Monday night – christmas spirit

December 13, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

I was out Christmas for a bit tonight.. downtown and in Williston.. and it almost felt alright. Holidays are still very hard for us.. I’m guessing that they always will be. Christmas is particularly hard.. now.. I still think about buying stuff for three kids.. now it’s two.. The sight of decorations and music has put me in a very dark place these last five years.. but somehow.. this year is a little better. I was able to walk around shipping without ‘going there’ .. I still don’t have much stomach for shopping.. but seeing other happy folks shopping made me feel..well… happy .. and that’s a bit of a breakthrough. I’m going out again on Wed night with a bunch of freinds.. I’m hoping that I again find it ok being immersed in the Christmas spirit.. I’ll let you know..

nite all, nite sam

-me

Sunday night -Ephimeris

December 12, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

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

December 11, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

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

December 10, 2011 johncohn 1 Comment

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 !!!!!!!