Jacking the Observatory
The Tardis Observatory is now up to 3 years old, and over that time the wooden 2×6 rails the 5″ wheels run on have degraded, warped, moved, and become rougher.…
WeatherPi issues
The Raspberry Pi called Weatherpi, has been out of action the last few days. Turned out there were some power issues and in some fashion the database was corrupted with…
possible fireball Tuesday 2016 October 04
There were twitter reports this morning of a possible fireball last night around 22:30 EDT. As always, media and other 3rd hand reports come with very little detail and timings…
Drought continues
Water levels remain extremely low in the area and the local Quinte Conservation area is still declaring us to be in a drought situation. We have had and are getting…
Fall has come
Fall has come. The frost-killed (-3.4 for 30 minutes and 6 hours below 0C on Sunday September 25, 2016) heirloom tomato plants got pulled out of Veg Bed #9 yesterday…
Before Sunrise
For those astronomers and others who do not get up before sunrise, just take a look at one of the spectacular views you are missing! This was taken on the…
Raspberry Pi projects #2 and 3
We have completed the R&D portions of projects 2 and 3 with the Raspberry Pi and am amazed at how flexible these things are. #2 was as a display controller…
Canadian Football
A couple of weeks later and things do not look nearly so bad. I’m talking about how the Saskatchewan Roughriders at 1 win 10 losses, last in the league then…
Loud Boom! that was not Susan Ivanova*
Woke up Sunday morning to twitter and web reports of a loud noise Saturday evening, 2016 Sept 24th around 20:50 edt. http://www.kingstonregion.com/news-story/6877053-mysterious-boom-startles-south-frontenac-residents/. Local television also covered the story: http://www.ckwstv.com/2016/09/25/128535/ The…
Napanee Garden Club met
The Lennox & Addington Horticultural Society (aka the Napanee Garden Club) met last night (Wednesday 2016 September 21). There was a good turnout of 19 people for the first regular…
Collimation for fun
Much more time has gone into the Torus telescope project this summer. The latest results from last night show a good night coarse collimation. The plan was daytime coarse, nighttime…
Raspberry Pi rules!
Yay! Success! After a year.. or two.. the time and pi and motivation all came together in the space of under an hour last night. Since 2002 we have had…
Electricity Costs in Ontario Canada
Looking at our summer rates of electricity her in Ontario Canada provided by the Hydro One Network (as it is a big political issue of late): cents/kwh Low 8.7 Mid…
Garden Status 2016 Sept 03
The worst of the heat and drought have almost given rise to cooler wetter conditions, but not quite yet. This is raised bed #1, containing heirloom tomatos. They are still…
Saturn 20160826
After drying out the imaging laptop for a week, it was fired up for a quick imaging run of Saturn on Friday evening, after returning from a field trip to…