Light Pollution

We were invited to a house in Wilder last night, a town well away from Boise.  I could still barely still 3rd magnitude stars.  Industrial plants such as Simplot's potato operations are surprisingly bright.  Boise does not help either. 

Appropriately Named Rep. Stalker (D-KY)

Explains why white kids need to be feel bad about their race.

As usual, a privileged person assumes she is privileged because of her race.  That she is privileged because Mom and Dad stayed together and created a stable home for her never occurs to her.

Million Monkeys, Million Typewriters, Million Dreams

I had q dream last night involving the word "rengulate."  There is no such word. But it kept coming back in multiple dreams  It is not a verb although it has the form of one.  It is not a category of animal like an ungulate.  Why did my subconscious create this verb. Can any of you assign a meaning for what seems to be a perfectly fine, million monkeys, million typewriters, million years word?

I Have Had Weeks Of Not Busy

This has allowed me to spend time on hobby activities.   Suddenly, College of Western Idaho's LMS (learning Management System) Canvas is operational for me to prepare for my spring semester class.  I am headed to New Orleans and Alabama on vacation December 27th, so i am attempting to get this all done before I leave.  I have taught this class before using the Blackboard LMS.  It is not like starting from scratch but about three hours per week of instruction to move to Canvas.  It is pretty tiring so I cannot spend all day at it. Blogging needless to say is lower priority. 

Adventures in Optics

That 52mm 152mm F.L. achromatic lens arrived Monday.  It seems a decent piece of glass for its intended purpose: a wide angle low power finderscope.  I had considered making the rest of the scope from carbon fiber composite, but this is perilously close to polishing a cow pie to perfect brilliance.   It turns out that perfectly respectable refractors can be made from lens like this and PVC plumbing pipe.  SCHEDULE 40 pipe in 2" nominal diameter is just about exactly the right size for this.  A 2" to 1" nominal size coupler allows you to use a PVC tube that is 1.31" OD.  To make go through the coupler I will bore through the coupler.   The 1" nominal tube will need boring to accept the 1.25" eyepiece.  I will tap the coupler to accept a thumb screw.  This will five a drawtube for coarse focus.  I have a helical focuser that goes into the draw tube for getting this nice and sharp.

Another fitting whose purpose is unclear (at least for plumbing) is the right ID for the achromat lens to rest in it.  I will put some 52mm O-rings at the front to hold the lens in place.  I need to figure some way to add set screws for adjusting the collimation of the lens to the tube.  I suspect my solution will only be approximate and that is probably good enough for intended purpose  

Bored? In Need of a Research Project for Your Colonial American History Class?

 I happened on this collection of estate inventories at the Colonial Williamsburg website.  Searching for gun produced 354 matches.  Gathering up all that data and summarizing it might be interesting.

Using the Rotating Table

LinuxCNC's axis GUI shows what the program will do and while it does it.  This is the first time I have written code using the rotating table and seen the display.

I am not sure how useful this really is.  It looks like a hose reel.