The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

  • Decorations

    It has been a while since I’ve last posted, not a whole lot has been going on. Last night after work, Ana and I went to a few stores and purchased all the necessary Christmas decorations we’d need today. We also picked up our Christmas tree and decorated it before heading to bed last night.

    Today has been very busy but now all of the outdoor lights and decorations are up, and there are only a few remaining things to be done inside. Tonight is LRS’ annual Christmas Party so we’re getting all cleaned up for that.

    The rest of the month looks to be pretty full. Next weekend we are hosting Ana’s work’s Christmas Party (just her division, not all 500+ in her building!). The weekend after that we are heading to the Illinois Symphony Orchestra for their Holiday Pops concert with my family. Should be very enjoyable.

    Pics of the decorated house coming soon.

  • Sunspots

    Courtesy of Spaceweather.com, here’s a comparison between the size of earth and the size of some current (small) sunspots.

  • Orville Redenbacher’s Cinnabon Popcorn

    We tried a bag of this stuff tonight. When we bought it were both a little worried that it may taste horrible (cinammon and popcorn? hmm) but were intrigued nonetheless. This stuff tastes great! Highly recommended if you have a sweet tooth.

    In ebay fashion: “A+++++!! GREAT PRODUCT!”

  • Leonid Meteor Shower

    The annual Leonid Meteor Shower is set to begin tonight and extend for several nights. It figures that it’s supposed to be cloudy all week so I’ll miss them just like I missed the eclipse last month. A few years ago Ana and I went a few miles outside of Champaign around 3am to watch and it was a spectacular show. I recommend if you have the chance, check them out.

  • Success!

    Today was a busy day, setting up all of our decorations. It was worth it though, we heard many great comments about how our house looked fantastic. The music/sound effects created a very spooky atmosphere – a group of neighbor kids playing in the next yard over thought our house was haunted. Much fun!

    Full pictures can be seen in the gallery.

  • Webcam

    Tonight I made a very quick test run of using a webcam with my telescope. Lots of people have been very successful in creating awesome photographs with their webcams, but I was pretty skeptical. I’ve been waiting to make a way of connecting the webcam to the telescope until I knew for sure it was actually going to be worth the trouble. After taking a quick shot at the moon, I must say that I’m very impressed and quite excited with what I may be able to do with deep space objects such as nebulas and the like. You can see the very shakey (since I was holding it up to the telescope by hand) video here, it’s a 3MB+ and in Windows Media format – I don’t have any software to go from avi->mpg here.

  • Halloween Decorations

    Ana and I have decided to do up the house with Halloween decorations and scary stuff for the trick’r treaters in the neighborhood. It should end up looking pretty cool and provide a fun evening tomorrow. Some preliminary pics can be seen here.

  • eVoting

    I ran across this article over at CNN. I think what Nevada is doing is a very good idea, but I first chuckled at thought of how appropriate it would be if people were lining up at slot machines to cast their votes for office.

  • Copernicus, part II

    He’s been on our porch every day now, just quietly curled up on our cushions. He’s there in the morning when we leave for work and in the evening when we arrive home. After some discussion, we’ve decided to start feeding him. We’ve sort of adopted him as our “Outdoor Kitty”, to quoute Ana. When we took a bowl of food out to him tonight, he took to it very quickly and immediately started purring.

    Ana’s already planning an outoor bed for him, a counter part to these.

  • [untitled]

    Awaiting the start of Game 4, hopefully the cardinals will show up to play. They’ve been very flat these past three games, it’s pretty depressing to watch. They still have a chance, but it’s probably just as big as my chance to catch a glimpse of the lunar eclipse tonight through the heavy cloudcover. Sucks indeed.