Lunar Eclipse- Night Owl Style

With nothing better to do, I stayed up until now to watch the lunar eclipse. Story here.

If you were not awake between about 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. Pacific time, you missed a red moon, which was very cool.

My daughter, Rachel, padded down the stairs at 2:00 a.m., trying to catch a glimpse, but saw nothing. She came back down an hour later, and the red moon was out.

We even managed to take the digital camera out, and the tripod, and actually figure out how to make it work without a flash. You see one of the results. Very nice!

Here is a nice graphic explaining the lunar eclipse.

Here is a nice video of the eclipse in March 2007 from YouTube.

Baseball for Geeks

I like watching baseball. I don't get to many games, especially during work hours. (Hear that, boss?)

So one of the the things I keep informed is Gameday, from MLB.com. Just go to mlb.com and a scoreboard will show up in the left hand column. Click on the little infield of a game in progress, like the Giants versus the Marlins, and up pops Gameday. It is a nifty little popup that gives you cheesy animation in real time about each pitch, hit, play. One of it's new features is what they call Pitch F/X. And there is a new article in Slate describing this. So now we can see if the umpires are squeezing the strike zone or expanding it. In addition, the Pitch F/X shows the movement of the pitch, the speed it leaves the pitcher's hand, and the speed when it crosses the plate. All sort of cool, in a geeky kind of way.