After months of speculation, Barack Obama finally came out and set a budget for NASA. What it means is that the world’s biggest space agency will hand over some space launches to commercial companies, spend more on space technology and – yes – cancel plans to revisit the moon.

Now it may not surprise you to learn that I wasn’t exactly high on NASA’s shortlist for landing on the moon. I’m a woman, for starters! But I must say that I’ve always loved staring at our nearest neighbour. There’s something magical about the moon, with its enormous craters and endless valleys. My favourite time of the month is during a full moon when you can see Earth’s only satellite in all its glory.

I’ve got a few friends in Manchester who enjoy a spot of stargazing too. It just so happens that we were talking about this very subject the other day in the Trafford Centre (only once the important business of shopping was over, mind!). They all felt much the same, that it’s been way too long since the last moon landing. Can you believe it’s nearly four decades since we last set foot on another world?

To be honest, our little stargazing gang doesn’t get to meet up as often as I’d like anymore. Everyone seems to be settling down, getting married and having kids, which sadly doesn’t leave much time for all-day shopping splurges!

Nowadays, the best we can usually manage is a natter every now and then in our local bingo club or while playing online bingo. It’s great to catch up with old friends on the chat forums, and we all still live in hope that one of us will win the jackpot sooner or later.

Who knows, maybe next time you hear from me, I’ll be rolling in money! Although what’s probably more likely is that I’ll still be rolling along as normal, gawping at the full moon with my good old Skymax Synscan 127.

It’s taken around 26 months, but our nearest neighbour will be at perfect opposition to the sun on January 29, at which point it will be the brightest object in the evening sky except for Sirius. If you’re hoping to catch a glimpse of Mars, be advised that it will rise in the evening and appear overhead at around midnight, which should be a good time to get a clear view if you can stay up.

Down from the heavens and back to events on terra firma, I’ve been using time which I would normally have spent watching the sky to enjoy some new hobbies (as you’ll know from my last few posts) and also to catch up with some friends.

First port of call was the cinema, where we watched Avatar. It’s great, especially in 3D, and I wholly recommend you go and see it (as you can tell I’m going to apply for Jonathon Ross’s job on The Film Programme when it becomes vacant). My friends and I also went back to the bingo club we visited before Christmas. Apparently bingo Manchester has been a bit quiet of late because of all the snow and bad weather but we were among those who braved a less treacherous night and actually went to a club.

As it goes, it was worth the visit, I won £10. Which is not bad considering the amount of fun we had. Considerably less fun was trying to get home afterwards – getting a taxi during the cold snap was a nightmare.

I also took the opportunity to speak to my friends about my potential move to Hebden Bridge. I’m starting to think that I might be having second thoughts, not just because of the potentially slower broadband but also because I think I’d miss town and my friends if I moved over there. I will have to continue mulling it over, but I don’t think anything will happen before summer at the earliest.

As a nice way of following on from my last couple of posts about online gaming I thought I’d do a quick run-through of online bingo and online casinos and pit the two against each other. So, here it is, my definitive (sort of) guide to the best way to gamble on the internet.

Online Bingo

I discovered online bingo at the end of this summer. I’d been to a couple of clubs but found that visiting in the evening was interfering with my stargazing and new found penchant for TV soaps. So I decided to try the website of the club I’d been going to, as that allowed me to play whenever I wanted. To be honest, online bingo is not too dissimilar to the game I’d been enjoying offline: you still get cards, numbers are still called out. But it’s simple and fun and there seems to be better special offers online. I’m not as excited now about online bingo as I was when I started playing but I think I’ll still have the odd game, I’ve been quite lucky with it and I also like playing the slots games in between sessions. Which leads me neatly on to…

Online Casinos

In terms of variety, online casinos have the edge over online bingo sites. They give you the option to play roulette, blackjack, poker and, my favourite, online slots. I got into online casino gaming after I’d being playing online bingo for a while, when one of my friends told me about the online casino no deposit bonus (basically a small amount of money to get you started). I picked a casino that looked nice and got started on the slots. To be honest I think they are a bit arbitrary; there’s certainly not much skill involved in hitting the button and watching the reels spin. But online slots can be very exciting. And the randomness of their alignment appeals particularly to the astronomy fan in me.

If you’re looking for fun, simplicity and a sense of community (the chat rooms can be great) I’d say give online bingo a go, but if you’re more serious about experiencing a varied selection of games, try online casinos. It’s hard to say which is ‘best’ out of the two, but at the moment I think I probably prefer online slots, so the casinos win.

Good luck!

Ps. In case I don’t get a chance to blog before, Sunday (17 Jan) sees a close Earth approach by Asteroid 136849. Pretty interesting for anyone interested in CEOs, it comes within 0.03 astronomical units. There are also a couple of comets coming nearby that day, notably LINEAR-NEAT, which will be closer to us than the sun for the first time in seven years.

Pps. Still no real progress on the move to Hebden Bridge. As well as looking for a suitable place I’m also doing research into who will be able to provide reasonably fast internet access in the area. I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

I’m at the stage where the hustle and bustle – not to mention the light pollution that so hinders my stargazing activity – of the city has become tiresome. Also, career-wise, I now find that I don’t need to be in the office as often since our company expanded and I took on a general manager. This leaves me much more time for indulging my love of the online casino world.

So we’re thinking about leaving the big smoke and getting a little cottage in a beautiful place called Hebden Bridge. The clear night skies will be perfect for astronomy, with barely any glare from city centre lights and buildings to disturb the view through my telescope. And the quieter pace of life should be perfectly suited to where I’m at right now. I’ve been told that I can use a VPN connection to access the files we have saved at work, which will allow me to work from home (should I feel like it) on documents stored in the office, but the concern I have – which is what I have been reading about – is with rural broadband speeds.

The latest report says that the government is looking at bringing in a 50p duty (tax) on all phone connections in the UK, in order to fund the expansion of broadband networks. They say that without this, only 70% of the country will get new high speed connections – leaving rural areas out in the cold and my dreams of using a VPN to stay in touch with my office in tatters.

With the VPN I could save files on the server at work, which is more secure than sending them over email. I can also quickly review things my colleagues have put together, again, more safely and quickly than over email. But all of this works best with a high speed broadband connection. If I move to the countryside and end up with an email connection slower than the orbital period of Hale-Bopp, I’m not sure how I’ll be able to cope. I also use the web for playing online casino games, keeping up with astronomy news and, of course, blogging.

The government has opened up a consultation on the new broadband tax, which should run for around 12 weeks. Only then will we know the fate of rural broadband users, or potential rural broadband users like myself.