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vin_petrolDisrupted sleep patterns mean I'm still awake... I'll pay for this tomorrow.
Friday night I took Trash and Anna (WANOLJ) into York and let them loose on some form of "dirty trollops night out in short skirts" - they seemed to enjoy themselves, although a FRENCH rugby team was involved(!) After a small snooze I wandered down to The Last Drop Inn where![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
steer was having a bit of a celebratory drink for getting his PhD. I rather too gleefully related to people that France had been beaten at Euro 2004 by Greece, and clotilde told everyone else an interesting factoid to annoy me. Bah!
At closing time, I gathered a surprisingly large number of people who wanted to go observing with me and my telescope (gothgrr, wey, greynolds, mister_ed and smorgasbord). Apologies to everild and Derek for not getting in touch - I had kinda reached my organisational limit for the night.
We wandered down to Acaster Airfield, where I had found a nice observing spot. Apparently, this is a popular site for 'doggers', so a gate has been constructed to stop people driving onto the airfield. So we were rather surprised to encounter a dog (i.e. of the woof woof kind) ambling about on the airfield where I wanted to setup my scope. It got lots of fuss from the dog people there. I believe it was called 'Ticky'.
Observing didn't go particularly well. First of all, the auto-alignment went wrong for no reason I would work out, so I had to do it all again. By this time the moon was too low to look at. We got to Albireo (very pretty double star) and the M39 open cluster in Cygnus, but I couldn't find the next couple of things I looked for. Then the batteries ran out. I had a spare set, but the battery case fell off the tripod and ripped the wires completely out of the plug :-( So that was the end of GoTo observing for the night. We did get to look at Mizar, and observing points towey for noticing the precise make-up of that system.
I did learn from this though. There needs to be a couple of "wow" objects in the sky if you're going to take people out observing. This summer, that isn't really the case. Jupiter and Saturn aren't really out at the moment, and the moon was down. So I'll watch out for clear skies *and* interesting objects in future. Plus, six people and one scope is probably too many people.
Saturday morning I wandered into the city to meetresyk and Phil (WINOLJ) for "lads breakfast". When Phil arrived I remembered he soldered things for a living, so I gave him the battery housing and plug from my telescope to fix. Once more I went into a bookshop and didn't buy a book: I'm getting good at this.
Saturday evening Trash and I met my old university friend Justin and his girlfriend in Meltons Too for some food. I asked Justin if he could remember any embarrassing stories about me, but he couldn't. His girlfriend is Canadian ... FRENCH Canadian! Eek! I was very nice to her though, so there!
After food, we wandered up to The Last Drop. I had had a mellow time there the previous evening, and it was sticking in my mind as a pleasant place to go. I think it's because it's quiet, relatively non-busy, and non-smoky. Everyone else drank some evil cider (Stowford Press?) and looked happy. Cider is Satan's Piss, I tell ya.
Sunday morning I wandered round to seeeverild's new pedal cycle, and to see if she wanted to go out for a ride. She was feeling the effects of riding a bike for the first time in a long time, so she wasn't up for it. I looked at her bike, so see if this was someone else I could entice out to "off road", but it's very much a road bike.
There were all sorts of little things I fancied doing today. One was to pop up to PCWorld and look at computer bits. So I got on the VFR and took a "long way round" blast up there, with "Danger Zone" and the theme from Top Gun echoing through my mind. Mmmmm. Lovely. Something I've recently realised is that modern scanners often contain built in negative scanning units. I've got loads of negatives from my photography days in the late 80s/early 90s. For the vast majority of negatives I no longer have prints. So, scanning the negs to digital form is going to be the way forward. So I had a lust over the scanners and will buy one of these soon.
The heat of the day made me a bit dozy though, so I spent the rest of the afternoon asleep (oops), getting up later to go to The Bassment in Leeds to see The Sisters of Murphy (meetingmiss_dark and cyberspice there). They were highly entertaining, but a slightly spooky experience. I've seen tribute bands before, but always for bands that no longer really exist. But then, The Sisters of the 80s no longer exists. Andrew Eldritch now wears white polo necks and averts his eyes when goths walk past :-)
I took my "higher quality" digital camera along to a gig too. This is the first time I've done gig photography in *years*. [Photography saddo bit: gig photography really works best in available light. My camera has an f2.8 mode, and I can tell it it's "400 ASA", so even in the gloom of Leeds Bassment it'll do 1/8 second. Too slow to hand hold, but there was a convenient metal guard around the DJ booth I could brace my camera against. Then it's just a little blurred from the movement of the band, but that kinda works in live event photography. Then again, the lighting was so low-tech that I gave up after a bit and did some flash as well. The differences are not significant.] I'll put the images on fotopic soon.
angelic_angie was there, and I was also introduced to myz_lilith and Edi (whose LJ name I cannot remember - bad memory!)
A swift blast back from Leeds in the Type-R, to discover Top Gun on BBC1. Wahey! That film is both fantastically good and fantastically crap AT THE SAME TIME. As I mentioned onmistressmalaise's journal, my favourite line from that film is "I feel the need ... the need ... for SPEED!" Obviously, a line that can have two significantly different meanings.
I hope I start to feel tired at some point... Ooo, a re-run of the Czech Republic versus Denmark on BBC1. Although I do know the ending :-)
Friday night I took Trash and Anna (WANOLJ) into York and let them loose on some form of "dirty trollops night out in short skirts" - they seemed to enjoy themselves, although a FRENCH rugby team was involved(!) After a small snooze I wandered down to The Last Drop Inn where
steer was having a bit of a celebratory drink for getting his PhD. I rather too gleefully related to people that France had been beaten at Euro 2004 by Greece, and clotilde told everyone else an interesting factoid to annoy me. Bah!At closing time, I gathered a surprisingly large number of people who wanted to go observing with me and my telescope (
gothgrr, wey, greynolds, mister_ed and smorgasbord). Apologies to everild and Derek for not getting in touch - I had kinda reached my organisational limit for the night.We wandered down to Acaster Airfield, where I had found a nice observing spot. Apparently, this is a popular site for 'doggers', so a gate has been constructed to stop people driving onto the airfield. So we were rather surprised to encounter a dog (i.e. of the woof woof kind) ambling about on the airfield where I wanted to setup my scope. It got lots of fuss from the dog people there. I believe it was called 'Ticky'.
Observing didn't go particularly well. First of all, the auto-alignment went wrong for no reason I would work out, so I had to do it all again. By this time the moon was too low to look at. We got to Albireo (very pretty double star) and the M39 open cluster in Cygnus, but I couldn't find the next couple of things I looked for. Then the batteries ran out. I had a spare set, but the battery case fell off the tripod and ripped the wires completely out of the plug :-( So that was the end of GoTo observing for the night. We did get to look at Mizar, and observing points to
wey for noticing the precise make-up of that system.I did learn from this though. There needs to be a couple of "wow" objects in the sky if you're going to take people out observing. This summer, that isn't really the case. Jupiter and Saturn aren't really out at the moment, and the moon was down. So I'll watch out for clear skies *and* interesting objects in future. Plus, six people and one scope is probably too many people.
Saturday morning I wandered into the city to meet
resyk and Phil (WINOLJ) for "lads breakfast". When Phil arrived I remembered he soldered things for a living, so I gave him the battery housing and plug from my telescope to fix. Once more I went into a bookshop and didn't buy a book: I'm getting good at this.Saturday evening Trash and I met my old university friend Justin and his girlfriend in Meltons Too for some food. I asked Justin if he could remember any embarrassing stories about me, but he couldn't. His girlfriend is Canadian ... FRENCH Canadian! Eek! I was very nice to her though, so there!
After food, we wandered up to The Last Drop. I had had a mellow time there the previous evening, and it was sticking in my mind as a pleasant place to go. I think it's because it's quiet, relatively non-busy, and non-smoky. Everyone else drank some evil cider (Stowford Press?) and looked happy. Cider is Satan's Piss, I tell ya.
Sunday morning I wandered round to see
everild's new pedal cycle, and to see if she wanted to go out for a ride. She was feeling the effects of riding a bike for the first time in a long time, so she wasn't up for it. I looked at her bike, so see if this was someone else I could entice out to "off road", but it's very much a road bike.There were all sorts of little things I fancied doing today. One was to pop up to PCWorld and look at computer bits. So I got on the VFR and took a "long way round" blast up there, with "Danger Zone" and the theme from Top Gun echoing through my mind. Mmmmm. Lovely. Something I've recently realised is that modern scanners often contain built in negative scanning units. I've got loads of negatives from my photography days in the late 80s/early 90s. For the vast majority of negatives I no longer have prints. So, scanning the negs to digital form is going to be the way forward. So I had a lust over the scanners and will buy one of these soon.
The heat of the day made me a bit dozy though, so I spent the rest of the afternoon asleep (oops), getting up later to go to The Bassment in Leeds to see The Sisters of Murphy (meeting
miss_dark and cyberspice there). They were highly entertaining, but a slightly spooky experience. I've seen tribute bands before, but always for bands that no longer really exist. But then, The Sisters of the 80s no longer exists. Andrew Eldritch now wears white polo necks and averts his eyes when goths walk past :-)I took my "higher quality" digital camera along to a gig too. This is the first time I've done gig photography in *years*. [Photography saddo bit: gig photography really works best in available light. My camera has an f2.8 mode, and I can tell it it's "400 ASA", so even in the gloom of Leeds Bassment it'll do 1/8 second. Too slow to hand hold, but there was a convenient metal guard around the DJ booth I could brace my camera against. Then it's just a little blurred from the movement of the band, but that kinda works in live event photography. Then again, the lighting was so low-tech that I gave up after a bit and did some flash as well. The differences are not significant.] I'll put the images on fotopic soon.
angelic_angie was there, and I was also introduced to myz_lilith and Edi (whose LJ name I cannot remember - bad memory!)A swift blast back from Leeds in the Type-R, to discover Top Gun on BBC1. Wahey! That film is both fantastically good and fantastically crap AT THE SAME TIME. As I mentioned on
mistressmalaise's journal, my favourite line from that film is "I feel the need ... the need ... for SPEED!" Obviously, a line that can have two significantly different meanings.I hope I start to feel tired at some point... Ooo, a re-run of the Czech Republic versus Denmark on BBC1. Although I do know the ending :-)
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..do you mean
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That's the person! Thanks.
Oi!
The reason I didn't come was because G and I already had plans to go out for the afternoon to Nostell Priory, so I'll thank you not to make me sound like a tender arsed wimp ;-P
my favourite line from that film is "I feel the need ... the need ... for SPEED!"
Ah yes - mine too! In fact it was rather a catch-phrase amongst some of my friends at Warwick - in particular my friend Richard who had a nasty yellow coloured ford fiesta. It was obligatory to say this line and then high-five before getting into it. Not that it was capable of achieving particularly high speeds, so I'm not sure quite what the derivation of this custom was...
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I did. It's at:
http://vinpetrol.fotopic.net
No underscores allowed in fotopic names :-(
I'll probably sort out the Sisters of Murphy pics at lunchtime.
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Sadly, I reckon so. They worked fine for me at home and work, and noone else has mentioned it. Bloody Internet! :-)
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Sounds like
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Observing didn't go particularly well. [...] I did learn from this though. There needs to be a couple of "wow" objects in the sky if you're going to take people out observing.
I think you suffer from too much performance anxiety. If you announce you're going to go observing and people decide to tag along, I don't see that it's your responsibility to keep everyone entertained. Nobody was bored (I wasn't, and I was sober!), nobody complained and everyone said it was fun.
And anyway,
First of all, the auto-alignment went wrong for no reason I would work out, so I had to do it all again.
Might this have been because the batteries were very low? I wondered whether perhaps the motor ran for the right amount of time but didn't go quite far enough because it was running out of juice.
We got to Albireo (very pretty double star) [...] We did get to look at Mizar, and observing points to wey for noticing the precise make-up of that system.
[smug] This page gives a nice little description of multiple stars, using Mizar and Albireo as examples.
an open cluster
Which one was it? I told you on Friday, I'm depending on you to write these things in your journal so I don't have to!
the battery case fell off the tripod and ripped the wires completely out of the plug :-(
Did Phil manage to fix it? I want to go again! [bounce bounce bounce]
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That kinda fits. When slewing to the second star of the sequence it did seem to stop short, and the manual adjustment I made seemed to be "too much."
Which one was it? I told you on Friday, I'm depending on you to write these things in your journal so I don't have to!
It was M39 open cluster in Cygnus. I shall edit.
Did Phil manage to fix it? I want to go again!
Not yet. He actually called me about it today, 'cos it's no longer obvious how the plug is wired up re positive and negative voltages. I've got to see if there's a diagram on the side of my scope tonight. If not, he'll take a best guess - which has a 50% chance of being wrong :-( I'll then check this on my own though. He's also offered to "armour plate" the battery stuff somewhat, and use more protective connectors and cable. I should be working again within a few days. I already have a spare set of batteries.
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[bounce bounce bounce]
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No he doesn't.
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He doesn't *now*, but I thought he did in the past, hence my use of the past tense. Is that not correct?
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Technically it is, yes, but most people would interpret "I remembered he soldered things" as "I remembered [in the past] that he solders [in the present]things".
Me myself and I would make it absolutely clear by saying "I remembered that he used to solder things"; but then we're all three of us pedants (and proud of it).