Facebook, Illustrations, Inspiration
Why can’t I copy a Facebook post to my blog with my iPhone? Seriously.
Gripe mode off
GIS for illustration reminds me how much art people generate on a daily basis. I’ve been scanning artwork recently but now I wonder at the futility of scanning in pages of drawings, doodles, etc… What’s the point when it’s just one more drop of ink in an endless multicolored sea?
Winter Tilling
I spent two hours tilling the garden today to a depth of ten inches. My arms felt like they were going to be pulled off by the tiller, but I got the job done.
Can’t fall asleep, suffering from major insomnia tonight.
Orion Starblast 6i
Orion Starblast 6i (with optional intelliscope holster) and Orion Starblast 4.5.
Well, today I took the Starblast 6i telescope out to the backyard after collimating it and pointed the EZ Finder II on it so that it and the scope are ready for some stargazing. I’ve got to contact Orion though, the power switch on the EZ Finder II doesn’t seem to shut off correctly, I guess I got a bum one in the batch. It’s the third EZ Finder II I’ve had, the first being the one on my first telescope, an Orion Spaceprobe 3… and the second one being on my Starblast 4.5.
I took a photo of the Starblast 6i and the 4.5 today for comparison. The Starblast 6 is really much much larger. It doesn’t seem as heavy to me today as it did when I first put it together. I am able to take it out the back door for stargazing pretty easily from taking it out twice today. Hopefully things will be clear tonight, and I will get to try it out a bit.
Long day, new scope
Well it’s been a long day. Got the new telescope, an Orion Starblast 6i. Assembly took roughly two hours. The 6i requires you to disassemble the base so you can install the electronics package and additional parts to support them.
The scope is big, and heavier than I thought. It’s a tabletop scope. 23.6 pounds, but it’s bulky.
My Starblast 4.5 is tiny compared to it. I have a friend who is going to buy the 4.5 for his grandson from me, so that frees up space on my desk for the 6i. Which fits.
I need to go through my desk and organize and purge some things. The cubbyholes are too full of stuff.
Hopefully I can get the new scope collimated in the next couple of days and then we will get a clear night so I can try out the zoom eyepiece a family member gifted me!
Hope you had a merry Christmas, time to turn in.
Mirado Black Warrior HB2
Sharpened the first pencil in a box of ten last night. Have done two decent pen and ink drawings in the last hour. One, a comic book cartoony dragon carrying a sword. The other a quick sketch of a chair that I’ve been looking at that has some character and personality to it.
I did the initial sketches with the Mirado Black Warrior, inked them and then shaded and textured with the pencil. It really does hold it’s point well, and the color of the lead is rich and black. I think I like this pencil better than any of my other drawing pencils.
Merry Christmas!
Well, not sure who reads this anymore but I gave up Facebook until the new year. Trying to focus my energy on other things, and we’ll see how that goes. I really want to illustrate something and haven’t drawn anything in a while. Playing with some ideas, hopefully some sort of inspiration will stick.
Observation
Observed the Pleiades through my telescope last night. Despite the 32mm eyepiece it wasn’t as impressive as with my binoculars. Jupiter and moons visible, moon spectacular.
New Hobby
Two years ago my wife (yes, I remarried, love does come round more than once) bought me an Orion 3″ Spaceprobe telescope. Beautiful piece of glass. I did some lunar observing, looked at some stars, basically futzes around. I used a 10 pound boat anchor to keep the center of gravity down, stuff like that.
About three months ago an Orion Starblast 4.5 comes up on Craigslist, and I buy it. I sell the old scope to a friend, and am out with the new scope when I pop in the Barlow and see Jupiter, cloud bands and moons! Holy moly! Very cool.
I’ve been to a star party the local astronomy group hosted, that was ever so cool. Telescopes everywhere, including a huge 24″ dobsonian. Families queued up to look through them all. I saw a double star, Jupiter and all four of it’s moons, andromeda nebula, Pleiades, meteorite shower and more.
So this is my new hobby, amateur astronomer and it’s proving to be very worthwhile.
Buy Nothing Day
So how did you celebrate Buy Nothing Day last year? More commonly referred to as Black Friday?
We stayed home most of the day, not venturing out and having to deal with the crowds and their crazed shopping. It seems like this time of year begins to get nuts, everyone is out to do all of their shopping.
I’ve actually completed my holiday shopping, guess the early tv ads got to me. The holiday season actually feels like a holiday this year.
The Old Blog versus New Blog
I’ve used this domain over the course of the years to document various things. Some of these included my foray into motorcycling (ended when Buell closed and I lost interest), my sudden disappearance while dealing with my divorce from Marie (my ex-wife), and a lot more.
When I switched from a hosted manual blog to thingamablog I kept the original entries, but when I switched to wordpress all of that got lost. I kept backups, so maybe I need to restore that, or maybe I just need to move on.
