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Jan. 20th, 2008 @ 10:02 pm Stars and such like
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I've re-ignited my interest in astronomy again. Its been a while since I've done much in the way of serious observing. I did see a few shooting stars while camping this summer (when it wasn't raining!) but haven't done that much else.

I have got myself a new camera and a equatorial mounted telescope, which should mean longer exposure pictures aren't quite so hard, and wont result in huge star trails. However, I have just spotted that my web based auto-resize image script doesn't like my image files-it something about 10 megapixel files being to large....

Some of my pictures are loaded onto the web albums in picasa, but I intend to get them up on here too.


I came across on sourceforge a little tool that looks like it could be useful. Its called Observation and is designed to help amateur astronomers log their observations. Its java and xml based, and can output html, so I intend keeping some kind of archive of what I see online.

Finally, here is one of the many pictures I've taken of the orion nebula and surrounding area of sky:( Image )

Oct. 6th, 2007 @ 03:20 pm Mythtv
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Over the last couple of weeks I've got myself a small stack of components and started to build myself a media pc. I picked up a nice small case-about the size of the average set top box, a micro atx motherboard and processor, and all the trappings. I've put into it to get tv, a Hauppauge winTV nova-T pci card (it has space for only one card-pci or pci-express) a laptop sized slot loading dvd-rw drive and also attached a usb soundcard, to ensure I get a digital output for my speakers.

I've now got kubuntu 7.04 installed and have myth able to pick up tv, although the digital itv signal here seems no-existant. I'm now working with getting the remote control to work as I want. Alsa is outputting sound, and the usb sound is now set as the default soundcard, however with myth running, I dont have control over its volume via alsa.
The kernel that I'm running at the moment (Kernel 2.6.20-16 ) has ir_common running, which interfers with lirc which is what many use to configure their remote control. Rather than reconfiguring the kernel to exclude ir_common I am working on setting up the appropriate keymaps so that the remote control keys do the appropriate functions in the program. So far I have only mapped the power button to the escape key for exiting the myth frontend, but will work on more, now I know how to do it. I used xev to display the keycodes of the pressed buttons and created a .Xmodmap file in ~/ to map it to a function.
More will be posted, if I ever remember to post stuff up here!
Oct. 6th, 2007 @ 03:12 pm Travel
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I've now taken most of my annual Holiday. One week was my normal week of camp in norfolk, and was the weather bad! Not so bad as the year before, as the huge stakes that hold the side of the marquee down didnt spend the week trying to pull out of the ground, but it did rain atleast once on every day. But we all survived, and a large heater was used in the main marquee to keep peoples clothes dry and have somewhere warm to disappear to.

Since august, I've also been over to Germany. I flew into Lubek airport (or Hamburg if you believe ryanair! I stayed the week in a fairly cheep hotel in Hamburg. I got there and asked for the reservation I'd made in my best (school based) german, and got the reply back that there had been a problem of water in the rooms, and I was now in a hotel a few doors up the street. I took me a moment to understand, and by the time I did, they offered to speak in english. But I did try and use german :-)

The week before last, I took a visit to a colo facility on Isle of Man, and set up a stack of gear for my company. My ears wear aching after several days of being blasted by air-con, and my legs from standing about configuring servers. But we got all the kit configured so at the minimum, we can access them from the main office to finish the configuration.
Jul. 5th, 2007 @ 11:29 pm Apple Store
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I've been talking about visiting the apple store on and off for a while-work has given me a few trips into london, but never that near the store. However Tuesday was different-I was playing courier with content for one of our customer platforms, and that involved me going past the store on Regent Street, on my way out of London. So I kinda got side tracked into there, on my way to oxford circus to find a tube to Liverpool street.
I'd love to wax lyrical about how amazing it was, but at the end of the day, its a computer shop. Yes, for shiney, and interesting computers, but they're still computers at the end of the day. I'd like to have bought one for myself, but with a desktop and laptop of my own, and a work laptop too, I dont exactly need any more machines at this given point in time. Ipods for that matter too. I have an adiquate car stereo, and thats the time when I would listen to mp3s. With iPods not storing tunes as standard file storage, they inherantly are incompatable as usb mass storage of tunes for playing though anything other than specialist software. So I bought a few peripherals instead, so it didnt feel like a total waste of time in there!
Jul. 1st, 2007 @ 11:18 pm Fita *
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Current Mood: thirstyDamp
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I completed my first ever world record status, and first ever fita star comp on saturday. I think I came out as the lowest scoring recurve, but still, someone has to be bottom. I think most people of a similar caliber to myself made the intelegent decision to not shoot given the weather. It certainly managed to rain well towards the end of the 50m. The main problem I had was it caused my arrows to drop by about 40 cm. With an 80 cm face, that puts them well out of the middle, and consiquently my score for a couple of ends suffered. That said, I put some good ends in too, getting a distance total of 230 at 70m which I was pleased with.
The weather dried off well enough to make bbq and camping ok overnight. I managed to use my new bbq and tent. The mini barel bbq I'd had for a couple of years suffered a bit at busa and gained an extra "air vent", right in the centre of the bottom 1/2 so got retired. The new one is stainless steel, and sits higher off the ground, so should be a better cooking height, when lounging about in folding chairs after spending the day shooting. It certainly seemed better that height than the old one.
The new tent-its 2 skinned, so doesnt seem so much like its going to leak in the slightest of showers, and has space to dump stuff outside the inner section during showers to keep worst of damp off things.

I've not got any other competitions coming up, but I would really like to get some 1st class scores on the board this season. I keep ending up just a handful of points short
Jun. 7th, 2007 @ 10:40 pm what to do with a web cam and shooting
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Current Location: My Garden
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I've remembered something I've meant to say in my last update. I've done a bit of experimenting with recording my shooting, as I know various things (like how high my elbow is) need sorting. So I figured I'd borrow my dads mini digi camcorder. But its battery was flat.... so I remembered that the mac book I have, has a web cam. I didnt know how to use iMovie on it at that point, so I pointed my browser at youtube, and connected to the wifi, and recorded straight to youtube. Apologies for the lack of editing on the clips, but it was an interesting experiment:

I took a few more, and raised the laptop to get a better angle of me:

The next day, when the camera had some battery, and I knew how to use iMovie, I compiled this clip, with a spot of editing (once I figured a way of importing the microsoft .asf formated file to a mac, so it could play/edit it. (the answer was to install ffmpegx for transcoding the video, then import the output for editing!
Jun. 7th, 2007 @ 12:18 am Norton + BT-Yahoo! broadband = pure evil
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I got the lucky task of sorting a friends computer out after work yesterday. I'd got told that it was wireless problems. TBH, they were just the tip of the iceburg. For starters the machine was unbeliveably slow. I know it wasnt too high a speced machine-256 MB RAM, couple of ghz cpu, but enough to plough its way thru xp home edition, which it did when I first set it up on the broadband. But no. It was making a 486 laptop seem blisteringly fast.
So I try and pull up task manager, only to get (eventualy) the message that the administrator had disabled it. Now, if I was a normal user on a windows domain, with a particulary nasty sys admin who'd locked it out, then I wouldnt be too fussed. But it was xp home, at home, with me logged in as an admistrator.
I coax it to let me reset a user accounts password (the password had been lost), as I thought maybe it was just this profile that was messed up. The other profile seems fine, but gradually ground to a halt, and taskmanager seemed to die, so in frustration I reboot it. to find... yep, task manager had be disabled by the adminsitrator. I was nearly convinced that it was a virus at that point, so getting a date set in diary to visit with a more complete set of. At that point I thought about other possable causes... I set at removing the infestation of BT and symantec software. Even by 1/3 of the way through the un-install, the performance had improved. By the end of it, after a reboot, the system seemed like a new machine.
To make matters worse, as part of the install procedure, Norton internet security had forced the removal of the other firewall and antiviral software on the machine!

So lessons learned... norton internet security-keeps things secure by never giving your computer a chance to access the net!
Jun. 6th, 2007 @ 11:53 pm updates
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I have been so busy the last few months.

Isle of man went suprisingly well for me. I shot a couple of personal bests, beat my score from last year, and got a medal! I came 2nd last year, but had to settle for 3rd this year. I'm amazed that I did so well.

The roads of the island were equaly fun. We clocked up a few more miles, and visited a number of our old haunts. Cregneash is becoming a regular place to visit when the weather is nice, which it was on the monday when we went down there. We also went up the steap side of Snaefell-I think the road number is A14. That was quite an experiance! :-)

Since then.... Well, I've done my first outdoor competition of the year, the Canadian 1200 up at Bronte archery club. I wasnt made to feel all that welcome by the organiser, which kinda sucks given that I was an (associate) member of the club. But I enjoyed it all, once the competition got going.

Work is keeping me busy, as ever. But its still enjoyable, which I think is the main thing

I visited the suffolk kite festival the other weekend, and got myself a 3.5 sqr m quad line. Its got some serious power in it. I dont think I optimise its strengths just yet, but it seems good fun to fly. I've had it drag me a short way, while lying on my back. That was funny to do, though I dont think I'll try that trick again in a hurry.

I think that covers most recent events...
Mar. 24th, 2007 @ 05:56 pm shooting time!
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Hmm IoM could be interesting. This afternoon I shot the back of an arrow off! And that was outside, with it being cold damp and windy, and no target face cos the damp was disintegrating it! Been a while since I've done that. That said, come the head to head on the last day, I know I'll be flagging a bit.
Mar. 16th, 2007 @ 08:50 pm to much gadgets
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Current Location: Somewhere near Doncaster
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well, here I am, on the train just past doncaster, having already used this laptop to connect via bluetooth to phone to internet, and with that, thru to work to do some reconfiguration of servers. It was so slow, espec whe then going over a vpn to the clients site, which is slow at best of times. But I managed to reconfigure the re-writes on an apache box. It takes me back to the good old days of dial up. Slow, but it gets there most of the time, if patient. It also encourages good typing on the command line, as it can take a sec for the character to register on the terminal.
I guess I need more challenges for locations to work from. The trouble is, with satelite phones the internet can now be got any where-even on south pole if really needed. That said, spain is the only place I've gone away to, so Antarctica may be a little bit over the top for hunting for off site work locations.
(I'm blogging to distract myself from the domestic between the people on the seats accross the asile from me)