PHOENIX SUCCESSFULLY LANDS ON MARS

It was a thrilling day for space exploration today as the Phoenix Mars Lander made a safe descent and touchdown on the surface of Mars. I watched the last twenty minutes before landing on NASA TV online. I found the whole coverage to be absolutely exhilarating. Just from watching the mission control room you could tell people were nervous, excited, eager, and hopeful, all at the same time. Listening to the mission commentator report all the various events left me at the edge of my seat. You could not help but feel good every time the control room erupted in applause as each subsequent piece of good news was reported. It was truly exciting to watch.

If you missed it the first time you watch the last few awesome minutes of the landing with this video, which intersperses mission control room footage with CG animation of what the lander was doing at that stage of the landing.

Among the many cool things about the landing was that among the various space agencies around the world, there are now enough spacecraft on or around Mars that each new arriving craft can be monitored by existing ones. In today’s case, the Phoenix was sending data during the descent to the Mars Odyssey, already in orbit. Going forward, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter should be able to pinpoint the exact location of Phoenix on Mars as well as help send its scientific data back to Earth. The MRO currently has the best communications system of any space probe in the history of space exploration.

Last but certainly not least, the Phoenix has begun sending images back to Earth. The one you see above is an approximate colour image of the area where it landed. You can see a full gallery of the images sent thus far here.

It’s expected the first set of data from the analysis of the soil and hopefully water will come in about five days. Exciting times!

I RECOMMEND CRACKED.COM

When I was a kid, my mom used to drive myself and my sister to Safeway every weekend to buy food. It was something I looked forward to because as a kid, I loved buying food that wasn’t good for me. Actually, that’s something I still love to this day. Anyways, when we passed by the magazine rack, I’d often pick up a copy of the latest Mad magazine.

It was entertaining stuff for kid like me, who enjoyed regular features like the movie spoofs, Spy vs. Spy, the awesome artwork of Sergio Aragonés, and of course the iconic fold-in jokes. Along side Mad magazine on the rack, however, was a publication named Cracked. Cracked had no shame in positioning itself as a Mad magazine imitator. If it was possible for me to have distinguishing tastes for corny magazine content, I found Cracked to be not to my liking. I believe I might have bought an issue once just because I was bored but regretted it when I got it home.

Though both magazines have had their readership numbers waver over the years, Cracked has actually ceased publication. Both properties have been remade in different formats. Most of you know that Mad was spun off into a sketch comedy show that competes with my beloved SNL. Cracked itself now lives on through an excellent web site.

As a web site Cracked.com, is one hell of a good read. In my opinion, the best thing about their site is the huge compilations of lists they have. Consider for example, 8 (Pointless) Laws All Comic Book Movies Follow or 8 Celebrities You Didn’t Know Were Geeks.

Another thing I like about the site is that, given its content, the level of grammar and writing is at a very high level. Similar sites on the web are just rife with mind-numbing spelling and grammatical errors. To see Cracked.com deliver good content in a nicely packaged form just makes me like it more.

Sadly, the site is blocked at EA for “adult content” even though there’s no nudity, so I gotta get my fix at home. Maybe it’s because of lists like The 15 Most Sexually Unappealing Porn Titles .

A BAD LIST OF 10 WORST ENTRY-LEVEL JOBS IN TECH

Valleywag recently put out a list of the 10 worst entry-level jobs in tech. While it seems like an interesting list, I think it’s got some dubious entries with jobs that don’t seem so bad. Getting paid $80K USD right out of undergrad and working for Amazon.com doesn’t seem like a horrible proposition to me. Hell, I made $38K straight out of grad school three years ago and I don’t see my old job on that list.

The author should also look at some QA jobs in the gaming industry. Getting paid $10/hr and working long shifts for months on end is far worse than some of the jobs in that list.

PHOENIX MARS LANDER

As a kid, a lot of things captured my imagination: comic book heroes, robots, sci-fi, and eating french fries whenever I wanted. One of the few things that were grounded in reality but also captured my imagination was interplanetary travel. Back then and unfortunately, to this day, the reality of that is still in the realm of unmanned robotic spacecraft.

Next Sunday, the latest in a fleet of spacecraft will attempt to land on the planet of Mars. The mission of the Phoenix Mars Lander is to examine the surface of Mars for soil and hopefully ice samples. Unlike the previous descents of the now-famous rovers, Phoenix will not utilize large airbags to cushion its impact with the surface. Phoenix will use good old-fashioned thrusters to slow itself down and bring it to a gentle landing.

Because those NASA guys and gals are so damn good what they do, they can predict that touchdown will occur on May 25, 2008 at 4:53:52 p.m PST, +/- ~46 seconds. If you’re at all interested in space exploration, I encourage you to watch NASA TV online next Sunday, where they will broadcast live coverage of the landing. I watched the coverage when both the landers made their descent and honestly, it’s exciting stuff.

I’ll post a reminder closer to Sunday. Good luck to the Phoenix team!

WHAT I'M WORKING ON

One of the sometimes amusing things about working in the games industry is that often I’m sworn to secrecy about the projects I’m working on. skate. shipped in late September of 2007 and I’ve been still employed since then, so I must have been working on something.

The truth can be somewhat revealed in this press release by EA. The skate. franchise is coming to both Nintendo Wii and DS platforms. There are separate teams working on both the Wii and DS versions. Though each game is definitely not a port, there are a few bits and pieces of core skate. technology that’s made it into Skate It for the Wii. I’m happy to say some of the stuff I worked on made it into the Wii version.

Shoved into the end of the press release, almost as an afterthought is this last line:

“Separately, Skate 2 is also currently in development for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system.“

I can finally say I’m working on the sequel to skate. Other than that, I can’t say anything about new features nor release dates. I can say, however, I’m excited about what we have in store for the game playing public. So there you have it.