Monday, July 07, 2014
Just in Case You Have Been Wondering Where I have Been
My posts have been a little thin on the ground recently, initially because of preparing for exams and an international conference.
The this happened, follow-ups are here, here, here, here and here. It will be a while before I am fully back on deck, but a few more posts may be coming sooner rather than later.
The this happened, follow-ups are here, here, here, here and here. It will be a while before I am fully back on deck, but a few more posts may be coming sooner rather than later.
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Mangrove, a floating installation
Last night is tomorrow night (sunset to 10 pm ish) , why not dress warnly and go along?
Labels: miscellaneous
Monday, March 31, 2014
MiddleOne is an odd number old
His age has two digits. The sum of the two digits is an even number, as is the sum of the two digits of EldestOne's age.
Adding these two numbers together gives you a two digit number that is one less than MiddleOne's age. Subtracting them gives you an even prime number.
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Einstein the Musical
It was brilliant, with a rap song about E = MC2, and lots of audience participation.
The Bettdeckererschnappender weisel and I were chosen to act out time dilation (standing in foor the previous two audience members who were acting out vector addition), I got to hold a light saber, BDEW got a vacuum cleaner named Hette, she was not amused, and muttered about 21st century role models, but we were informed it was 1936, so that didn't apply).
It was an absolute hoot, the last show is tomorrow, why not go along?
(PS, do I need to tell you I have the best family ever?)
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Friday, January 03, 2014
I Have The Best Family (part 2)
Photographer mother-in-law gifted me her old Pentax K10D DSLR as well (still not worthy).
I have to get an micro SD card for the Go Pro, then it is coming on my next canoe trip. The Pentax fits my telescope adaptor for my Pentax KM film camera, next clear night it is going on my telescope.
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Friday, November 22, 2013
EldestOne plays the Scarecrow
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
At MiddleOne's Concert
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Waiting for Godot
Monday, November 11, 2013
SmallestOne is Double-digit Old
SmallestOne now has an Aragorn costume.
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Saturday, September 21, 2013
The Mug Shot Project
The Mug Shot project is part of the 5015 project, which is in turn part of the Port Festival's art program. The 5015 project is to get people to use analog photography to capture Port Adelaide and its environs (postcode 5015).
In the Mug Shot project you get to pose for "mug shots" with a coffee mug. People can use the mug in various creative ways. I was wearing my Dalek T-shirt, so I posed the mug next to the Dalek. This lead to the conversation with one of the photographers (Dianca) who had worked on Dr. Who (go Silurians!).
That is just the first part of the project. The next is to use coffee and vitamin C to develop the film, and coffee to make the prints. Yes, you read that right, they are using coffee to develop the film. You can see a video of the process here.
That is pretty amazing, as I use coffee often as an example in my teaching, I'm going to have to introduce my students to this (and give it a try myself). I'm really looking forward to the exhibition (which will take place in the Red Lime Shack 18-20 October).
I may even try to enter myself, using a drink can pinhole camera.
Labels: miscellaneous
Monday, September 02, 2013
Fathers Day 2013
SmallestOne and I played Sci-Fi card games and MiddleOne came kayaking with me (he didn't actually go kayaking, but he sat on the bank in the sunshine while I paddled about).
Best.Family.Ever
Spent earlier tonight watching EldestOne play soccer against hos schools alumni. He did pretty darned well, nice hook shot and a sweet header.
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Another kind of stars
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Friday, August 02, 2013
Concert: Songs to Sip Soup By
My
beloved Bettdeckererschnappender Weisle's acappella group, Nobody's Fault but Mine is having a concert this
weekend - Sunday 4th August, 4pm, St Theodore's Church Hall, Cnr Swaine and Prescott, Toorak Gardens. $5 homemade soup included. I'll be the doorman.
If you haven't seen the (rather embarrassing acording to BDSW) video .. check it out here
http://vimeo.com/14447026
If you haven't seen the (rather embarrassing acording to BDSW) video .. check it out here
http://vimeo.com/14447026
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Saturday, July 06, 2013
Asteroid 5099 Iainbanks (with Celestia add-on)
 |  |
| Asteroid 5009 Iainbanks taken with iTelescope T9 at 9 pm on Friday July 5. 5 x 3 inute exposures were stacked using ImageJ and SUMMED. | Animated GIF of 5009 Iainbanks from two sequences shot an hour apart. The other moving things are all artifacts. |
 |  |
| Celestia simulation showing the orbit of 5099 Iainbanks. | The view towards Earth from Iainbanks, simulated in Celestia. |
Iain Banks, a prolific and celebrated writer, died on 9 June 2013. He wrote both conventional and science fiction, publishing his science fiction works as Iain M Banks. He was one of my favourite novelists, his Culture novels works of soaring imagination, operating over huge swaths of the galaxy and of time. The solar system spanning artefacts his Culture dwellers created/inhabited put Larrry Niven's Ringworld Engineers to shame (Okay, okay, so the Orbitals were mini-Ringworlds, but he made a lot more of them, and other solar system wide structures).
On June 23rd the IAU named asteroid 5099 as iainbanks, a fitting tribute to a much loved science fiction author. I didn't hear of it until yesterday, so I took the opportunity to take some shots of the asteroid with iTelescopes T9 instrument. At magnitude 17 it's quite a bit dimmer than my usual quarry, and moving sufficiently slowly that I had to do two imaging runs an hour apart to see it move.
One thing puzzles me though, the article states of Iain Banks's Culture that
"Thanks to their technology they are able to hollow out asteroids and use them as ships capable of faster-than-light travel while providing a living habitat with centrifugally-generated gravity for their thousands of denizens."I don't actually remember that in his novels (some of the ships are gigantic, but I though they were made de novo by the Minds). Still the only more fitting memorial would be an asteroid on a hyperbolic orbit.
Of course I've made Celestia files for 5009 Iainbanks. As usual, copy the data here to a plain text file (5099iainbanks.ssc) and copy the file to the Celestia extras folder. Sadly, there are no Culture add-ons in the Celestia Science Fiction section, but there is a Ringworld add-on.
===============5099iainbanks.ssc======================================
"5099 Iainbanks" "Sol"
#Data from MPC http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/MPEph/MPEph.html
#Epoch 2013 Apr. 18.0 TT = JDT 2456400.5 MPC
#M 224.98550 (2000.0) P Q
#n 0.25162303 Peri. 288.09916 +0.98702989 -0.15923578 T = 2456937.07449 JDT
#a 2.4848630 Node 81.06718 +0.15399094 +0.90320511 q = 2.3556400
#e 0.0520041 Incl. 1.18300 +0.04537395 +0.39857809
#P 3.92 H 13.1 G 0.15 U 0
#From 1286 observations at 20 oppositions, 1954-2013, mean residual 0".51.
{
Class "asteroid"
Mesh "ky26.cmod"
Texture "asteroid.jpg"
Radius 3.05 # maximum semi-axis
MeshCenter [ -0.000718 -0.000099 0.000556 ]
InfoURL "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%285099%29_Iainbanks"
EllipticalOrbit
{
Epoch 2456400.5 # Epoch 2013 Apr. 18.0 TT = JDT 2456400.5
Period 3.92 # P
SemiMajorAxis 2.4848630 # a
Eccentricity 0.0520041 # e
Inclination 1.18300 # Incl.
AscendingNode 81.06718 # Node
ArgOfPericenter 288.09916 # Peri
PericenterDistance 2.3556400 # q
MeanAnomaly 224.98550 # M
}
RotationPeriod 0.9 #Guess
Albedo 0.15 #Based on typical Stony asteroids, rotation periods vary from one hour to one day
}
======================================================================
Labels: asteroids, celestia, iTelescope, miscellaneous
Thursday, May 16, 2013
At EldestOne's Play
Labels: homelife, miscellaneous
Friday, April 26, 2013
ANZAC Day, 2013
I normally alternate between the dawn services at Largs and Semaphore. This year was Semaphore's turn, and I cycled down under a cloudy sky with the setting Moon hidden under a band of cloud.
This year there was more people than ever. A huge increase over the last time I was here, despite the clod an threatening rain. With added St' Johns amulance vans, a coffee tent and the rotary cooking breakfast it was a somewhat lighter atmosphere than last time. The rotary and coffee van were never there before.
The service was goo, and the Salvation Army Children's Choir were beautiful.
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Monday, April 08, 2013
20 Years Ago Today ....
Sure, we could have gotten married in Berlin, but Paris was just a hop and a skip away, and far more romantic, and we could get married in the Australian Embassy in Paris (you can't get married at Australian embassies any more).
So we gathered up some friends, a couple of rellies came over and we had a fantastic wedding in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower (with a few amusing-in-retrospect hiccups along the way). We made BDEW's dad ride public transport (the Paris metro, he complained all the way) to get to the wedding feast in a little Paris Bistro.
Today we just had dinner at the local Pub. Not quiet as romantic as the French restraunt I envisaged. But SmallestOne had a cold, everyone was exhausted and needed early bedtimes (and all the open French restaurants were a fair hike away). Still we had a great time and told the kids tales of our wedding.
20 years, how fast it's flown. Through good times and bad, triumphs and tragedies. Loss of loved ones and the birth of ours sons it's been one heck of a ride. I can't wait to find out what the next 20 bring.
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Monday, April 01, 2013
MiddleOne is an Even Number Old
 |  |
| Boy's room midway through painting | Boy's room after painting completed, note Ikea desk "Micke" which MiddleOne and I put together |
MiddleOne is an even number old. The sum of the first digit and last digit of his age is a prime number, the same prime number that you get when subtracting the first digit from the last digit of EldestOnes age (who is also an even number old). When you add this prime number to SMallestOnes age (who is an odd number old, and his age is the cube of a prime number), you recover MiddleOnes age.
This year MiddleOnes birthday fell on Easter Sunday. We promised MiddleOne for his birthday we would redo the space in the room he shares with SmallestOne to give him more personal space. This involved spending Easter spackfilling gaping holes in walls, sanding, washing, priming, painting, being slapped in the face by large slabs of ceiling paint that had been softened by the primers and fell off the ceiling, more painting, travelling to Ikea to purchase desk, lamps, chairs (Eldest One also scored a new chair and a lamp, we also resorted his room to give him more effective space), eating $1 Ikea hot dogs (mmmm), assembling said furniture and collapsing in a heap aching in muscles we didn't know we had.
In between we organised an Easter Egg Hunt and the Bettdeckererschnappender Weisle made MiddleOne a birthday cake.
Labels: home life, kids, miscellaneous
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Not Seeing a Transit of Io
There was Europa coming out of eclipse, followed by a transit of Io. So I got out the 4" Newtonian and started setting it up for imaging.
It was nicely clear an I could see some intermediate atmospheric bands in the medium power eye piece. I showed the planet to MiddleOne, who has had a resergence in interest in what I do, then turned to get the imaging run ready.
So of course cloud came over, thick, orgulous cloud, exactly the kind you can't see Jupiter through. Sigh.
Oh for Drakskywatcher7 and all those who think Jupiter has tilted, it was in exactly the right orientation with regard to Omega Taurii and the minor stars that it should be.
Labels: astrophotography, Jupiter, miscellaneous
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Australia Day, 2013
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
