My Ocular Binoculars

I've been into Astronomy for a couple years now. However, I always find myself reading the articles people publish every now and then about how to get started in Astronomy. I'm not sure why but I guess I really like remembering my roots, why I fell in love with this hobby in the first place. Reading these articles always spark that excitement back in me! Or maybe I always read them because I'm hoping to find some simple thing to fuel the Astrofire back in me.

In these "How to start in Astronomy" articles the authors will almost always recommend people start out with a pair of binoculars because of binocular's convience and intuitive nature. It always sounded like a good idea, but I knew that I really wanted a telescope so I skipped the binocs.

Well, tonight Jessica and I ended up going to a benefit dinner in Appleton, WI. We placed some bids on some items and won the Bushnell PowerView 12 x 50mm Binoculars (13-1250C)! Got them for a what I consider a pretty good price too! $41.00. I was excited to get home to see what all the authors I've read were raving about.

When I got home I unpacked the binoculars and ran out side to put these babies to the test. I was really curious to see how well DSO (Deep Space Objects) would show up if at all. So I targeted right on the Orion Nebula (M42), of course, and sure enough there she was! Even though I'm in the city. There she was! She wasn't as bright as when I use my 8" Dobsonian, but there was no mistaken there was a nebula in my field of view! Beautiful!

I think my binoculars and I are going to have many years of stargazing ahead of us. The convienence is a HUGE plus! If I want to go camping and I don't have enough room or I just simply don't want to haul my big ol' telecsope out I really think that my binoculars will be a great alternative.

For those that want to know how to find The Orion Nebula (M42) here's a quick picture. The nebula sits in the constellation of Orion right on what appears to be the middle star of Orion's sword.

The Wisconsin Chill

It's been a while since I've been able to go outside at night and use the telescope. The frigid Wisconsin weather seems to stick around for as long as it wills. I haven't even had a chance to check out The Great Orion Nebula this Winter, one of my favorite views.

I've taken peace in the fact that most of what I get to see in the sky doesn't change much and I know it'll be there next time I finally make it out. However, I'm starting to think that I may end up having to bundle up, fight the cold, and pray that I survive this coming week. I've built this telescope and I want to make sure I use it.

Maybe I'll purchase some land up north and build an observatory, give it an Internet connection and electricty, and write some software to remotely control it from the comfort of my 70 degree home.

Self-Awareness Paper

I had to write this for my speech class. I thought I'd share it here.
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If you are reading this paper you are in one of two situations. You have either decided that you want to know more about who I am or you are unwillingly being forced into learning about one of the most interesting people written about in this paper. Hopefully, you’re not the latter. If you are, I will try to make this as painless as possible.

We have all at one point in our lives been born. This usually happens at the beginning of our lives and I am no different. I was born in Neenah, WI on March 31st, 1982. I have an older brother and a younger sister. My older brother liked to physically manifest his seniority on my face whenever he felt it necessary. My younger sister, I considered my best friend.

I have since grown up and married a beautiful woman, Jessica. I work full time as a Systems Engineer (also known as a server administrator) at a paper mill in the Fox Valley. I enjoy what I do because it can be challenging and it gives my neurons a chance to pump some iron. I love when there is a problem and I am given some time to figure a way through it.

My sense of humor is something that is awfully important to me. I can find humor in almost any situation. When asking my wife to list off some of my personality traits one of the first ones listed was goofiness. I think it’s important to have a good understanding of humor. Using it too much or using it in the wrong situation can irritate people. I try to balance it the best I can and I believe I do a pretty good job at it, but let’s be honest, sometimes it can just get out of hand.

Unfortunately, something I haven’t let get out of hand lately is my music. I play guitar, piano and I also sing. I’ve led worship at my church for many years but until recently have had to put it on hold. I have a strong passion for music and leading worship but my family is my number one priority and leading ended up becoming more of a burden than a joy. In the future I hope I can get back into the beat of things but for now I’ll have to settle for jamming solo at home.

Just like my heart is attached to music, it is also attached to astronomy. Since I was a child I have found the night sky enchanting. While most people are in bed trying to conjure up a dream, I am outside living a dream. There is just something about the night sky that tinkers with my thinker. Is it because looking skyward causes me to try and comprehend the vastness of the Universe? Is it the journeys that looking through the eyepiece of a telescope send me on? Or is it as simple as a beautiful star silently twinkling high above my head? I’m not sure and I think that may be why astronomy continues to capture my imagination.

I try to continually better myself every day by keeping an unbiased look at myself and having open communication with those who are close to me. Looking back at my life I have seen much growth that has transformed me into a better person. Growth has occurred through things that have gone well in my life as well as others that have blown up in my face. I hope that I can continue to enjoy life and grow for the rest of my life.

2008 PimpYourScope.Com Astronomy Wall Calendar

The 2008 PimpYourScope.com Astronomy Wall Calendar is now available for download, and just in time for the new year! The new calendar does a great job of visually showing daily meteor shower activity and more. Best of all it's FREE! Go to PimpYourScope.com and get your copy in the Downloads section.

I Hate Thumbs.db - How to Get Rid of It!

If you're reading this, chances are that you have Explorer set to show hidden files and folders. If there's a file there, you want to see it! The problem with this is every once in a while you may notice a file called Thumbs.db. If you delete it, it just comes right back. What is this file? How do you get rid of it?

Thumbs.db is a file that stores smaller versions (aka. Thumbnails) of the pictures in that folder. Anytime you go to a folder Windows will look for pictures in that folder. If it finds one it will read that file and generate a thumbnail and set that as the picture's icon. To speed up the process for the next time you go to that folder it will save these thumbnails in Thumbs.db.

Generally, these thumbnails don't take too long to create. But if you have a folder with 100s, maybe 1000s, of pictures you will probably notice that it will while for all the thumbnails to be generated. Thumbs.db comes in handy in these situations. However, I still have it disabled. If seeing these pictures quickly is important to you, you may not want to disable this feature.

Anyway, here's why you're reading this. The following will disable this feature:

1. In Windows Explorer, go to the folder that has the thumbs.db file.


2. Click Tools / Folder Options

3. Click the "View" tab / Check "Do not Cache Thumbnails"


4. What you just did will change that setting for the particular folder you were in. If you want this applied to all folders click the "Apply To All Folders" button.

5. Click "Ok" to close the "Folder Options" window.

After these settings have been changed you should now be able to delete the thumbs.db without having to worry about it coming back later. If you wanted to delete all the thumbs.db files on your computer try doing a search in from the Search option in the Start Menu and searching for thumbs.db. You should be able to delete them from search results page.

Bash Script: Interval Get

I had an idea while watching WLUK's Lambeau Cam, a webcam mounted on a radar tower near Lambeau field. I thought it would be cool to download images of a webcam at a set interval and then convert them intto a movie format. The result would be a stop motion (or time lapse) video of that webcam's output.

While I was writing this script I remembered that WLUK already broadcasts a time lapse video of the Lambeau Cam almost every night during their weather forecast but this didn't stop me because it can be used on more than just a web cam.

Description:
iget.sh (aka. Interval Get) is passed three parameters. 1. The URL of a file; 2. A filename to tag the downloaded file with; 3. An Interval in seconds.

iget will download the URL, tag it with the date and time and your custom file name at the interval of seconds you tell it.

Example:
./iget.sh http://weather.myfoxnewisconsin.com/maps/WLUK/lambeaucam/capture.jpg lambeau.jpg 60

This would output YYYY-MM-DD_HHMMSS_lambeau.jpg every sixty seconds.

Dependencies:
Bash
wget

Note: Before running this script you may have to give it Execute permisions. You can do this using chmod (ie. chmod +x ./iget.sh). Also, I have tested this in Ubuntu v7.04 and in Cygwin, it worked fine on both.

Download

After you have downloaded all the pictures you should be able to use a program that can convert many pictures into a movie. I used mencoder, which was easy to setup on Ubuntu, a little more difficult on Cygwin.

Have Fun!

8" Oak Octagon Telescope Completed

Hey everyone! I know it doesn't look like I've been doing much on the telescope in a while, well, you couldn't be more further from the truth! As a matter of fact on May 19th, 2007 I finished the project and even had nice enough weather for first light! There is still a little staining work to be done...

The reason I haven't posted anything here lately is because I'm looking at moving the project steps to another site. But don't worry, I'll still keep this up and going. It all just got way too big for me to manage in such a small GUI editor. I'm planning on creating a PDF file of the steps, even though I haven't posted here in a while I still took step-by-step pictures of the process I took.

Anyway, to settle your appetite a little here are a couple pictures of the finished telescope.

The finished telescope. I named it "Cheeks" after my wife. ;)










The telescope and it's creator... ME!











The sexy telescope ("Cheeks") and my even more sexier wife Jessica Strike ("Cheeks").