I liked the opening to Pandora's Star, by Peter F Hamilton. The first astronauts landing on Mars are met by someone just standing there, visiting through a wormhole.

It's the wrong trousers Gromit! And they've gone wrong!

"When you are talking about going from naught to 3,500 mph in 8 seconds straight up - there will be no ride anywhere in the world that will be like it," Branson said.

That's from something in 2018 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/29/richard-branson-virgin-galactic-is-2-or-3-flights-away-from-space.html. Ignore the naught / nought typo. cnbc.

"They'll be taken up by our mothership up to about 25,000ft, they'll be dropped. They'll go to about 3,500 miles an hour in eight seconds," said Branson.

That's from local news here recently https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/commercial-space-travel-step-closer-virgin-galactic-prepares-test-flight

My back of the envelope calculations suggests that this is ~20g.

I'll pass, thank you.

We've had something similar in Wellington for nearly 5 years for our parking bays.

Each bay is numbered, you put the bay number into the machine, the presence of a vehicle is verified, you select the duration, and pay. The nice people at Parking Services get push notifications for bays that are due to expire but the vehicle is still there.

Here's a link to a news story from a couple of years ago https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/116222348/sensors-sans-sense-almost-5000-wellington-parking-tickets-waived

I remember when they were being introduced, thinking how much fun there would be if empty parks were made available on an app, cars from everywhere rushing to the only free bay left, all but one missing out, then all rushing to a new one that just freed up on the other side of town. Alas, that's not happened, it's used only for parking enforcement.

If anyone comes too close, I tell them to "fuck off".

I guess the pilots and flight crew all have to be US citizens as well?

Pandemic - Putting the dem in Panic This has been a Public Health Service announcement. We now return you to your scheduled programming.

I still remember playing this on my Dad's TRS-80. Galactic Empire and Galactic Trader too. A more simple time.

I wonder if the tape archive goes back to the original regional shows. I remember watching the first episode with John Asher and Chris Tarrant, and from memory it was ATV only, rather than national. My brother entered a competition, and won a Bee Gees album. It would be worth the look on his face to be able to see that again.

http://www.martinbackes.com/pixelhead-limited-edition/

Not new in New Zealand either. We went to Monday / Wednesday / Friday or Tuesday / Thursday / Saturday in July 2015.

A paper cut.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

I've seen Amalur for sale in the local EB Games, for I think ~NZ$70. I'm unsure about buying it mostly because I have no idea if there's any call-home DRM in place or servers left to call home to. If I buy it, will it run?

I treated 99/00 as a dress rehearsal for 00/01, now I'm just waiting for the next one.