What have you been up to lately?

[turboscrew]

Shoveled about 1/3 of the yard. Still no chance to get anywhere with the car.
About 30 cm (12") of snow to shovel, and I think I need to get to the shop tomorrow. (Sigh!)
The -7°C (19.5°F) with 5 m/s wind doesn't exactly make the shoveling a pleasure.

[pakarinen]

Someone taught this mooch to come and stare in through the patio door around breakfast time. Grandkids are denying any knowledge…

[notFritzArgelander]

The failure of the Orion SSIII mount has really cut down on short grab'n go sessions. So I've ordered an SSIV that is wireless controllable and so not subject to the same failure mode. Maybe ther'll be another one?

Also jiggering with the ship date since I am invited to another voyage to SLC. It seems grandad is needed to stimulate interest in calculus. The science inclined one needs no motivational lecture. The business inclined one will have the usefulness of higher maths in optimization, finance and (most importantly) video games as carrots.

Here come the quaternions!

[OzEclipse]

Over recent weeks, I contributed to a BBC Witness History program about Transits of Venus concentrating on the 2012 event entitled, "The Day the World Looked Up."
The podcast has just dropped. We did 70 minutes of recordings, of which about 1 minute of my audio made it into the program.

I expected heavy editing. After all, it is only a 9 minute podcast.

Here is the link to the podcast, available worldwide:-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct1x8w

In general, I think Nick has done an excellent job producing and editing this and after the interview, we chatted about doing a much longer special for a different program about the worldwide community of solar eclipse chasers and the "sport" of solar eclipse chasing.

cheers
Joe

[Butterfly Maiden]

Good to listen to Joe.

You came across very professionally and knowledgeable

Maybe you should consider doing some YouTube videos (if you haven't already) about your astronomy experiences and post links on the Forum.

If you could get sponsorship from some companies you could make a bit of pocket money from them

[OzEclipse]

Good to listen to Joe.

You came across very professionally and knowledgeable

Maybe you should consider doing some YouTube videos (if you haven't already) about your astronomy experiences and post links on the Forum.

If you could get sponsorship from some companies you could make a bit of pocket money from them

Hi Vanessa,
Thank you so much. I have some eclipse videos on Vimeo but they are not monetised. I also have some astronomical image processing tutorials on the same vimeo channel. Vimeo allows videos to be password protected and hidden, So I have done that with those tutorials and they are only available to my workshop students.

The problem I see with what you suggest is that I have little to no audio or video on file. Mostly stills. So it would mostly be me talking behind stills or Burns effect pans. But thank you for your suggestion. I'll give it some thought.

Joe

[turboscrew]

ZWO EFW 7x36 filter wheel ordered, while it was still available. No filters were available, though.
Maybe it's good: my next credit card bill will be about 3000 eur. Hurts to think that.

Also shoveled the last third of the snow from my yard. I hope I get to go to sauna next weekend without having to shovel snow again before that.

Still have to study if there's something I could do to the stove to get more löyly. Cleaning the fireplace (or whatchacallit, where you put the firewood) might help a bit, now that the holes are welded.

[KingNothing13]

Last night went to see Bruce Dickinson -Iron Maiden's lead singer, on a speaking tour.

He's a very funny man.

[pakarinen]

Biz trip to scenic Iowa, where the windchill is currently in the WTF? range. Clear, dry roads though and some eclectic college town restaurants here. I was able to take a side trip to a B3 dark site that people have been touting. Looked promising, but I didn't explore much due to time constraints. It's about 100 miles from home, so it wouldn't be a spur of the moment trip.

FedEx was supposed to deliver my 102ED Thursday, but delivery was delayed. I opted to have them hold it at a local office, but I don't have much faith in FedEx from previous experiences, so we'll see where the scope actually winds up. Guess it's also time to decide which scope(s) to sell to thin the herd.

Sold my TW-1 mount so it might also be time to consider getting something with a higher load capacity than my SW AZ5.

[GCoyote]

My 2012 Samsung tablet is dying, no longer holding a charge. I was never able to get my Amazon Fire tablet to accept the change of cookies the site went through so I used the Samsung for browsing the forum and my astronomy aps. Without it, I have to use the desktop PC to access the forums, hence my lack of participation these past few weeks.

Installed Windows 11 on the desktop since it was holding up some other upgrades and Micro$oft would not quite bugging me about it. So far everything seems to be working.

[UlteriorModem]

My 2012 Samsung tablet is dying, no longer holding a charge. I was never able to get my Amazon Fire tablet to accept the change of cookies the site went through so I used the Samsung for browsing the forum and my astronomy aps. Without it, I have to use the desktop PC to access the forums, hence my lack of participation these past few weeks.

Installed Windows 11 on the desktop since it was holding up some other upgrades and Micro$oft would not quite bugging me about it. So far everything seems to be working.

The batteries are pretty easy to replace and readily availabe.

[turboscrew]

Fifteen minutes ago, my doorbell rang - my filterwheel (ZWO EFW 7x36mm) arrived!

I also found ZWO LRGB filter set in a shop here in Finland. Ordered.

[GCoyote]

My 2012 Samsung tablet is dying, no longer holding a charge. I was never able to get my Amazon Fire tablet to accept the change of cookies the site went through so I used the Samsung for browsing the forum and my astronomy aps. Without it, I have to use the desktop PC to access the forums, hence my lack of participation these past few weeks.

Installed Windows 11 on the desktop since it was holding up some other upgrades and Micro$oft would not quite bugging me about it. So far everything seems to be working.

The batteries are pretty easy to replace and readily availabe.

Not sure it's worth it for a device that old.

[Butterfly Maiden]

My 2012 Samsung tablet is dying, no longer holding a charge. I was never able to get my Amazon Fire tablet to accept the change of cookies the site went through so I used the Samsung for browsing the forum and my astronomy aps. Without it, I have to use the desktop PC to access the forums, hence my lack of participation these past few weeks.

Installed Windows 11 on the desktop since it was holding up some other upgrades and Micro$oft would not quite bugging me about it. So far everything seems to be working.

The batteries are pretty easy to replace and readily availabe.

Not sure it's worth it for a device that old.

If that was me Gary, I would put the money a new battery would cost towards a new device - ten years is quite old for the other components to be reliable for much longer.

[Ylem]

Took my wife to an appointment and saw some crab trees blooming!

[UlteriorModem]

My 2012 Samsung tablet is dying, no longer holding a charge. I was never able to get my Amazon Fire tablet to accept the change of cookies the site went through so I used the Samsung for browsing the forum and my astronomy aps. Without it, I have to use the desktop PC to access the forums, hence my lack of participation these past few weeks.

Installed Windows 11 on the desktop since it was holding up some other upgrades and Micro$oft would not quite bugging me about it. So far everything seems to be working.

The batteries are pretty easy to replace and readily availabe.

Not sure it's worth it for a device that old.

I have replaced the battery in my wifes Kindle fire like 3 times now. It's still chugging along. Though I did have to explain to her to turn off the damn wifi when reading books

[515bonner]

[/quote]
I have replaced the battery in my wifes Kindle fire like 3 times now. It's still chugging along. Though I did have to explain to her to turn off the damn wifi when reading books
[/quote]

Yeah, I like NEVER use wi-fi for my phone, except for downloading apps. Leaving it on, for some reason just eats up battery time.
I have a cap of 5 gigs a month for whatever before I am charged extra, and barely squeak out 2 or 3.
I think it is all those things that are "calling home", even though I have just about ALL the permissions turned off.
Go figure.

Rob

[turboscrew]

I have replaced the battery in my wifes Kindle fire like 3 times now. It's still chugging along. Though I did have to explain to her to turn off the damn wifi when reading books

Yeah, I like NEVER use wi-fi for my phone, except for downloading apps. Leaving it on, for some reason just eats up battery time.
I have a cap of 5 gigs a month for whatever before I am charged extra, and barely squeak out 2 or 3.
I think it is all those things that are "calling home", even though I have just about ALL the permissions turned off.
Go figure.

Rob

It keeps communicating with the tower, so the system knows if it can be paged, but yes, also those "news" polls by applications. They usually wait for available WiFi. And if there's no WiFi available, some of them may even use 3G/4G/5G.

[Ylem]

Heading back to Savannah to help my dad, he's 86 and having some issues.
Trying to get him to move here, but stubborn is what stubborn does.

[notFritzArgelander]

Heading back to Savannah to help my dad, he's 86 and having some issues.
Trying to get him to move here, but stubborn is what stubborn does.

I had the same difficult discussion with my Mom. I failed to persuade and didn’t force the issue though I had PoA. It’s tricky. Good luck.