October 24, 2009

Maintenance, Heavens Above and reCurved

As you can probably see, I have done a little site maintenance this morning, dredging out the CSS knowledge from when I used to design the web pages, killing that bloody annoying transparency behind the posts and adding a sexy new header image up there (my dob+the moon, from last night).  So the blog, which is 20 days old now, is looking a bit better :)

I found some awesome links last night, which I added to the Linkage section over there, chief among which is Heavens Above which has the cool feature of recording your Lat, Long and Alt then preparing tables of things like planet rise times and positions based on where you are ... I love it, it's awesome and consider this a plug!  If anyone's interested (looking at you Bill) Snells Beach is approx -36.4°N, 174.7°E with an alt of pretty much 0.

The other thing I found last night was CHDK (Canon Hack Dev Kit) which is a firmware extension for Canon digital cameras, that allows you have full manual control over pretty much everything, focus, aperture, ISO, all the way up to programmable time lapse.  So I am now officially looking to sell my Lumix if anyone's interested :) Nice little camera, for a very reasonable price.

Finally, I am working on a new blog (in addition to this one) to cover another of my recent obbsessions, the blog, which will be called reCurved is the experiences, results and fun of the SBGDSC (Snells Beach Garage Door Snipers Club) - which at this point amounts to 3 guys firing arrows at a target on my garage.  So I will let y'all know when that's up and running :)

So today, it's a beautiful sunny day, warm, full of (now) clean washing and hopefully (later) starting work on AstroCam2.  AstroCam having been retired to being gaffer-taped to the top of my secondary monitor so I can speak to my beloved Jacqui whilst she's in Malaysia. See you all tonight!

4 comments:

BillB said...

Thanks for the lat/long, I've been using Auckland. Come to think of it, google earth would also be an easy way to find it. Site's looking good!

Allan Sheblom said...

Hey Man

Your blog is looking good man, digging your banner.

Thought you might want to have a look at these programs on you en devours into space:
http://portableapps.com/apps/education/celestia_portable

http://portableapps.com/apps/education/stellarium_portable

Selina said...

Liking the new look!

ValHallen said...

Thanks Guys!!

Allan: I already use Stellarium bro :) Don't have a laptop of my own atm, but when Bill gets his back, it will have Stellarium on it :D

Pixi! Cheers hon, your cleaver inspired me somewhat :)