Patently a Martian

Lugnasa                                                        Garlic Planting Moon

Cybermage Bill Schmidt has two new gold stars on his life resume.

1.  His signature is now on Mars.  He has a friend who works at JPL who, about three years ago, showed him around the place, pointing out during the tour the rover now named Curiosity.  Behind it was a book.  “Sign the book,” his friend said.  Bill did.  “What’s it for?” “We’ll take a picture of all the names, put them on a chip and send them to Mars with the rover.”  Mission accomplished.  Bill’s a Martian. Sort of.

2.  Over the last few years Bill has worked at his favorite activity, coding, to make an invention by a local psychotherapist even more useful.  The invention records on video both sides of a conversation and allows easy tracking back through the dialogue later.

The company applied for a patent and Bill’s name stands as one of the two applying.  The patent has 38 claims for uniqueness.