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.
Dog Vomit Slime Mold
Dog Vomit Slime Mold, from Wikipedia
Fold what looked like was yellow powder in our flowerbeds earlier this week. Told Gina about it, and today she looked and came up to me and said: “Ewww, I see what you’re talking about!”. So I go and look, and it looks like Good Stuff foam after it’s puffed up. So I, being a man, broke it to pieces with my hands, and it was dark brown inside. A quick search on Google for “Yellow Powder that turns into a fungus” turned up slime molds, and Dog Vomit Slime Mold. It initially was white, I just never saw that stage. I thought it might have been some fertilizer or something. Luckily it’s harmless, and we have had alot of rain so that explains it.
The Infrequent Blogger
Haven’t done this in a while. Life is constantly throwing curve balls it seems. I finished the built in bookshelves, sold both my motorcycles, gotta sell my jackets and helmets, we’re gonna have a yard sake, spring is here and everything is trying to turn green. I’ve got to get back in shape, my best guess/bet is a decent bicycle and the total gym an angel gave us (older model, but it works. Same kind Chuck Norris uses. Lol, at least according to commercials. I’m not sure what I blog about on here anymore. Just felt like writing something, since it’s been so long.
Home improvement on a budget
I built some laundry room shelves from some scrap lumber a few weeks back, and completed the painting of them this last weekend.
I’ve done some measuring, planning to build some built-in bookshelves and picture alcoves along one side of the hall, but I am short on lumber of the right size in my shed for the bookshelves. I have scrap to build the photo alcoves, but for the bookshelves I need 6 – 1″x10″x10′ 6 – 1″x2″x8′, and 2 sheets of 4′x8′x1/8″ wood paneling. Don’t have a budget for any wood or lumber right now.
I also need to re-mulch the front flowerbeds before spring, or weeding will be a nightmare, but there isn’t any budget for that at the moment either.
Bookstorage in the WC / Homemade Conceal Bookshelf
Antigrav bookshelf
There are a lot of people who like to read in the bathroom. I’ve had female friends who keep baskets of magazines in their bathrooms, seen bookshelves in bathrooms, etc… I myself usually just sit them on the counter, or some other place, but they’re not exactly where I’d like them and water can damage them.
There is a company named Umbra, that makes floating bookshelves that look like your books are floating on the wall. Very minimalist. They’re also out of stock at Amazon.com in the small size, but Smart Furniture has them in stock for $13.50 minus S&H.
Modified bookend installed.
I’ve seen some novel bookshelves, some use an old book with brackets built-in to make the floating shelf. Some have the books hanging down like newspapers in a library, but other than the Conceal Bookshelf from Umbra, I haven’t seen anything similar.
When I saw the Conceal Bookshelf my first thought was that I could duplicate that with a bookend or something similar from a things I have around the house. I didn’t want to pay $13.50 + S&H for something I could make myself either.
The first step was to locate the bookend I wanted to use. It was a black steel bookend with foam on the back. I took the bookend, and drilled three holes in it with my small drill press.
See! Just a simple bookend, working in a different manner.
The hardware in my bathrooms is silver and chrome. I had a can of aluminum silver paint, so I hung up the drilled bookend on a hanger and spray painted it silver. I had already selected some drywall anchors and screws to fit from my small parts cabinet, so I sprayed the screw heads as well so they’d match.
After 15 minutes for them to dry, I marked the place for the holes, used a screwdriver to make the holes for the anchors and attached it to the wall tightly. Then I tensioned it a bit so when no books are on it, the shelf piece is angled upwards a bit.
I loaded it with the books I’m currently reading. Pink Noise, Neverwhere, Hacking Work, and an old paperback copy of Hitchhikers Guide that I am constantly rereading.
I looks great, very minimal, and it was made from stuff I had, using the tools on hand.
Halloween Decor
War of the Worlds Halloween Pumpkin
I was at Wal-Mart the other day, in the garden center and saw these green pumpkins. The kinds kids carry around for candy. 99 cents each. So I picked one up in green for my office at work. Then I added a small bendy photo tripod by enlarging the hole in the bottom with a pocket knife so it would screw on, cut the handle in half and stuck rubber ends on it and I have a War of the Worlds pumpkin! Plus with the little photo tripod, it can stand just about anywhere.
40 watt red candelabra bulbs
Krylon stained glass paint arrived today after we got back from a MFSA breakfast (Methodist organization).
I made a cardboard bulb holder and shot three coats of paint on the 40 watt bulbs I pulled out of the driveway and porch lights when I put the 7 watt red twinkle bulbs in for October. The 40 watts will go back in for December, but I’ll need to pick up 12 clear 40′s for the rest of the year.
The Krylon paint looks good, I got some ripples, but it’s great stuff. The cardboard where the overspray was looks like it’s candy coated.
I also installed a timer on the bug zapper.
The neighbors pool is fixed too, no more jet engine sound! I’d just gotten used to it as a whitenoise generator but regular silence is better I suppose. They probably couldn’t sleep with it as close to their house as it was and had the pool guy out working on it when I was tinkering with the bug zapper.
