Yearly Archives: 2011

Sunday night -Ephimeris

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Very peaceful day.. beautiful outside.. cold and clear.. got me motivated to get out my telescope to see if I could get a shot of Jupiter which is bright in the sky now..   it’s really amazing how big Jupiter’s moons appear even under low magnification. I was telling Gabe at dinner about how folks used to use the transits of Janitors moons as a universal time reference which allowed them to calculate Longitude.The transit times were carefully recorded and a fixed place (ie. Greenwich England) and published in books called Ephimeris.. Someone in a different part of the world could use those transit times., star positions  and a little geometry to figure out how how far east or west they were from the original measurment point. That’s the best folks had until good accurate clocks became available in the late 18th century.. Dava Sobel wrote a great book about it called ‘Longitude’ ..Check it out..

Jupiter looked great through my scope.. unfortunately this is the best picture I could grab by putting my blogging camera up to the eyepiece.. .. still.. ti’s clear enough to see three of the four ‘Gallelian’ moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.. .. I’m not certain. but  by their orbits , I think Ganymeade is the one missing here.. it must be behind the planet.

Our moon was unsurprisingly easier to spot 🙂  .. You can tell by the fuzzy outlines here that the air wasn’t that stable tonight.. but I always like looking at the moon !

 

I can tell by the positions of the moon that  it was dinner time … Diane made homemade chille rellenos.. using Kale she pulled fromthe garden..

It’s funny how kale lasts into the winter.. (note the snow !)

OK.. time for bed.. more tomorrow.

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

Saturday night – scavanged

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Very lazy day.. still shaking off jetlag.. I woke up at 10 AM !.. I think a new record for me.. After a quiet day of puttering ’round the house, i got a call from good freind Bill P. .. my old mentor from MIT. He ‘s an independent inventor and one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met.   He’s moving out of one of the old warehouse spaces he rents in Waitsfield and was getting rid of lots of old scavenged parts. Bill has one of the best collections of odds and ends.. of anyone I’ve ever met.. things like megawatt eximir lasers, vacuum systems, annealing ovens.. and lots and lots of small parts. Like all good hoarding inventors, Bill was finding it pretty painful to have to let these go as scrap by the pound. he called me.and I called freind Homer and we went down to see what we could use.    We found tons … literally.. luckily my car was only big enough for a an eight of a ton or so.

Here are Bill and his freind Francoise waving bye to us with our carload of goodies.. .. we really appreciate this stuff.. thanks Bill !!!!

I forgot to take a picture of the entire car.. it was packed.. but here’s a typical box.. it’s full of solenoid valves and pneumatic cylinders.. you may see junk.. but I see a 3 foot robotic spider. (can you see it now ? )

Homer and I drove back home and unloaded our treasures… Diane was pleased to see that most of the big stuff was not staying at our house L0_
Homer hung out with us for dinner which was really nice.. we got to catch up on some projects.. He hadn’t seen the tesla coil Scott had helped me rebuild.. so I gave hi a demo.. I hadn’t filmed it with the better music working.. looking pretty good and robust (thanks to Scott !)

OK.. that’s it for tonight.. I think I’m going to try and get another long nights sleep..
more tomorrow..

night all, night sam,
-me

ps. At the dance last night I saw this picture of me that Gabe had taken for his photo class.. spoooooooooooky !

 

Friday night – phoenix

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Tonight was fun and busy.. Gabe asked Diane and I to chaperon a dance at the school.. it’s nice when your kid asks you to o something like that.. My job was to watch for kids sneaking behind the bleachers to do whatever.. I felt  like a spy.. but it was fun hanging out behind the bleachers myself.. I felt like I was getting away with soemthing. The dance was the official unveiling of slushie machine that the student council purchased for the school. .. Gabe helped champion that.. it was a hit. !.

after the dance .at about 11pm we headed over to Chris and Kim’s for Kim’s birthday party finale, a bun of a 10 foot tall Phoenix that Chris had built. it was really beutiful !

 

my job was to do the pyrotechnics to start the fire.. but for some reason the potassium permanganate/glycerin mix never litspontaneoulsy combusted.. We had to futz with it with fuse and gas.. ..it was an pretty embarrassing fail for me.. but Chris rescued the event by ligthing the thing with a fuse.. I’d put a large aluminum and zink flash powders. that was cool ad pretty…

The bird finally caight and burned beutifully for about 30 min.. It was quite a site.. and a great tribute to freind Kim.. what a great person !!!!!!!

ok.. I’m  still pretty jetlagged.. so I’ll end there for the day. More tomorrow.. !

-nite all, nite sam (you would have loved this bird !)

-me

 

 

Thursday night – back in the USSA

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What a long strange trip its’ been.. I’m now lying in bed trying to figure out what time my body thinks it is… I’m trying to figure out how I crammed everything into the last day.. Yesterday’s event at Skolkovo was really fun and interesting. There were 1000 IBM business partners attending the forum in the Skolkovo Business school. it’s an amazing building.

 

. I got to see many of our company’s products and customers at work.. and n Cyrillic, no less.   I gave two  keynotes yesterday.. one to senior IT professionals, then the second, bigger one to about 500 C-level execs from across the contry. It was a little intimidating. but bun. my talk was done in simultaneous translation .. .. and I know I’m a fast  and quirky speaker.. somehow the translators kept up because the audience reacted in all the right ways.. I felt good about the talk..  Here’s the country general manager about to introduce me.. he was a nice guy..

The crowd was great.. and I was swamped with questions afterwards.. that’s always a good sign.

here I am with my friend Tatiania.. she was my ‘handler’ yesterday.. keeping me out of trouble..

this woman is one of the tob tweeters in russia !

hey.. that’s me !  D-chon koen

here’s a cool compuyter controlled water foutan they had..

setting up for my sn3 talk… (no pressure !)

Our comms team..

. last night’s party at the Skolkovo event went until about 10:30.. then Ian. Artur and Tatyianna and I went out for dinner and beers.

I got back to the hotel at 2.. and packed to be ready for my 4 AM cab.. i did get abotu 45 minutes of sleep, I think..
The reception after the signing ceremony was pretty lavish.. lot of good snacks and vodka everywhere, uve iever been to a work  party like this they had this guy drawning charactures .

Pretty nice !

4AM was pretty early.. but at least there wast any traffic. It was a joy to drive around on empty streets.  (but we did manage to get pulled over by the  the police at one point

I boarderd the palne to berlin about 7L40..  The short stop in berlin  was nice..   I dropped  a samstone  of beside the driveway

Very nice !!!!

then .. after ‘only’ 21.5 hor s f traveling. I was back in Vermont.. the place looked so beautiful with it’s blannket of snoe.

and here’s our litle valleyfrom the air..

Diane picked me up at the Burlington airport at 4L30 and we went right over to Echo to get ready for the ‘Thats Brilliant!’ event.. it really et great.. thanks so much to Jeromme Cann who did most of the real work. alongside the echo staff,

we had oover 160 people there tonight.. whats more, people were having fun !!! here’s Phelan getting chargeds

glad that s brilliant went wel. glad tavel worked well.. and glad… finally .. for a chance ot sleep..

nite all, note sam

 

there’s no place like hiime !

-me