[IT] FAT32 File-size Limits

Yesterday, I was trying to transfer a 7GB file from my laptop to my removable hard drive when I ran across a problem. The persistent message of "File size too large" popped up every time. I wondered if it was due to a hard drive problem or maybe the file was corrupted. After doing some research, I realized that I was missing some basic knowledge of FAT32 architecture limits.

FAT stands for File Allocation Table, a computer file system architecture used mainly on portable devices now due to its relative simplicity and portability across multiple file system architectures. However, it does have many limitations. For one, there is a limitation on partition sizes. FAT32 has a 2TB limit on partition size while FAT16 has a 4GB limit on partition size. My removable hard drive was one partition of 596 GB, clearly well below the 2TB threshold. But there are also limitations on the file size. The Microsoft website confirms that the file-size limit on FAT32 is (2^32)-1, one byte less than exactly 4GB.

So how did I get around the problem? As far as I could tell, there were three solutions:

1. Format my removable hard drive to NTFS. This will limit its applicability to Windows but will solve any file transfer issues in the future. However, I will have to back up my files on the hard drive before I do this. This will take some time since I don't have any other medium to store my 200GB+ of information already on there.

2. Burn the image onto a DVD. This is all fine except I don't fancy carrying around a bunch of CDs.

3. Reduce the size of the file or split the file into multiple smaller files. This will solve the file transfer issue with just a little more hassle.

I decided to go with Option 3. I had on my computer a powerful and simple freeware called HJ-Split which does exactly that. It splits one file into multiple smaller files of sizes I decide. I have only used it before to merge files that have been split but doing the reverse is definitely possible. It took about half an hour to split the single size into 7 smaller files of ~1GB each but afterwards transferring the files was a cinch. In the future, I just need to recombine the files if I ever want it again.

By the way, you can download HJ-Split here:

http://www.hjsplit.org/

Notebook Entry 5: Ecology, Microbiology, Business, Spirituality, etc.

I went to a friend's house last night for some decent company and food. Like always, I learned quite a bit from talking to several people. Because I like to organize my thoughts, I have divided my night into several episodes of conversation.

Episode 1
Mark Andrews
Manager of Contracts Services

While eating some good food, an elder man named Mark happened to sit next to me. I introduced himself and he introduced himself. Apparently, he is in charge of approving the funding that goes through TEES (Texas Engineering Experimental Station). He used to work for AgriLife and has helped acquire funding for some crops that helped jumpstart Iran's economy after their disastrous war with Iraq.

He's quite an interesting fellow who is well-read in multiple disciplines of science and technology. We talked about renewable energy for a bit. He said that there's quite a lot of algae research in Plano, TX where A&M has some algae farms. The conditions there are perfect for algae growth since the combination of sunlight, carbon dioxide, and open ponds. The carbon dioxide is actually from the byproducts of the oil pipelines that go through there. That was quite an interesting correlation.

Episode 2
Chris Hoelfer (Microbiology Grad Student)

Sat on the couch after dinner and talked with Chris and Carolina for quite a while.

Chris is doing research on microbial communication which is how bacteria grow and develop. He's currently looking at two strands. I asked him how this will affect the average layman like me. The answer is simple: a new antibiotics approach needs to be found. The pharmaceutical industry haven't done anything new in terms of antibiotics development in the last few decades. Their antibiotics only work for a few months before the bacteria gains immunity.

Hopefully, through his research, enough base knowledge on these bacteria can be found so that eventually a new antibiotics approach can be found. Bacteria colonizes as multiple species and live in a dynamic balance. Some bacteria are symbiotic. Some are mutualistic. Some are antagonistic.

Episode 3
Chris Hoelfer

We talked about life for a bit. Chris said something that was really insightful:

"Life escapes most people."

I asked him what he wanted to do after graduation to not let that happen. He said he was still searching. Definitely good to have open options, I told him. He agreed. A lot of people has a passion that has nothing to do with their work. I believe that it's good to have a passion for work that is intwined with life. For instance, if you're into skiing, the ideal life is not where you just work a menial job to save nup enough money to go skiing. Most people give up too easily since they think they don't possess the skills to be a skiing instructor. That may very well be true. However, they can incorporate their passions in other ways. For instance, my friend Katelyn likes skiing but she wants to open a skiing equipment company.

These possibilities certainly exist. We just need to find them!

Episode 3
Chris Hoelfer
Carolina Rivas (Graduated MBA student from elsewhere, originally from El Salvador)

I told Chris and Carolina an idea of mine to help facilitate the university connections. Say a professor wants to find some students to do a certain research. Typically, the prof will spend quite a lot of time going through different applications to find the right one. The same goes for a student trying to find the right prof. Why not have a service where the prof or the student can hire us. We'll compile a list of possible contacts for the prof.

Chris and Carolina suggested that instead of just a simple list which anyone can do. Why not establish the connection? In other words, introduce the two people together. This certainly has a more defined value than just giving information. This minimizes the amount of time to filter noise. For instance, instead of sorting 1000 applicants for 10 slots, you sort 50 applicants for 10 slots.

Episode 4
Chris Hoefler
Carolina Rivas

Talked about spirituality and the Bahai faith for a little while. There's three levels of spiritual understanding.

1. Literal
2. Application
3. Implication

This is why reading and re-reading passages is not a waste of time. Implication is the ultimate understanding and once understanding that, you can apply the learned passage to situations not directly applicable.

We started reading some passages from Reflections on the Life of the Spirit. Some passages that struck me:

"O brethren! Let deeds, not words, be your adorning."

"O Son of Being! Bring thyself to account each day ere thou art summoned to a reckoning."

"Holy words and pure and goodly deeds ascend unto the heaven of celestial glory."

On a more ritualistic note, I learned that the Bahai faith uses a calendar of 19 months of 19 days. Bahais meet once a month and also on holy days for gatherings.

Episode 5
Mark Andrews

Talked to Mark Andrew some more and he mentioned some crazy guys painting an asteroid. I said I was one of those crazy guys. I went on and told him some about our project. He seemed quite impressed. He suggested painting Coca Cola on the moon so that we can see it from planet Earth. Is that feasible? Honestly, I don't think so but I'll do a calculation later. Is projecting Coca Cola on the moon with lasers also feasible?

Episode 6
Mark Andrews' daughter
Afsaneh

I talked with them a bit about nothing in particular. Mark's daughter is this very bubbly enthusiastic girl who's currently getting a Masters at the Bush school with research focused on foster kids. She also has a strong faith in Christianity.

Episode 7
Jon Hart (Formerly from New England, now an optician at the mall)
Sima Hart (Turkish girl who currently manages an apartment)

Right when they were about to leave, I struck up a conversation with Jon. Turns out that he's an optician at the mall. I asked him for his email since he may be able to help me out with making some custom lenses. He said that he'll only do it if I have a prescription. Looks like I have to get creative to get such a prescription. I need the lens to make something like this:

http://www.funsci.com/fun3_en/sky/sky.htm

We also talked for a while about photography. Apparently, both of them like doing photography. Jon likes doing sports photography and Sima likes doing portraits. She also used to go on nature expeditions with friends. Pretty awesome I thought. She has a Nikon D80 while her husband Jon has a Nikon D200.

Jon is actually thinking of getting paid for his sports photography sometime soon. I told him that he'll need a website to promote his works and get his name out there for sure. I told him that thankfully I happened to design websites. I'll have to keep in touch with him to see how I can help him.

North Korea (World Affairs Council of Houston Event)

George invited me to a talk in Houston from the World Affairs Council of Houston. Dr. Bruce Bechtol, the associate professor of political science at Angelo State University, gave the talk on North Korea. He wrote the Defiant Failed State, a book on the threat North Korea poses and how to handle it. The hour and half talk was quite informative and I learned a lot that I didn't know before.

He started out saying something funny. You could watch CNN and MSNBC if you're on the left. Watch FOX on right. Or PBS if you're really bored.

Conventional weapons in North Korea is a very compelling issue but hardly ever highlighted on the news. There's 1.1 million men and women in the armed forces. Food and fuel is inadequate but that's still a lot of stuff! They also have 3000 pontoon bridges to cross the river anytime to invade South Korea.

South Korea has the 12th largest GDP in the world. North Korea does not have enough GDP to do an arms race with South Korea. So North Korea tends to concentrate on asymmetric forces while traditional forces remain large and adequately maintained. The three key areas that North Korea focus on are

1. Long range artillery (~900 systems)
2. Ballistic missiles
3. Special operation forces

The North Korean plan is to take over Seoul and then start dealing. 7/10 of the army is deployed for invasion. To support their military, North Korea sells weapons and drugs everywhere. For instance, in October 2009, a huge former Soviet aircraft from North Korea was caught in Thailand. The shipment was going to five different countries including New Zealand.

The succession issue is a serious issue. Kim Jong-Il is seriously ill and will probably only live 3-5 years. Since his oldest son have fallen out of favor, the youngest son have been the focus. However, there's been only 18 months to train his youngest son. If the father dies, will the son Kim Jong-Un be able to hold the state together? If not, there could be civil war, collapse, or invasion of South Korea.

This was the gist of his talk. We were allowed a Q&A session afterwards. Some questions and answers:

Q) Why were his sons educated in Switzerland?
A) Switzerland has the best schools. The elite wants to feel elite.

Q) Why not just take out North Korea?
A) It's Seoul's decision. Seoul will never let action first again North Korea.

Afterwards, there was a book selling so of course I paid the $20 to get a signed book. The book can also be bought here:

http://www.amazon.com/Defiant-Failed-State-International-Security/dp/1597975311

After this talk, I'm definitely thinking of joining the world affairs council of Houston. It's only $25 for students. Actually, I'll recommend it for anyone interested in foreign affairs and international issues. Website here:

https://www.wachouston.org//assnfe/enrollme.asp?SnID=554501257

Thirst in Life

Not having any plans tonight and not really wanting to do any real work, I proceeded to read the book Freedom Writers by Erin Gruwell. The book is actually a collection of real diaries that the students and herself wrote while she was a teacher at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. I saw the movie a while back on an international plane flight and really enjoyed it. When I saw it at Half Price Books the other day, I immediately jumped on purchasing it.

Reading it turned out to be more moving for me than watching the movie. Perhaps the environment of being alone in a quiet room also helps. Somehow, the words, perhaps because of their simplicity and frankness, drew me in and captivated me in the world that these racially discriminated or ghetto kids had to endure while supposedly trying to get an education at school. How one woman transformed their lives by treating them as real people and going beyond existing stereotypes that they're stupid or hopeless is amazing.

Erin Gruwell is a definite hero; she had faith in their potential and inspired her students to share that faith as well. She established a foundation after she became famous to continue to help and inspire students and overcome whatever their circumstances may be through acceptance and innovative teaching methods. The website is http://www.freedomwritersfoundation.org/

Reading this book has put me in a very pensive mood. I feel like I ought to do something as well. Sure, I'm busy running around doing various projects and school but I also feel like I'm obligated to help out the community as well. In the book, most of the other teachers just ignored the issue. They felt that these black, Latino, and Asian kids growing up in these terrible neighborhoods were hopeless. I need to ask myself this question:

As someone who claims to care about the world and others am I doing the same thing? In other words, am I ignoring people around me that ought to be helped? Am I as tolerant as I think I am?

I will look up some volunteering around the community and see what I can do to lead a more fulfilling life helping others. Helping myself by career advancement and business is always good but I have always felt that there's something missing. A thirst in life that has left unquenched regardless of reading spiritual books or talking to people about it. Perhaps reading this is a wake up call to do more than just personal reflection once in a while. I'll keep posted on what I end up doing.

Equation of Happiness

I'm going to tell you an interesting story. Now, normally when someone says this to you, you know that you're in a long haul for a story that's likely anything but interesting. Since this is Shen Ge though and if you know him at all you know he's anything but boring, if you want to hear something interesting you'll just read on.

I was at the Texas Young Professional social earlier this evening and I met an engineer that's in between jobs. I talked to him for a good while since I was interested in what he did. His card read MBA/Engineer so of course that caught my attention. I humorously commented that he must be feeling pretty jaded about engineering these days considering his job situation. I started saying that I was feeling pretty jaded about school earlier. He interrupted me and said that industry was worse. He went on for a bit and it became obvious that he hated his job though he worked at it for a good number of years. There were no design and building aspects to it; instead it was endless boring projects that he had little to no interest in.

I mentioned the guy to my boss Joe later whom Joe also met and we both came to the one-word conclusion that he was pathetic. At that moment, I suddenly thought of an equation of happiness which can be applied to anyone:

(Hours of unhappiness)X(Unhappiness weight) - (Hours of happiness)X(Happiness weight) = Overall happiness in a typical day

Now, I applied the equation to myself for a typical day:

Hours of unhappiness: 4 (Source: frustration, anger, fear of failure, worry, stress overall)

Unhappiness weight: 2

Hours of happiness: 10 (Source: talking to cool people, learning cool things, doing cool things, seeing my future vision taking hold from hard work)

Happiness weight: 3

This leads me to have an overall happiness of +22. Not bad. Then I did it for this guy when he was working at the oil&gas engineering firm:

Hours of unhappiness: 8 (Source: just about everything at work)

Unhappiness weight: 5

Hours of happiness: 6 (Source: TV? Family? Hobbies? Social events? Internet? Note: Does not include sleeping, commuting, eating, etc.)

Happiness weight: 3 (Guessed)

This leads him to have an overall happiness of -22. In other words, he's really unhappy on a typical workday. Now I know these numbers are estimated but it's a fairly accurate representation.

Do you feel excited about your current full-time job? If not, quit your current job. Think about it! You spend at least 40 hours a week on your job; it takes up much of your waking life. Do you really want those 40 hours to drain away your happiness or do you want those 40 hours to give you happiness?

This is something even a village idiot can answer but yet many people are somehow willing to be more foolish than a village idiot. They do jobs that obviously bring no level of life satisfaction to them but instead of trying something different and possibly more fulfilling, they stick with their happiness-draining job for material things like money and stability. In the meantime, they slowly become jaded grouches since all their joy in life have withered away after an extended period of self-imposed dissatisfaction.

The analogy here for some people is stepping into a room of leeches and instead of quickly walking away, they just lie there and let the leeches suck away their blood because they somehow think the leeches will magically disappear if they stay still long enough. After a while some of them do get up and leave but if they leave too late, they're dried-up husks by the time they leave. In other words, they have completely lost their passion towards life which they almost definitely possessed as kids.

Anyways, let me know what you think of my happiness equation and the relation to reality. I think there's a lot of truths to it that many otherwise intelligent people do not see. Not trying to be arrogant here but I tend to reflect on life more than most people which can often give me more insight on life.

Wise Quotes from Nishanth

Nishanth, a former roommate of mine, woke me up at 9 in the morning today. Considering that it's Sunday I have a legit excuse to be still in bed then. Talking with Nishanth is always very illuminating since I always learn a lot from this guy. In our two hour conversation today, we not only caught up on each of our respective lives but also related it to life and society as usual.

One thing that he mentioned especially struck home with me since I feel the same way; we are very similar in many ways:

"My biggest strength and flaw is to do whatever I want to do. This is my greatest strength and weakness. Strength because it's what motivates me to continue. Weakness is because I'm so stubborn that I'm unwilling to give up an idea that does not work. Compromise doesn't work for me about things that I'm passionate about."

I'll end this with some wise life tips I learned from him this time which includes:

Teaching is not just about teaching what the students need to know; it's also about understanding what the students do not know. You cannot teach students until you know what they know and they don't know.

If you can see 1% of the things in life differently from other people, you gain a deeper understanding of the other 99% and attain overall enlightenment in life. This 1% can be very simple things but it's often the simple things that people ignore since they think that they understand it.

Two people can have the same problem but the solution for them is different since they are different people. Advice given cannot be a constant--everyone should be served and approached differently.

Self-reflection is necessary regardless of one's mental state. Many people stop questioning past the first layer. The key to understanding what you should do and not do is trying to answer multiple questions and attaining an answer there.

[Art] What Defines Art from Not Art

Art is an expression of an idea or indescribable feeling that can be conveyed through an image. An especially moving piece of art will be able to sway the viewer into a strong emotional state without any necessary explanation from the artist. Furthermore, this feeling must have some indescribable meaning beyond just the simple descriptions of an emotion such as desire or fear--for instance a graphic photographic depiction of an execution cannot be considered art if it's done in a tasteless manner which only conveys the feeling of disgust.

I believe that the best way to distinguish between what is art and what is not art is through the immediate reaction after viewing the picture in its entirety. Any image examined long enough can become "art" due to long exposure and the association of one's mood with the piece of "art". True art requires only a moment for the mind to crystallize its thoughts and emotions about it.

Some pictures affect almost all of humanity. Others take a little more discretion and whether it's art or not is dependent on the viewer. Without further ado, I present to you some images which may not be universally appreciated:

[Biz] Conducting Efficient Meetings

At Half-Price Books, a great used book store in town, I bought the book The Time Trap (How to Get More Done in Less Time) by R. Alec Mackenzie a few weeks or back. As you can imagine, this book is on how to spend time more efficiently--specifically on management and procedures in the professional environment. Though the book was written in 1972, many of the values still hold today which is very cool considering that the book is falling apart and I only paid $3 for it. That's one reason I like used book stores by the way--you can acquire things that are worth a lot of value in knowledge improvement for a low monetary value.

Anyways, one chapter that struck home with me was on meetings. I don't agree with everything but I'll summarize what I do agree with:

BEFORE MEETING

1. Explore alternatives to the meeting. Is this necessary?
2. Limit attendance to time only needed to make your contribution.
3. Keep attendance small. Only those needed should come.
4. Define purpose before calling meeting.
5. Distribute agenda in advance.
6. Time-limit meeting and agenda. Allocate time according to its relative importance.

DURING MEETING

1. Start on time. No substitute.
2. Start with and stick to agenda.
3. Allow interruptions for emergency purposes only.
4. Restate conclusions and assignments to insure agreement.
5. End on time.

AFTER MEETING

1. Distribute minutes within the next 24 hours. Minutes are a reminder and useful followup tool.
2. Provide followups! List uncompleted actions under "Unfinished Business" for next meeting's agenda.
3. Make a committee inventory and survey committees to see whether objectives have been achieved. Abolish those that are already done.

[AERO] Constellations and Fun Sporcle Test

Recently, a friend showed me the wonderful site www.sporcle.com which has become a new time-waster, although it's a slightly productive time-waster. It's essentially fun quizzes of knowledge on just about anything you can think of. Some of them are quite cool since there's also visual appeal; I like those more. I happened to stumble across this very cool constellation quiz the other day which I just had to share:

http://www.sporcle.com/games/constellations_northern.php

I haven't regularly stargazed in a while and I shamefully admit that I only got 15 constellations: Orion, Auriga, Taurus, Canis Minor, Gemini, Perseus, Pegasus, Cygnus, Leo, Delphinus, Pisces, Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, and Draco. Given 8 minutes, I naturally cheated and managed to get most of the rest from looking up my star chart. However, I still missed a few. See screenshot:

[AERO] How to Not Travel (Interplanetarily)

Re-reading Robert Zubrin's books are fun since this guy has a definite cheeky sense of humor. Over spring break a few months back, I went to New York City and checked out the American Museum of Natural History while I was there. Surprisingly, there was a section in the museum for space. That was unexpected in a natural history museum but I suppose they just have to have everything. [Image Credit: Buzz Aldrin Mars Cycler - painting by Don Dixon for Scientific American]

Anyways, while I was at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, I happened across the book How to Live on Mars by Robert Zubrin and acquired it there. This book is a hilarious practical guide for anyone seeking to leave Earth and live in life in the late 21st century. Each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of Martian survival which includes how to get there, what to wear (outside of course), what rovers to get, what homes to acquire, how to choose what to have in the habitat, how to not get fried by radiation, etc.

The book is for a non-technical audience but occasionally there's some interesting science thrown in with a huge warning note that says High Science Content. One thing that I found quite amusing was his rant on cyclers. I had a friend who worked on cyclers for his Master's thesis back at Georgia Tech and I wonder what he'll say about this. Let me go on with Zubrin's points on disadvantages of cyclers.

Cyclers, short for cycling space stations, are huge space stations built to last a long time for the role of allowing permanent transfer orbits between Earth and another planet like Mars. Once setup, such large structures do not have to be relaunched and people can just catch the trip by catching the cyclers in small, fast "taxi" capsules fired from each planet. Yet, there's definite issues which I have ascertained from reading and reflecting on Zubrin's intelligent rants:

1. Since it's built to last a long time, the one you're using is likely mold infested and breaking down. Unsanitary ancient bilge cans do not sound very appealing though it may be cheap.
2. The taxi may miss the cycler and if so, you just paid a trip for nothing.
3. [High Science Warning] The trip takes longer than a typical Hohmann transfer (HT) since a Hohomann transfer to Mars requires 8.5 months--round trip time will be 17 months. This doesn't synchronize with 12-month orbital period of Earth. If a spacecraft leaves Earth on a HT, it will not rendezvous with Earth when it comes back. The trip must have a Type 1 leg as well as a Type 2 leg either on outbound or inbound. Either way, passengers will be stuck with the slow boat on one way.
4. [High Science Warning] Cyclers are inefficient in its usage--not a problem for you maybe but certainly for the government paying to keep it afloat which you are paying taxes for. The minimum orbit time for cyclers designable to rendezvous with Earth is two years. However, that's not synchronous with Mars, whose orbital period is 23 months. The only solution is to have multiple cyclers with each one used for Earth-Mars transport once every six or seven years. 

Some interesting issues right? We'll see how it pans out in the future but I think Zubrin has convinced me not to support cyclers if they ever do gain a broad interest.

[Image credit: http://buzzaldrin.com/]

[Biz] Reflections on Art of the Start

I just finished reading Guy Kawasaki's book Art of the Start. Guy Kawasaki, if you don't know, is a well-known technology entrepreneur in Silicon Valley that has has started and sold a number of high-value startups. Better yet, he writes articles and books to help others understand how to be successful as well. In other words, this guy has all three traits I admire in an individual: smart, sociable, and kind. In other words, he's a mensch.

Mensch in Yiddish apparently means a person that is ethical, decent, and admirable.  The last chapter in the book is entitled "On the Art of Being a Mensch" which caught my eye naturally. To summarize, the three foundations of menschhood are:

1. Help many people! The easiest people to help are those whom you think you'll need someday. The big point though is to help those that CANNOT help you. As Kawasaki puts it, you should derive intrinsic joy from helping your fellow man and not because it's for your own benefit down the line.


2. Do what's right! Lots of businesses are so short-sighted that they focus only on the immediate and try to get away with as much as possible. For instance, if you're a jewelry retailer and you ordered the 14-carat gold ones and received 18-carat ones, will you call the manufacturer and tell them the discrepancy? If you what's right, you should and others will respect you much more for your ethical business practices.


3. Pay back society! A mensch does not have to be wealthy to give back. Oftentimes, he pays back society through things that cannot be defined by money such as helpful advice, spiritual connections with individuals, helping out people, etc. And why shouldn't you pay back society? Even if you're not at the top of the world, you can always be grateful that you at least have some of these:
   
   
   
   • Family and friends
   • Spiritual fulfillment
   • Good health
   • Beautiful environment
   • Economic success
   • Hat trick once in a while

I think these are extremely wise observations from Kawasaki that anyone, entrepreneurs or not, ought to follow when conducting their life professionally and personally. The key is that you can have a good life without being a selfish bastard. By the way, go to a bookstore or buy the book at amazon.com and order yourself a copy if you have any interest in starting a business:

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Start-Time-Tested-Battle-Hardened-Starting/dp/1591840562

I'll leave you with this awesome talk by Kawaski:

[Biz] Thoughts on Not Writing Business Plans

I have often heard that you need to write a business plan before you go out and "do it". Honestly, my feelings are a bit ambivalent about this. To me, writing a plan is necessary at a certain point but before you get there, you don't need a plan. Conducting a thorough market study seems downright retarded when you're engaging in something that's high-risk in the first place. How do you know if it's going to work or not until you start experimenting?

At a certain point, yes, it'll be a good idea to examine your competitors. This is especially true when you have a prototype of the developed product or service and actually want to start making $. But before you get to that stage, what's the point? Seems to me just like an empty dream without any content backing it up. What do you think?

[AERO] Commercializing Space Generates More Jobs!

Well, that's true according to a recent study conducted by The Tauri Group, a premiere space consulting firm. You might want to check out the link here:

http://taurigroup.com/graphics/snapshots/DERPCCCEPBR.pdf

Found this study through the Commercial Spaceflight Federation by the way. They're an industry association of various companies and organizations actively involved in commercializing space. As far as I'm concerned, more focus and government support for commercial space companies is the right track to go. I thought of writing an article on why it was a good thing that Constellation was canceled but frankly some people just write much better than me on this topic.

The latest Aerospace America issue (April 2010) had a very insightful and concise article written by Marco Caceres from the Teal Group with viewpoints that I wholeheartedly agree with. You might want to take a look at pages 20-21, 24-25 of the latest issue if you haven't done so already. The article is entitled "A Boost for Commercial Human Spaceflight" and it's a short read. To sum it up and to take directly from what Marco wrote,

"The cancellation of the VSE [Vision for Space Exploration] is a pragmatic decision by the Obama administration. There is just not enough money in the US budget to pay for a space transportation and exploration initiative in which the tangible benefits to the nation are not clear...NASA will help fund efforts by companies like SpaceX and OSC to develop human-rated space vehicles that will eventually be able to transport astronauts. These vehicles can, in turn, be adapted and offered to spur the development of new commercial markets such as space tourism. This will stimulate private capital investment in these types of space transportation programs, and before you know it you will have a growing and vibrant commercial human spaceflight industry."

I find it interesting that two separate aerospace consulting firms have reached the same conclusion, namely that space commercialization is good. I'm wondering if there's any aerospace consulting firm out there who actually thinks shifting emphasis from the Constellation to private space companies is a bad thing. Let me know if you find any.

[IT] Anyone Heard of Gist?

When I stumbled upon this website,

http://blog.gist.com/2010/04/16/relationships-are-life-and-why-i-use-gist-everyday/#more-1543

earlier today, I thought to myself: "Hey! This is an idea that I have thought of a year ago." Well, it looks like since I did nothing about it someone else did. The idea is simply a website to reorganize online social information. In other words, you can look up anyone's name in your contact list and see the person's contact info, latest meetings, recent tweets, status updates, emails, and potential people that both of you know. 

A very simple idea but a very necessary one in our modern age where some of us into social networking have at least five different ways of connecting with people online and checking every single one and correlating between them gets very tedious or confusing. I only wish that I had started working on this a year ago. Ah well. Can't win them all. The project I'm currently working on should show some promise in a month or so: VbizMirror.

Why Did I Start This Blog?

My original purpose in starting this blog was mostly for professional networking and exposure of myself. I had just finished reading the book called Smart Networking by Liz Lynch and her words here convinced me to start one:

"Write your first few posts, the first of which should reveal your vision for your blog, what inspired you to start it, and what you plan to cover...Then send an email to your contacts letting them know you've launched a blog and invite them to submit comments. This starts the interaction with your readers that is so important in blogging and networking."

However, I have decided that I have a lot of thoughts which are less than professional and heck a personal blog is supposed to be representative of that as well. From the end of July 2010, I have rectified this matter by not limiting myself to the scope of topics discussed.