My Boring Life

June 10, 2011

SCHOOL'S OUT!!!

SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!SCHOOL'S OUT!

SCHOOL'S OUT!

April 9, 2011

Japanese The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Commercial

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Commercial, from Japan; the only place where commercial breaks aren't annoying.

There are English and Japanese (Romaji and Kanji, respectively) subtitles.

March 29, 2011

Periodic Update

I'm still alive. It's just that my life is SO BORING! Why else would I call the blog "My Boring Life"?

March 19, 2011

Images of the "Super Moon"

Not much to say but, it's the full moon. I hope that these show improvement since my last round of photos.

NOTE: Yet again, these are very large image files, sorry for the long load times; I wanted the best quality possible.

I don't care if this isn't perfectly focused. JUST LOOK AT IT, I CAPTURED A PLANE IN FRONT OF THE MOON!

Taken right after the above picture, as indicated by the faint contrail.

Kinda good.

Probably the best picture that I took.

Not quite as good as the above, even though it's focused better, due to it being less than half the size.

March 18, 2011

"Super Moon" tomorrow

Tomorrow an extremely rare even occurs that is called a "Super Moon". This happens when the full moon coincides perigee. Perigee is the point at which an orbiting body (the Moon) is at its closest to the object it orbits (Earth). Normally the effect is unnoticeable; however, the event happening at the same time as the full moon makes the effect very noticeable. Especially when the moon is close to the horizon. I will, if weather permits, have photos of it, lots of photos of it.

Quite a difference!

March 13, 2011

Attempt at Astrophotography

By FAR the best picture I got. Helped, in part, by
the magic that is Adobe Photoshop!

Tonight, I went out, armed with a telescope and a camera, to get some pictures. Of the 20 some pictures I took, only 3 came out well, and all of them required enhancing in Photoshop. I used a Jason Rotary Power 50mm telescope and a Nikon point and shoot camera. Ironically, I got better results with a $130 Nikon point-and-shoot, than a $400 Canon EOS Reble 300D.

Meh...

Note: These are very large image files and will take a little while to load on a slow connection.

One of my great passions in life is astronomy. However, it can be an exhausting hobby. All of these required going out in near freezing temperatures with a steady wind. Not only did the wind make me cold, but it caused slight disturbance in the images. But, as all good astronomers know, the best time for using a telescope is during the winter because of the lower temperatures and humidity.

Better, though it still has room to improve.

This, in turn, makes astronomy quite a hobby. It requires a REALLY good tolerance for cold weather. But, most of all, it requires MONEY.

This is, by no means, a cheap hobby. Even small telescopes, of good quality, cost at least $100. Even for that money, you are only getting a small 2 inch diameter Galilean Refractor (I live in the US, sue me for using my own measurement system!). Good telescopes are Newtonian Reflectors, and cost at least $300 for a 4 inch one on even an alt-azimuth mount. A good telescope mount is called an Equatorial mount, the main merit of these are the ability to use a polar tracking motor. What the motor does, is follow one point in the sky at the same rate that the Earth rotates at. Using one of these mounts, an astronomer can attach a camera eyepiece to the telescope, and have the camera expose for minutes without the image moving out of place. This is necessary because, while the normal exposure times are fine for the moon, they are simply too short to catch the faint light of nebula, stars, and galaxies. The way I took these photos is about as rudimentary as possible, I just pointed the telescope at the moon, and the camera into the eyepiece. The originals were not very good quality, I had to play around with the ISO setting for a little before I settled on using 3200. Then I had to line up the camera PERFECTLY to fit the whole image in frame. I also had a hard time focusing the images because this process involves 2 items that need to be focused. While the camera has a pretty good auto-focus, the telescope requiters VERY specific and small movements to focus properly. It is a headache that I don't usually do.

February 18, 2011

Happy Birthday

Today's my birthday, now I am, officially, 15. Things went well. Sadly, I have a cold.

Wow it's warm

We've been having an unusually warm week. Right now it's up to 70°F. Sadly this will not continue as tomorrows forecast calls for a high temperature of 49°F.

February 17, 2011

Crazy School Day

This was a weird day.
First we had a fire drill.
RIGHT after that, the school server went down.
The phones didn't call, the computers wouldn't log in.
On the plus side, because the computers wouldn't log in, free lunch.
The registers were computers with software.
Then, as if to taunt us, the server would let us log in, but we were unable to get the internet.