relaxing finish

Did a few things at the CAO... Otherwise took it easy.

• delivered the new Kendrick dew heaters (for Tele Vue 101 objective and the 2" eyepieces on both the TV101 and the Celestron 14")
  
• delivered the foam for the new MallinCam case (but didn't cut it)
• took more hot chocolate (for my personal stash!)
  
• replaced the batteries in the Davis weather station console*
  
• reset the min/max history in the Davis console (good timing, on the beginning of the new year)
• verified the weather data was getting to the web site
  
• remembered to retrieve the keys from Zbig
• surveyed the property
• updated our property diagrams
• verified the generator exercise routine
  
• discussed relocating the CAO computer server
• sent Tony the link to the IT survey
• sent updates to Dietmar
• finally beat Trevor at backgammon
  
• chilled the bubbly
  

* When Trevor and I swapped out the C batteries from the Davis console, we tried to reset the unit. After a few attempts, I finally figured out / remembered how to do it. RTFM! One needs to hold the DONE button when finished the setup... Duh.

Pretty lazy. For me anyway. Tony was a busy-bee.

foggy domes

It was a little weird seeing the pods emerge from the fog...



The legs of an elephant?

the social aspect

Received a nice note from Stu. He talked about how he had fun observing this year. And that we was surprised at how important the social aspect of astronomy is. I agree. Some times I want to observe alone; other times, it's hollow. I had a lot of fun observing with people this year. Phil at the OSC star party; broadcasting on NSN with Dietmar; viewing doubles with Millie; quasar hunting on the Observing Pad with Ian, Mickey, et al; at the parkette with Manuel; finding noctilucent clouds with Sharmin; Mew Lake fun with Bob, Adam, and Katrina; and nailing the ISS in front of the Moon with Steve, Kiron, Denis, Trevor, Tony, Scott, Jim, Bill, and Sharmin! A lot of fun.

challenging drive

After the stressful drive to the CAO through freezing rain and horizontal snow, I thought a cool beverage would be refreshing. Mmm, snow beer.



Some of the last few St. Peter's Winter Ale in the province. For me and Grace.

headed to the CAO

A small group of us are headed to the Carr Astronomical Observatory for a few days. We were looking forward to celebrating New Year's there. Grace has a nice dinner planned. I'm making lasaga with all the fixin's one of the eve's. The weather wasn't looking promising but we didn't care...

arranged parking

Now that the horse stables have been sold, we no longer have our usual parking spot, when visiting the CAO in the winter. I phoned our neighbours to the east to see if they might oblige us.

demo'ed db

Showed Phil the changes I had made in Access to the Toronto Centre membership database... He likes it! Skeena likes it too!

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Borrowed Phil's snow shoes.

ordered heaters for GBO

I didn't know if they'd be opened during the holidays. Didn't know if they'd have what I wanted in stock.

Toes crossed, I rang Kendrick. Luda picked up! Awesome. Asked if they were open. Sorta. It was quiet, not a lot of staff were around, she was doing the books, but was prepared to help. Asked if they had dew heaters in stock for the Tele Vue and 2" eyepieces. She put me on hold. And she returned in short order with good news. w00t!

I booked my pick up time on Friday...

second leg begins

Terry sent details including tracking number, costs, photocopies of receipts and the order form. The NXW431 board is on its way to the Great White North. Where we too have solder!

reworked database

I applied a bunch of changes to the Access database used to manage the Toronto Centre members. Worked on it for about 12 hours. Essentially, I took it from a flat-file to a relational database. The visible change was a modern, sophisticated, multi-tabbed form for input. Without the dumbass crazy headache-inducing astro-theme background. I think Phil's gonna like it.

in his hands

Terry reported receiving the circuit board for the CPC 1100. He said he'd put it in the post mail tomorrow. The first leg is ended. Half way home!

couch installed

Thanks to Malcolm, Tony, and Steve for helping get a two-seater in Mom's studio observatory.

gifts 2011

Received some SF- and astronomy-related gifts under the tree this year...

Space Invaders scratch-n-scan instant-win OLG ticket. With scratcher. From Donna.



Weird card magnet. Eew-niverse.



Femo polymer clay pen and pen holder. Glow in the dark! Stars and moons. By Edi Jenkins.



Felt mobile thing with all the planets of the solar system. Custom made by Donna.

The book, The Life & Death of Stars by D.A. Cooke (with intro by Mr. Moore—'cuse me, Sir Moore). A discarded book from a library actually. From Donna and Steve.



A nice surprise was Looking Up by R.P. Broughton. One of the RASC's own publications. I immediately looked up pix of Dr. Chou. Fun. Again, from Donna and Steve.



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Yesterday, while passing through, Donna asked if I wanted a cookie tin. Shaped like a star. I didn't notice until later that it has the signs of the zodiac on it. That'll be kinda fun, transporting treats to the CAO...

Rocket Rudolph

OK...



That's just weird.

Happy holidays.

board shipped

Terry sent an update on the NXW431 circuit board:

Ho, ho, ho,

I just got an e-mail that the board has shipped. It actually got into the UPS system last night. The UPS Ground tracking number is: 1ZR4472V0353122978

They say to allow 3 - 5 days.

Exciting!

doing what it's supposed to do

The new news of Kepler finding two Earth sized planets is very good. OK. Exciting. Indeed, it is very good on several levels. The euphoria of the discovery might eclipse a subtle point however. The Kepler telescope is working. Working as planned. Fulfilling the wishes of the designers. Exhibiting a high degree of precision. Extreme accuracy needed to pluck a 6 or 7,000 rock circling a star 1,000 light years away. It's doing what they asked it to do.

Can you imagine the joy the people on this project must be feeling?

helped John out

I had e-mailed John, winner of SkyTools 3, to congratulate him. My ulterior motive was different. When I didn't hear back I was starting to wonder if I had the wrong person. So I phoned.

We chatted live. He was very happy. He had started to dive into the software and was doing well. He did protest though about the red light mode. He explained his problem... none of the text was visible.

I directed him to the Preferences and the red light mode brightness slider. He said he had seen it actually but assumed it was not working. I encouraged him to try again.

He was pleased that I had called.

farmable calc

Helped Tony calculate the portion of our land at the CAO that could be farmed for crops. Used the Google maps image, the original site survey by CSP, and Visio. The hardest part was establishing the scale. The numbers I arrived at, after the first cut, seem reasonable.

they took his money

Terry relayed that his credit card was hit for the CPC 1100 board. A very good sign. The bad news was that they were only shipping it now. So, I guess Santa wont be bringing an NXW431 down the chimney...

mini calendar formatting improved

Early Dec I tweaked some of the code in the mini calendar. It looked fine for me in the browser I was using. But I forgot to check in others. A couple of days later, while visiting the RASC Toronto Centre web site, I saw a little problem. But, while inconsistent, it didn't seem terrible.

On 16 Dec, John M reported a big problem at his end. Oh oh.

I finally jumped back into the code tonight. Stripped all the evil FONT tags. And deployed CSS classes, using the CSS definitions already in place. Didn't seem to work at first. Double checked how I was doing it. And then it started working. Tested in FF and IE.

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John gave a thumbs-up! Whew.

implemented analytics

I finally got 'round to embedding the Google analytics codes into our HTML templates on the main RASC Toronto Centre web site. I hope this will give Allard the results he's interested in...

paper surveys in

I manually entered the surveys mailed to me. This so that Jason would have a complete set of results in the Survey Monkey system. It was tedious however as the web site seemed to use cookies to know that I had already completed the RASC IT and web survey. So I had to clear history and reset the browser for each submission.

Then I submitted one more. Anonymously.

exoplanet push

Now that's an interesting notification... From NASA. To the freshly downloaded app on the iPod Touch. Kepler found a bunch of Earth-sized planets. Kinda nice being amongst the first to know.

ho ho, found it

Wow. Via the incredible internet, I found Cosmic Christmas! In a bunch of YouTube snips.



Fantastic old Canadian animation directed Clive A. Smith, produced by Nelvana no less. Spaceships, a Prime Directive, variable stars or supernovae, and aliens. Not the head-biting kind.

part 1 (8:22)
part 2 (8:42)
part 3 (8:46)

Eerily familiar, all the sounds... I wonder if I recorded the sound track on my old cassette deck. I know the words and sounds almost before they say them. I probably first saw this in December 1977.

Good to see it again.

database ideas

While Ralph coached Phil on using the Toronto Centre membership database in Access, I observed, made an occasional inquiry, and made some notes. The finer details were a little overwhelming at times. But I got a bunch of ideas on how to improve the database proper (in terms of collecting valuable data) and improve workflow. Then we had tea and treats.

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Damn! I forgot to receive the Stellarium course evaluations from Ralph...