TheSkySearchers

Went to work Wednesday afternoon (I work a 3pm-midnight shift normally.) and felt fine when I got there. By the end of my shift I was feeling a little like garbage. Went home and got in bed with a slight fever, sore throat and my whole body aching. I woke up at 10am to see my wife in bed next to me. That's strange because she works a regular 8-5 job. I asked her what was up and she said she wasn't feeling good, had a sore throat, so they sent her home.
I guess you all know where this is headed. We both tested positive on Thursday 12/30. It really sucks because I was scheduled to work NYE and New Year's day which is good money in our union.
I waited to say anything till I was sure we would both be ok and it seems as though yesterday (01/01) was probably the worst of it. I'm actually feeling almost normal tonight, except just a little tired. Same for my wife. Luckily we are both fully vaccinated with a booster.
My Dr. said it's only a matter of time now before everyone gets this and she thinks Covid is with us to stay now because we wasted too much time nipping it early.
She thinks that from now on we'll be just getting a Flu/Covid vaccine every year.
Happy 2022 folks!

Hanging some new pictures and binge-watching "Midsomer Murders". The weather has gone to schmutz again. Our three days a week in the office has been reduced to two days, so I'm going in Thursday since today is a holiday. Hard to get motivated when it's gray and cold outside.

notFritzArgelander wrote: ↑Wed Jan 12, 2022 10:03 pm Too busy having fun, I made a blunder on the astrophysics board by failing to read through the hype in a threads OP article.

The amusing distractions are AAS virtual meetings, which at least are on topic and my competition in an online chess league event. So far the competition has been fairly successful with placing 1, 2, or 3 in each weekly event. Although I’m not as strong a player as I used to be, it’s still enjoyable.

At least it's (chess) enjoyable up to a limit and I think I've hit it. The leagues are organized in 8 levels each of which contains divisions. If you turn in a performance that "makes a cut" you get promoted to a "higher" league. Well, I started at the bottom (as all do) and made 4 cuts placing 1st, 2nd (twice), and 3rd. The division of the 5th league is full of hyper achievers. Once you claw your way into the top level there are money prizes (enough to fund a Tak ). But being in a division of overachievers is no fun. Math tells me that some of these guys are doing nothing else but playing chess over the internet.....

Anyway unlike the first four rodeos, I simply do not want to make the effort to make the next cut. I'm playing too much chess and it's affecting daily life adversely. For instance on January 12 and 16 I made each day a howler of a gaffe on the astrophysics board. By the tender mercy of editing I was able to repair most of the damage. Posts by @seigell and @helicon alerted me that things were out of hand.

Successful sequence last night. Found the scope parked and "Captured until time limit".

Seems my changes and adjustments worked

The tank is now cycled and the bacteria bloom is gone. Time to add some sea life a little at a time. A very fun patience is the key hobby.

Just added a few Scarlett Hermit crabs into the tank. Do not know why my other two videos are missing. However, here is a video of the first sea life in my new nano reef tank. Before Spring I will update my PADI scuba certification. Once while on a scuba dive in Cozumel I saw a crab that was about three feet wide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSrQEMoaOCk

Was going to work on the closet - but suddenly realized that I need to get the ceiling up in the den first. So getting someone to do the sheetrocking is now critical. If not, I'm going to spend the bucks and get me a sheetrock lifter which will make my life a whole lot easier (~$250). It's beginning to snow outside. It was kind of clear for a while last night - but full moon too. I'm not going to sink anymore money into astronomy stuff if this cycle of 1 clear night every six weeks continues. I don't know if it's climate change or not but it certainly seems to be getting worse every year since I started AP.

I started work on a wooden model the "Harriet Lane". She was a Revenue Service cutter pre-US Civil War and played some significant roles during the Civil War. She's a side wheel steam/sail hybrid ship. I figure this is going to take a long time. There is steaming and bending of wood involved - something I've never done. So I will learn some new skills. Right now I'm refining the shape of the hull - it's close, but not perfect. I have some sanding to do now to smooth the wood prior to applying stain. Maybe I'll take some pics and post them here as a work in progress.

With winter weather here, I'm firing up my model trains again. I have a basic oval roundy-round for the grandkids to mess with and I'm doing a 2-meter shelf switcher well out of their reach for me. I'm trying a one turnout wonder - section of mainline with a long transload spur since transloads can handle a variety of freight. Adding scenery will be a nice creative outlet and I can do what I want when I want.

Star Dad wrote: ↑Thu Jan 20, 2022 3:52 pm Was going to work on the closet - but suddenly realized that I need to get the ceiling up in the den first. So getting someone to do the sheetrocking is now critical. If not, I'm going to spend the bucks and get me a sheetrock lifter which will make my life a whole lot easier (~$250). It's beginning to snow outside. It was kind of clear for a while last night - but full moon too. I'm not going to sink anymore money into astronomy stuff if this cycle of 1 clear night every six weeks continues. I don't know if it's climate change or not but it certainly seems to be getting worse every year since I started AP.

I started work on a wooden model the "Harriet Lane". She was a Revenue Service cutter pre-US Civil War and played some significant roles during the Civil War. She's a side wheel steam/sail hybrid ship. I figure this is going to take a long time. There is steaming and bending of wood involved - something I've never done. So I will learn some new skills. Right now I'm refining the shape of the hull - it's close, but not perfect. I have some sanding to do now to smooth the wood prior to applying stain. Maybe I'll take some pics and post them here as a work in progress.

I'd love to see the pics! What size will the model be?

Regarding the "sheetrock", I agree with getting a lifting frame: that stuff is very awkward! I suspect it would be a lot more than $250 to get someone to do it for you.
(BTW, "sheetrock" is my new American word for the day: I had to look it up. In fact at first I was pronouncing it "She trock" in my head!
Here in Oz we call it "gyprock" (because the main component is gypsum) or "plasterboard". Is it also called "drywall" in the US?)

Have fun with your model: it is great to have a fun hobby to fall back on if you are an astronomer!

All the best,

Dean

Star Dad wrote: ↑Thu Jan 20, 2022 3:52 pm I'm not going to sink anymore money into astronomy stuff if this cycle of 1 clear night every six weeks continues. I don't know if it's climate change or not but it certainly seems to be getting worse every year since I started AP.

Stardad,

Welcome to astronomy.

One clear night every six weeks works out to 8-9 clear nights a year, 80-90 per decade.

I've made this comment on TSS before, astronomy is a marathon, not a sprint. Take the long game approach.

cheers

Joe

My brother just sent me copies of all the photos my mother had stored away in a box. My niece had scanned them and put them on Google drive. (All 990 of them). There are photos of both my dads and mothers families going back to the early 1900's. It's a long term project!

Gordon wrote: ↑Fri Jan 21, 2022 6:57 pm My brother just sent me copies of all the photos my mother had stored away in a box. My niece had scanned them and put them on Google drive. (All 990 of them). There are photos of both my dads and mothers families going back to the early 1900's. It's a long term project!

I did that same thing about 2 years ago. I already had most of the pics and documents my mothers parents had, but my brother turned over all the photo albums MY parents had after my mother passed away. All together I ended up with around 1700 pic and docs for about 28gig of information. Made numerous copies and passed them out as Christmas presents. I think the oldest I have were land deeds from my great grandfather dating back to around 1860 or so. Probably the most enlightening were the letters my grandfather (Dad's side) wrote to my grandmother from Europe when he was in WW1. I was amazed how many documents survived all those years. Same with the pics.

Rob

515bonner wrote: ↑Fri Jan 21, 2022 7:46 pm
I did that same thing about 2 years ago. I already had most of the pics and documents my mothers parents had, but my brother turned over all the photo albums MY parents had after my mother passed away. All together I ended up with around 1700 pic and docs for about 28gig of information. Made numerous copies and passed them out as Christmas presents. I think the oldest I have were land deeds from my great grandfather dating back to around 1860 or so. Probably the most enlightening were the letters my grandfather (Dad's side) wrote to my grandmother from Europe when he was in WW1. I was amazed how many documents survived all those years. Same with the pics.

Rob

I have copies of the grant deeds issued to both my great grandfathers property from the mid 1800's. The remaining property was sold off in 1998. So nothing left of it in the family. There's some 'oral history' about my mothers family being given a surname from the king of Sweden but I haven't found any written evidence of it. But there was a surname change in the late 1700s which was carried down.

Mum and dad both passed away in 2011 and 2012. There were 1300 photos and documents that had come from grandparents and great grandparents and mostly ended up in this one collection. In the years before her death, mum had tried to find a way to divide up the photos between the grandchildren. When mum and dad died, I asked my brother if I could taken them all and digitise them. He's not tech savvy nor into photography so he readily agreed. I considered scanning but the time required was excessive. So I set up a copy stand and with a DSLR shooting raw I got excellent results, great dynamic range and FAST. I shot all 1300 working two full days one weekend, a Saturday and a Sunday, and then the following Saturday morning. I processed everything in Lightroom a couple of hours a night for about 5 nights.

When finished, I created a big photo gallery using the gallery generator in Lightroom and then created a secure space on my web server where family members can view the gallery. I also have downloadable zip files in that same secured space so that family members can download the full resolution files if they want to print anything.

As an example, this is a picture of my paternal grandfather taken in the Port of Colombo in 1930. It was taken by a street photographer and I assume developed and contact printed on the spot from a half plate camera. The original print was 25x40mm and overprinted so that it was so dark it couldn't really be viewed. It's a wonder that it was not discarded. But it found its way to me. Using macro lens, bright side lighting and raw capture, I was able to produce the second image which dragged detail out of the shadows. I then restored some of the blemishes that were on and around his image leaving others to attest to the age and street photographer nature of the original.

I was also able to colour correct some early 1970's colour prints that were turning red. Mum had long ago thrown out the negatives because in her words, "we had the photos so we didn't need the negatives." Some others that were too far gone were able to be turned into B&W images.

Another bonus of your double image above is that it can work as a semi 3D image if you combine them both with your eyes...

BTW, it is interesting what you find out about your parents when you go through the old photos. I even have one of my Dad on his honeymoon, lounging on the beach in his 3-piece suit (about as close as he ever got to swimming!).
But I think one of the best is one of my Mum in the centre of a formal shot of the scientists and engineers who were working on the development of ballistic missiles at the Weapons Research Establishment in South Australia in 1951, before they were test-fired at the Woomera Range. This was a joint UK/Australia enterprise which was leading the world at the time. Right behind her is Peter Twiss, a British test pilot who at one stage held the world record as the first man to fly a jet aircraft at 1000mph. (This was in the “Fairey Delta 2” in 1956: one of the delta-winged test vehicles on the way to developing the Concorde.) The weird thing is that the photo was taken in Oct 1951, the same month that she got married: and we children always thought she was in a completely different job, running a local flour mill, at that time. She did have a model rocket, mounted on a tail fin from the real thing, that was given to her when she left (only 2 were ever made), but she never spoke about the weapons research stuff. I assume this was because they were told to never discuss things under the Official Secrets Act. She would be able to now that 70 years have passed, but sadly she is no longer with us...

Butterfly Maiden wrote: ↑Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:08 pm

turboscrew wrote: ↑Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:43 pm

Butterfly Maiden wrote: ↑Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:24 pm

Next time Juha, we want to see some selfies of you in the snow, discreetly covered up first of course

That might be a problem. Neither my dog nor my cat can operate a camera. And I don't have a selfie-stick either.

Tripod and camera with self-timer?

No pressure Juha

I REALLY hesitated, but since Vanessa wants to see a walrus...
I'm sorry for the torture to the eyes...

Around midnight, -8°C (17°F). (I'm sill not sure this was a good idea.)

Okay Juha, I am sorry for twisting your arm to do that and I wasn't expecting you to go ahead with it.

But kudos for the effort. It makes me shiver just seeing you with all that snow on bare skin, when I was expecting you to do a 'snow angel' fully clothed actually

I will have to be careful what I challenge members to do in future though

Butterfly Maiden wrote: ↑Sat Jan 22, 2022 1:37 pm Okay Juha, I am sorry for twisting your arm to do that and I wasn't expecting you to go ahead with it.

But kudos for the effort. It makes me shiver just seeing you with all that snow on bare skin, when I was expecting you to do a 'snow angel' fully clothed actually

I will have to be careful what I challenge members to do in future though

You can, probably, see the snow angel behind me?
I have my swimming suit on, and it doesn't matter that much whether I roll or make snow angel.

For my generation, and older, rolling in snow when sauna-bathing used to be quite common. Especially among children.
Nowadays it's not that easy. People live in cities and towns.

[/quote]
I REALLY hesitated, but since Vanessa wants to see a walrus...
I'm sorry for the torture to the eyes...
Around midnight, -8°C (17°F).

(I'm sill not sure this was a good idea.)
[/quote]

to answer a couple of questions:
Harriet Lane model is 1/12th scale = ~1 foot long
In the US sheetrock is also commonly called drywall, and less frequently gypsum board. I wish there was something lighter available... not sure why we use gypsum... it's fire proof, but the paper holding it together isn't.