Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

I stumbled across Starship Troopers: Marauder on TV. I did not have great expectations for the movie but it surprised me. There is the high ranking fleet commander marooned on a hostile planet with a skeleton crew. The fleet command is ignoring the crew's rescue calls and the bugs on the planet are inexplicably following them at a safe distance. The aide of the fleet commander puts together a covert rescue mission while the bugs start picking on the survivors on the planet. Will the rescue team reach the survivors in time? Why is fleet command ignoring the rescue calls? It made for an interesting viewing though it ticked the check boxes for all the cliches. It turns out I started watching the movie from halfway. The first half laid out all the plot points and killed all the suspense. This is one movie that can benefit from a better screen play. If you happen to have no alternative to this movie, skip the first thirty minutes. You will feel much better

Houston's telescopes

I travelled to Houston on company business and spent a couple of weekends there. One of those weekends, I visited the Brazos Bend State Park. While the park itself is a nice place to have a picnic and watch alligators, the observatory in the park had me really excited. The observatory has a three telescopes and a star gazing session each Saturday night. I had never been in an observatory before and I was looking forward to the night.

 

The night's session started with a slide show on the observatories telescopes and what we can expect to see that night. The turn out was excellent for a weekly event. There were a large number of kids with their parents. After the slideshow, we headed upstairs to the telescopes. All the area was lit with dim red lights. It had something to do with red not interfering with the telescopes functioning or night vision.

I spent the next couple hours like a kid in a candy store. I got a look through each of the three telescopes. The telescope in the central dome was huge. I just wonder how much engineering goes into building and controlling such a machine.

The really cool part was that a bunch of smaller telescopes were setup on the terrace. These were brought by astronomers/enthusiasts around Houston. There were different kinds of telescopes each covering a different section of the sky. One of them had a TV connected to it. This one was pointed at the moon and I could see the rough lunar surface like the back of my hand. I went around from telescope to telescope enjoying myself. Very knowledgeable people. All you had to do was show up at the telescope and they would patiently explain what the telescope is pointed at and answer all the questions. The evening completely excited my inner geek. Atleast one Saturday put to good use.

Chasm: A great flash game

A great little game if you have some time at your hand. Chasm has a simple premise. Chasmton's water supply has broken down and you have to fix it. Throw in very good graphics, a funky looking character( a beaver no less) and well suited background score. Oh I forgot! You also get to explore the Chasm and solve puzzles like in Crystal Maze.