Monday,
2 August 2004
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{Five Years
Ago Today]
09:40 - I shut down theodore,
our NT4 Server box and primary domain controller, over the weekend.
That's one less Windows box around here. My former primary workstation,
messier, is a Windows 2000 box that's now serving temporarily as the file server. Things are a lot quieter in my office with theodore turned off. It has a PC Power & Cooling TurboCool power supply, which is a fine power supply but a relatively loud one.
My new main box is leibniz,
a 3.2 GHz P4 processor on an Intel D875PBZ motherboard with 1 GB of
Crucial PC3200 DDR-SDRAM, a Plextor PX-708A DVD burner, a 160 GB
Seagate Barracuda hard drive, Logitech Cordless MX Duo keyboard and
mouse, Logitech Z-3 speaker system, a RADEON 9200 video adapter and a
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card. Xandros installed without problems
on this box.
I have the tools I need to get my work done on this Xandros box,
although a few of them will take some getting used to. I miss some of
the features and tools in FrontPage, although Mozilla Composer, with
which I'm writing this, will get the job done. It's a learning
experience. I'm not entirely sure, for example, how I'm going to
publish this page.
But my major tools--Mozilla Mail and browser, Word 2000, and so
on--are the same tools I've been using all along, so there won't be
many changes there. Things may feel a little strange to start with, but
I'll get used to them rapidly, I'm sure. I just noticed that Mozilla
Composer has no on-the-fly spell checker. That's okay, though. I don't
really use spell checking. It's a crutch. One thing I like about
Mozilla Composer is that the display fonts while I'm editing are decent
sized. FrontPage uses tiny little fonts in the editor, and I've never
found a way to change those.
The new system will take a bit of getting used to as well. For
example, when I checked my mail late last evening, I forgot to put the
mouse back in the charger. This morning, it was discharged, so I'm
writing this using the arrow keys, with the mouse sitting over in its
charger. It has just enough charge now that I can use it for short
periods to do stuff that really requires a mouse. I may change it out
for a corded optical mouse. Cordless is nice, but it does have its disadvantages.
This week is heads-down writing on a chapter for the new book. My
editor is on vacation, and I hope to have a completed chapter for him
by the time he returns.
Now to find out if I can figure out how to publish this...
12:30 -
I was able to publish using Mozilla Composer's built-in ftp stub. As
far as I can see, there's no "publish site" function, just a publish
function for individual pages. The good news is that it's very, very
fast because it's not comparing the sites on the server and the local
machine. It just blasts the page to the server, which takes only a
second. That makes it very easy to publish routine updates.
I looked at nvu a couple of weeks ago. It's based on Mozilla Composer,
but has additional features. Lindows/Linspire is sponsoring it, so it
should continue to be developed. I may change to it once there's a
supported version on the Xandros repository. Since this is now my
primary system, I'm being quite careful about what I install on it.
I need a tool to replace my batchfile-based "quick backup" scripts,
which I use frequently throughout the day to xcopy changed data to
other network volumes. Scott Kitterman recommended I take a look at Unison File Synchronizer, which appears to be an enhanced rsync utility. When I get a spare moment, I'll look at that.
Right now, I'm doing my quick backups by one of two methods. Either switching the KVM over to messier (the W2K box) and running the old batch file (suitably modified) from there, or from leibniz (the Xandros box) simply selecting the working data directory on messier and copying the whole directory from messier to the backup directory on leibniz. The brute force method, but it gets the job done.
Interestingly, copying large amounts of data between a Xandros box and
a Windows 2000 box is much faster than copying the same data between
two W2K boxes. Hmmm.
14:38 -
Every time I build a system without a floppy disk drive, I have cause
to regret it. Every time. This time, I was in the process of installing
Win4Lin on my new main Xandros box, which will allow me to run Windows
98SE and Windows apps under Xandros. I got quite far along in the
process when the Win4Lin installer told me to insert a Windows 98SE
boot floppy. Duh. It also gave me the option of pointing to a boot
image, but I didn't have one of those, either, and I didn't feel like
making one. I think I'm going to order a stack of FDDs and just install
one every time I build a system. For $10 or so, it's cheap insurance
even if I never need it.
As to why I was installing Win4Lin, two reasons. First, I need to run
some Windows apps, such as the Cartes du Ciel astronomy program, that
don't run under Crossover Office. Second, I wanted to compare how well
MS Office 2000 works under Crossover compared to Win4Lin.
Ah, well. Compared to what might have been, this transition is going very smoothly, thanks to Xandros Desktop OS.
[Top]
Tuesday,
3 August 2004
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{Five Years
Ago Today]
08:52 -
Xandros is behaving a bit oddly on my new main office desktop system,
and I'm not sure if it's a hardware problem or if I managed to mangle
the OS. The first oddity occurred yesterday while I was out with the
dogs. When I came back, my system was sitting at a login prompt.
Apparently, it had rebooted spontaneously. I thought that was odd, but
assumed perhaps we'd had a power glitch or something.
Yesterday afternoon, it rebooted spontaneously while I was browsing.
No data lost, but very disconcerting. I didn't notice a power glitch,
but it's possible one occurred. Last night, as I headed back to bed, I
noticed that my office was lit by the monitor, which I turned off
manually. I'm not sure why the screensaver hadn't kicked in. Then, this
morning when I came in, Xandros was again sitting at a login prompt.
When I logged in, all of my fonts were tiny, desktop and in
applications. I rebooted again, and the fonts returned to normal size.
I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the installation of
Win4Lin, which installs a customized kernel. Supposedly, it downloads a
kernel specific to the distribution upon which it's being installed,
but I'm not entirely sure what the implications are of that. At this
point, Xandros seems "fragile", and I'm thinking I might do a repair
install or even a fresh install.
09:17 -
This is very strange. I was just browsing the web. I was sitting there
reading a page, not scrolling or anything, and all of a sudden the
browser disappeared and I was looking at the Xandros desktop. Blam, it
was gone. I uninstalled Win4Lin, but I'm afraid I may have borked
things up, so I think I'll try doing a repair install. This ain't good.
11:17 -
It's interesting figuring out new ways to do the same old things. I'm
working on the Power Supplies chapter and needed to grab a screen shot
of a mechanical drawing of the power supply form factor I'm writing
about. I'm grabbing it from a PDF document. Rather than using Adobe
Acrobat Reader, Xandros displays PDFs natively, but it doesn't have the
toolbar provided by Acrobat Reader that allows selecting and copying
images.
That's easy to deal with, though. I simply display that page that
contains the graphic, zoom it up enough that the graphic occupies most
of the screen, and then use Xandros's Screen Capture utility
(ksnapshot) to grab and save the screen capture. The next step was to
crop out the extraneous stuff, and I couldn't find any obvious way to
do that in Xandros. I suppose I could have downloaded the GIMP and used
it, but that seems excessive for the minor image manipulations I do.
What I really wanted was Irfanview for Linux. Hmmm. The Irfanview web
page lists no Linux version, but Crossover Office is known to run apps
that aren't listed as compatible. So I clicked over to the directory
where I store distribution files and clicked on the Irfanview .exe
installer. Sure enough, up popped the Crossover Office installer, which
installed Irfanview under Xandros and put an Irfanview icon on my
desktop.
I fired up Irfanview, which appeared to run normally. (It's interesting
how quickly I've gotten used to the way Xandros looks; now Windows apps
look ugly to me.) I called up an image file in Irfanview, cropped it,
saved it, and displayed it with the Xandros image viewer. All worked
normally.
It's also interesting how quickly I've gotten used to publishing with
Mozilla Composer. It doesn't have the site management features of
FrontPage, so it's very fast. FrontPage typically takes a couple of
minutes to publish an update, as it compares the contents of the local
copy of the web site with the remote copy. Mozilla Composer publishes
this page in literally a second. I click "Publish" and, bang, it's
published.
13:04 -
People's names seldom have much to do with their personalities, but
Mark Hacking seems to have a particularly appropriate name, at least if
he did what he's accused of doing.
From what information has been made public, it's been difficult to
imagine from the first how it could have been anyone except Mark
Hacking who murdered his wife in what has been described as a "fit of
rage".
And now Hacking is jailed and under a suicide watch. I've never
understood the concept of a suicide watch. It's every person's right to
commit suicide, whether or not he happens to be incarcerated. It seems
to me that in such cases suicide might be the best outcome. It would
end the criminal's ordeal quickly and painlessly, and it would save the
taxpayers the cost of a trial and the very high cost of imprisoning or
executing the criminal.
If it were me, I'd see to it that Hacking's cell was equipped with a
noose, a bottle of lethal pills, and so on. Give him lots of
alternatives. Heck, I'd counsel and encourage the guy to do himself in
and save everyone a lot of bother if he had in fact killed his wife.
And what if, by some currently inconceivable set of circumstances, it
wasn't Hacking who killed his wife? Well, he may simply be distraught,
but that doesn't mean he doesn't have the right to kill himself anyway.
15:07 -
One thing I have to credit Microsoft for. They're professionals when it
comes to dealing with the press. I just emailed the Rapid Response Team
at Wagg-Ed (their PR agency) to ask them for copies of Windows XP and
Office 2003 to do screen shots for the new book. I didn't even bother
to email my request from a Windows box running Outlook. I just used my
Xandros box and Mozilla Mail.
I mentioned that copies that didn't require activation would be ideal
because I need to run them on multiple machines. The lady at Wagg-Ed
told me they didn't have access to such, but she could send me as many
copies as I needed. I don't doubt they'll show up FedEx.
Microsoft is smart about dealing with the press. I could have written
an editorial saying that Bill Gates is the spawn of Satan. Everyone at
Microsoft, including Mr. Gates, could have been aware of that, and yet
if I'd emailed them the next day to request sample products, they'd be
on their way to me FedEx.
Contrast that with some other companies, among whom Apple is notable.
Even the smallest criticism of Apple or its products gets you on its
Enemies List, where you'll probably remain permanently. I remember
probably 20 years ago, in the early days of the Mac, when Jerry
Pournelle wrote a glowing review of an Apple product in his column. But
he made the mistake of offering one small suggestion as to how they
could improve the product. That got Jerry on Apple's Enemies List, and
I think he's still on it. I'm sure I am.
There should be a moral there somewhere. Treat people who want to like
your products like enemies, and it's likely they'll become enemies.
Treat them like friends, and there's always a chance they'll become
friends. Even if they don't, there's not much lost.
[Top]
Wednesday,
4 August 2004
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{Five
Years Ago Today]
09:29 - I need to do some work on Barbara's machine today. When I shut down theodore, our NT4 Server PDC, I converted Barbara from using a domain login to logging in locally to newton,
her computer. That messed up a couple things. When Barbara stopped
using Outlook, I installed the Palm Desktop for her. Although the Palm
Desktop icon still appears on her desktop, attempting to run it
generates an error. She needs that to sync her PDA, so I'll need to get
it running.
Also, WebWasher no longer works, so she's presented with a bunch of
ads every time she visits a commercial web page. I think I'll install Privoxy
instead of WebWasher. WebWasher, although generally a decent product,
sometimes causes rendering problems and is pretty much incompatible
with fast systems. I've yet to get it working on a 3.2 GHz or faster P4
system, for example. Or perhaps I'll just install the Adblock and
FlashBlock extensions for Mozilla. Those do the job pretty well.
My main system has problems, which may be a combination of hardware
and software. Processes just die for no apparent reason. For example,
yesterday I was sitting here reading a web page. I hadn't touched the
mouse or keyboard for quite some time, and as I was reading the page
Mozilla just disappeared. Gone from the screen, not on the task bar,
not even showing in the process list. Just gone. This is very
disturbing.
It may be that some of the hardware I used isn't on the Xandros HCL.
That's hard to determine, because the Xandros HCL is set up as an
Easter Egg Hunt. Instead of displaying a list of compatible
motherboards, say, you have to search for a specific motherboard. I
wish that Xandros would provide a usable HCL in a similar format to
that used by Red Hat, say.
The RADEON 9200 I'm using is listed as "tested", which apparently is
one level below "certified". The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound adapter
isn't listed, although sound worked perfectly with no tweaking.
Bizarrely, when I searched motherboards for the Intel D875PBZ, I found
only one motherboard listed for the search string "Intel". That was an
FIC model. Surely there must be numerous Intel motherboards that have
been tested with Xandros. If so, you couldn't prove it by checking the
Xandros HCL.
I knew going into this transition that I'd have some problems, but
the problems I'm having aren't the ones I expected. I guess that's
usually the case. I'm doing an intense test of Xandros this month,
because I'd like to migrate Barbara over to Xandros by month-end. At
that point, other than test-bed systems, we'll have a completely
Windows-free environment around here.
Xandros has also announced a server version, which I'll probably get a copy of.
10:49 -
Some days I dislike working on Windows systems more than I do other
days. Today is not one of those other days. I set out to do three
things on Barbara's machine, to wit:
- Move her Mozilla Mail data from the Documents and Settings subdirectory on her C: drive to the shared F: directory on messier.
- Install ad-blocking software of some sort for Mozilla.
- Get the Palm Desktop software for her Sony Clie working.
I accomplished #1 with no problem. I couldn't do #2 because the server
from which I planned to install Adblock was down. For #3, I had no joy.
The Sony Clie installation procedure puts the Palm Desktop files in the
Program Files subdirectory, which is fine, but it also stores all of
the user data there, which is stupid.
But that's not the problem. The shortcut on Barbara's desktop simply
points to the Palm Desktop .exe file. There's no argument in the
string, nothing pointing anywhere but the program directory. So why
doesn't it run with Barbara logged in as a local user rather than a
domain user? I have no idea. I don't see anything odd in the registry.
Surely the app can't be authenticating against the SAM, can it?
The only solution may be to uninstall and then re-install the Palm
Desktop software with Barbara logged in as a local user. That's
particularly annoying because I hope to have Barbara migrated to
Xandros by the end of this month. Of course, I'll have to find some way
for her to sync her PDA under Xandros. The Mozilla Calendar doesn't yet
support synching. I think Korganizer does, but I've not looked at it. I
think Evolution also does, but Barbara's perfectly happy with Mozilla
Mail. I may end up setting up Evolution for her just as a PIM, with the
mail features disabled. She did something similar after she moved to
Mozilla Mail, using Outlook only for its PIM features. Oh, well. I
guess we'll see what happens.
12:53 - This from Rob Campbell.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: xandrox hardware searches
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 09:16:02 -0700
From: Rob Campbell
To: Robert Bruce Thompson
A minor tip
for the xandros site: you can use % as a wildcard when searching for
hardware to print the entire list in a category like video cards.
It drove me nuts until I found that option.
Thanks. That does indeed work. I wonder why they don't show that option on the search page.
Their HCL list is
hard to take seriously. I mean, it has a total of about 450 entries for
everything. There are only 15 motherboards listed, none of them Intel.
Only a dozen optical drives, none of them Plextor. Geez. I'd have
expected a couple of hundred entries for each of those, certainly
including such market leaders as Intel and Plextor. There are also
numerous entries for components that show the "Tested" as compatible
icon and yet in the text it says "doesn't work at all" or words to that
effect. They have only two chipsets listed, the "nVidia - Nforce 1 /
Nforce 2", which is listed as tested compatible, presumably by Xandros,
and the "Via Tech. - Via Aplo KT400", which is "Reported Working". No
indication of which version(s) of Xandros were used for testing.
I think the best advice for determining hardware compatibility for Xandros is "try it and see".
14:41 - Wonderful. It appears that Katelyn Faber, the woman who accused Kobe Bryant of raping her, is now reconsidering her position,
"because she fears the release of court documents about her sex life
threatens her chance of getting a fair hearing." In other words, she
thinks if the jury is allowed to hear the facts it won't believe her
story.
It seems to me that if she does try to back out now, she should face
charges for falsely accusing Mr. Bryant, and, if convicted, should face
the same amount of jail time he might have been sentenced to. For that
matter, if the trial proceeds and Mr. Bryant is found not guilty, she
should be imprisoned for the same term that Mr. Bryant would have been
sentenced to.
[Top]
Thursday, 5
August 2004
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{Five Years
Ago Today]
10:15 -
This system is behaving more and more strangely. This morning, for
example, I found that my personal menu bar in Mozilla had disappeared.
The bookmarks file had a current date/timestamp on it, and was only 8
KB, versus 118 KB for the original. The original had folders, including
one with a couple dozen bookmarks for PVR-related items. The items in
that folder were now at the root of my bookmarks file, and everything
else was gone.
Xandros is stable on two other systems here, so I find it hard to
believe that it's a software problem, but on the other hand the
problems I'm having don't look like hardware problems. The system has
spontaneously rebooted a couple of times, which sounds like hardware,
but most of the time the problems are a lot more software-like. Things
like an app simply dying without notice, or one particular app hanging
while everything else continues functioning normally.
I just went into BIOS Setup and checked everything. I don't have any
"performance" stuff enabled. Support for Hyper Threading was disabled,
so I enabled it just for the hell of it. I may pop the lid later and
replace the memory modules. Something is weird. I just don't know what.
12:00 -
Well, it hung up on me again, this time as I was mousing around a web
page. So I took down the system, popped the lid, and replaced the two
Crucial PC3200 512 MB DIMMs with two Crucial PC3200 256 MB DIMMs. I was
going to use known-good DIMMs, but I didn't have any on the bench so I
just installed two new ones. With Crucial, that's as close to being
"known-good" as with any hardware product.
I did notice when I removed the 512 MB DIMMs that both of the little
pivoting arms that secured one of the DIMMs were not quite fully
latched into place, so it may be that that DIMM was making intermittant
contact with its socket. I'll test both the 512 MB DIMMs later to see
what happens.
15:12 -
After more than three hours since replacing the memory, nothing weird
has happened. I'm beginning to think that the problem was indeed a
memory module that wasn't fully seated. I'm going to give this a couple
more days of testing before I declare the problem solved, but at this
point it's looking good.
I guess the moral here is that hardware problems can manifest in very subtle ways with Linux.
17:27 -
Sometimes our politicians speak more truthfully than they presumably
intended. Here's one from President Bush, uttered just today:
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we."
If you think this is an urban legend, see the verbatim transcript of the comments.
Better get it now, before they "fix" it.
[Top]
Friday, 6
August 2004
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Week]
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{Five Years
Ago Today]
08:57 -
Rats. It wasn't the memory. Things were going well until after dinner
when I checked my mail and started to download a file. The system
locked up entirely. I'm not sure what to try next. Ordinarily, I'd
think the power supply might be the problem, but that doesn't seem
reasonable given the symptoms I've been seeing. The lockups, yes, those
might be the power supply, but individual apps just disappearing off
the screen? That's very odd. Anyway, this is an Antec TrueControl 550,
and I find it hard to believe it's the problem. Perhaps it's the
motherboard, although I've never had any stability problems with an
Intel D875PBZ before.
I did something yesterday I thought I'd never do. I bought a VCR. We're
down to one functioning VCR in the house, and it's one of those combo
units, which tend to be less reliable than standalone VCRs. The combo
unit is a 20" Panasonic TV/VCR, which is probably more reliable than
some, but I still hate to depend on it. Also, I'm not even sure it has
outputs, which I need for transferring our VHS tape archive to CDs and
DVDs.
So I went to the Best Buy website
and searched for VCRs. I was surprised to see a decent Panasonic
unit--stereo, 4-head, commercial skip, yada yada) for $60. I was
getting ready to drive over to Best Buy, which is on the other side of
town in the area with the worst traffic in town, and buy one. It'd have taken me at
least an hour to drive over, pick up the VCR, and back. If I was lucky.
Then I noticed the "Free Shipping" icon on the Best Buy web page. Why
not? I don't need the VCR immediately, and I can save at least an
hour just by having them send it to me. So that's what I did.
This one gets the award for the strangest spam I've seen this year:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: info
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 05:53:34 +0300
From: ROOT <telepassport@tvskat.net>
Reply-To: ROOT <r_kirova@agencycrew.com>
To: Robert Bruce Thompson
Dear Mr Sher
We
just received an advice from our Accounting Department for receiving
the total sum of USD 46 148.62$ for Our crew management services for
your vessel for July 2004. We think that there is something wrong,
because the total sum according to the invoice sent to you, including
the wages for the crew is USD 45 148.62$. Also yesterday 03.08.2004 We
received the sum of USD 11 480 $ for the crew's
travel expenses and medical examinations. So on 09.08.2004 We'll return
to your bank account the sum of USD 1000$. The engine staff, excepting
the Ch.Eng. shall be changed on 19.07.2004.
Our Managing
Director Mr.Stoyanov greets you for the buying of two new ships.The
crews are already prepaired, so We just expecting you instructions.
Best Regards,
M.Ivanov,
Crew Manager / Telepasport - Bulgaria Ltd
Mob.Phone 24/7 : ++359 898 43 43 66
Telephone: ++359 56 800 227 Fax : ++359 56 800 228
Telex : 067 83208 TLPSPT
E-Mail : info@agencycrew.com <mailto:info@agencycrew.com> :
contact@agencycrew.com <mailto:contact@agencycrew.com>
Web Site : www.agencycrew.com <http://www.agencycrew.com> :
www.worldjobs.us <http://www.worldjobs.us>
U.K. Representative:
Mr. Ivelin Nikolov
Mob.Phone 24/7 : ++447810891302
E-Mail : ivo@agencycrew.com <mailto:ivo@agencycrew.com>
*********************************** **********************************
Confidentiality
notice: The information contained in this e-mail is intended for the
named recipients only. If you are not an intended recipient, and have
received this message in error, please do not copy, distribute or take
any action in reliance on it but notify us immediately at
info@agencycrew.com <mailto:info@agencycrew.com> Mob.Phone 24/7 :
++359 887 47 00 57 Telephone: ++359 56 800 227 Fax : ++359 56 800 228
********************************************************************
10:03 -
Wow! That was fast. Yesterday morning about this time I emailed nVIDIA
to request samples of current adapters in AGP and PCI Express. A few
minutes ago, UPS showed up with a box that contained two nVIDIA GeForce
6 Series adapters, one AGP and one PCI Express.
I've always been impressed by the 3D performance of nVIDIA adapters.
Although ATi has pretty much owned the 3D performance crown for the
last couple of years, nVIDIA's recent models have greatly decreased or
eliminated that advantage. I'll put these current 6 Series nVIDIA
adapters up against comparable ATi models and see what happens.
Several years ago, I started using mostly ATi adapters because their
2D image quality was superior to nVIDIA 2D image quality. More recent
nVIDIA adapters I've looked at have had much better 2D image quality
than previous nVIDIA adapters, particularly at high resolutions. It'll
be interesting to test these current 6 Series nVIDIA adapters and
compare their 2D image quality against X-Series ATi adapters. Given the
improvements nVIDIA has made over the last couple of years, it may be a
horserace.
17:28 -
My office Xandros box hasn't crashed or done anything else odd today,
despite some fairly heavy use. I'm beginning to wonder if audio is the
problem. I can't be sure, but looking back it seems to me that I'd been
playing MP3s and/or WAVs sometime between each boot and a subsequent
crash. Since the last boot, last night about 10:00 p.m., the only sound
coming out of this system has been the Xandros greeting tune (which is
at least as obnoxious as the Microsoft one). And, so far, no crashes.
PC audio has always been plagued with various troubles, most of
which are fundamentally hardware issues, so it wouldn't surprise me if
that was the root of the problem here. I think I'm going to leave this
system up for a week or so, assuming it lasts that long, without using
audio at all. If it survives the week, I'll start using audio and see
how long it takes to crash.
[Top]
Saturday, 7
August 2004
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{Five Years
Ago Today]
10:55 -
Rats. It wasn't the audio. After running all day yesterday without so
much as a hiccough, the Xandros box crashed overnight. I may just pull
the D875PBZ motherboard and install something with integrated video. I
don't need high performance in this system, so simpler may be better.
Last night was the first clear weekend night without a moon in a long
time, so Barbara and I went up to Bullington, our observing site near
Pilot Mountain. I was concerned about the clouds and haze on the
horizon at sunset, but things cleared up nicely by the time it was full
dark.
Barbara, being a librarian, is very organized, and that extends to our
astronomical observing sessions as well. Whenever possible, we work out
of the back of the truck, setting up an observing center with a folding
table to hold the notebook computer, observing logs, charts, and so on.
The eyepiece case and other accessories go on a rack underneath the
table. Although we usually keep them out while working, the truck's
interior lights are all red. (If you ever see a vehicle with red
interior lights, you can be pretty sure it's owned by an amateur
astronomer.)
And here I am, sitting at our 10" Dobsonian telescope. When Barbara
shot this image, I had just finished aligning the finders on an
insulator on a telephone pole about half a mile away. Both finders are
visible in this image, at the top front of the scope. The one to the
right and forward is an 8X50 right-angle, correct-image (RACI) finder.
It's basically half of a binocular with a cross-hair eyepiece. To the
left of the RACI finder and slightly toward the rear of the tube is the
Telrad unit-power finder.
The Telrad is a reflex finder, patterned on the heads-up sights used in
WWII fighter planes. It projects a red bullseye pattern on the
background sky, with circles of 1/2°, 2°, and 4°. By
placing those circles geometrically on the background pattern of stars,
it's possible to point the scope very quickly to the approximate area
of sky you want to view. You can then, if necessary, refine the aim by
using the 8X50 optical finder to place the scope precisely against the
background stars.
We ended up having a pretty good night
last night. Clouds were 0/10, and transparency, while not perfect, was
much better than we've had recently. Barbara and I worked the Herschel
400 objects in Scorpius and Saggitarius, along with our Binocular Deep
Sky list. We each added several new objects to our logs. Moonrise was
just before midnight, and Luna was 62% illuminated. That much light
makes deep-sky oberving impossible, so we packed it up and headed home
to walk the dogs and play a little hall ball before bed.
Brian and Marcia Bilbrey have a new family member. I'm sure that Duncan and Malcolm will enjoy meeting Molly when next we visit.
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Sunday, 8
August 2004
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{Five Years
Ago Today]
14:20 - Barbara just got home from playing golf with her dad and gave me a haircut. I've spent the morning replacing leibniz, my problem Xandros box, with hypatia, the Xandros box that was in the den. I ended up stripping down hypatia to bare metal and reinstalling from scratch. More on that tomorrow.
Barbara and I had planned to go up to Bullington to observe again last night. Until yesterday afternoon, the Clear Sky Clock forecast
was excellent. The CSC is updated twice a day, around midnight to 1:00
a.m. and noon to 1:00 p.m. Alas the 1:00 p.m. forecast degraded
significantly. We decided to keep tabs on the clouds and make a
decision immediately before sunset. While we were out walking the dogs
around 5:00 p.m., there were a few puffy cumulous clouds, but most of
the sky was a nice deep blue. At that point, we thought we'd risk the
trip up to observe. But when we walked the dogs again around 7:00 p.m.,
a bunch of high cirrus clouds had arrived, covering most of the sky.
The sky was still blue, but those thin cirrus clouds are enough to make
observing faint fuzzies futile.
We talked it over with Steve Childers, who'd missed the Friday
evening session, and decided it wasn't worth the trip up. I got mail
from Steve late last evening, and said we'd guessed wrong again. It had
cleared up. Oh, well.
In the mean time, Jerry Pournelle had called to talk about his
August BYTE column just before the second time we walked the dogs, when
we still thought we'd be going up to Bullington. I mentioned that we
were just about to leave for an observing session. Barbara and I were
in bed about midnight when the phone rang. Sure enough, it was Jerry,
who was expecting to get the answering machine, thinking we'd be out
under the stars. Jerry was horrified when I picked up. "Tell Barbara I
thought you were out observing and expected to leave a message," Jerry
said. I told him not to worry about it. We both knew when the phone
rang that it'd be Jerry and that he was expecting us not to be home.
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Copyright © 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 by Robert Bruce Thompson. All Rights Reserved.