Category: Fun stuff

Random fun things

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Eclipse party!

Unless you’ve been living in a seriously deep hole under  a big rock, you know that there’s going to be a solar eclipse coming up this August. It’s the first one that will be crossing the entire US in quite a while. All of North America will be able to see at least a partial eclipse, and a good chunk of the US will get to see 90% or more of the sun in eclipse.

The US path of the August 21 total solar eclipse starts in Oregon at around 1600UTC (10:00 AM PDT) and ends in South Carolina a little after 2000UTC (4:00 PM EDT).

Back at the old house, we were just at the right edge of the path of totality. Our new house is much closer to the middle of the path (about 22 km from the center as the crow flies) and will be a much better place to watch the eclipse from. In addition, aside from houses, we have an almost unobstructed view of the entire sky from the house and a great big field to hang out in at the end of the street (if the yard gets too crowded).

2017 Eclipse path
2017 Eclipse path through the Charleston SC area

See that path of totality? We’re practically right in the middle of it.

The last solar eclipse I was able to watch was back when I was in elementary school. I remember all the windows of the school had been covered up with paper, and nobody was allowed to go outside during the eclipse. Welding shades were taped to the windows of several doors so that kids could look up at the sun to see the eclipse.

The plan for this eclipse is to acquire a few #14 welding shades and make at least a couple of pinhole cameras for friends and neighbours to view the eclipse with.

Hopefully the weather will be good. August is starting to get into the peak of the hurricane season. Don’t want one of those coming by at the wrong time and messing things up.

Eclipse data from Xavier Jubier’s interactive map.

2m 22.7s (total solar eclipse)
2m 24.5s (lunar limb corrected)
Umbral depth : 61.05%
Umbral depth : 22.3km (13.9mi)
Path width : 114.7km (71.3mi)
Obscuration : 100.00%
Magnitude at maximum : 1.00918
Moon/Sun size ratio : 1.03009
Umbral vel. : 0.670km/s (1498 mph)
Event Time (UTC)
Start of partial eclipse 17:16:25
Start of total eclipse 18:45:20
Maximum eclipse 18:46:31
End of total eclipse 18:47:42
End of partial eclipse 20:09:21

If you want to come by to watch the eclipse, drop me a line.

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Shuttle Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center

The Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center is my new favourite place to go now.

The last time we were at KSC (back in 2012), the exhibit building was still under construction. Didn’t get to make it back for the exhibit opening, so we made sure to include it as part of the itinerary for our cruise last week.

The exhibit building is easy to find. Just look for the great big orange fuel tank of the shuttle booster rocket (it’s a full sized replica).

Space shuttle booster rocket
Replica of the space shuttle booster

The exhibit starts with a short film about the history of the space shuttle program, after which the big door opens and you see the Shuttle Atlantis in all its glory.

The Shuttle exhibit is pretty well done with lots of interactive displays, simulators and a “Meet a specialist” program where you can talk with people who worked on the shuttles.

Having grown up during the space shuttle era, I never imagined that I’d actually get to see it up close. There are a few places where you can reach out and almost touch the shuttle. You can even read the numbers on the heat shield tiles and see the texture of the heat shield blankets. So awesome.

Also part of the exhibit is a tribute for the crew of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttles. A very moving display with personal items that belonged to each crew member. Also part of the display is a body panel from Challenger and the cockpit windows from Columbia.

You can’t help but spend a few quiet moments here.

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Heading to Southeast Linuxfest 2016!

Now that we have a closing date on the house that’s a little earlier than originally anticipated, I can make plans to go to Southeast Linuxfest 2016.

My attendance streak got broken last year since I couldn’t make it (just too many things going on), so it will be good to get back this year. It’s always a great place to learn about what’s going on, learn something new, and of course get together with friends.

Unlike previous years where I drove up the day before, this year I’ll be leaving bright and early on Friday so that I can get to Charlotte around 0900ish. If anybody from the Charleston or Columbia area wants to carpool with me, drop me a line.

Looking forward to another Southeast Linuxfest!

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BarcampCHS 2015

Another Barcamp Charleston is over with. The seventh Barcamp Charleston was a lot of fun. Significantly smaller than previous barcamps, but still a good time. There were also fewer presentations pitched this year as a result, but there were some pretty good ones.

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After the pitch sessions, I started the morning off hanging out with people in a BoF (Birds of a Feather) session. After that was my first presentation that I called Charleston Area Amateur Radio. Had a fairly decent sized group come to my talk where I talked a bit about the ham radio clubs in the area and the repeater networks around here that are available for use.

My session ended a bit early, and I was able to catch the Palmetto Scholars Academy kids working on their high altitude balloon launch demonstration. Their balloon didn’t go all that high, but they did a good job of explaining and demonstrating the process and requirements behind launching high altitude balloons.

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After the group photo and lunch was a session on graphs and graph theory by Denise Gosnell, one of the data scientists at Pokitdoc. Neat stuff. Kudos to Pokitdoc for being BarcampCHS sponsors and sending a great group of people to give some great presentations.

My second presentation of the day was a simple Ask a Medical Physicist session. Much to my surprise, I actually had a few (3) people show up, so it was just a very informal Q&A session where I gave a brief description of some of the things medical physicists do and answered any questions they had. It turned out to be a pretty decent session from my perspective.

The last two sessions I went to were on JSON and Clojure. They were both good sessions and I learned enough to dig a little more into them.

The crowd at this year’s Barcamp Charleston was a lot smaller than previous years, but there were a lot of new faces there. Hopefully they’ll spread the word and bring friends next year.

https://www.instagram.com/p/9y3J8pNadg/

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Communicator panel

I’ve had one of these Star Trek door chime panels hanging up on the wall for quite a while now.

Star Trek communicator panel

It’s pretty cool, although rather limited. The button on the front plays the Star Trek communicator panel sound. When motion sensors on the side are triggered, the panel can play the door swooshing sound, a red alert klaxon sound or no sound (determined by the sliding switch on the front).

Over the weekend, the thought popped into my head that I should get a second one and modify it to also function as a wireless intercom system. Push the button, it plays the communicator panel sound and activates the intercom. Add a microphone behind the speaker grill and some LEDs to light up the white indicator box when the intercom is active. How cool would that be?

I’ve been pondering ways to do this. Cannibalizing an old intercom system or maybe even a couple of FRS radios should be a relatively easy turnkey solution. Something Arduino based using a Pro Mini or Pro Micro with some kind of low power FM transmitter might work too, but require considerably more effort to develop. I haven’t opened mine up so I don’t know how much room there is to cram stuff into.

I’ll let it spin around in my head for a while, maybe hit a couple of thrift stores to see if there’s anything interesting to work with. With the move coming up, it will probably be a while before I have much time to work on this.