just miscellaneous thoughts from a web denizen.  I hope you’ll add me to your RSS feed and that I can reward that action with some useful and fun posts. Welcome!

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