| On Movies: Austin fete braces for the Philadelphians
Yo, it's a Phillywood moment. In a couple of weeks, indie filmmakers from Philadelphia will be out in force - and out and about in Austin, Texas - at the 15th annual South by Southwest Film Festival. Running March 7 through 15 in front of the storied SXSW Music Festival, this year's screen program boasts hundreds of features and shorts, and more than a few prominent entries from the buzzing Philly scene. Anyone who has ambled around South Street, down the streets of Queen Village and the back alleys of Bella Vista, knows the work of Isaiah Zagar: His mosaics - mirror shards, broken china, clay figurines, wine bottles, tiles and bicycle wheels - adorn the exteriors of scores of houses and businesses, and his studio, on the 1000 block of South, has become a tourist destination. Jeremiah Zagar, Isaiah's son, has made a deeply personal documentary, In a Dream, about his father, his father's art, and his father's marriage to Julia Zagar.
Compass to guide next generation of spacecraft
In space, there's no up or down, north or south, east or west. So how does a spacecraft know which way it's facing when it fires its thrusters or tries to beam data back to Earth? Just as sailors used to navigate by the stars, a spacecraft uses star patterns to know its direction. A star camera checks the star patterns and uses those to check the pointing of the spacecraft. A gyroscope measures any rotation of the spacecraft. Between them, they keep things on target. What's a gyroscope? One kind of gyroscope is a bicycle wheel. Once you're on a bike and moving, the bike's wheels want to stay in the same plane -- upright. That's why, as long as you keep those gyros … er, wheels spinning, you won't fall over. If something like the wind tries to push the spinning wheel sideways, the wheel sort of "pushes back." Well, spinning gyroscopes also work in space.
Pedal power For commuting or just having fun, riding a bike in winter ...
Studded tires for bikes? Sure. You can also get chains if you want to join the intrepid cyclists who commute to work on two-wheelers during the winter, or who just want to have fun in the snow."I've been riding a bicycle for my main transportation for over 30 years. It's a force of habit," says John Schwenker, a 51-year-old aerospace engineer who lives near Boulder, Colo.He rides four miles to his office and four miles back, even in the snow."It's a matter of going slow in the stuff," he says.Bikes aren't just for sunny summer weather. There are those across the country - whether for environmental reasons, fun or fitness - who so love cycling that they ride year-round, pretty much regardless of the weather. .
Dickens Festival takes over downtown Riverside
Women with parasols and men in top hats strolled along Mission Inn Avenue in downtown Riverside on Saturday. Dennis Forel, of Torrance, pedaled his 1868-style bicycle with a 52-inch front wheel past Bob Mogg, who snapped a photo with a camera box he designed to resemble a Daguerreotype camera. "It's like stepping back in time," said Doris Taylor, of Lexington, Ky., who was in Riverside visiting family. .
Before RAGBRAI there was the Fort Madison Cycling Club
Dun Auge is a serious bicyclist. He participates in most of the organized rides anywhere within 25 or 30 miles of Fort Madison and in between he can usually be seen pedaling around town solo or with friends.Recently Don loaded his bicycle in the back of his pickup truck and traveled to central Missouri to tour a good part of the Katy Trail State Park, one of the premier bicycling spots in the country. This park is only a few dozen feet wide, but follows the abandoned right-of-way of M-K-T railroad for 225 miles across scenic Missouri.Don did not realize it, but going to Missouri to bicycle he was following a program first established here back in the late 19th century by the 100 members or so of the old Fort Madison Cycling Club.Anyone who owned a "wheel" - as bicycles were called in those days - was considered a person of distinction, for at that time even an ordinary bicycle like the Crescent cost a whopping $45.
For Bellingham’s Mark Wheatley, the bicycle is way of life
Sitting behind a computer all day is Mark Wheatleys job. But his passion is outside out anywhere he can get to on two wheels. Im not the kind of guy who really likes to sit still, says Wheatley, 53, an instructor and systems engineer who bikes often from his home in Bellingham for overnight trips to his job in Bellevue at computer-training company SQLSoft. I like to do something bigger, he says, getting out and seeing a big horizon. In that spirit, Wheatley takes his bicycle everywhere: he rides it to and from work, on tours and even on vacation. He spent a week before and after a Microsoft conference in November 2006 in Barcelona to tour Europe on his bike. Its sustainable transportation, and I never feel like a road trip (in a car) is at all satisfying to me, he says of his work-and-play biking habits.
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