Smile for the camera. Make love to the camera...

The Cassini spacecraft has returned its first images of Saturn's cloud-shrouded moon, Titan. Even though they're still pretty fuzzy, the pics are as good if not better than anything we can get from Earth. And since Cassini is going to use Titan as a gravity-well slingshot to navigate the Saturnian system, returning to the giant moon time and time again, the wealth of information and fantastic images will only increase over time. Read the whole spiel at the official Ciclops site.

Personally, the Cassini mission has me far more excited than the Galileo mission to Jupiter. I dunno why. Europa and Io are easily the most interesting moons in the solar system, but I'm sure Saturn has held some trump cards close to the vest. Titan is so mysterious. It's as big as Mercury, and likely has lakes, if not oceans, of ethane and methane. It's a weird, strange world that is unique in that we know that we have little idea of how strange it actually is. This is going to be fun.

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That boom you hear is LA imploding

All I can say is "Thank you Jason Kidd so very much for staying with the Nets." Tony Parker is unbelievable. When the Spurs were chasing Kidd last year, all I could think of was "Why?" Parker is only 21. He's still learning the game, yet he's playing like an All-Star. The upside is immense. His talent and ability won't peak for another five years or so.

Shaq played his game, and that's supposed to make the Lakers unbeatable. But Manu Ginobli and Tim Duncan played their games as well. Coupled with Tony Parker's impersonation of Wally West, LA never had a chance. Well, LA did have a chance--they pulled within two in the fourth--but once again they were out of gas at the end of the game. It's pretty obvious that two of these four future Hall of Famers on the Lakers' roster are simply old.

Tony Parker was too much for the Lakers to handle — too accurate in the early going, too quick all night, and too deft on his best move of the game.

Parker scored eight of his 30 points in the fourth quarter, including a stunning crossover move that fooled Devean George and ended the Lakers' final push as San Antonio defeated Los Angeles 95-85 Wednesday night in Game 2 of their second-round playoff series.

Read the rest of the Los Angeles Times initial report on the Game 2 carnage here.

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Fun with fermentation

I've been dabbling in homebrew for years. Mostly pre-mix kits--I tried the whole nine yards with the boiling of the crystal malt and such, but found the additional hassle less than fulfilling. So I pay my $15 for the canned mix and pretend I'm a master brewer.

I like to experiment, and I've wanted to branch into brewing honey mead from almost day one. I only had one fermentation vessel, though, and mead needs to be "racked" into separate vessels to settle out particulates and aging. That complicated matters for me, so I never attempted it. Until now. My wife has a friend who's gone through an ugly divorce, but in the process she came into possession of two "Mr. Beer" homebrew kits. She very kindly gave them to me, since she has no interest in homebrewing. The fermentation vessels are small--3 and 1.5 gallons each, but they're just the right size for my modest mead-making ambitions (at least for now). So I invested in Ken Schramm's excellent book The Compleat Meadmaker and have started my first batch--a slightly sweet variation on a traditional mead recipe.

The current fermentation vessel is driving me nuts. It will not stay sealed. It's clear, so I've been able to keep track of the fermentation by the bubbles rising in the must. But once this started, the water trap/air lock at the top wasn't bubbling. So I seriously bust some arm muscles tightening the lid. Success. The water trap begins bubbling instantly. Problem solved. Today I get home from work, and the trap is inactive again. This time, brute force has no effect. So I take the lid off (hoping all the while that the fermentation process is far enough along that wild yeast won't infect the must to negative effect) and discover two plastic "runners" left over from the original mold that are protruding into the lid's seal, leaving the tiniest of gaps. That's enough to let the yeast-produced CO2 escape without going through the water trap. After the quick application of a utility knife, the water trap is happily bubbling again. Let's see if it sticks this time.

Speaking of brewing, I just read in the San Antonio Express-News that the Faust Hotel brewpub here in New Braunfels has reopened. That's one of the first things I noticed when we first decided to move to New Braunfels, and I've wanted to sample their microbrew for some time. Now that they're back in business, I'll have to make it a point to drop in.

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In which the tedium of transcription sets in

Despite chronic time mis-management on my part, I managed to get some work done on both the Paul Dini and Lois McMaster Bujold interviews. Not as much as I'd like, and the Bujold interview, for some reason, has a muffled quality on playback that I don't remember hearing when I proofed the recording back after our talk. No matter--both will get done presently. Pete Crowther has expressed some interest in the Bujold for a future issue of Postscripts, and the Dini interview is going to RevSF, unless someone else offers me money for it (hint hint).

It's times like this where it's made painfully obvious to me just how bad my typing skills actually are. When I'm mentally composing my fiction at the standard breakneck (re: glacial) pace, my fingers keep up no problem. In fact, they often wander and play with action figures, beer steins, old phone bills, random deer antlers... But during transcription, yeesh.

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Do dun cows wander salt roads?

My reviews of Nalo Hopkinson's The Salt Roads and The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr., are now live at SFSite and Green Man Review, respectively. For your reading pleasure, naturally.

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The next time someone says nudity doesn't cause problems...

It causes boats to capsize. Says so right here: Rental boat capsizes at Lake Travis. The description is right out of an old Warner Brothers cartoon, with a naked person sunning on the shore and gawking passengers rushing to one side of the barge to get an eyeful. Cue the Keystone Kops mayhem music.

Hundreds of people were in the Hippie Hollow area when the boat flipped over. The accident occurred during Splash Day, a semiannual event hosted at the clothing-optional area by the Austin Tavern Guild, a gay and lesbian bar association. Investigators said they did not know whether the party barge was participating in Splash Day.

I haven't been to Hippie Hollow in almost a decade. It was a nice park. Secluded, with terraced limestone that practically beg for sun worshipers. And naked people. Lots of naked people. The only drawback was there were always several perverts lurking along the tree-lined park road above the waterline, oogling everyone down below. I've heard that in recent years it's become more of a gay meat market, with, how do I put this... "immodest activity" taking place. Hope the boaters at least got treated to a good show.

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Spurs in six (again)

I missed it by two when the Spurs swept Memphis in the first round of the NBA playoffs, so I figure if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Spurs eliminate the Lakers in the semis in six, just like last year. If San Antonio keeps playing like it did in its 81-71 Game 1 thumping of Los Angeles, well, the Lakers may be in the market for some new Hall of Famers in the off-season.

Is it time to panic yet? Is Jack Nicholson threatening to jump off the Tower Records building? Does Shaq need to open up a can of Kazaam! on the Spurs? According to Gary Payton, he played defense against San Antonio's Tony Parker just fine--which leads to my favorite quote regarding Game 1, courtesy of Bill Plaschke at the L.A. Times:

The only way anybody would have believed he had done a good job on Parker was if this had been Souvenir Blindfold Day.

I just have to wrap this up by sending a big "Thak You" to the Houston Rockets. The Lakers looked dead on their feet in the fourth quarter, and L.A. coach Phil Jackson blamed it on fatigue catching up with them. Must've been the toughest five-games series in history, eh?

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