05 August, 2009

27

Well. I'm officially in my late twenties. That's all there is.

21 July, 2009

Apollo 11 Source Code.

I'm on the brink of hyperventilating.

The source code from the guidance computers of the Apollo 11 Command Module and Lunar Module is available on Google Code. Have a look. Makes me wish I knew some Assembly Language.

As a (mediocre) coder, I'm often satisfied when my code makes part of a web page function, or automates some mundane task. This code... took human beings... to the freaking moon.

20 July, 2009

We Choose to go to the Moon.

The phrase on most people's mind to day is "That's one small step for Man, one giant leap for Mankind."*

The phrase on my mind, though, is "We choose to go to the moon, we choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

I've watched Kennedy's Moon Mission Speech at Rice University dozens of times, and it still gives me chills.


*Armstrong claims that the phrase he spoke was "That's one small step for a man, and one giant leap for Mankind," and that the transmission cut out the often omitted "a". The phrase in its more well-known form, is redundant.