05 Aug 2015
I've bought myself an Orion XT10i -- a 10" Dobsonian with a push-to
controller. I'm at my parents' place right now, test-driving it under
their incredibly dark skies. The first night was mostly spent getting
used to it, but the second night I managed to get some good observing
time in. I'm going to combine the two nights into one entry.
First impressions: this is a big scope compared with the 8" I have
now. It's heavier and bulkier, and is going to take some thinking and
work to make it as portable as the 8". But it's nicely made, the
controller seems to work well, and once I replaced the RACI finder
with my old straight-through, I could actually find things. The
movement is okay, but it's still going to take some work. A
perfunctory star test looked same inside and out, but I still need to
sketch it. Will need to baffle the mirror end, esp when I get back to
light pollution. The spring-loaded collimation screws are wonderful,
but I wish I didn't get different answers from the collimation cap and
the Cheshire I've got. With some practice managed to get warp factor
of 0.2, but even bad warp facters (5) seemed useful.
And with that, I got set up for first light! After doing the first
alignment, I went right away to the Double-Double. Not sure if it's
the scope or just that it's high overhead, but it was a lot easier to
split this than with the 8".
M13 was glorious. I might have been able to see the propeller.
M92 was utterly charming, even right after M13. I saw what looked
like a kind of lazy looping S of in this glob.
M101 was cool to see, but not the "glorious Catherine Wheel of
fireworks" that Sue French describes in "Deep Sky Wonders". I saw
shadowy hints of structure that might've hinted at spiral arms, but
that was it. (And that was over two separate nights.)
M57 was cool to see as always, as was M11. M51 was also pretty,
but showed no detectable structure beyond the two components.
M109 and M108 were pretty but seemed formless. Sorta kinda maybe
might've seen one eye in M97 but I wouldn't swear to it.
NGC 5985 and 5982 -- lovely, especially for the distance (100
million ly!). Zero sign of NGC 5981, but stats say it's mag 13 so I
don't feel so bad.
Saturday night, I went out again. I started out just laying on the
grass and looking at the Milky Way overhead, sometimes with binos and
sometimes with Mark I naked eye. Amazing. Neat to see early
Perseids. Saw what looked like dark nebula right by Deneb.
M13: Tried for propeller again. Maybe hint of it at 200X, but not
certain. Still gorgeous.
North American Nebula: took some tracking down, but finally spotted
in 18mm with O3 filter by looking for NGC 6997, one of the OCs that
are in this. Found Gulf of Mexico w/o filter, and east coat with.
Neat, but subtle even w/filter. Not like...
Veil Nebula: First words out of my mouth were "Holy shit, you're
kidding me." This is AMAZING. Srsly, I think this may be equal of
M42. Found arcs on both sides but not central portions.
Whatever...my god, this was incredible to see.
Looked for Blinking Planetary; could not track down. Next.
M33: Wow, actually hints of structure plus easy to find. Double
plus, saw NGC 604, a large (1500 ly!) star-forming region in M33. Wow.
M31: WOW. M110 and M32 obvious. Tracked down G1, a glob
orbiting M31...DOUBLE wow. Was not able to separate G1 from the two
stars it's next too, but was obv. non-stellar.
Alpha Persei: Pretty sure I saw nebulosity in this area, just
w/naked eye. Neat.
Tags:
astronomy
19 Jul 2015
Wow, so the last time I went out with the scope was May -- it's
amazing it's been so long. I drove up to Seymour Mountain, but there
was some kind of party int he woods where folks usually observe.
Turned around and drove out to Boundary Bay, wondering why I'm not
paying for a RASC membership. There was a beautiful crescent moon
setting next to Venus as I drove out.
Since it's 2.55am as I write this, let's get to the good parts: what I
saw! (Oh, except to say I used the Dob this time.)
Saturn was low in the slop, but still pretty to look at. Cassinni
Division popped in and out iwth the 6mm (100X).
Double-double: coud not split.
Star test: same as always; rings all the way in on one side, hole
in the middle on the other side. Need to figure out what this
means.
Omega Serpentis -- nothing much to look at, but it
holds an exoplanet and that's pretty cool. 1.7x mass of
Jupiter, 277 day period, and 273 light years away.
On a whim, tried for NGC 5990 which was right near Omega Serpentis;
no luck finding it.
Found M5 pretty easily.
Found M80 -- new Messier! Harder to pick out than M4 was. No
resolution -- just a q-tip.
M19 -- easy enough to find in binos. Maybe some resolution at
100X but that's suspicous.
M13 -- oldie but goodie. And I found NGC6202 for the first
time! Seemed fairly obvious -- not sure if that's the night, the
locatiom or getting used to things.
M92: aww, I love globs I can resolve.
NGC 5985, 5982 & 5981 -- took a lot of time with these. I got
5982 w/AV, but couldn't see the other to.
M11 -- wow, just wow.
Tags:
astronomy
21 Jun 2015
I just today pulled the trigger on an Orion XT10i. This is a pretty
big upgrade from the two scopes I've got now: an 8" SkyWatcher Dob,
and an 8" Meade LX10. It's two inches more aperture, of course, but
also I'm looking forward to the Intelliscope -- after spending a lot
of time starhopping with the Dob, I'm in the mood to be lazy. The
LX10's got a controller (the Magellan II), but I've found its accuracy
to be iffy sometimes. Doubtless it's operator error, but I've heard
pretty much nothing but good things about the Intelliscope.
I'd been thinking hard about what to upgrade to. I've been looking
very seriously at the Celestron NexStar Evolution, particularly since
it would be GoTo rather than PushTo. The wireless problems
people are encountering are concerning, but more than that I think the
XT10i should be a great deal more portable than the Evolution. I've
got a hand truck that I use for the 8" Dob, and that lets me walk the
scope over to a local park to go observing, rather than having to
drive. For the Meade I've got a wagon, but it's a lot heavier and a
lot more awkward. I don't want to be stuck driving, and the hand
truck works well.
Only trouble is, I won't get to use it for six weeks. How come? 'Cos
I'm having it shipped out to my parents' place in Ontario, where my
family will be vacationing for a couple weeks in August. It's a long
time to wait, but their skies are incredibly dark: they live ten
minutes drive outside a village of 300 people, on an island about
120km away from the nearest city. We were last there three years ago,
and I easily picked up Messier objects in binoculars that I hadn't
been able to see near my house with the Dob. That time, the scope I
had was a 4.25" reflector I'd packed into a suitcase; this time, I'm
gonna be loaded for bear. :) After vacation's over, I'm going to
disassemble it and ship it back home.
So...now we wait. And collect Cloudy Nights threads on mods, tips,
complaints, raves and the most passing of mentions. No, YOU'RE obsessed.
Tags:
astronomy
14 May 2015
BlackDoc is a two-column Jekyll theme that's ideal for websites that require a master-detail layout for viewing of content. It's based on Poole, the Jekyll butler, and the Hyde theme.
I needed a two-column layout with a scrolling sidebar to publish my code cheatsheets, and found the Hyde Jekyll theme to be a good starting theme. To complement the color scheme of my main website, I customised the theme to make it look great in black background and changed the sidebar to display scrolling content. I created this theme because I can't seem to find any good Jekyll theme with a master-detail layout. Hopefully, someone will find this useful as well in their own projects.
Built on Poole
Poole is the Jekyll Butler, serving as a foundation for creating Jekyll themes. Poole-based themes, such as BlackDoc here, include the following:
- Complete Jekyll setup included (layouts, config, 404, RSS feed, posts, and example page)
- Mobile friendly design and development
- Easily scalable text and component sizing with
rem units in the CSS
- Support for a wide gamut of HTML elements
- Related posts (time-based, because Jekyll) below each post
- Syntax highlighting using Pygments (the Python-based code snippet highlighter)
BlackDoc Features
In addition to the features of Poole and Hyde, BlackDoc theme adds the following:
- Scrolling sidebar with a thin scrollbar to allow displaying of numerous top-level content.
- Elements and classes of the Hyde theme were updated to look great in black background. Check out the Theme Styles to see the stylings used in the theme.
Check out the Readme of Poole and Hyde theme to learn more about the features.
Browser support
BlackDoc theme supports most modern browsers and only compatible with Internet Explorer 9 and above.
Download
BlackDoc is a free Jekyll theme and hosted with GitHub. Head to the GitHub repository to download.
Cheers!
Tags:
08 May 2015
It is a strange thing to look up and to see green around you. Maybe
not so strange; plants eat light, and green helps them do that, and it
turns out there are plants everywhere. But to look up after a day of
being inside, staring at computers and arguing/laughing/crying
fiercely about them, to look up and see green -- hedges, trees, grass,
herbs -- well, it's a change.
This week has been spent with computers. And that's not so strange,
since I type at them for a living. But I've been with them a lot
this week. I've been working nights, and working mornings, and all
for the best of reasons: because I like my work; because I like
computers; because people I like and respect have asked me to do
things with them, and to work hard, and to accomplish. So I have, if
clumsily, and have worked hard to do so.
But now I'm outside. Outside in the most gentle of senses: a porch,
attached to a house that's attached to other houses. I see concrete
and stone, condos and windows, tables and chairs. My four metres
square is next to other four metres square, and the road is not far
beyond that. I hear cars, and neighbours, and none of it sounds
terribly nature-filled. And, as before, that's not so strange either.
But there is a Douglas Fir, one metre tall, growing in a pot beside
me; we'll plant it later this year in a park. Sunflowers and morning
glories and oregano and lettuce are sprouting in a planter box; the
kids and I planted them three weeks ago, and now they're stretching
for the sun slower than I can see. There is new growth on the hedges.
The rose bush beside them is blooming -- one flower now, more to come
in the summer. There's dogwood and lavender and herbs growing in a
neighbour's porch and a spindly oak tree I grew from an acorn brought
back from UBC. There is wind to move all of them: to create a waving
mass of leaves, of green, of life.
Tags:
09 Apr 2015
(I don't often reply to other posts, but this one deserves a
reply.)
I spent a good chunk of my day working on computers, of course,
because that's what I've picked as my career. (It's odd to have a
career, but that's another post.) So I spun up Docker container after
Docker container, built in Jenkins, tweaking LDAP and SSL settings
until everything was right, then adding favicons and splash images
that would make me and others around me happy. Laughing -- laughing
well and happily, not meanly -- is important. And as a reward I got
to share those laughs with coworkers, and I got to move tickets to the
"Resolved" pile, and both were satisfying.
So work is done, but now it has to be documented -- another thing I
like, since it means writing (which I like) and writing down what I've
done so I don't have to explain it (which I like), and even if it
takes longer than I think it will (which it does) the time goes faster
when you slip in some jokes that make your coworkers smile. Laughing
is important.
Next up is lunch, which gives me a chance to talk to my onboarding
brother from another mother and ask what he's up to, and what keeps
his team from doing things another way -- which turns out to be a lot
I didn't know, which is exactly what I had hoped would come out of
this: me learning something I didn't know. Later in the afternoon
I'll ask another coworker questions that are challenging-sounding, and
explain that I don't doubt his assertion, I just want to know what it
is he's thinking about that I'm missing. I still struggle with how to
phrase these questions.
And then there was a problem with Nagios and PagerDuty -- which turned
out to be a problem with our understanding of how they interact. I've
got a shaky understanding, and my attempt to explain it to someone
else does not sound convincing -- which is fair, and in any case is
less important to them than the fact that they have to do extra work
to figure out WTF is going on. It calls for a better understanding of
how we use the two, so I make a note for our Friday documentation
spike, which I'm proud to say I started.
All this has left me no time to talk to my coworker in San Francisco,
who spent yesterday busy in meetings and spent today working on stuff
I should have helped out with. We commiserate about it. Supper is
leftover pizza eaten cold (it is the ONLY way to have leftover pizza)
at my desk.
At 6:30 is OpenLateYVR, the Northern Edition of the meetups in San
Francisco. People show up, I talk to them; I introduce our speaker,
then call for other speakers after it's done; I talk some more. I am
not extroverted, but I have learned, late in life, that one of the
gifts my father has given me is the ability to LARP it when needed,
and I meet many people during the night: the guy who worked in the
docks until he busted his elbow, and is now figuring out web
development; someone else who works at a competitor and may be up for
a career change; the one who is reorganizing his life, one bit at a
time, and is feeling his way around Vancouver's tech scene. It is a
strange thing to be so outgoing, so confident (maybe not deservedly
so, but confident nonetheless), when most days I want to just hide in
my hole and type at computers, not people.
I get home at 10:45, after a crowded SkyTrain and bus ride home. And
I come across my wife's blog post about her day. I've known for
a hella long time that I'm incredibly lucky, but it is a particularly
wonderful example of this to read her describing her day; there are
pictures of the kids (our beautiful, beautiful children), there are
the details I would have asked for, there are thought-provoking bits
that I'm doing such a poor job of trying to echo here.
Tags:
geekdad
05 Apr 2015
Last Saturday I made a run to Vancouver Telescopes. It's an awesome
store, with absolutely amazing service, and I can't recommend it
enough. I came home with a few different things:
I've done a little bit of playing around with the first two, but not
enough to get really familiar with them. Still, they look good, and
the FOV on the 6mm is nice -- it's definitely noticeable when I
compare it to a 7.5mm Plossl I've got.
I tried out the Cheshire on Ranger, the 8" Dob, and man that was a
revelation. I've been using a film cannister with a hole punched in
it, and that worked fine -- but it was a very noticeable difference
to have the crosshairs in there too. The scope wasn't too badly
misaligned when I started, but it was a lot easier to get everything
lined up than it has been in the past...having the crosshairs really
shows you the effect of turning this or that Allen key. Speaking of
which, next upgrade might be a set of Bob's Knobs...it would be nice
to not have to use Allen keys and screwdrivers. Plus, for some reason
the Skywatcher needs a 2mm Allen key for the primary, and an Imperial
measure (3/64ths? Can't remember) for the secondary.
On Wednesday a friend of mine came over for supper; he's a coworker of
mine from OpenDNS, and he was up from San Francisco to work for the
week. (Side note: we're working on setting up OpenStack together, and
it's amazing to have a partner in crime; it's also amazing to be in
person and sort things out. Google Hangouts are great, but they're
still no substitute for in-person infinite bandwidth. But I digress.)
He also wanted to see the scope, so we dragged it out to let it cool,
then sat out on the porch after supper. We were able to see Jupiter:
four moons visible, equatorial belts and south temperate belt easily
visible. Then it was the moon -- 95% full, and a lovely set of
shadows at the edge. He took a number of photos of both Jupiter and
the moon on his iPhone; the moon turned out best, of course, but the
pix of Jupiter showed a (sadly) overexposed Jupiter and four distinct
moons -- quite a bit better than I've been able to do with Jupiter,
and not at all bad for simply holding up the phone to the scope. It
was a lot of fun, and I suspect he may be a candidate for a scope in
the future...
Speaking of which, I'm going to upgrade this summer. My family and I
are going to be spending a couple weeks at my parents' place, and it
is dark there -- darker than anything else I've ever seen. They
live 10 minutes' drive away from a village of 300, and the nearest big
city is ~ 100 km away. My plan is to order a new scope and get it
shipped out there before I arrive, use it while I'm there, then ship
it back here.
I've thought a lot about what I want to get. A C8 would be wonderful,
and the Nexstar Evolution looked really neat -- but it's a very new
model, and the reports on Cloudy Nights indicated some worrying
problems. A C8 on a GEM, or maybe the CPC, would be a good scope, but
it's not terrible portable -- I would have a hard time observing
with this on a regular basis here without committing to driving it
around everywhere. A small refractor would be nice, and still
relatively portable -- but it's still a small refractor.
In the end, I've setttled on an Orion XT10i -- a 10" Dob with
Orion's Intelliscope (digital setting circles). It's relatively
cheap, at about half the price of a C8. It's still relatively
portable, especially compared to a C8 or some such on a GEM; there are
lots of people who put these on hand trucks (as I've done with Ranger,
the 8" Dob I've got now), and that'll help me walk it around when I
want to go observing at the park near my house. And while the upgrade
in aperture will be nice, I'm also really looking forward to the
Intelliscope system. I think this will be a great thing both here
(where light pollution is a problem), and in dark skies (where I will
have problems finding my way through the embarrassment of riches!).
I'm tempted to get it now so I can make sure everything's okay (and
observe with it, of course!), but I suspect that disassembling it and
shipping it twice will be more trouble and expense than I want. It's
still going to be a fair amount to ship it back, of course, but it'll
be worth it to have it at such a dark site.
The last thing I wanted to put down here was about cooling the Dob.
One morning this week I was up early, and brought out Ranger to have a
look at M13 in Hercules. Before I got started, though, I took some
time to do a star test with the new 6mm eyepiece and Rasalhague. When
I defocused the image, the shimmering and dancing of the star's image,
from the mirror cooling off, were amazing -- I'd never taken the time
to look before, and it was like looking through the bottom of a pool.
This was right after I'd brought out the scope, and I thought for sure
I wouldn't get a good look that morning. I kept on anyhow, figuring
that it wouldn't cool off in less than an hour and I might as well
enjoy the view I did have.
Twenty minutes later I decided to try the star test again, and holy
crap -- it was immensely steadier. It wasn't perfect, of course,
but instead of constant rapid billowing, it was slow ripples. (I
presume this would have been mostly the seeing right then, rather than
from the mirror cooling.) I also noticed that if I brought my hand
underneath the scope's front end, I could see the shimmering from the
heat of my hand.
It was an amazing demonstration, and I wish I had thought to try this
long ago; it would have helped me guage things, and understand what I
was seeing (or not seeing) a lot better. And I can't believe the
difference that only 20 minutes made...between that and the ability to
see how much it has cooled, I am never going to worry my pretty
little head about mirror cooling again. Oh, it makes a difference, of
course -- but between the short time it takes to get noticeably
better, and the simple fun and enjoyment of any view through the
scope, I think there are lots of other things to worry about.
Tags:
astronomy
29 Mar 2015
I was turned on to "Fisherman's Blues", by The Waterboys, in 1992 by a
girl I met while working at a provincial park in Ontario. She was
kind of a hippy (by which I mean she gave and received hugs freely),
and I kind of had a crush on her (though she was quite honest about
not reciprocating). "There's this album," she said, "that you should
really listen to." So I did, and wah -- I was hooked. The opening
chords of "Fisherman's Blues"; the men's choir shouting along to
"World Party"; the whimsy and fun of "And A Bang on the Ear"; and the
gorgeous, moving, tearful beauty of both "Sweet Thing/Blackbird" and
"The Stolen Child" held me like few other albums have. I listened to
it over and over and over again. I have fond memories of her for lots
of different reasons -- she was an excellent friend -- but high among
them is telling me about this album.
I've listened to other songs by The Waterboys, but never really got
into them. Lots of people I know love "Whole of the Moon" but it
never left me anything but frowning, unsure how something like that
could come from the same band.
Years later I came across "Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille" by
Stephen Brust. It's a story about a band that plays Irish music in a
bar that travels through space and time, and how they accidentally
save humanity. It charmed me with quoted lyrics at the beginning of
every chapter, with making a joke on the song "Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O"
(covered by The Waterboys on their next album), with being funny and
clever. Shortly after I met my future wife, we exchanged books;
I gave her "Cowboy Feng", and she gave me "In The Skin of a Lion" by
Michael Ondaatje. I felt seriously outclassed. I read her book, but
it took me 'til the third and final part to really get into it -- but
that just confirmed what a schnook I was, and how my choice of book
was a poor one. She's dismissed that -- but that's how I felt.
I was harsh on myself, of course, and harsh on "Cowboy Feng." It may
not be the best sci-fi novel ever written, but it holds a very special
place in my heart. I love the way it focuses on small things, small
details; yes, humanity has expanded to other star systems, settled on
other worlds...but they have brought music with them, and it's
something like what we have now, and it has evolved to nothing like we
have now. People muddle on.
When my children were infants, I would sing, lullaby-fashion,
"Fisherman's Blues" when I was trying to rock them to sleep. I don't
know that it actually, you know, got them to sleep, , but it made me
feel good. I think about that now -- about how much of what I do for
my children, I do for reasons that move me rather than them. I
think of articles I've read describing how artists deal with people
who want to tell them What That Thing Means To Them, and how I still
want to find Mike Scott and tell him about this.
Today I found out that there is a six-cd box set for The Waterboys'
"Fisherman's Blues", with a metric crapton of outtakes, never-released
and alternate versions. As a result, I spent an hour tonight trawling
YouTube for live recordings of songs from that album, which apparently
Mike Scott and Anthony Thistlewaite are touring/have toured. There
are lots, of course -- the Internet is a big place -- and no lie, no
exaggeration, I wept near constantly at the beauty of their
performances and their songwriting.
I imagine them younger, at concerts I never saw; I imagine cover
versions, some that might move me and some that will just piss me off,
on planets I will never visit; I imagine showing my children these
videos and them listening more or less politely, then wandering off to
find their own songs; I imagine being old, possibly senile, and my
eyes still lighting up when I hear that fiddle line from the title
song.
Tags:
music
geekdad
22 Mar 2015
Tonight was clear -- the first time in a week or more. I wanted to
get out my scope. But the clear sky chart said it was going to get
cloudy between 8 and 9pm; Environment Canada's forecast was calling
for clouds and fog overnight. Worse, I hadn't put out my scope to
cool, and I was worried about crappy views. I dithered and dallied,
but at last hauled up the Dob from the basement and set it on the
front porch, and I brought out a chair.
We live in a townhouse, and there's a condo building attached to
the development that's right across from us -- four metres or so
separate our front door from that building. We have hedges between us
and our adjacent neighbours. All in all, the sky that's visible from
the porch is a chunk about 30 degrees wide, about 30 degrees above the
horizon to straight up, aimed roughly southeast. And these days,
Jupiter is right there when it gets dark.
I wasn't expecting much. The scope hadn't cooled, I hadn't collimated,
and my eyepieces are nothing special. But oh, that view! The two
giant equatorial bands, with the southern tropical band popping into
view every now and then. And sure enough, there was the Great Red
Spot as well -- hah! Even at 100X, the view held just fine.
Callisto, Io and Io were visible off to one side, and Ganymede to the
other; Europa was hidden behind Jupiter.
I looked around to see what else was visible in this sliver of sky.
Not much...but there was Castor, a double star. Could I split it?
Yes -- barely; this made the lack of collimation apparent. But I was
happy anyway, even if double stars aren't usually my thing.
By this time the sky was clouding over -- but only in the east. On a
whim I took a walk to a nearby ball field to see if I could see the
moon or Venus...and holy crap, it was! I hurried back and put the dob
on a hand truck I use to move it around, then wheeled it over. The
moon wasn't high at all -- a hand's breadth above the rooftops -- but
it was beautiful, a tiny sliver of brightness and the rest filled out
by Earthshine. Venus was clearly not quite a full disk. Mars was
tiny, and it too showed the shortcomings of my setup -- not just
collimation, but being so very low on the horizon. But that was okay;
it was enough to see it. I swung back to the moon and just drank it
in until it got low, and then I went home.
There is a lot to optimize, or fuss over, or worry about in this
hobby. There are good reasons to; a bit of care can make the
difference between seeing a fuzzy blob and having your breath taken
away by the crispness and the beauty. But there is a lot, a lot to
be said for just doing it; for not overthinking things; for simply
getting out and looking. I saw three planets, a double star and our
moon tonight; the light I was seeing took from under two seconds
(Luna) to 12 minutes (Venus) to 41 minutes (Jupiter) to nearly 50
years (Castor) to reach me from its source. I saw sunrise on the moon
and imagined seeing it in person. I saw the ecliptic laid out for me,
from the already-set sun through Jupiter. I wouldn't have seen
anything if I'd let my worries get the best of me.
Tags:
astronomy
14 Mar 2015
Just came across this project and it's too cool not to write down.
Tags:
astronomy
13 Mar 2015
So a while ago, I wrote about the li'l ol' laptop under the TV;
an old, old Dell with a P3 processor that was finally coming to an
end. Oliver Hookins, bless his heart, recommended the Zotac
ZBox; after a bit of research, I agreed and bought the CI-320.
(Sorry, Wout, but I wanted something with a bit more horsepower than a
Banana Pi.) I bought 4GB of RAM for it, and I already had a 64GB SSD
lying around. Debian installed on it w/o any problems whatsoever, and
I migrated everything over a couple of weeks ago.
It's pretty wonderful, not least because it's completely silent.
It's passively cooled, and with the SSD there are no moving parts.
I've got an external HD attached to it via USB (though this thing has
also got eSATA, GigE, wireless, HDMI...), and it does backup for the
house. I finally got rid of my crappy, crappy-ass rsync wrapper and
set up rsnapshot; I've been told to check out
elkarbackup, a nice-looking web interface for it. (Now if I can
only get off my butt and set up duply and offsite encrypted
storage...)
And the name? Zombie.saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com. Zbox...what're
you gonna do?
Tags:
hardware
backups
08 Mar 2015
Last week I went out to Boundary Bay to observe. It had been a
beautiful afternoon and evening, but by the time I got out it was hazy
as anything. Not fog, but high-up haze. I got there at 8, and stuck it
out 'til 9.30. I observed Jupiter some, but it was fuzzy and without
detail; I put it down to the haze, or maybe internal reflections in
the diagonal. I went home at 9.30.
This week I went out again, but I was accompanied by my oldest son (8
3/4). He'd wanted to come out last week, but I only found out at the
last minute. This time we got prepared beforehand: books, blanket and
a pillow. (I knew he wanted to stay up late and look through the
scope, but I also knew he'd want to go to sleep at some point. We got
there at 8pm again, with much better weather (you know, clear).
There was a fair amount of outreach tonight. First was a family of
five out to see the stars, and second was a couple out for a walk.
They were all pretty stoked to see through the scope. One of the kids
really took a shine to my son and declared him his new best friend; I
think Arlo was a little relieved when they left.
Between those visits, I figured out what the problem was with my
scope: collimation, of course. I haven't collimated it since
purchasing it, and the last few times I've had it out I"'e been pretty
frustrated with the views. I finally got it done, and
WOW what a difference -- Jupiter was actually sharp and detailed and
beautiful again. It made me want to call the first family back to
show them what they'd missed.
There were ambitions for the night, but fog kept rolling in for a
while, dewing the corrector lens (despite the home-made dew heater);
the battery on the Magellan ran out and had to be replaced; and the
moon was up and nearly full. I tried for M78 (reflection nebula in
Orion) and failed, even with an O3 filter; I tried for M79 (glob in
Lepus) and failed; I tried for NGC 2207 (galaxy in CMaj) but failed;
but I finally got somewhere with M93, OC in CMaj. Got a sketch
through the dew; it has a real W-shape. One more Messier...
As for my son: I think he enjoyed it, though I think he would have
been happier coming home earlier. I know that a big part of it for
him is being out with me and staying up late, rather than the
astronomy itself -- but he was happy to see the constellations, and to
did seem to have fun.
There's more to write, but that's all I've got strength for now.
Another time...
Tags:
astronomy
geekdad
14 Feb 2015
I'm frugal (which sounds nicer than "cheap"). My laptop is a
refurbished Chromebook I got from US Walmart for $350. It's not bad
at all -- runs Linux, 4GB RAM, decent processor and turns out the 16GB
SSD hasn't been a limit so far. But it's a Yugo, all right; sound is
fussy, the screen is small (which I haven't valued as much as I
thought I would), and the trackpad is for shit. But it was cheap!
My former laptop was a monster of a Dell; it had been my wife's before
the wireless crapped out and we (sort of) upgraded her. I stuck in a
USB wireless stick that mostly works, and went with that 'til the
monitor started flashing angry red unless you tilted it just right.
Now it belongs to the kids, and they use it to send email and play
Minecraft.
And the laptop before that? Refurbished Dell (there's a pattern
here) I bought off eBay for the 12" screen. It's a P3 (remember
those?) with 500 MB of RAM. The battery doesn't work any more, of
course, but it still serves my website, catches my mail and runs Emacs
& Mutt. And until today, it held music and backups too, on an
external hard drive my dad sent me long ago: an old 500 GB PATA drive
in a Ferrari case that came from his town library. It died today, but
I had been in the habit of rsyncing it to a couple other external
drives (newer vintage), plus the kids' laptop, so it was easy enough
to recover things.
It turns out it was a good match for this old laptop: 500GB is small
enough that it didn't strain its tiny little brain trying to count too
high. Hooking up the 3 TB hard drive just caused all sorts of
problems. I might have a smaller hard drive that'll work...but of
course, the laptop was old when I bought it in 2007. The one USB port
on it is 1.0, for heaven's sake. It's amazing that it's kept running
this long.
So what now? I'm not sure. I hate dealing with hardware anymore --
who has the time? -- but I also don't want to host my website & mail
externally. I also still need some kinda server to play music and
such. I want something silent, Linux/BSD compatible, already
assembled, and durable -- I don't want to do this again for another 5
years. And did I mention I'm cheap^Wfrugal?
Intel NUC might be an idea. I've got a Raspberry Pi that has been
nothing but trouble because of USB problems; ditto a PogoPlug before
that. I love the idea of low-power boxen, but they're turning out to
be a PITA. I could go to the local FreeGeek and try another laptop --
$100 would probably get me something decent and considerably more
recent.
Sigh, dunno...snappy conclusion goes here.
Tags:
hardware
24 Jan 2015
Some cool things I've come across recently:
Tags:
emacs
03 Jan 2015
(aka "random words for titles, please")
$WORK: I've been working on OpenStack lately. It's been fun, despite
its frustrations (which I won't list here because I tend to rant a
lot, and I'm becoming less convinced its helpful or as funny as I
think it is) (which drolly deserves its own bit of expansion...). Why
fun? Because a) I've had the luxury of focusing on this for, like, a
month now, pretty much to the exclusion of all else, and b) because
I'm not on my own. One of my coworkers is doing this with me and he
is really, really good. He's careful, his shell scripts make me cry
with their beauty, and he's just a lot of fun. And it's amazing what
a difference a great bunch of coworkers make (he's just one of a great
gang of people).
This has been a real revelation, particularly after visiting my
workplace to catch up with people. It was good to see everyone again,
but it really reminded me how much all of us needed a change -- me to
get the hell out of there, and them to get someone in who is
enthusiastic about things again.
It has been quiet over the holidays, which is good; I was on call for
NYE and hardly had anything happen at all. And the office was quiet
with people being out for so much of it. But I'm looking forward to
people being back in, conversations going on, HipChat having more
traffic than just me asking Hubot to animate me a Christmas tree.
Holidays: not nearly as long as when I was at UBC, but it was still
good. The kids had lots of school vacation, of course, and then there
was COUNTDOWN TO XMAS OMGOMGOMG. They nearly lost their little minds
with anticipation, but finally Xmas was here and...they loved what
they got. Which was a relief; they had been pining for Xboxes and
tablets and iPhone 99s and I don't know what all. None of that was
going to be happening for so many reasons (money, they're 6 and 8, I
have moral qualms about non-free computing) (which is ironic because I
have an Apple laptop now for work); they knew that, but I wasn't sure
how they'd actually handle it on the day. And it was a non-event:
they got sketchbooks and books and toys and were happy as clams.
My wife and I continued our Xmas tradition of Watching Bad Movies
on Xmas Eve with "The Christmas Cottage: The Thomas Kinkade" story ($5
in the grocery store bargain bin!). It's no Asylum joint (and what a
concept that would be...), but it was still wonderful (by which I mean
really odd: Peter O'Toole as Kinkade's mentor, and Chris Elliott as
chair of the town's Chamber of Commerce). We didn't get a chance to
go out on our own, but we'll fix that one night.
I've been spending time on the Stack Exchange Emacs beta; it's really
shaping up. It's been fun to answer some of the questions, and really
dig into Emacs; the digging (because it's rarely as straightforward as
I think it's going to be) turns up a lot of stuff I never knew.
I sent off my first letters for Amnesty International last month; it's
been something I've wanted to do for a while now, and I finally got
off my ass and joined their Urgent Appeal network. It's easier to
sign up than I thought it would be;
I urge you to consider joining yourself.
Reading:
Tags:
sysadmin
geekdad
emacs
15 Dec 2014
Tonight was a clear night -- but first, it was tree-decorating time.
(I admit to being tempted to duck out of decorating the tree, but I
relented after, I dunno, no more than 20 minutes of thinking about it.
I am a bad person.) I decided to head out to Boundary Bay -- it's
clear, it's Sunday, it's winter (astro twilight ends at 18:10, y'all)
and I'd just flocked the Meade (both the main tube and the drawtube to
the first knife-edge baffle -- man, that makes a difference).
I'd planned to hit M31 then the Cassiopeia clusters, but as Douglas
Adams said, the best part of making a plan is ignoring it. Got out at
about 7.30, was set up by 7.45 and panning around with the binos by
7.50. Saw a Geminid (hurrah!). Took a quick look at easy Messiers,
and they were: M35, M36, M37 and M38 all just popped right out. So
for shits and giggles I looked up where M33 should be, and holy hell
if I didn't find goddamn M33 with binos right away. Wow! I tried
to find it in the scope but was unable -- and rather than get bogged
down in that, I gave myself a high-five and carried on.
I moved over to M31, and used a printout to find M110 -- only to
realize at home (like, ten minutes before I typed this) that I'd
already found it last August, apparently. (I'm giving myself the
side-eye as I write that.)
So okay, no new Messier there -- but as long as we're really
honest-to-god finding faint Messiers, I found M1 without any real
difficulty. Still nothing like Jeremy Perez' sketch, but no
question about seeing it this time.
New Messier, though: M77! Spiral galaxy I had not seen before, in
Cetus. Relatively simple to find; not much to look at, but great to
see.
Took a look at M42 -- first good look of the season, and despite
being unable to focus (dew heaters were not working at this point; not
sure what went wrong), it actually made me gasp. Amazing, just
amazing. Even saw M43 w/averted vision this time.
So after all that -- I'm up to 65 Messiers. Hurrah!
Tags:
astronomy
geekdad
09 Dec 2014
So one thing that's been hanging around in my mailbox for (checks
mailbox) good God, three weeks now is an exchange I had with Jess
Males (aka Hefeweizen on IRC, which is a damn good name). He wrote to
me about my Infrastructure Code Testing BoF, and asked:
I don't see notes to this effect, so I'll ask: what's the difference
between monitoning and test-driven infrastructure? Monitoring
started as a way to tell us that the infrastructure we need is
available and operating as expected. Test-driven infrastructure
serves the role of verifying that the environment we're describing
(in code) is being implemented, and thus, operating as expected.
Those sound awfully similar to me. Is there a nuance that flies
over my head?
Before I insert my uninformed opinions, I'll point you to an excellent
article from this year's SysAdvent by Yvonne Lam called
How To Talk About Monitors, Tests, and Diagnostics. But if
you're still interested, here goes...
First, often (though not always) it's a pain in the ass to point
already-existing monitoring at possibly ephemeral VMs, dev machines
and the like. Just think of the pain involved in adding a new machine
+ a bunch of services AND remembering to disable alerts while you do
so. Not to say it can't be done, just that it's a source of friction,
which means it's less likely to be done.
Second, there are often times when we're building something new, and
we don't have already-existing monitoring to point at it. Case in
point: I recently set up RabbitMQ at work; this was new to us, and I
was completely unfamiliar with it. The tests I added can go on to
form the basis of new monitoring, but they emerged from my desire to
get familiar with them.
Third, these tests were also about getting familiar with RabbitMQ (and
Puppet, which is new to me), and doubtless there are some things in
there that will not be needed for monitoring. These are valuable to
have in testing, but don't always need to be kept around.
I fully stipulate that monitoring, as often implemented, falls
woefully short of our ideal. More often than not, monitoring is a
ping check or a port check. Our test driven environment should
check for page load times or members behind a load-balancer, or &c.
If what we really want are better, more accurate environment
measuring, then know there's a refreshing reimagination of
monitoring with #monitoringlove. If they're already marching in our
direction, let's join ranks.
True story. I've shot myself in the foot more times than I care to
remember by, for example, testing that port 80's open without checking
the content coming back.
Now that I've said this, I think I start to answer my own question of TDI
(test-driven infrastructure) vs monitoring. I begin to see these points:
write the tests first (duh, devs have been saying this for years), and
better test (monitoring artifacts) generation (ideally, automatic).
Test first: yes, particularly when starting with a new technology (see
above re: RabbitMQ). Also, in theory you can rip stuff out and try
something else in its place (think nginx vs Apache); if the tests
still pass, you're golden. Still missing: Better test generation.
jI'd love something that ate serverspec tests and spat out Nagios
configs; even as a first draft of the tests, it'd be valuable.
Tags:
testing
sysadmin
lisa14
01 Dec 2014
I was recently asked what it was like to join my latest job:
This is a good question, and one that with the whirlwind of switching
jobs I didn't write much about. Now that I've had a few months, it's
worth revisiting.
The interview process for OpenDNS was long; there was a lot of talking
to people, a lot of technical interviews, a practical test, and
finally a visit to the office to talk with both the Sr. Director of
Infrastructure Engineering (two levels above) and the CTO (three). It
was during that visit that I was finally told I'd be getting a job
offer. After that I gave notice to UBC and started preparing for
things.
First up was a trip to San Francisco; everyone goes there for a week,
even if you work in the Vancouver office (or in Belgium, where my
latest coworker is from). I made sure my passport was okay, bought a
new packsack, and flew down. I got a bit turned around on the Bart,
but made it into town at last and found the office. Corporate
apartment was close by, and I pretty much just rested that night.
Next morning was first day at the new place. There were seven of us
all together in the lobby, waiting to be collected, including one
person on my team (but who works at the SF office, and one person who
works at YVR (but on another team). We were kept together for most of
the rest of the week, and this was a really good way of getting to
know each other. I also shared accommodation with the YVR person
while I was there -- we were the only two folks from YVR that week --
and that helped too.
The week was spent in meetings...lots and lots of meetings. This was
about 90% good; we were given orientation on (I think) every single
part of the company. Sales, marketing, recruiting, finance, IT, HR,
security, engineering -- we had an hour or so with each one to hear
what they did, ask questions, and learn how they contributed. There
were also orientations on policy, financial stuff (including an hour
with the CFO), travel, our products themselves, and a bunch of other
things. (I'd just like to point out that it's weird to not be the IT
person anymore, and that the IT people there are really, really
well-organized, thoughtful and patient. There's a lot I'd have done
differently in my previous jobs if I'd been able to work with them.)
Coming from places that have been smaller and less organized, this was
really, really nice. Sure, it was a lot for one week; by the end of
it our eyes were glazing over, and we had no idea what was happening
next without checking our schedules. But it was pretty well
organized, and did a good job of avoiding dull or repetitious. And on
top of that, it gave us a chance to meet more people; particularly for
those of us in YVR, it's really good to have a sense of who people are
outside of HipChat.
As for the team I joined: something had to give, and this was (IMHO)
where it did. I had some time with my team, and they did their best
to shove knowledge into our heads -- particularly mine, as I was going
back up to Vancouver at the end of the week. So there were chunks of
time set aside where the senior admins stood at the whiteboard and
drew diagrams while we scribbled furiously. But coming on top of
everything else I was learning that week, plus new job, plus new team,
plus away from home, I know a lot of it leaked straight out of my head
again. (Having had the chance to repeat some of the knowledge drops
since then, I think it's also a question of having context for what
you're hearing. When you're able to relate this new thing with
that chunk you already know, it seems to stick better than when it's
twelve new things all at once with no anchor.)
It's a tough problem, to be sure; there was a lot to learn about the
infrastructure, and like I keep telling people it's at a scale I
haven't worked at before -- so it's hard not to be overwhelmed by
everything. I think it might have been better if I'd spent a second
week down at SFO, just working with the team and listening; OTOH,
the passage of time seems to be necessary (or at least helpful).
Thus for technical knowledge and company knowledge. What about
culture, and what about fitting in with my team?
I'll start with this in here: the HR/PeopleOps at OpenDNS are doing
the work of the angels. That company has hired about 100 people in
the last two years, and they've managed to keep things not only
organized and working well, but working fun. That's not the best
way of describing it, but it's as good as I can come up with right
now. Their work, their problems, are as hard, as knotty, as deeply
challenging as anything I ever hope to tackle as a techie. I'm
very, very grateful that there are people who find this work
rewarding; I enjoy the fruits of their labours, and I would not be a
tenth as good at their job as they are.
So: Culture was as much the focus of that first week as anything else.
Company values, how to use HipChat (not "where do I type?" but "most
people use it as the default means of communication"), when we had
lunch, paperwork ("Don't use paper. Just don't")...all of it was
explained to us over that week. And people! People were good; the
people are really, really nice at OpenDNS. Sitting at the lunch
table, someone'd strike up a conversation with you (which is nice when
you're shy/introverted): when did you start? what do you do? And then
you'd learn something, like what the renewals team did (ensure that
service subscriptions are renewed, instead of falling by the wayside,
and hopefully upgraded along the way).
And ditto for the team. Time with the rest of my coworkers was
scattered and slim, but we tried as much as possible to get to know
each other; lunch, conversations about background, all that sort of
thing. Mostly, though, that would wait for the next visit to SFO.
After that week, it was back to Vancouver. I'm the only one on my
team in Vancouver, but there are other teams we work with quite
closely -- so this was my chance to meet them. It was good, and a lot
less formal and harried, more slow and organic.
I was also trying to be useful to my team; admirable ambition, but
this took a long time, I think. It took a lot of small (and
not-so-small) tasks, good for getting to know things. Some were
well-documented processes, like building yourself a development VM,
and were good for illustrating things (and showed why we wanted to
automate it). Some were expeditions: changing Puppet code in a large,
intricate codebase, when you're a Puppet n00b who really wants to
understand how everything's put together, can take a lot of
grepping.
And all this was happening when routines were imposed/kicking in,
mostly new to me: standups; weekly planning (what?); round-tables
between departments; multiple redundant ticketing systems (don't ask);
Google hangouts where I was the only remote person; HipChat
conversations with people across the room from me.
A couple of weeks later, two of my team came up to work for the week
in Vancouver: my manager and the person who'd started the same week I
did. (This sort of thing happens all the time at OpenDNS; it's rare
that we'll have a week without someone coming up or heading down, even
if there aren't coworkers at the other end.) Having these folks up
was really, really good. I solidified my friendship with both of
them, and the bandwidth in person is just so much higher....everything
from "Hey, I found out this thing you should know!" to "OMG, this is
such a pain to deal with" became so much easier. And having my
manager (-to-be; she was promoted shortly after this trip) around was
incredibly helpful: I got a good sense of what she wanted from me, and
what our team's challenges were.
Getting up to speed on the tech took time, and I'm only just now
beginning to feel like I have a good understanding. Partly that's
because it's complicated; partly that's because it's not terribly
well-documented (though that's a real priority for us, and it's
changing fast). But also, like I said, things make a lot more sense
when you have a context to fit them into -- and gaining that context
is something that happens over time.
So someone tells you something, and you nod and smile and write it
down but it doesn't make sense. But you can't ask about it right
then, because there are 'bout a hundred things you've tripped over in
the last week that you don't understand, and now it's a hundred and
one, and in the meantime you've got things to do. And you forget
about it until you need to understand it again two weeks later, and
you ask about it again with a sheepish grin, and now you've got the
slot for it. This sort of thing has been happening all the time
since I started, and it has taken me a while to make my peace with
it...to realize that yes, it's complicated; yes, it's taking a while;
and no, it doesn't mean I'm stupid. I'm levelling up over time; I
hold on to that.
Last thing I'll mention is my second trip down to SFO, which happened
in October. We had a new coworker starting; he's from Belgium, so he
was spending three weeks in SFO and one week in YVR before heading
back home. We combined his first week with a week of team stuff:
offsites, planning, and so on.
One thing which was pretty amazing: we all gave 10 minute
presentations about ourselves...who we were, what we'd done, how we'd
made it to the place we were at now. It sounds intimidating, but it
wasn't. I learned a lot about my coworkers in a hurry, and it was a
wonderful introduction to each other -- what makes us tick, what we're
worried about, and the weird career paths we'd taken. (One person
used to be an airline pilot; another interned for JPL; another is a
trained EMT.)
There was also the mandatory what-are-we-gonna-do-now meeting, where
we looked at what we'd promised other people (promises made before
half of us had joined the team), figured out how we were gonna
deliver, and so on. Discussions were sometimes heated, but that was
good too; it didn't get out of hand, and we got a good sense for what
everyone worries about. (Side note: the place where we had this
meeting provided snacks and lunch, and they brought in the best scones
I have ever had: crumbly, not too sweet, and just amazing. I
neglected to ask where they came from. I am going to dedicate the
rest of my life to duplicating that recipe.) And there was also the
mandatory dinner and drinks night -- and again, this was great. The
food was wonderful but the company was amazing. Getting to know
everyone in a casual setting is just really, really wonderful.
So to answer the questions:
What did my first day look like? Same as the first week: a lot of
meetings, mainly very well organized, that told me most of what I
needed to know about the company.
How did I get pulled into the culture? By joining people down at
SFO, the way everyone else in the company did; and by joining a
remote office that still shares the company values.
How was I brought up to speed on tech? Lectures, small tasks,
frustration and moments of revelation as things fell into place; rinse
& repeat.
Tags:
sysadmin
30 Nov 2014
Tonight it was cold and clear; it snowed earlier today and was
probably about -5 C when I went out (15 F). I didn't stay out long --
maybe an hour and a half of actual observing -- but it was the first
time I've been out out since September. Wonderful to see
Auriga, Gemini, Orion, Perseus and Pegasus...
Pleides were the first target, just to see if I could fit them into
the new 2" 31mm. No.
After that I spent some time sketching M31 and M32. I searched
for M110, and the closest I came was a "Oh, maybe that might
be a little fuzzy perhaps." As it turns out, that's reasonably
close to where it should be -- but I'm not willing to call this one
found; I think it's more that I know where to look when I'm in a
darker location.
After this I did an alignment on the Magellan for the first time; it
worked well, except that the display was very slow to respond --
presumably because of the cold.
Used the Magellan to find M36, M37 and M38. All were lovely,
and M38's X is very pretty, but oh, that M37. Such a lovely splash
of stars.
Bino break! M35, M42, M36 through M38, and M31. I'm impressed
I'm able to find M35 and M36/37/38 so easily now; that was tough,
bordering on impossible, not so long ago.
Switched to Cassiopeia and tried looking for NGC 7789, but it was
too damn cold; I found where it should have been, but could not be
bothered to keep going.
Did I mention that the dew heaters worked splendidly? Because they did.
Tags:
astronomy
24 Nov 2014
So LISA's over...has been for a week now. Time to put up some
thoughts about what it was like.
First off, the blogging was a lot of work, and big enormous shouts out
to BeerOps and Mark Lamourine, as well as Noah
Meyerhans and Matt Simmons, for doing such excellent work.
We kept a pretty good cadence going. Our goal was two posts/week in
the leadup to the conference, which we pretty much met, and then one
post/day per person during the conference itself, which we nailed.
I'm glad I did it and I'm glad it's done and I'm glad I went. (Glad
glad glad gladdity glad glad, in fact.)
I realized in retrospect that I did not mention anywhere that I got
free admission to the conference for our work; that's bad. I love the
conference and would have been happy to go anyhow, but I should have
made it clear that I was being compensated for it. Not sure if that's
necessarily required on the USENIX site itself, but I was also writing
here...anyhow: I messed up there.
Speaking of posts, I also wrote a post for $WORK on testing Puppet
modules with ServerSpec and Vagrant. (I wasn't paid for that, but
it's expected that we'll take turns coming up with posts for the blog;
this came out of a lunch-and-learn I did for coworkers on this topic.)
That one was a lot of work, too, both for the writing and the
example code that goes with it, and I'm glad it's finally done.
But back to LISA. Some highlights from the conference:
- chance to learn about statistics
- getting to meet fellow bloggers BeerOps and Mark Lamourine in person
- getting to meet Dave Josephsen
- presentation on Bosun
- Facebook data centre keynote
- Hosting a well-attended BoF on testing infrastructure code
- learning from Brendan Gregg that the state of process tracing on
Linux is much better than I would have guessed
- meeting Kurt Opsahl, deputy general counsel for the EFF:
- Getting to see Sarah and Noah again, and meet Logan (their brand-new
5-week old boy)
- Dinner with my family and Matt, where he totally got drunk and
started singing "Brandy" even though we were at a pizza joint, not a
karaoke bar
- A lovely visit to Seattle with my family: Space Needle, Woodland Zoo
and breakfast at a brewery
There's more to write, but I need to post this...so I'll come back to
the BoF and some questions I got asked about testing code in the first place.
Tags:
lisa14
—
Saint Aardvark (@saintaardvark)