Done

I managed to win NaNoWriMo this year.  You probably noticed the neat badge on the homepage, but if not, here’s this year’s

Working On It

So I went and signed up for my third NaNoWriMo attempt in three years.  My first one, I nailed hard. My second… yeah.  If I could have taken the extra words I wrote from the first successful attempt and added them to the try in 2013, I’d have two wins. 

How Cool Is This?

I’ve been following the progress of the Philae lander this week with all of the excitement I felt as a kid when the Space Shuttle launched for the first time.  When you think about it, this is quite an accomplishment

Happy Update – Unexpected Star Trek

I alluded to a friend I have that is providing me technical assistance on my current novel and equally-current NaNoWriMo

Another Try

Hi, I’m Tom Elias.  You might remember me from such awesome websites as, “This Is My First Failed Blog Attempt,” “I’m A Riter and I Gnow It,” and the forgettable

Looking to the Future

As I come up for air from the re-write of my first book – with an eye toward submitting it somewhere – I realized again I’m lagging on adding any posts.

Fan Art

I received my very first piece of fan art today

The New Cosmos

I absolutely loved the new Cosmos that aired on six (six!!) stations tonight.  It was just incredible, and a total flashback to my childhood watching

Home

I had the great fortune to have some well-earned time off this last week, and I enjoyed it by visiting my home in Dallas. 

Curiosity’s Picture of Home

By now, unless you live under a rock or something along those lines, you’ve likely seen this amazing picture somewhere on the internet:

All Of Us
(Courtesy Curiosity’s Twitter)

This is a photo taken by the Mars Curiosity rover.  The semiautonomous, rugged exploration robot has mapped out all kinds of terrain for well over a year on Mars.  Finally, the techies at NASA elected to direct it to look skyward.

I find this kind of thing compelling.  As a space junkie, I’ve seen the mosaic by Cassini of the various planets viewed from the icy orbit of Saturn.  This picture, however, fires my imagination a bit more.

The space.com website noted both the Earth and Moon were visible in this picture, which I copied from the Curiosity’s Twitter feed.  I can’t resolve two bright points, but that’s irrelevant.  What got me excited was the notion that I could – with proper equipment – stand on that very spot on Mars and see the exact same sight.  It’s the same level of excitement as seeing Jupiter or Saturn from Earth, but raised an exponent.

This demonstrates how far we’ve come, in a picture.

Now here’s a thought for you: every single person who ever lived or is living right now – everyone you know, everyone you love – is in that picture.