Welcome

We write about technical, professional, and academic products and books, as well as cover various environmental and space-oriented topics. We started this site in May of 2010 and are pleased how site traffic continues to increase every month. We appreciate when people visit our site and read our articles, and we encourage our readers to post comments to help other people looking for this type of information.

A New Direction for Our Blog

Global warming is a very real threat to modern society. For a long time, I have been appalled at the way big petroleum money has been spent on think tanks that focus on providing disinformation about climate science.  I read the blogs and catch Twitter post from these lackeys of big petroleum that continue to raise the same issues to congress and the press, trying to prevent us from addressing an unpresented climate change: our Earth is warming far faster than in the past, and that can change weather in ways dangerous to people, animals and plant life on our pale blue planet.

Global warming is a very real danger, and a bigger danger is the failure of the US government to help the rest of the world reduce emissions that cause global warming.  The day President Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accords should be as black a day in US history as Pearl Harbour being bombed.  Climate scientists like Dr. Michael Mann, who is educated in, you know, climate science, knows more about this subject than every denier lackey arguing against global warming. Dr. Mann testifies in congress, gives speeches and classes on this topic, and has written a couple of good books on the subject.  Please, buy these books and learn about a very real threat to us, our children and our grand children.

Harry has already written some about global warming.  I intend to review books on the subject, as well as examine real scientific evidence that our planet is getting warming faster than it should.  Please feel free to post comments – trolls I can banish as needed.

ABOUT US

Harry and I have been reviewing computer-related products for many different magazines (print, online, and disk-based) for years, so we decided to start this site to provide more coverage of things often overlooked by other magazines: development software, games, freeware, shareware, and programming/how-to books. We also want to cover environmental issues that affect our world as well as space-related issues, since they impact so many people today. Harry primarily reviews Mac OSX apps and technical books; Mike reviews Mac OSX/Windows/mobile apps and technical books.

Ted Bade joined our staff in 2011, which was good because Harry and I have worked with Ted in the past and value his insightful reviews. Ted is a technically-oriented person and he shares Mike’s passion for all things astronomy, so expect to see the majority (but not all) of his work on the Space page. Ted has a Macbook Pro, an iPad and an iPod touch, so he evaluates mobile apps as well as Mac OSX apps.

SITE ENHANCEMENTS

We’ve continued to enhanced several of our site pages over the past year: Space (a page for Ted and me to share astronomy-related reviews and topics), and Programming (devoted to articles and tips about software development). Both pages are accessed from the top menu on this site. We will continue to enhance our pages with more material and images over time.

We recently began integrating our relevant astronomy articles with Wolfram|Alpha, so real time data is available for those wanting current information (like the location of both Voyagers/New Horizons/Mars Rovers, the Apollo Missions, the Space Shuttles, scientifically-relevant planetary data, etc). We’ve also started covering Starry Night version updates for our readers that use that excellent astronomy product, and will cover updates to Mathematica as they are made available to us.

We are looking for interesting iPod and iPad applications to review – right now I look at the iPod apps and Ted reviews iPad apps, but I hope that changes in the near future. I am ready to buy one.

COMMENTS WELCOME

We welcome comments about our posts. People have a right to agree and disagree with our appraisals and we don’t object to discussions as long as they remain civil and don’t become flame wars. We value the true scientific approach of using real, not falsified or misleading data, and we do not believe in using politically-correct or religiously-correct data to justify a position. We respect the opinions of others and expect the same consideration, because this is not a political or religious discussion site. We do not publish comments that are merely posted to act as ads for products or services.

FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Click here to visit the Sleeping Cat Recipes site, where Harry and I post some of our personal favorite recipes. Some are calorie conscious, while others  are ethnic foods, but they are things we both enjoy making and eating. One of my favorite side dishes on the site is basil pesto mashed potatoes; easy to make and basil pesto makes them quite different from typical mashed potatoes. My burger biscuits rock, but they take a little work to make.  Try some of our recipes and let us know what you think.

IN CLOSING

Thanks for visiting our site, please stop back again as we update many articles over time, and we hope to hear your opinions about our articles.

Mike, Harry and Ted