Among my 50by50 goals, I have a series of inter-related ones called “get my sh** together”. Since those don’t look very nice as page titles, I’ve tweaked it a bit to make it a little more family-friendly (my son, Jacob, age 8, does read my blog, so I should clean up my act). And one thing that has annoyed me on the digital front for a very long time is my online photo gallery.
I won’t bore you with the long version of its sordid history, but the short rant is that I have a website (polywogg.ca) that I pay to host. And so I have my own domain, my own file area, relatively unlimited file storage related to the website (i.e. I can’t turn it into a cloud server, but for the purposes of a website, it’s open season). So I should be able to have a gallery for my personal pictures and video clips. But when it comes to video, almost all the basic hosters have the same limitation.
No hosting video.
If you want to have video on the site, you generally have to upload it to Vimeo or DailyMotion or Youtube (with the ownership and advertisement and privacy issues, oh my, that go along with these sites), and then link to it from your site by embedding the link in your post. It works really well, don’t get me wrong, but dealing with those video sites is a pain in the patootie. A few years ago, I was putting the videos in a password protected area of Vimeo or Dailymotion (I don’t even remember now which one it was), and linking them to a web gallery on my server, running Piwigo as the photo gallery with video embeds. It was working okay, I uploaded about 3000 photos, and then I ran into a problem with the hoster. They claimed it was Piwigo, and after a bunch of testing, frustration, and failure, I eventually killed the Piwigo site and moved everything — photos and video — to SmugMug. Like Flickr and others, it allows you to upload personal photos and videos and then share them. There are basic accounts that are free, but I would have quickly overwhelmed those limits, so I bit the bullet — and paid $80 / year to host everything at SmugMug.
Overall, it’s been great. It took me a while to get up and running, but eventually, I had it all working, so all good. Except it has still been costing me $80 a year when I’m *already paying to host a website elsewhere*. Grrr…oh, and about ten months ago, my workplace updated their firewall blacklist and SmugMug was on it (to prevent people streaming video to the office and sucking up bandwidth) — so when I do blog posts and paste pics from the site, the pics don’t show up in my articles when viewed from work or some other government sites. Which means some of my posts about HR that have pics in them don’t show properly. It has been on my list to fix, but a pain in the patootie to find an alternative, as the most likely alternative is finding somewhere where I could host everything. A new hoster, perhaps. There’s a small chicken-and-egg loop in there, move the site or move the pics, and I’ve not bothered to fix it.
As I said, most basic hosters don’t allow video. They are afraid because video can drastically suck their bandwidth, which they can’t afford to do on basic sites at basic rates. And they don’t want to charge someone $5 / month and have them start streaming movies and trailers for the masses. Except that’s not what I’m doing. I have a few personal videos per month that when posted might get watched by up to five or six people, and then it will sit dormant most of the time. Low bandwidth, nothing major. I know that, the hosters don’t, so they have general policies that say “no video” and they block it internally on the site for all their hosting accounts.
So imagine my surprise recently when I tried a video on my WordPress site and it not only uploaded, stored and loaded on a page, it actually played. WTF? It isn’t blocked? But I know it violates the general terms of service, so I contacted them and asked the question. Maybe I pay them a bit more each month or year so I could host a bit of low bandwidth video on my site? I’m paying SmugMug $80 a year; anything less than that, or potentially even a little more with it fully integrated with my website, and I’d be in digital heaven.
Their response? No extra charge, as long as it is low bandwidth, go ahead. Hallelujah and pass the upload app!
I drive a 2009 Nissan Rogue, base model. While it isn’t flashy or sporty, I’m not a “car enthusiast”. I don’t care about whether it can do 0 to 60 in 3 seconds, I just want to know if it has enough power to pass three cars on a two-lane highway or not. I honestly care more about reliability and cargo space than styling or engine displacement.
Since the car is now 8 years old, I’ve been thinking that maybe, sometime soon perhaps, I may start to see big expenses creep into the picture and the big giant decision will start to loom:
Fix or ditch?
Transmissions are often big-ticket items, but mine was covered under warranty and replaced about 20K back, with a new warranty on the replacement. I’m good for a while.
We’ve done brakes a few times.
Nothing gigantic looming.
But I had a small issue recently — my back shocks started leaking until they were completely dry.
I talked to my father-in-law who has probably forgotten more about cars than I will ever know, and he felt it was likely time to think about a new car too, which was the way I was leaning. I had planned to run it into the ground, but that ground was getting closer (literally with the shocks gone).
During the evaluation of what needed to be done, I did a test drive of the 2017 Rogue, looking at a step up in level, and it is like night and day. Moon roof availability, relatively the same handling, interior upgrades, tech packages. Overall a much nicer car than we have currently, and that was part of my thinking too — I spend a lot of time in the car, and I want some perks added to the package. One that I would love to have is 360 degree cameras that show the side line-up for parking between lines in parking lots, front and back cameras and proximity alerts, etc.
Then the quote for repairs came back around $2K, and we were now in the realm of ditching the car in favour of a new one.
The Nissan Rogue was an obvious contender. The existing model meets my needs relatively well, so why change? We looked at a few options, including a demo model with full styling packages, and it was a viable choice.
But if we were going to do a real search, we wanted to do a real search.
We checked out hybrids at Toyota. We calculated the added cost to go hybrid, and as long as we were keeping the car longer than about 3-5 years, the higher purchase price would be compensated for by lower operational costs. In the end though, I just didn’t like the feel of the car.
We tried to check out the Honda CRV. We went to the dealership, and while I hadn’t made an appointment, I wasn’t expecting any problem talking to someone. It was a weeknight and the showroom wasn’t busy. We went in, went straight to the vehicle, opened it up, climbed in and out, took out our measuring tape and measured things with seats up and down, forward and back. Anybody would see we weren’t kicking tires, we were actively seeing if this car would meet our needs. Serious sales potential. When we were done, I had a concern about the interior styling as the one area jutted out into my leg space, and I wanted to know if it was that way in all styling packages. I have no idea the answer as nobody would come help us.
We were there for 15 minutes and nobody came to see if we wanted anything. When we were done, we walked out into the middle of the showroom, and were clearly looking around for someone to talk to…but three people hiding in little cubicles saw us and ignored us. A guy was coming back from talking to the receptionist, and walking straight toward me. I went to ask him the question, clearly looking to engage him, and he turned, walked towards the manager’s office and ignored me. WTF? Your business is that good that you can intentionally snub and ignore customers? Really? I wouldn’t take a car from them if they PAID me to take their vehicle. Ass hats. I decided that when we bought the car, we would take a picture (we always do) and send it to them to thank them for ignoring us and steering us to their competitors. I was tempted to send it to head office too.
Next up, I wanted to try a Subaru. Partly as so many of the Subaru owners are passionate about how happy they are with their purchase. We were in an elevator at work the one time, and a coworker mentioned they were looking and considering the Outback. Another woman, someone none of us knew, turned and said that she had bought an Outback, and it had CHANGED. HER. LIFE. It was actually a little bit creepy.
Anyway, I tried the Outback and fell in love. I grew up driving big Buicks and Le Mans and Le Barons and basically large land boats with power steering. While the Outback isn’t big and clunky, it had the big solid feel I grew up with, and I was totally comfortable driving it. Great rating out the wazoo, very comfortable, all good, except for one thing. The seat height from the floor is only about 13 inches, compared to the 15-16 inches in the CUVs. Basically, it’s a car with car seating, not a CUV. Andrea really didn’t like the seats, and while the rest was probably enough to compensate for it for me, I didn’t disagree. It was likely going to be out.
The Subaru Forrester by contrast wasn’t quite as comfortable for sheer driveability, but it was pretty good. Great styling, good tech packages (backing up, driver assist, but not sides).
While we were considering the Forrester, we decided to try the Santa Fe Sport. I was doubtful there was as much room in the backseat for Jacob (the online specs showed less room), but it turned out to be equally spacious. With more pep for the acceleration. I confess though that I’m still a bit leery of Hyundai’s quality. Some friends in the know said that it is much better now, but I wasn’t convinced. Some of the ratings are good, but I didn’t feel like it was as solid a build to drive. Small, but persuasive.
We made a decision. We would go for the Forrester. We even made an appointment with the salesman to go in and discuss the final financing.
But there was one niggling detail. We weren’t entirely convinced we needed a new car yet.
I know, I know, you’d think we had already decided that, but it was a bit in context. I was willing to let it go, even if I felt it might have another year or two left in the old girl. And the repairs could be done for a bit less, closer to $1500, and one of them was just an irregular tune-up cost since it was overdue. Which meant I was looking at a bill of about $1200-$1500 to fix it, vs. the big financing option to buy.
What was the deciding factor? It was two-fold.
First, I was a bit grumpy with the salespeople. The Rogue isn’t in bad shape, pretty good actually, nothing really wrong with it, and the online book value puts it somewhere between $5K and $5500. Sure, those numbers can be a bit high, and you’ll see less to sell it in the end, but north of $4500 for sure. Plus, I had winter tires and summer tires for it, on rims, and they were both only a year old — almost $2500 worth of better-than-average tires, call it discounted to about $1200. Which would put me back squarely in the $5000-$5500 range.
Except none of the dealers were offering us over $3K. One came close and then said, “Oops, not we’re not doing that after all”.
So I would give up a $5K car and take the $2K hit; I would get the new vehicle and with financing, shell out $5-6K per year for about five years. Not including a substantial down payment.
Or I could spend up to the same $6K per year and keep enjoying the financing-free premium of owning the car outright right now.
Second, two friends came over for dinner and in discussions with them, while they agreed with the desire to buy a new vehicle, they basically mentioned how frugal cheap they are and that they prefer to eke out every last drop of value from the vehicle before they get rid of one.
And separately, Andrea and I were convinced. We didn’t need to buy the new car, although we could. I had it e-tested, just to be sure, and yes, we could keep our current vehicle. While we won’t be driving across the country in it, it’s fine for daily use and short-hauls.
So we got if fixed. And we’re exploiting the crap out of it for now. It seems strange, but after long conversations on FB with people, we decided that our new car would be a 2009 Nissan Rogue that was already in our driveway.
But at least we know where we might start looking in two years when I’m willing to let the current car go on trade-in for whatever they choose to give me.
As part of my 50by50 initiative, I wanted to do a month where I stepped away from the computer. I briefly toyed with the idea of no screens, but between work and a lot of digitally-enabled hobbies I have, that wasn’t very feasible. Nor am I a hysterical hipster worried that screens are going to destroy civilization.
For me, it is and always will be about balance. As much enjoyment as I get from some activities, some other activities are equally enjoyable but often not engaged in simply because old habits are just easier to follow.
I am not a giant social media person — I basically have only about 100 friends on FB, and when it goes above that, I start to get stressed that there is too much superficiality in my feeds. I also avoid drama in my feeds, so keeping it down to less than a hundred helps with that. On Twitter, it is mostly just about me posting review links. I don’t actively engage much. That’s it, that’s all. I’m not on Instagram or Pinterest, or Linked In, Google+, a bunch of others. FB and Twitter.
Now, I confess that while I had no fear of leaving Twits behind for a month, I was wondering about FB. Over the last few years, I have become a bit more isolated from friends and family, and could a month without FB break remaining ties? Would I feel MORE isolated after a month? It could happen, I suppose.
On January 1st, I posted a Happy New Year message, and then went radio silent. I share a few things a day sometimes on FB, so probably 100 shares fewer over the month. And no reading. I warned people I was doing it, just so nobody would notice that I went from active to ghost overnight and start asking, “Who was that masked man?” or worse, no one even noticing.
I broke the “fast” only twice, both intentionally. Some people message me through FB Messenger, and I didn’t treat that as verboten. For me, that was just an alternative to email, which was running strong throughout the month. So I did have 3-4 messages throughout the month that I responded to but without going into regular FB. I also went on Twitter once as I was looking for usage of a specific hashtag possibility and I wasn’t sure if people tagged the “noun” in question as “#noun” or #TheNoun. Wasn’t a big issue, just wanted to not wait until today to find out, and while I was on, I didn’t look for or at anything else. I got in, and got out.
Now, interestingly, I had three reactions throughout the month.
First, sure, I did feel a bit out of the loop on stuff. Enough that I would choose to return rather than just calling it quits on FB entirely. I like the interactions, some of the jokes and teasing. And heck, if my wife can use social media to teach about poop knives, who am I to say I shouldn’t be following along? (Okay, I missed some of you, I said it. Not my family though. Pfttt)
Second, I was surprised how much the social media options were integrated with some of my emails. I do subscribe to a bunch of feeds, some news-related or curations of interesting things, but a couple of them are almost all links to things being shared on social media. I put them all in a folder called “hiatus”. Similarly for when I was tagged in things, I put the notification in the hiatus folder to look at later. I relied on my wife to let me know if anything big or urgent cropped up anywhere.
Third, here is the interesting thing. Since I wasn’t spending time on FB or Twitter, I was far more productive elsewhere. I had lots of extra time. Now, I know some people think that I’m talking about time wasted just reading status updates, but that wasn’t the time suck. It was that because I wasn’t on FB, I wasn’t seeing the dozen or so articles per day that people shared, and clicking on them while I followed a funny cat video down a rabbit hole. Equally, I wasn’t clicking on LongReads (a curated feed) that shares lots of great longer articles — I usually enjoy 1-2 topics per week, minimum. And while I read fast, some of the articles could take 10 minutes for me to read.
FB is like a gateway drug. It wasn’t the drug itself, it was what it opened me up to afterwards. I never really thought of it before, but often after dinner, and we put Jacob to bed, I’ll get on my computer and rather than doing something productive, I would start perusing FB posts. 60 minutes later, or more, I was now tired enough not to want to do anything productive. So I would do a bit and then off to do something else (laundry, TV, whatever).
Without the distraction and rabbit holes, I would clear my email and be ready to be “productive” after about 10 minutes. Sometimes less. Which gave me a fair amount of other time to work on projects. I felt like I had a lot more productive time over the last month, just by elminating the gateway clicking on FB. Wasn’t quite what I expected.
Not only would I do it again, I feel like I may do it intentionally and consciously when I know I have some projects to get finished. I was able to focus a lot better, which is intuitive, but far more effectively in general than I would have expected.
I’m not sure I was an unbiased viewer of tonight’s live performance — Arsenic and Old Lace at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
Some of you may remember back in the day when my lovely bride and I were married at that theatre. We had been season’s tickets subscribers in the past, it was near our old neighbourhood, and we were looking for an off-beat venue. It was perfect for us. So we kind of have a special place in our heart for the old girl. And this year we are season’s ticket holders again. We missed the first play, but I really wanted to see this one. So much so that we changed the tickets to a more convenient night as next weekend is a bit busy.
Why was I excited? Because it’s Arsenic and Old Lace, duh.
I know, I know, you probably don’t even know AOL as anything other than an internet provider that old people used to use. Well, no, A&OL is Arsenic and Old Lace. Lots of older people would remember it as an old Cary Grant movie. If they were truly aware, they would know that it was based on a hugely successful Broadway play starring Boris Karloff, who is referenced repeatedly throughout the original play, movie and tonight’s version. But me? I first heard it as an old-time radio broadcast following an “intro” to radio dramas in Grade 9 Canadian History class.
The comedy tonight has three main levels of cast members…tier 3 involves some beat cops, a visitor, a director of a sanitarium. Tier 2 involves a bride-to-be, a plastic surgeon, and three nephews. And tier 1 includes two elderly aunts. As you find out within the first few minutes of the play, Aunt Martha and Aunt Abby have taken to performing acts of charity with lonely old men — they poison them and bury them in the basement.
Now, with the two aunts, the show lives or dies by their delivery. If they’re “on”, the play sings; if they’re not “on”, it suffers. Tonight? Janet Banigan as Aunt Martha and Sarah Hearn as Aunt Abby were downright awesome. They tripped over lines a couple of times, but not egregiously, and they do occupy almost 40% of the play. Entirely believable. Played by Jean Adair and Josephine Hull in both Broadway and film versions, the characters are delicious to watch. Innocently spooky almost. Just don’t drink their elderberry wine.
The three nephews — Mortimer, the normal one; Jonathan, the criminal; and Teddy, the one who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt — were played by Kurt Shantz, Paul Williamson, Dan Desmarais (the roles occupied by Cary Grant, Raymond Massey as a clone of Boris Karloff, and John Alexander in film). Shantz and Williamson were pretty solid, although Shantz looked a bit too much like Dan Ackroyd in Trading Places at times when he was going for “smug”. Williamson was definitely thug-like for his role, a little bit nutty with a strong mean streak.
The Doctor was played by Claude Laroche, and I almost want to see the film version to see Peter Lorre in the role. Can’t even imagine him as Einstein. With Mary Whalen handling the part of Elaine, the girlfriend/bride-to-be (Priscilla Lane in the film in one of her last roles). I’ve seen Whalen before, and she’s hit and miss for some roles — tonight she did great. As did Laroche, in a role that is hard to balance between a little sleazy, a little weak, a little mousy, a little evil.
The rest of the cast is a bit of a wash both in terms of their performance as well as the roles themselves. In the radio drama, most of them don’t even show up — mostly it’s just the three nephews, two aunts, the doctor, and a beat cop. Seven cast members, not the 13 who were in tonight’s version.
I was nervous — I like the play so much and I just wanted them to nail it. Which they did.
One of the best performances Andrea and I have ever seen at the OLT. Great night…
When I set my goals for the year (Goals for 2017 – Nudging the needle), I had some astronomy goals in mind. Specifically, under my blue goals, I wanted:
Astronomy: Fixed battery supplies + 1 viewing…I want to attend the RASC annual meeting, do at least 1 viewing at Star Party+Luskville+cottage, but I’ll start with 1 viewing. And work on reading the new RASC guidebook for the year.
and under my yellow goals I had:
Astrophotography: One decent shot…Sure, I would like to do more. Level 2 would likely be a complete set of moon phases (1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full). Level 3 and beyond could be constellations, planets, figuring out the laptop thingy, filters, etc. But I’ll start with the moon. And somewhere in there I have to sort my existing astro photos.
Since my new 50by50 goals kind of overtake the regular 2017 ones, I wanted to keep something in my new goals related to astronomy and I wanted to be realistic. So, in the end, I chose:
Upload my previous astronomy photos to my photo gallery;
I didn’t expect to meet all five of those in one week!
Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this last weekend was the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Annual General Meeting, and because it was Canada Day, the Ottawa Chapter (of which I am a member) had offered to host the meeting. About 150-200 attendees across the three days, I think. Including…dun dun dun…me!
Yes, I registered, and yes, I went. I confess readily that I suck at attending RASC meetings. The local chapter meets the first Friday of the month, and there is a mix of technical and non-technical presentations. But the meeting is way across town, you have to pay for parking, the items I usually care about are only part of the meeting, and the reason I joined RASC is not really what they do. I originally hoped for more “informal training”, as I generally don’t know what I’m doing. I had hoped, I guess, that there would be more offerings on set themes, kind of like groups going out one night at the start of the year where everyone gets to figure out how to work the scope better; then perhaps a night aimed at studying the moon; another aimed at planets, or constellations, or clusters. Not really how it works. And I thought the star parties would lead to more obvious bonding, but honestly, you’re in the dark and you can’t even really see the other person you’re talking to most of the time! Don’t get me wrong, some people find it great; I’m an analytical introvert, and mingling is not one of my big skills. All things being equal, I feel I might as well stay home and watch the YouTube feed. 🙂
But I join every year, I pay my dues, and this year, I decided I would go to the annual meeting. I know! Surprised me too!
I won’t cover everything, but I picked up my registration on day 1, including my extra swag, a nice t-shirt for the conference. I was already wearing my “You have a place in space” shirt from the US Planetary Society; if nothing else, I have the group swag. I checked ou the displays, spoke to a couple of people, and said hi to Tristan working the Focus Scientific desk (more on that later). And then I decided to attend a sesson on “50 years of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at the Algonquin Radio Observatory”. I know, right, how could I pass up such a stimulating topic? Dr. Brendan Quine was presenting, and I had heard good things about him, but seriously, why would I care about the topic? Cuz it was a title that did not do the presentation justice. He was fun, engaging, and talked about not only the basics of VLBI and it’s foundational work to create GPS, but also the transfer of the ARO from the government to the private sector and what his company (Thoth) was doing these days. Including workable ideas for space elevators. Not a dry technical presentation at all, although some in the room could have likely handled that detail too, and highly entertaining. Plus I found out that the ARO rents rooms out to guests who want to come and hang out i.e. a place where I could do a weekend’s worth of observing in Algonquin Park where the observing + sleeping is the same location, not a hotel somewhere nearby. With reasonable rates. Colour me intrigued, and I might book something for this fall (when the bugs are gone!).
I even attended the BBQ the first night. I normally eschew the social aspects by nature, but if I want to meet people, I kind of have to do it, right? So I did. And ended up sitting at the same table as our local rock star, Gary Boyle. Okay, so there is nothing remotely “rock star” like about Gary, but he is regularly interviewed by CBC, his name is recognizable to anyone in the Canadian astronomy community plus lots of people internationally, and not for nothing, he just had an asteroid named after him. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/astroid-named-after-gary-boyle-1.4075015 Plus I actually managed to talk to someone I had never met before, Heather from Calgary, who helps out with the Executive and is on several sub-committee/task teams. Practically being a social butterfly by my normal standards. And checking off part (a) above…meeting attended!
I left the BBQ and headed to pick up my son Jacob and wife Andrea, then a friend Mike, and we headed out to the star party in Carp. The weather wasn’t looking awesome but it was still a “go”. We arrived just around 8:30 as the sun was still setting, and Ingrid (wife of Attila, owners of the giant scopes) showed us sun spots on her small 4″ scope. We had a lovely sunset, and then we got to see the Moon, and then Jupiter along with four moons eventually as the night got a bit darker. This was the only the second star party I have been at without my own scope, and the first Ottawa one for Mike, Andrea and Jacob. We all walked up and down the row looking through all the different types, seeing the different setups and viewing options. Later, someone had Saturn in their scopes, so we had to look at them all again for that. Easy to see the rings, all good. Then the fireflies arrived. The field next to the viewing area was dancing. And all of that was in about 1 hour, 15 minutes. By which time the clouds were threatening and the bug stuff we were using was NOT working well enough to stay. Great evening, and tick off part (b) of my goal…star party attended!
On Canada Day, I quite enjoyed the presentation on the solar system and current geological controversies from a retired NRCan scientist, highly enjoyable, and again, a topic I normally wouldn’t have chosen to attend if it was part of the monthly series. I even chatted with some more people at lunch — Eriq La Salle, and his friend Taras, plus Mike M of course — and got some really good advice from Taras on viewing areas and my battery problem. I avoided the opportunity to go visit the Hill that night for Canada Day, and hung out at home with my family. Sunday was okay too, nothing big sticks out, although I skipped the actual AGM in the morning and the banquet at night (which apparently was quite good).
I mentioned above that I talked to Tristan, as well as Taras, and most of that conversation was about two things. First, I have a battery problem. I have two PowerTanks to power my telescope, but they are both standard batteries, which means if you over charge them or leave them on charge or let them go too low on charge, they die. Never to work again.
I killed a large PowerTank, I killed a small PowerTank. And the pain of figuring out what to do with them has been a bit paralysing. I sought other people’s opinions and options online, and found out I could try putting the PowerTanks on trickle or DC charge to see if it would help revive them, but reliability would always be an issue even if I get them to work. Or take them apart and replace the core batteries in them. Which has a bunch of labour involved, not very clear instructions, potentially a need for soldering (!), and no guarantees of success, plus the cost of the batteries, maybe $175+ to attempt to fix both? Or I could say screw it and buy one of the almost idiot-proof lithium ion phosphate ones that don’t die if you mess up the charging schedule. But they cost almost $200 and well, I already have these other ones, they just need fixing. Grrr…
Problem solved. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the old ones, maybe offer them to anyone who wants to try to repair them or for parts. In the meantime, I had power for my scope. You know, that scope I haven’t really used in over a year. Tick box (c) above…power issue solved!
The fourth item on my list was to have one decent shot of the moon. I have a range of options to do this, none of which I’ve figured out how to do reliably or consistently:
Smartphone by itself, not very exciting;
Point and shoot by itself, ditto;
DSLR by itself, with a tripod, at least now I’m in the ballpark;
Scope + smartphone over eyepiece — hard to get the phone centred above the eyepiece;
Scope + point and shoot over eyepiece — similar to smartphone problem, but I have this little adapter thing, just never got it to work very well;
Scope + NEXIMAGE 5 + laptop + software — I’ve done this before, even got some shots, but stability was definitely an issue, plus replicating the outcome from shot to shot.
Scope + DSLR with adapter — sure, this is supposed to be easy, but I’ve struggled on anything other than the moon;
Scope + DSLR with adapter + laptop + software — supposed to take a lot of the guesswork out of the previous option but I haven’t figured that one out yet;
Now, I have been treating these like a series of more and more complicated options and / or more reliable and sophisticated photos. Bear in mind that I am using a SCT-style scope on a basic alt-az base…this is NOT designed for sophisticated astrophotography, and honestly I don’t want it to do that…I just want some quick snaps of what I’m seeing, preferably all less than a second or two of elapsed time. I won’t get the beautiful colour shots of other people, but I’m okay with that. More souvenirs of what I saw, records of my viewing, than art.
And I can pretty much eliminate (a) and (b) above. I haven’t tried (c) yet for the DSLR just on a tripod, not consistently, although I do have a photo or two of the Milky Way and constellations. D-H are all increasingly complicated, as I said, and I wasn’t really into it.
Until I went to the conference and saw what Tristan was selling. A Meade smartphone adapter, one with a very simple setup, with good reviews online. For $30. Hell yeah.
It is a simple adapter that attaches itself to your smartphone and puts a little ring adapter over your camera so that you can “mount” it over an eyepiece i.e. the ring holds the top of the 1.25″ eyepiece (without the rubber cup around the EP) and thus allows you to almost centre it perfectly before you even put the EP into the scope. You can see the layout of it here at the FS store: https://focusscientific.com/product_info.php/products_id/1354
And I managed to get a few decent shots…they are not DSLR quality, nor will I be publishing them in an astro magazine, but as a fun addition to my hobby, I was pretty happy. Then I tried to get a “little” fancy, and do some zooms.
I have moon maps, so I can go through some time and label some of the features. But for now, I’m happy with just getting the shots. Part (d) complete…a good shot of the moon.
Which has left me with one simple piece outstanding — to organize my astronomy photos over the last 4 years and upload them to my site. I had them semi-organized at one point when I had a Piwigo sub-site, but never got around to fixing the mess of how they are stored now that I’m with SmugMug. I hadn’t even uploaded them. So that’s fixed too. I have shots of the sun (1), moon (54), Venus (2), Mars (6), Jupiter (5), Saturn (19), Milky Way (8), Constellations (6) and my gear setup (1). Not all photos in those batches are created equal, but it’s the best I have so far. And with that, I’ve completed part (e)…upload astronomy photos to the gallery.
Which means one of the items that I didn’t think I would come close to completing before the fall is done. I’ve re-started my astronomy hobby. Feels good.
