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Observer’s Handbook, 2019 by RASC (2018) – BR00142 (2019) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
March 12 2019

Plot or Premise

This is the annual observer’s guide published by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

What I Liked

Each year, the Observer’s Guide is produced and sold to amateur and professional astronomers across North America, and those astronomers vary considerably in their capacity and interests. It’s hard to serve any “one group”, but as I am at the intro stage to the hobby, I’ll review from that perspective. Some highlights include:

  • List of observatories, star parties, planetaria (pp 11-14);
  • Observable satellites of the planets (pp 25-26);
  • Observing artificial satellites (p 38);
  • Overview of filters (pp 64-67);
  • Deep-sky observing hints by Alan Dyer (pp 85-87);
  • Lunar observing (pp 158-161);
  • The brightest stars (pp 274-283, 285); and,
  • The deep sky (pp 307-337).

Of course, it also has the key reference materials:

  • The Moon (pp 148-157);
  • The Sun (pp 184-193);
  • Dwarf and minor planets (pp 241-251); and,
  • Double and multiple stars (pp 291-294, 296-297).

And it has specific highlights for the year:

  • The Sky month-by-month (pp 94-121);
  • Times of sunrise and sunset for 2019 (pp 205-207);
  • 2019 transit of Mercury (pp 139-143);
  • The planets in 2019 (pp 211-229); and,
  • Comets in 2019 (p 264).

I’m happy too that some of the errors in URLs published last year have been corrected.

What I Didn’t Like

I still find the pages on telescope exit pupils (pp 50-53) to be incredibly dense. I keep meaning to find a more basic set of explanations online of it, but I never seem to get around to it. I would add the next section on magnification and contrast in deep sky observing (pp 54-57) as equally confusing. I have to believe that dense text can somehow be explained more easily to the newbie with some basic guidelines for common scopes and ages of users. Equally, I’m not thrilled with the astrophotography section (pp 91-93) which still lists the “big cameras” as best, in the same way that many photography websites ten years ago suggested that professionals would never go digital. There is an emerging market for people sharing prime shots they take with their smartphones — souvenir quality shots, not NASA shots — and it is almost completely ignored by the section (grudgingly it says “even cell phones”). I also find that the economic bias of last year towards higher-end binoculars and scopes continues. But those issues are mostly me just being picky — they aren’t enough to reduce the overall rating.

Disclosure

I received a copy of the guide as part of my annual membership in RASC.

The Bottom Line

Excellent edition for the year.

The Two-Night One-Night Stand by Ryan Ringbloom (2018) – BR00126 (2019) – 🐸⚪⚪⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
January 27 2019

Plot or Premise

A case of mistaken identity on a blind date leads to a one-night stand.

What I Liked

I don’t normally read romance or romcom, but I grabbed this off Kindle Unlimited because it was free, it sounded like it could be funny, and the initial question of the story — can you turn a one-night stand into a dating partner? — had some great potential. How do you go from sex without strings to a potential relationship?

What I Didn’t Like

The writing is lacklustre, the sexual escapades beyond unrealistic (neither very experienced but both are supposedly MIND-BLOWING in bed — it actually contains the line that he has ruined her for other men), and the characters more stupid than immature. Plus completely inconsistent — hesitant, unsure of themselves, constantly letting their personal squirrels mess with their heads until they’re drunk out of their minds, having sex, etc., and then they suddenly become confident porn stars. And there were only two scenes that were even humourous, with neither rising to funny.

The Bottom Line

More failed romance novel than RomCom

Change: What Really Leads to Lasting Personal Transformation by Jeffrey A. Kottler (2013) – BR00118 (2018) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
December 17 2018

Plot or Premise

Kottler reflects on literature and his personal experiences as a psychologist about the elements that lead people to not only make changes in their life but also sustain those changes over the long-term.

What I Liked

I had the pleasure of hearing Kottler speak as an honoured guest at my wife’s university graduation ceremony, and he intrigued me enough on the subject of “change” — what we know and what we don’t know — that I bought his book. It was the perfect book for me at this point in my life, as I’ve been wanting to make a significant change that has been holding me back for at least 30 years. I’m great at the day-to-day goal-setting stuff, but I needed to understand large-scale change on a deeper level, and this book was ideal for that education.

In the beginning, I was struck by a central question — when does an alteration in attitudes, beliefs, behaviour, thinking, or feeling “count” as change, and how long does it have to last in order to qualify? In shorter terms, when does a temporary change become permanent and sustainable? Chapter 2 was an eye-opener — hidden benefits from my current approach that resist change. Not the obvious ones but more internal ones that might even seem like positive traits in someone (being strong, standing up for oneself disguising some issues with temper, for instance). And some baby-step coping techniques. Chapter 3 dealt more with the conditions that allow you to transition from temporary to permanent change, almost pre-conditions in some cases.

Other chapters were relatively straight-forward: the power of story-telling (chapter 4); hitting bottom in various forms (chapter 5); how you react to trauma and whether it can be a positive catalyst (chapter 6); the limits to psychotherapy (chapter 7); change through physical travel or spiritual journeys (chapter 8); moments of clarity (chapter 9); and resolving conflicts in relationships (chapter 13). The last chapter — Why Changes Don’t Often Last (Chapter 14) — was the one that I was most looking forward to in the book, and while he goes into various spins and examples, most of it seems to come down to varying forms of fear. It certainly did for me, and I find the chapter fantastic for presenting it quite concisely. In the end, the price of the book is worth it just to get the 7 pages at the end, if you have time for nothing else (308-315).

I managed to use it to create a six-part “to do” list / game plan for the change that I’ve been wanting to make, and for the first time in my life, I’m doing it. I’m six months in and it seems to be holding. It’ll take another 18 months to “finish”, but the book helped me get there. Onward to the journey!

What I Didn’t Like

Several chapters didn’t really sing as well as the rest. Being happy (chapter 11) and transformation while helping others (12) were relatively bland, and a chapter on the importance of social capital (chapter 10) seemed almost like an afterthought.

The Bottom Line

It gave me the courage to get unstuck after 30 years.

Observer’s Handbook, 2018 by RASC (2017) – BR00114 (2017) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
November 11 2017

Plot or Premise

This is the annual observer’s guide published by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

What I Liked

One of the most obvious challenges for an Observer’s Guide of this kind is balancing the needs of newbies and moderate amateurs with the needs of advanced astronomers, photographers, and outright astrophysicists. However, I’m on the newer end of the spectrum, and I found the typical wealth of information such as using the handbook for teaching purposes and resources (p 17); observable satellites (p 25); filters (p 64); deep-sky observing hints (p 85); the sky month by month; and overviews on planets, dwarf planets, satellites, the sun, and various star options before getting to the deep-sky lists (which could benefit from better presentation). However, I think my favourite section was on the Moon. The entire handbook is “made” just having the info from Bruce McCurdy on lunar observing starting on page 158 as it is perfect for me. Relative shifts per day (p 158), Canadian content (p 160), the Hadley Rille (p 161), and the lunar certificate (p 161) are all great elements for me to try to see in the coming year.

What I Didn’t Like

I was surprised to see a number of errors in included URLs. While it is hard to stay evergreen, these were links that had not changed from last year and when I went back to the RASC website, the links worked just fine. Somehow they got edited in publication and never tested. Even links to the actual RASC website were wrong. There are also some highly technical pages on magnification, telescope parameters, night myopia, and exit pupils, and while correct, they are presented so densely that re-reading them left me more confused than informed. Finally, there is a strong economic bias that creeps into the texts in a few places — on binoculars, the only ones they mention as being good cost around $1500, and when talking about using Schmidt-Cassegrain scopes (often bought as they are quite portable), recommends just putting it in your backyard observatory, assuming, of course, that you have the money to have a house with a backyard with room and resources to build an observatory. In addition, there are numerous editing choices made throughout the text such as lists sorted by one variable instead of by one that might aid organization. I’ve already found myself copying lists from previous years online into spreadsheets so I can resort them into a more usable format.

Disclosure

I received a copy of the guide as part of my annual membership in RASC.

The Bottom Line

Solid guide but some editorial and tone issues throughout.

Hot Six by Janet Evanovich (2001) – BR00102 (2017) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
January 20 2017

Plot or Premise

Plum’s got her latest assignment, no problem. She just has to bring in Ranger, a suspect in the death of a wanna-be gangster, the son of an arms dealer.

What I Liked

As with most things Plum, there’s a lot going on … Grandma has moved in, she gets stuck babysitting a wild dog, and there’s a killer running around who likes Stephanie. Plus we get to see an old high school pal, Moon Man, who is frequently fun since the elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top floors.

What I Didn’t Like

The whole sub-story with gun-runners and missing money, and Ranger being “wanted”, gets a little ridiculous after a while.

The Bottom Line

Plum vs. Ranger…talk about a mismatch.