“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” – Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)
A quiet night landing of the space shuttle Atlantis, returning from the STS-135 mission, marked the end of the US space shuttle programme.
NASA's Constellation Program, which was projected to develop a replacement rocket for the space shuttle, was cancelled last year.
While the government is not currently working on a shuttle replacement, potential private sector candidates include the Falcon 9-Dragon vehicle from SpaceX, which has been successful in test launches so far, but is still in early development.
Thus for the foreseeable future the USA will no longer have any human-rated launch vehicle.
Without manned spacecraft, US astronauts will now have to rely solely on the Russian Soyuz to access the International Space Station.
Here is a video and some photos I took on my travels in Malaysia over the past year.
For this video, I took fairly short clips because my previous computer had less than 10 Gb free space to store all my media files, but this is no longer a limitation. In future videos, longer segments will be more common.
As for the photos, I picked those with striking colours and patterns... plus some with a touch of curious.
I try not to feature photos of regular touristy attractions - because, as you know, they have been photographed millions of times.
Public hand wash (May 2010) - Johor Bahru
Motorcycle park (May 2010) - Johor Bahru
Sculpture (May 2010) - Johor Bahru
Bus number 666 (Jun 2010) - Larkin
Gazebo (Jun 2010) - Kota Tinggi
Raw latex (Jun 2010) - Kota Tinggi
Street football (Jun 2010) - Kota Tinggi
Melaka Sentral (Jun 2010) - Melaka
V formation (Jun 2010) - Melaka
Viaduct (Jun 2010) - Melaka
Menara Taming Sari (Jun 2010) - Melaka
Colourful trishaws (Jun 2010) - Melaka
Old propeller (Jun 2010) - Melaka
Rusty musket (Jun 2010) - Melaka
Ornate bridge (Jun 2010) - Melaka
Jonker Walk (Jun 2010) - Melaka
Use Malaysian rubber (Jun 2010) - Melaka
Berjaya Times Square (Jul 2010) - Kuala Lumpur
Maybank (Jul 2010) - Kuala Lumpur
Muzium Negara (Jul 2010) - Kuala Lumpur
Sultanate of Malacca (Jul 2010) - Kuala Lumpur
Communist hat (Jul 2010) - Kuala Lumpur
Demolishing Pudu Prison (Jul 2010) - Kuala Lumpur
Petaling Street (Jul 2010) - Kuala Lumpur
Petronas Twin Towers (Jul 2010) - Kuala Lumpur
Parit Waterfall (Aug 2010) - Cameron Highlands
Giant vegetables (Aug 2010) - Cameron Highlands
Double helix (Aug 2010) - Cameron Highlands
Strawberry (Aug 2010) - Cameron Highlands
Unlike in my previous photo galleries, I've decided not to mention the brand and model of the cameras used for these pictures, since it doesn't really matter.
Suffice to say that they were not SLRs and no tripods were used for any of the above shots. That's right, they were all handheld.
Please tune in next time for a media-rich, day-by-day account of my recent journey to Japan!
I've been travelling a bit in the past year, and thus I have accumulated so many hundreds of photos and videos that I'm not sure where to start.
Stay tuned for a more substantial series of blog entries soon, but for now, here are some videos about the transportation I took during a short trip to Kuala Lumpur a couple of months ago.
Physics are gonna kill you, Harry! Physics are gonna kill you, Harry!
It's gonna kill you and make you dead.
Physics gonna pull out a gun. Shoot you right in the head. BLAM oh no, look out now! Hey...
Physics.
Oh yeah. Oh...
Oh...
I can't wait to make love... to physics.
Gonna love her all night long. Making physics love, singing the physics song. Throw another downwards to double jump. Or throw it up to not jump as high.
Do it Harry, do it to win.
Punch that missile right in the face. Punch that missile all over the place. One two three four, punch that missile!
A quiet night landing of the space shuttle Atlantis, returning from the STS-135 mission, marked the end of the US space shuttle programme.
Everything is better with Auto-Tune.
