The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

Author: eajhnsn1

  • What a Weekend

    This is gonna be a long one…sorry.

    Paul Tarr’s wedding was this weekend in Columbia, IL so Ana and I decided to take the opportunity and spend the weekend in St. Louis. Before heading down there on Friday after work, we made a stop at the Annual Chatham Sweet Corn Festival to listen to the band Jay is in, Cinnamon Toast Funk. After some delicious corn and great music, we hit the highway and were on our way to St. Louis.

    Our first stop was to Busch Stadium to see if there was any chance of us sneaking in late in the game when they open up the gates, but we were a few innings to early and just had a nice walk around the outside of the stadium. We did get to see the new stadium so it wasn’t a total loss. At around 9:30pm, we decided to head over to our favorite restaurant in The Hill, Zias. As always, the food was awesome. After a short stop to check into our hotel in Clayton, it was off to the Waldenbooks in the Galleria… for the midnight distribution of Harry Potter. Oh the joy 🙂 Ana’s been reading the book on and off all weekend.

    On Saturday we spent a good portion of the morning shopping in the Galleria and the afternoon in the St. Louis Science Center. It has been a long time since my last visit…. wow, I had forgotten how much fun it is! I even had my first visit to a planetarium. We had to cut our Science Center visit short and head to Paul’s wedding and reception in Columbia.

    Today was a lot of fun. We went to a Cardinals store in the Galleria and treated ourselves to several new Cardinal jackets, shirts, and sweatshirts. After that, and a trip to Crate an Barrel for a few things, we decided to head to the grocery store Viviano’s on The Hill to get some great Italian food. But, somehow we forgot/didn’t know that they were closed on Sundays and left empty handed. This really confuses us because we swear we’ve stopped there in the past on our way back from St. Louis on Sundays. Shrug.

    After that disappointment, we decided we would just head home. On a whim, I decided to swing by Busch Stadium and see if I could procure a pair of tickets. (this weekend has been a sold-out series with the Houston Astros). We ran across someone a couple blocks from the stadium and the price was right…score!

    Or so we thought. Busch Stadium this year is doing something new with their tickets, they are scanning them as you enter the park. When we tried getting in, we learned that the tickets had been used already, but the gentleman suggested we just go to a different gate and say we had exited the park and needed back in. We tried a few gates and kept getting turned down, but finally had success. The game turned out very well, got a lot of sun and got to see a good pitcher’s duel.

    We headed home after the game and I mowed the lawn. As I was sweeping up, a man and his wife (from the neighborhood) were walking past and stopped to ask what I do to get the yard to green. Woo, go Scott’s Turf Builder!

    So that’s it, we’re really tired from all the sun and Ana is reading Harry Potter as I type this.

  • Photos

    When I want to print some of my astronomy photos, I usually take them to Meijer’s Photo Lab on a memory card and use their photo kiosks to submit them for printing. On Saturday I went online and discovered they now have a Windows client application that allows photos to be submitted from home. I downloaded and installed the app, submitted my photos, and picked them up at the local Meijer just over an hour later. Worked flawlessly and I highly recommend it.

    In the past I’ve tried Wal-Mart’s digital photo services, but the astronomy pictures I tried just came out very poorly. I think this was due to Wal-Mart trying to be smart and make adjustments to the submitted digital photo, and it getting aweful confused when the pictures I was printing were 99% black.

    Since I’ve been printing them at Meijer, they’ve come to know me and often comment on how much they like printing the ones I send in. Saturday I printed one of my sunspot pictures and, when I picked them up, the lady explained that she was really confused about what the picture was – until she saw and recognized my name. At least I have a fan!

  • Camping

    On Saturday night, Ana and I went camping with Jay and Katherine. The weather was perfect – the temperature probably dipped in the low 60s, give or take, with very low humidity. I dragged the telescope along with us and Jay and I were out under the stars until close to 4am while the girls slept. I’ve never been to a darker site or seen the
    Milky Way appear so bright.

    We all had a lot of fun, are tired, and look forward to doing it again.

    More camping photos.

    Snapped a picture of the Andromeda Galaxy too.

  • Classical Music

    If you enjoy classical music and haven’t listened to any Yo-Yo Ma, you are definitely missing out. Over the course of the past 3 weeks I’ve purchased 4 of his CDs and have enjoyed each and every one of them.

  • Bookcases

    Ana and I are tossing the idea around of hiring someone to build us a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall bookcase in our living room. I really don’t have the slightest idea on how much a project like that will cost, but it would be a welcome addition to our house. I hate having 4-5 bookcases throughout the house holding various types; a 20’x9′ should rectify that situation.

  • Long Weekend

    It has been a long week at work and I’ve been looking forward to the 3 day weekend. Ana and I don’t really have anything planned, maybe just a project or two around the house.

    Earlier in the week I was disappointed to learn that Deep Impact’s collision with comet Tempel 1 will not be visible from Illinois on Monday morning. I was planning on watching it (watching the side-effects I suppose would be a better term – the comet is expected to get noticably brighter) as it happened but I would need to be west of the Mississippi. Instead, I’ll just check it Sunday night and again on Monday night to compare the brightness. I may even setup the camera and see if I can get a photo or two.

  • Busy Weekend

    This weekend turned out to be pretty busy. Ana finished sanding one of our pieces of bedroom furniture and was able to prime and paint it; photos soon. Shopping for Father’s Day gifts took up most of the day on Saturday, and I spent Friday and Saturday night out under the stars getting some pretty good pictures of some small Deep Sky Objects. They can be seen in my gallery. Last night I was out until 1:40am so I’m looking forward to getting some rest tonight.

  • Ring Nebula

    Took the telescope out last night, it was a very clear evening. I was able to snap a few shots of M57, The Ring Nebula. I was pretty suprised they came out like they did, this was the first time I’ve used the 15 second exposure option on my digital camera – I had the mount aligned pretty good so there aren’t very long “star trails” from the long exposure.

    M57, The Ring Nebula, is a Planetary Nebula 2300 light-years (which google tells us is 1.35205496 × 10^16 miles) away from us. A Planetary Nebula is a “shell” of gas and plasma that is left when some types of stars die/explode. At the center of this is that star, a white dwarf now. Unfortunately you can’t see it in my picture.

    ring nebula
    The Ring Nebula is the small doughnut looking shape in the center.

  • Sunspots

    sunspots

    Took a few photos of the sun with the solar filter. Click to view gallery.

  • X-Files Mythology

    Picked up my copy of X-Files Mythology 1 tonight from Best Buy. I really enjoyed X-Files when it was on, but stopped really keeping track of the main story line once I went to college. Watching the Pilot episode now!