Hi Folks,
Its been awhile but mostly what I have been doing is working. If your a facebook friend you already know that I am below 300lbs. A lot has changed in these past few months, now that I have shrunk I have much more energy! This has lead to me becoming a Doer, the result is that I am currently working with a new laptop.
Now we are moving into the Plan. I am ordering a new telescope optical tube tomorrow, and updating my pinboard. The next month will be spent trying to secure the GEM for my mount. Along with birthday money I will hopefully have the telescope and mount in late June, then the fun begins.
My plan is to start in my back yard, setting up and tearing down the scope, using eyepieces to split doubles and star testing. I have found my old DSI Pro II not only works, but works in linux as well. I hope to turn it into a guide camera on my setup.
Once the mount and Telescope have been setup I am going to try and figure out how to start my camping setups, more than likely I am going to purchase a tent, after I have some of the big ticket astro imaging items done. I plan on doing a trip to Mt.Lemmon or something of the like in August, but we will have to see. In the fall though expedition one may go off.
In the mean time Stay tuned to the pinboard as Items are purchased they will go off the list.
A couple of more items, this saturday 5/04/2014 I would like to get a group together to talk about projects they are working on. I hope to make it an ongoing thing, which may become a club.
Also I have started a wiki, Exemplar Astronomiae its latin for a book of astronomy which is meant to be copied. I hope to put up tidbits of knowledge as well as some experiments people can do with telescopes from 5-42inches. Hopefully the experiments will be detailed enough that people can repeat them. There is a section for equipment as well, with instructions for various calibration and testing strategies. My hope is that others will eventually contribute but we will see.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Next Steps
So I am almost to the point of purchasing my laptop. My next purchase is going to be the OTA for my next telescope. Why the OTA first, because its on back order until June, so I need to order it now and get it while the getting is good. Next is the mount, followed by my camera modification. Then comes the fun part, each of the little individual components necissary to make my telescope work properly.
These range for the coma corrector to the laser collimator to reticle eyepieces to autoguiding setups. Not to mention I have to go to a wedding in August. Hopefully we are on track to do our first expedition next October, but we will have to see. I will post pics of my laptop when it comes in hopefully in a couple of weeks.
In the mean time I have created a website for the two aspects of my business, tutoring and computer repairs. It can be found at twedgec.com.
These range for the coma corrector to the laser collimator to reticle eyepieces to autoguiding setups. Not to mention I have to go to a wedding in August. Hopefully we are on track to do our first expedition next October, but we will have to see. I will post pics of my laptop when it comes in hopefully in a couple of weeks.
In the mean time I have created a website for the two aspects of my business, tutoring and computer repairs. It can be found at twedgec.com.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Running Behind
So the plan is proceeding, sort of. Right now I am saving up some money but unfortunately I am not prepping to buy a scope. The first thing I need to get is a new laptop. My current beast of burden has served me well, but its been worked too hard for too long. As a result my acquisitions are behind. My initial goal was to purchase the telescope and mount first followed by some camping gear so that I would be ready for the Grand Canyon Star party, now it looks like nothing will be happening until next fall.
If you are interested in what I am planning for a new laptop its a rather funny story, I am planning on getting a bare-bones kit and building it up myself. You can get them at rjtech.com with some $10 spudgers you can make yourself a laptop, it will be pretty heavy, however I am not noticing the girth of my old laptop as much now that I am getting healthier. I am hoping to order the laptop by mid April, once that is done I will hopefully have enough by mid-May to buy my scope, which may take a few months to get here.
If you are interested in what I am planning for a new laptop its a rather funny story, I am planning on getting a bare-bones kit and building it up myself. You can get them at rjtech.com with some $10 spudgers you can make yourself a laptop, it will be pretty heavy, however I am not noticing the girth of my old laptop as much now that I am getting healthier. I am hoping to order the laptop by mid April, once that is done I will hopefully have enough by mid-May to buy my scope, which may take a few months to get here.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Be the Change
The plan is still on, I am attempting to ramp up my business in order to get to the point where I can purchase everything that I will need. But I am restless, the problem is that I have a need to tinker. To this end I have bought an Aurduino Uno board as a platform for building a Temperature compensating focuser. The focuser software will run under Linux Mint.
The thing that has always bothered me about Amateur astronomy is that the tools we need for our hobby cost so much. Software which should not be expensive is either hundreds or thousands of dollars. This needs to change, which is why I started OpenAIP. However this project will never get finished as long as all of the tools needed to go around it are gestating. The good news is that there are good hardware platforms on Windows and Linux, ASCOM and INDI respectively. The next step is to build the tools on top of these platforms for image processing.
GIMP should do the job of Photoshop, and to a certain extent it does. But we have no equivalent for Maxim DL (hence OpenAIP). My personal opinion is that a version of linux dedicated to astronomy should exist. One where you can simply boot your computer up and try it or install it and make it work for you. But this is a goal far off in the future, for now I will start with my focuser and eventually get back to OpenAIP.
Look forward to tutorials for installing INDI on Linux Mint/Ubuntu.
Ed.
Of course after I wrote this Cinnamon inexplicably crashed so hard I had to re-image the machine overnight.
The thing that has always bothered me about Amateur astronomy is that the tools we need for our hobby cost so much. Software which should not be expensive is either hundreds or thousands of dollars. This needs to change, which is why I started OpenAIP. However this project will never get finished as long as all of the tools needed to go around it are gestating. The good news is that there are good hardware platforms on Windows and Linux, ASCOM and INDI respectively. The next step is to build the tools on top of these platforms for image processing.
GIMP should do the job of Photoshop, and to a certain extent it does. But we have no equivalent for Maxim DL (hence OpenAIP). My personal opinion is that a version of linux dedicated to astronomy should exist. One where you can simply boot your computer up and try it or install it and make it work for you. But this is a goal far off in the future, for now I will start with my focuser and eventually get back to OpenAIP.
Look forward to tutorials for installing INDI on Linux Mint/Ubuntu.
Ed.
Of course after I wrote this Cinnamon inexplicably crashed so hard I had to re-image the machine overnight.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Factoring integers for fun and profit
Sorry for the time between posts. I have been working on a project which has been monopolizing my time. Anyway we had a lull at work and there is a problem which crops up periodically which is I get a 3-5 digit number which I think might be prime. While my TI-89 will factor integer I also thought it would be relatively easy to write a program which is determines primality simply by searching for a divisor. Once a divisor greater than 1 and less than the number is found the number is composite.
Hence you simple use the mod operator in C to find a divisor and you only need to check integer less in the desired range if you do not find one then the number is prime. This program is a strait forward exersise I am thinking of giving to some of my programming tutoring students. Now I told one of the other tutors about this and they asked me if 2013 was prime, which I responded it was not. They asked me what its factorization was, which I did not know. They seemed upset, so challenge accepted. Next I was extending my program to provide the prime factorization of a number less than UINT_MAX which happens to be the same as ULONG_MAX. The result is this file.
The interesting thing is that trial division is highly inefficient method of doing prime factorization. However for integers up to 2^32-1 computers are fast enough for this method to give results in a reasonable amount of time. (1-2 secs) Now keep in mind that this is purely an interesting side project for me, as it has no practical use, i.e. code-breaking.
What was amazing was that when I went to ULLONG_MAX which is 2^64-1, this program broke. Not only is it too slow but the sheer size of integers causes segmentation faults. The first solution I thought of was using libpari to generate a list of primes. However libpari could only do this on a 64-bit native system, so the next step is to create a class which generates at its instantiation the list of primes from 2 to 2^64-1 (well 2^64-59 inclusive) This will require implementation of a decent prime sieve, since I have written Sieve of Eratosthenes before I am thinking that I will implement the Sieve of Atkin.
My hope is that this process will yield an algorithm that is O(n/log(n)) at detecting primes after the list has been generated. Doing this for arbitrary primes is a much harder question. <-massive understatement! If you have not done this and are interested in programming I highly suggest doing it once, its a wonderful afternoon of work.
Ed. Do the back of the envelope calculation on how much memory you would need to hold all of the primes less than 2^64-1. Its a steep hill to climb.
Hence you simple use the mod operator in C to find a divisor and you only need to check integer less in the desired range if you do not find one then the number is prime. This program is a strait forward exersise I am thinking of giving to some of my programming tutoring students. Now I told one of the other tutors about this and they asked me if 2013 was prime, which I responded it was not. They asked me what its factorization was, which I did not know. They seemed upset, so challenge accepted. Next I was extending my program to provide the prime factorization of a number less than UINT_MAX which happens to be the same as ULONG_MAX. The result is this file.
The interesting thing is that trial division is highly inefficient method of doing prime factorization. However for integers up to 2^32-1 computers are fast enough for this method to give results in a reasonable amount of time. (1-2 secs) Now keep in mind that this is purely an interesting side project for me, as it has no practical use, i.e. code-breaking.
What was amazing was that when I went to ULLONG_MAX which is 2^64-1, this program broke. Not only is it too slow but the sheer size of integers causes segmentation faults. The first solution I thought of was using libpari to generate a list of primes. However libpari could only do this on a 64-bit native system, so the next step is to create a class which generates at its instantiation the list of primes from 2 to 2^64-1 (well 2^64-59 inclusive) This will require implementation of a decent prime sieve, since I have written Sieve of Eratosthenes before I am thinking that I will implement the Sieve of Atkin.
My hope is that this process will yield an algorithm that is O(n/log(n)) at detecting primes after the list has been generated. Doing this for arbitrary primes is a much harder question. <-massive understatement! If you have not done this and are interested in programming I highly suggest doing it once, its a wonderful afternoon of work.
Ed. Do the back of the envelope calculation on how much memory you would need to hold all of the primes less than 2^64-1. Its a steep hill to climb.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Recipies Page
Hi All,
Apparently people are now interested in what I am eating, which I kind of do not understand but no matter. I have added a recipes page with my first recipe, a marinated London Broil which I may cook for this weekend again. Stay tuned for Teriyaki Salmon, Paleo-Pizza, and others. Find the link at the top.
Apparently people are now interested in what I am eating, which I kind of do not understand but no matter. I have added a recipes page with my first recipe, a marinated London Broil which I may cook for this weekend again. Stay tuned for Teriyaki Salmon, Paleo-Pizza, and others. Find the link at the top.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Happy Holidays
Hi All,
I hope your are having a happy holiday season. I am sick as usual, but I did get a wonderful Christmas Gift of slippers from my Mother. I am now eating solid food again and it is glorious, as I am finally getting the hang of eating with this new digestive tract. I think I will try to make some pizza soon with pita bread as a crust.
In the interim I would like to discuss the notion of hobbies. I think that one of the reasons people are so miserable is that they do not have hobbies. Notice I didn't say a hobby, I said hobbies. Hence, since I am going to get a digital SLR anyway. I am going to go ahead and learn how to take pictures and edit them in Photoshop and Lightroom. This is on top of rebuilding my electronics making capacity.
Ultimately I want you guys to stay tuned for some interesting developments in January. I hope to have a line of EQMOD cables for purchase. Along with maybe some serial bulb cables to control Canon camera's via a Serial/USB port.
I hope your are having a happy holiday season. I am sick as usual, but I did get a wonderful Christmas Gift of slippers from my Mother. I am now eating solid food again and it is glorious, as I am finally getting the hang of eating with this new digestive tract. I think I will try to make some pizza soon with pita bread as a crust.
In the interim I would like to discuss the notion of hobbies. I think that one of the reasons people are so miserable is that they do not have hobbies. Notice I didn't say a hobby, I said hobbies. Hence, since I am going to get a digital SLR anyway. I am going to go ahead and learn how to take pictures and edit them in Photoshop and Lightroom. This is on top of rebuilding my electronics making capacity.
Ultimately I want you guys to stay tuned for some interesting developments in January. I hope to have a line of EQMOD cables for purchase. Along with maybe some serial bulb cables to control Canon camera's via a Serial/USB port.
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