These are sunrise & sunset times on the first of each month.
naiteek sangani has indicated you are a Friend:
Hi Rick,
I am a recent graduate from Columbia University and am seeking FULL TIME employment in the field of Software Development. Kindly get in touch with me if you have anything in store for me.Looking forward to hearing from you.
regards,
- naiteek sangani
I'm not sure of this person's culture, and what passes for initiative or standard practice, but here in the US (and I think it's fairly evident from my LinkedIn profile that I'm in the US), this kind of approach is guaranteed to make any potential employer avoid you like the plague.
]]>The number they're all calling has been listed in the Do Not Call Registry for years. Now, like typical pro-consumer legislation, the Do Not Call rules allow companies with "existing relationships" to continue to contact you, as well as some degree of their subsidiaries and partners. It also has very little teeth. I had hoped for $500 fines per incident (similar to unsolicited faxing), but it doesn't appear to be so.
So, back to the calls. They're generally native English speakers, cheerful and energetic. They almost always imply a pre-existing relationship, by saying they're following up on the information I requested before.
To be clear: I have never requested such information. I am hypersensitive to marketing efforts, and do all my research anonymously online. I never knowingly request information of this nature. I think it's a blatant lie, intended to confuse me, or cause me to doubt myself, and is an attempt to shield themselves from the law that allows contact in case of pre-existing relationships.,/p>
On to the calls. This list is by no means complete. I've received literally dozens of calls, many I ignore. Some wake me in the morning. If I'm patient enough, I'll get a name from the caller. I also don't trust the caller ID; it could easily be forged, I think.
When I called one back (to verify it was not a legitimate missed call), he answered as if he were not expecting a business call. A "hello," some confusion, and after I asked who this was, because I saw the call in my call log, he replied, "This is the after-hours answering service for US Oil Fields" (a company that has called me before, or with a name similar to one). This makes me think that these aren't even call centers, but individuals in their homes, making these calls.
| Date | Company | Agent | Caller ID | Location | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-02-04 1629 PST | Properties Coast to Coast | Jeff Deese | 818 373-6746 | Northern LA, CA | |
| 2010-01-25 1423 PST | International Images | Denis Sheild | 702 922-1300 | Las Vegas, NV | Claims we spoke six months ago about "amazing photographs." This time I made a point of getting his name and company name, and so he took that opportunity to describe what they do. Something about selling "great" art, images, photographs from around the world. This is different from all the others, in that he wasn't asking me to invest in precious metals or oil fields. But it's the same kind of call; the suggestion that we've had a conversation prior to this. |
| 2010-01-25 1402 PST | Atlantis Group | Ron Lewist (sp?) | 310 856-9700 | Gardena, CA | I answered this call, and heard the caller speaking to someone near him, saying something about "the fucking transfer." It took five or six "Hello?" inquiries form me before he started talkign to me: "From the way you answered, you don't remember me." "You've never called me before." "Really? I have here in my notes that we've spoken." "You're full of shit. You've never called me. You're one of a thousand companies that's calling me with the same schtick." Something about I'm gonna miss out, that something's happening. I tried to tell him to put me on the do not call list, and he kept on yapping, so I hung up. |
| 2010-01-21 1459 PST | Advantage Management | 954 351-5459 | FL | Also told me to invest in precious metals. | |
| 2010-01-21 1144 PST | American Precious Metals | Anna Risesh | 954 944-0965 | FL | This company has called me many times. I've requested to be put on their do not call list, only to get a call from the same area code an hour later. |
| 2010-01-20 1514 PST | 214 628-9435 | TX | Also told me to invest in precious metals. | ||
| 2010-01-20 1407 PST | US Oil Fields | 213 281-9074 | Los Angeles, CA | When I called, a man said, "hello." When I asked who it was, after fumbling a bit, he said "This is the after-hours answering service for US Oil Fields." This call and the next came within seconds of each other. | |
| 2010-01-20 1407 PST | Domestic Development Company | 214 350-1340 | TX | ||
| 2010-01-20 | Fusion | TX | Might be one of the other calls this day. | ||
| 2010-01-20 1302 PST | Unanswered | 214 628-9435 | TX | ||
| 2010-01-19 1459 PST | Unanswered | 214 628-9435 | TX | ||
| 2010-01-19 1039 PST | Unanswered | 954 944-0139 | FL | ||
| 2010-01-18 1235 PST | Unanswered | 954 491-9764 | FL | ||
| 2010-01-15 0807 PST | Unanswered | 214 628-9435 | TX | ||
| 2010-01-14 1611 PST | Unanswered | 954 944-0966 | FL | ||
| 2010-01-13 1214 PST | Templeton Financial Group | 561 499-9889 | FL | ||
| 2010-01-12 1417 PST | Unanswered | 214 628-9435 | TX | ||
| 2010-01-11 1339 PST | Unanswered | 512 623-5784 | Austin, TX | ||
| 2010-01-11 1137 PST | Unanswered | 214 628-9435 | TX | ||
| 2010-01-06 1102 PST | Rockwell | 954 725-1599 | FL | Precious metals. | |
| 2009-12-30 0921 PST | Unanswered | 214 628-9435 | TX | ||
| 2009-12-28 1525 PST | Unanswered | 818 373-6756 | Los Angeles, CA | I got another call from 818 for restaurant franchise opportunities. |
I've filed a complaint via the Do Not Call Registry, but they don't address individual complaints. I filed a complaint with the FTC, but they don't, either. I think the next step will be to contact my local representatives.
Update 2010-01-25: I called the FCC today, but unfortunately the people who handle these complaints were gone for the day. Supposedly they'll be calling me back.
]]>You may find the suggestions below expensive. That's part of why I haven't gotten it all yet. You should know that I don't like to start small. I like to get equipment that makes my life as easy as possible. You may prefer a different approach. Don't let this post discourage you from trying. It's likely you have more patience than I do.
Astrophotography is hard. Shooting bright objects like the moon is easy. Shooting any kind of "deep sky" object, like a nebula, is hard. There is a lot to learn, and a lot of equipment to buy, and you can really go whole-hog. When I was trying to figure this stuff out, I didn't really want to know everything, just the specifics for the kind of equipment I had already bought (a Celestron NexStar 6SE).
So, here's a partial list of stuff to buy to get started. I'm sure you can do better, and I haven't even tried all of these things myself, but it's what I have or will buy next. Note that I assume you're using a Cassegrain telescope.
Okay, I there's more stuff to put on this list, but I'm finding it hard to be specific enough in the short time I want to take to write this. A couple of notes:
The telescope suggested above is both a mount and an optical tube (OTA). I'd probably recommend getting a different OTA, one with the capability of accepting 2" optics on the back. The Sirius EQ-G mount worked well for me for the short time I had it, although I didn't like the computer as much as on the NexStar 6SE mount. However, it will work fine with any number of OTAs. It's often cheaper to buy one of their pre-made combinations, but it might not really be what you want. The actual OTA you get is (in my inexperienced opinion) less important than the mount, the focuser, and the camera. But the more serious accessories are 2", and you can always add an adaptor to get down to the 1.25" stuff.
Oh, and get the GPS accessory to save you time and reduce errors when setting up.
The focuser mentioned above seems like a first-rate device, but I don't have one yet. Ideally, you want electric, computer-controlled focusing. Focusing is the single hardest part of shooting images, and I can't stress enough how much frustration I've encountered with it. I very much want computer-controlled focusing, and as a beginning step, I would get a focuser that at least has an electric motor on it that I can control manually. This keeps you from touching the telescope and making it shake.
There is so much backlash in the worm gear on the built-in focus in the SCT OTA, it's very hard to use it to focus. Adding the Crayford-style focuser should vastly improve your ability to focus, and I won't try to take pictures again until I have one.
Buying a focuser from those guys requires knowing exactly what telescope you have. There are like three different things to order: the focuser itself, the adaptor for your specific telescope, and the remote focus motor and electronics. After you settle on a telescope, call them and they should be helpful in getting you the right focuser.
Before buying the focuser, try shooting without it on your scope, and see what your results are. Pretty soon, you'll be wanting one.
There are many choices in cameras. If you have a nice DSLR, you'll probably want to use that. I borrowed a friend's for a while, but finally bought a low-res video camera from The Imaging Source. His DSLR was a little too old to be well-controlled by the computer. The key is to be able to have the computer see what the camera sees, with rapid frame updates, to make it easier to focus. Once that's done, you want the computer to be able to control the camera's shutter and exposure, so that you can remotely trigger it, and not shake the OTA.
Once you start taking pictures that need more than a few (10 - 30) seconds' exposure, you're going to need to autoguide your telescope. This requires a second camera. Fortunately, this camera can be cheaper and lower-quality, and ideally is black and white.
While your main imaging camera has its shutter open and is accumulating photons, it can't send back data to the computer. The second camera takes short exposures of brighter stars, and uses the movement of those stars to move the telescope while the main camera is still exposing. You can easily need to take several hour-long exposures to get a really good deep-sky image, and for this, autoguiding is a requirement (simple open-loop tracking isn't good enough, and you'll get smearing).
I have no recommendations for autoguiding, because I've never gotten good enough at focusing to even consider it. You'll need a little OTA attached to your main OTA for it, and you'll need a camera and software compatible with your computer (I use a Mac, and most of this stuff is designed for PCs).
But you can take some nice images with good focus and your mount's tracking before spending money on autoguiding.
There's so much more to learn. Get Ron Wodowski's The New CCD Astronomy to learn it all. For example, the best pictures are taken with very sensitive B&W cameras, and color filters are used. You shoot four separate images, three with RGB filters and one for luminance, and then combine them in software.
There's stuff about periodic error correction (PEC) and other elements of the tracking mount drive train to improve tracking.
There's stuff about cooling your imaging device to reduce thermal noise in the sensor.
There's stuff about shooting dark frames to remove noise from defects in your sensor (this you can do with any setup, and is fairly easy: just put the cover on your telescope, and shoot a frame, then subtract that from your results in software).
These are sunrise & sunset times on the first of each month.
jetforme: My new twitter name will be Father Changsteine El Gamal
CatherineQ: @jetforme Wow you're really going to screw us up for RTs then? :-)
Blueskeyes207: @jetforme Um, no.
txflygirl: @jetforme I think that name is 140 characters
jetforme: @txflygirl @Blueskeyes207 @CatherineQ Father Changstein El Gamal from the First Amalgamated Church (of Futurama) :-)
jetforme: @txflygirl LOL!
txflygirl: @jetforme This is what a tweet to you would be like
txflygirl: @jetforme Father Changstein El Gamal from the First Amalgamated Church -- how
txflygirl: @jetforme Father Changstein El Gamal from the First Amalgamated Church -- was
txflygirl: @jetforme Father Changstein El Gamal from the First Amalgamated Church -- your
txflygirl: @jetforme Father Changstein El Gamal from the First Amalgamated Church -- day
I started laughing out loud so hard, I was slipping off the edge of my couch, and I could barely read the screen 'cause my eyes were tearing up. This kept up for at least the five minutes it took me to put my leftover dinner away.
Awesome tweeps.
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So, I looked along the rays of light to see the source. Turns out, the afternoon sun was reflecting off a stop sign in the street below. I'm still not sure how the reflection occurred, since the sign is roughly perpendicular to the ground, and both the Sun and I are well above the sign, and both on the same side of it (left-to-right and front-to-back). Perhaps it's the nature of the reflective paint used.
Shooting the sign challenged my otherwise fairly capable digicam, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3. Interesting vertical lines appear prominent in the sign, as does a double image. The image was taken through a somewhat dirty window and screen, but the effect is barely noticeable (if at all) on other elements in the image.
Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool.
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Block diagram:
Here's what's inside. A MakeController and an alt-az gimbal mount that I don't think is available any longer.
The ports. Ethernet and USB (not sure which I'll implement) for the ground control computer to connect to, and power (may not be used either).
Here are the other parts. GPS (EM-408) , compass module (HMC6352), external GPS antenna (with a little MMCX to SMA pigtail):
Closeup of the GPS and compass module:
Getting all the stuff mounted in the enclosure has been a pain, and has taken much of the day (plus the Cal game, and other stuff). There's a lot of wiring to do still, and hopefully I'll actually get some code written this weekend. Stay tuned!
Really what I want to do is launch a satellite. So I've decided to expand the scope of the balloon launch in support of a future satellite launch. I've ordered the Microhard radio we'll be using on the satellite to test on the balloon.
We're going to build a payload with GPS, temperature, pressure, still pictures, and possibly video. Lots of work to do in the link budget calculation to see what we can do, and within the 1.8-kg payload FAA limit. We're also building a directional 2.4 GHz antenna to automatically point at the thing (a project I began a couple years ago for UAV use).
This is going to be fun. Check back for updates.
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Clearly, launch days are good for MissionClock.
]]>I'm not sure for how long this little tip will work. I figure when Akamai & Apple catch on to the fact that people are watching a stream they intended for the iPhone, they'll put a stop to it.
But in the meantime, you can watch a very high quality stream of NASA TV in Snow Leopard's QuickTime X Player. Just launch QuickTime Player, go to the File menu and choose “Open URL…”. Then enter the following URI:
http://iphoned5.akamai.com.edgesuite.net/mhbarron/nasatv/nasatv_700.m3u8Old URI: http://qthttp.akamai.com.edgesuite.net/iphone_source/yahoo/nasa/nasa_all.m3u8You can also follow along with STS-128 with MissionClock for iPhone and iPod Touch.
I've been watching for the past hour or so, and it's not without its problems. It's about 45 seconds behind Spacevidcast, which seems to be the lowest-latency stream available. Every now and again it will stop momentarily. Sometimes the window shrinks and turns black for a while, then comes back. But overall, it's a high-quality image that should work on a variety of connections, and doesn't suck down CPU like watching in a Flash player. However, it does cause the fans in my Aluminum MacBook Pro 2.5 GHz Core2Duo to run a little bit, and I suspect Apple could do some work to improve this.
]]>Frustrated, I went home, and eventually wrote a review on Apple's website, saying that the display was gorgeous but that the inability to use it with my older Mac was a failure, and gave it one star. Here's a screenshot of what I submitted:
A couple weeks later, I still haven't seen my review show up on their site. If you happen to see it, please let me know in the comments below.
Thanks!
Exploration Beyond LEO: Process and Progress (pdf, 144k)
We lack the political and public will to see through an effort of the complexity and cost of the Apollo program. But it's possible a direct and urgent Mars mission could capture the public's imagination sufficiently.]]>A manned landing on Mars, with a stay sufficient to do significant research, as well as engaging in communications (blog posts, twitter, email, etc) with individuals of the public and the public as a group, is the best way to ensure a) that we can maintain interest long enough to get there and b) ensure a lasting legacy of public support for HSF.
Furthermore, such an effort should endeavor to do two things: re-use as much existing technology and expertise as possible, and engage the private sector in competition for the development of the technology and hardware.
Th re-use of existing technology is embodied by efforts such as Jupiter Direct. It could conceivably allow the current Shuttle program to continue operating without adversely affecting new development efforts, due to the degree to which hardware is shared between the two programs. It saves substantially on development costs, and shortens development cycles, which is critical (politicians and the public must see constant progress in the form of launches, or they will get bored).
NASA should sponsor competitions among private industry (as the X-prize foundation does) to develop technologies, as outlined in Zubrin's _The Case for Mars_. NASA can serve as evaluator and integrator. This will speed development and lower development costs, while prompting private industry to employ people.
We've already been to the Moon; we know how to do that, but we're rapidly forgetting it, because all of the scientists and engineers of the era are disappearing. We need to leverage what they know *now*, and use it to develop a manned Mars program, the only thing that can capture the public's imagination in the way necessary to ensure the human space program's future.
Only after a Mars effort is well underway should we turn our attention to the next steps, including a permanent base on the Moon (for example, a far side telescope).
Yesterday I needed a nice-looking dot, like the one next to unread email messages in the iPhone Mail client. At first I tried lifting the dot from the phone directly, taking a screenshot. But that gave me a 13 x 13 pixel dot that was antialiased to white, and I needed it antialiased to transparent, so that it would work against any background. This is the dot I wanted (the final result is at the bottom):
So I tried my hand at creating it from scratch in Photoshop, and it turned out to be surprisingly easy (even easier when I reproduced the steps in order to create the screenshots here). The Photoshop tools are very well designed for exactly this sort of graphic.
For this, I used Photoshop CS3 for Mac OS X. This article assumes you have a basic familiarity with Photoshop, but I try to be specific in how to carry out the operations. I glossed over the configuration of the Marquee tool a bit, but hopefully you'll get it.
Start by creating a new document of the overall size you want. I wanted a 13 x 13-pixel dot, so I created a 13 x 13 document. It's important that it be RGB, and have a transparent background:
Zoom way in on the document, by typing Command-+ a few times. I worked at 3200% zoom. Then choose the colors you'll want to use. I used just two shades of blue, lifted right from the screenshot of the Mail dot. You'll need three, one for the border color, and two for the gradient start and end.
For this step, make sure the darker color is the front color:
With the Ellipse Tool, create a circle by clicking in the very upper-left corner of your document, and dragging to the lower-right:
It should fill in a nice antialiased circle of the chosen color:
Then choose the Elliptical Marquee Tool:
And create a circular selection that's smaller than the circle you filled before. I did this by holding down the Option key as I clicked in the center of the image, and dragging toward the lower-right. Holding the shift key while you do this will constrain the proportions to be square:
When you let go, it'll change shape to show the actual pixels that are selected:
At this point, you want to fill in the circle with the gradient, to give it a highlight. On Mac OS X and iPhone OS, lights are always directly above the graphic.
To fill the gradient, Photoshop needs a layer into which it can draw. Click the New Layer button in the Layers utility window:
Set up the colors for the gradient fill. Since I chose the colors I was going to use already, I just had to make sure the light color was on top:
Then select the Gradient tool:
And make sure the tool is set up to do radial gradients. At the top of the screen, there's a tool bar that lets you configure the gradient tool. Set it up so it looks like this:
At this point, you should have a selection of pixels and a new layer selected that match the steps above, and the colors you want your gradient to be. Then use the gradient tool by clicking near the top-center of your dot, and dragging downward, not quite all the way:
When you let go, you'll have a nice gradient filling just the selected pixels, and properly antialiased, to boot, although that's not as noticeable here since we painted over the same blue color:
Now you can use "Save for Web & Devices…" from the File menu to save this as a 24-bit PNG file with transparency, and it'll be ready for use in iPhone apps. Here's the result (it might be ever-so-slightly different, as this is the dot I got from my first run through these steps, and the screenshots above are from the second run through them I made to write this):
Thanks to NASA and Spacevidcast, playing on my desktop I have no less than six video streams, some with multiple angles, showing me the rocket and various other video. Thanks to ScanAmerica, I'm listening to the Kennedy Space Center ground loops via iTunes internet radio streaming. A NASA Java applet shows the Atlas countdown information. I'm chatting with friends via AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, and GTalk, as well as Spacevidcast's chat room. I'm following NASA agencies and employees via Twitter. And I have my as-yet-unfinished iPhone app MissionClock counting down to LRO. It looks like this:
This is all cool by itself, but every now and again I get a tweet like this one from Andy, who works cryogenics (fuel) and other things on the launch pad:
Been on the tower for the last 5 hrs. Finally got down and now they are kicking us out for the Atlas launch.
They just started the go/no-go poll. Time to do some real work while I listen/watch. Weather is a bit of a concern, here's hoping it holds!
One last bit of commentary: this ULA/Atlas launch has a lot more transparency/awesome geek factor than NASA Shuttle launches. I get to see a lot more info, and hear a lot more. I hope the Shuttle public outreach can surpass that of the Atlas someday soon. There aren't many opportunities left!
A small parakeet, in flocks numbering in the thousands, was racing round and round the block! Right down the street, anywhere from one to 5 meters above the ground. They came in wave after wave of dozens or even hundreds of birds, at incredible speed, weaving and dodging among the people and cars in the street.
And the waves never seemed to end. I asked the driver what was going on, and he told me that these birds like to race around the block at this time in the evening. They start up some time after the sun sets, and keep it up until it becomes too dark for them to see well enough.
I stood in the middle of the street as these flocks flooded the space around me. I tried to reach out to touch them, but they were far too agile and quick for that.