Well, ok, it works

I've had some consistency problems with Shaw's cable internet service, which Derek and I share via a wireless router. Lately, the service has been unavailable about half of the time. I've become frustrated enough to set up a "portable internet" account with Rogers. To this end, I purchased a wireless modem (this one made by Motorola) which is the central component necessary to connect to Rogers portable internet services.

The company which actually sold this modem to me is one of three or four in the Metrotown mall which are Rogers representatives. They appeared to be the only ones who had this modem in stock. They went through the routines to set up and activate my new account right on the premises. I took the modem home, unwrapped it, and plugged it into the wall, and connected the included RJ45 connecting cable to my wireless router. You can also connect your wireless modem directly to your computer if you're not running a network.

Astonishingly, there were no setup instructions or manuals included. I'm tech-savvy, and got the internet connection going after experimenting for about an hour. The reason for experimenting (aside from the lack of instructions) was that there is no information regarding how this modem handles IP addressing - DHCP or static addressing, which exact addresses, defaults, etc. - all necessary for successful internet communication. I can't see how anyone unfamiliar with the ins-and-outs of computer communications can easily get this going. An easy installation is claimed on the wrapper of the box in which the modem was packaged (see picture).







the wrapper



















the wirelss modem (indicator lights at the top)










In order to use Outlook Express for email (email is one of the "killer apps" for which many people get involved with the internet in the first place) you need certain information, such as mail server names, port usage, etc., none of which was included with the package. This information is "Rogers-specific" in this case, because I'm using Rogers as an Internet Service Supplier (ISP - see image above). The modem wrapper bears Rogers' label but that information was not immediately at hand.

Today, I dug a little deeper into setting up Outlook Express (OE). Since a number of parameters in OE need to be set up for email, and since these parameters depend to some considerable degree on the "characteristics" of the ISP, this information needed to come from Rogers. So, I phoned their technical support, and, after going through an automated response system (using voice phrase recognition) I talked to a real person. This person (I think his name is Dave) supplied all the necessary information, as well as the requisite expertise, to get the email setup up and running. He spent 31 minutes with me making sure that things were working according to how I wanted my system to work. Dave is the kind of technical support person seldom available nowadays. Many companies get a bad press for poor customer service, but this is an instance which illustrates what customer service should be. Kudos to Rogers for this one.

Well, what's the bottom line? The system works, but it's not a fast as the ads want you to believe. Now, a fair number of external factors affect the performance of your internet experience - number of users online, bandwidth available, your own computer, etc. In my case, I think that signal strength (like that of a radio station) may be an issue.

The wireless modem has five unlabelled indicator lights (see image above). I have yet to find out what they indicate, but I theorize that they indicate signal strength. Only one light on may indicate low strength, five on may mean maximum strength. After moving the modem to various spots in my office, I could only come up with a maximum of three indicator lights turning on. So perhaps this means a kind of "medium strength" signal, which might have an effect on performance. I must emphasize that this is my theory only - I stand to be corrected.

The nice thing about this whole approach is that you're independent of the "hard-wired" (phone lines or cable) systems. If some car runs into a pole, or some thief steals some copper cable, you're still in operation. A big point is the fact that this system is portable - if you really want to have complete internet connectivity elsewhere (in your car, say) and you want to use your current computer and its files, and the wireless modem, you don't need to change any settings, and you can just carry on as though you are in your office (for this to work, you've got to take the wireless modem with you into the car). Of course you could always buy a Blackberry, or the new iPod Touch.

I wonder what my long-term feelings about this system will be - I'll let you know in time.

Ode to our kitchen

We subscribe to both the Vancouver Sun and to the weekend edition of the Globe and Mail newspapers. The VS spplies us with topical, local news - the GaM has an interesting editorial page and also three commentators who we both like equally (I've always wondered about that word: should it not be commentors ? We don't "commentate", we comment) - Margaret Wente, Jeffrey Simpson, and Rex Murphy. Of these, I'm making a special reference to Margaret Wente here.





The image shows Margaret Wente's article, as scanned from the Globe and Mail - click on it to read.











In this weekend's edition, she writes about designer kitchens and refers to her own cluttered and old-fashioned one, much like our own kitchen here (see below). Her point is that many of the designer kitchens are "showpieces" only, they are often not used for the kind of family cooking which we all enjoy and have the privilege to have access to.







Our own kitchen - it is as old as our house. The electrical appliances are newer, but were bought to match the needs of such a "working" kitchen. Many times, it has fed all of us when we had family gatherings at our house (see below).





I have had a number of occasions to see working kitchens in houses where really good cooks do their thing; they all look like ours. As you know from my previous post, I have a wife who really does know how to cook - this kitchen is her domain. I stay out of it - my cooking prowess is limited to toasting bread and boiling eggs. I will fix any of the appliances if they break down, and will also repair whatever plumbing needs work, though.


Here's some of the crowd which is often fed by my wife's cooking, produced in our "old-fashioned" kitchen. Our family dinners are sumptuous, with additional contributions from our son and daughter-in-law, my sister and sister-in-law, brothers-in-law, extended family and family friends., all of whom produce their food in kitchens just like ours.



Let's hear it for the "working kitchen"!

It's for the birds

Today, as forecast, has turned into one of those dreary, dark, and grey Pacific Northwest rainy days. So, any deviation from the dark greens and grays surrounding us falls readily into one's eye.

Our neighbours have tree in their yard which has lost all its leaves (naturally, it's November), but is hanging on to its fruits, as it does every year. My wife says that they are yellow apples - I wouldn't know; my botanical knowledge is very limited. My impression leans more towards Japanese oranges. In any case, they are very distinct (see the left picture, above, taken with a 300mm lens through our living room window). If you take a closer look at the centre of that image, you'll notice one of them with it's innards hollowed out (enlarged image on the right). I'm sure its the work of the local bird population.

We do have a number of resident species which are not deterred by our (usually quite mild) winters - crows, seagulls, pidgeons, sparrows, etc. I'm sure they appreciate the availability of food sources like that during this time of year.

So, because our neighbour usually leaves these fruits on the tree, he's doing something for the environment - it's for the birds.

Side effects

Derek's having a less than stellar day today. He is in the middle of his third chemo treatment. Airdrie says that he's just beat, and has spent the day in bed.

We saw him yesterday, after he came home from the hospital from his bi-weekly infusions there. He was feeling ok at that time. Today and tomorrow he is still connected to the "take-home" drip, I suppose that's what's causing his discomfort right now. I always think of chemotherapy as "controlled poisoning" - it's really a course way to attack cancer cells. It's the only reliable method we know of, though. Much research is under way to be able to "fine tune" these treatments - looking for the magic bullet, if you like.

The B.C. Cancer Agency is in the forefront of this research. It needs all the support it can get.

A number of happenings

Sometimes a lot of things happen in a short period.

On the weekend, my wife and I drove to Seattle to meet a cousin whom I hadn't seen in 52 years. She was visiting one of her daughters, who had recently moved there. Other than exchanging a few emails in the last year, we hadn't really connected in a meaningful way.

The last time we met face-to-face was when we were both in our early teens, before I emigrated to Canada from Berlin. Later, she married an American in the armed services, became an American citizen many years ago, and moved to Texas.

In any case, we reconnected on Sunday, caught up on family history, took some pictures, and promised to visit each other more often.

It was a significant, and happy day for both of us.


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On Monday, my wife decided that it would be nice to have an intimate dinner with Derek, Airdrie, Marina and Lauren. Since they all live next door, it is easy to get together. We had one of my wife's specialties (rouladen) and various greens, rice, pudding. My wife is a wonderful cook (I married her for her cooking and her money - well, and because I love her, too). This recipe she learned from my mother; my mother always said that my wife made it better than she herself.

So, we had a nice evening.

Yesterday, I finally managed to take a short peek at comet Holmes; a short peek because I saw it through holes in the clouds only. It is very bright, and easily seen with the naked eye as a fuzzy star. It looks magnificent in binoculars, if a little unusual - I did not see a tail; it appears like a big, fuzzy ball. It's a shame that our sky is covered in clouds, and predictions are for more of the same, and lots of rain. Well, this is the Pacific Northwest - what would you expect at this time of year?


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This morning we had some sad news. My wife has three close friends, two of whom she has known since they all were kids, another "joined the club" more than fifty years ago. They all live in the city, and the four of them get together often; they celebrate their birthdays, and find many other reasons to have "a night out" with each other. They've gone through the ups and downs in their lives more-or-less together; two of them are widowed. I have known all four of them since before my wife and I got married (nearly 43 years ago). They all were bridesmaids at our wedding. The four of them are part of our family, and join in and contribute to most of our family get-togethers.

One of them, Sonia, whom my wife has known since they were both children, died this morning. We are all very sad. Her health had not been the best in the last years; none-the-less she travelled often, enjoyed her food, and was always "open" to life. It's a great loss to us all. Derek has written an eloquent note about her.

So, life has its happy and sad moments.

Surprise comet

(click on the picture to see a larger version)







Figure 1 (from "Sky and Telescope" magazine.)









Photographer AnnMarie Jones
Location Aberllefenni, Wales, UK
Date 5th Nov '07 - pm
Equipment Canon 20D 100-400L @ 400mm Celestron CG5 mount






(click on the picture for a larger version)





Figure 3

These sequential pictures taken by Gary Seronik (RASC)








We have an unanticipated visitor in the night sky right now. I'm talking about the periodic comet Holmes. That comet orbits between Mars and Jupiter (right in the asteroid belt) and is normally very faint - too faint for many telescopes and certainly binoculars. Its orbit is tilted with respect to the plane of the orbits of the major planets and the average plane of the asteroid belt. As a consequence, the comet encounters the asteroid belt twice - once on the way "up" from "below", and again on the way "down" from "above" the planetary plane.

In the last couple of weeks, it has become very bright (relatively speaking), so that it can now be seen with the naked eye, and is certainly quite easy in binoculars. Some people have estimated its brightness at 2nd magnitude, whereas it is normally at 17th magnitude.

In astronomy the magnitude of an object refers to its brightness; each magnitude is approximately 2.5 times brighter than the next. A bright star, for instance, can be of magnitude 1, with larger numbers actually denoting lower brightness. So a star of magnitude 1 is 2.5 times brighter than one of magnitude 2, which in turn is 2.5 times brighter than a star of magnitude 3, etc. You can therefore get a pretty good idea of how much the comet's brightness has increased if you consider that its brightness has increased by about 15 magnitudes (that's 2.5 raised to the 15th power) which comes to approximately a million times. For a more precise explanation, see an article by Nick Strobel.

This brightness increase is unexplained at the moment. My hunch is that the comet collided with some asteroid or a large meteoroid. Something very similar was done artificially by deliberately crashing the "Deep Impact" probe into the comet Tempel 1.

You can find comet Holmes on a clear evening if you look to the northeast at around 8 pm (and it'll be visible all night long, as the sky turns through the hours, slowly making its way to the overhead, and later, northwest position). Make reference to figure 1 to find it in the sky. The comet is in a position in it's orbit which will keep it in the area of the Perseus constellation until about March 2008. Perhaps it'll keep up its brightness - comets are notoriously unpredictable in that regard. Use your binoculars to enhance the view. You'll probably see a fuzzy blob, quite distinct from the nearby stars.

Practical uses

As most of you know, I'm sure, there are a number of satellites orbiting the Earth with astronomical purposes as their primary or only function. The most famous of these is the Hubble Space Telescope; who hasn't seen at least some of spectacular images that telescope has produced over the years? Above you see Hubble images of the planet Jupiter and the inside of a gaseous nebula known as M17 (In binoculars, visible as a small "blob" - both it, and Jupiter and its four big moons are easily seen from your back yard with binoculars, especially if they are attached to a photo tripod or similar support.)

There are a number of other artificial satellites making astronomical observations at electromagnetic wavelengths that do not penetrate our atmosphere (infra-red, ultraviolet, certain radio frequencies, etc...). A couple of these, the Spitzer and the Chandra space telescopes, were recently in the news with regards to "missing black holes".

Space telescopes provide data for basic research, and their resulting data sets have less direct application to everyday life, though some the published pictures resulting from their activities are aesthetically pleasing, and grace the walls of planetariums (planetaria?) and museums (musea?), and probably quite a few private residences the world over. They also have scientific value; so one can say that there is perhaps some direct effect.

There is another class of Earth satellites which very directly affect our lives - the "weather satellites". There are several which provide up-to-date weather information and make today's weather forecasts so much more accurate. For instance, here is an image picturing some pertinent current conditions relayed by one of those satellites. The International Space Station and NASA's space shuttle also have a role in this regard, many important weather pictures have been taken by people occupying these vehicles.

Information such as this helps people prepare for these occurrences, and saves many lives. While this is not astronomy activity in the strict sense, the technologies developed for astronomical purposes certainly have important applications in this field of meteorology (this name itself shows the connection, meteors are certainly considered to be astronomical phenomena).

Practical uses of science, for sure.

...

The haunted abode

It's this time of year again: we're haunted. The ghosts and goblins appear in our windows and doors - time to appease them with gifts of candy and other goodies.

These goblins were created by Marina and Lauren and Marina's classmate Chayenne.

Halloween recital

Marina at the piano













The proud parents (Derek and Airdrie)















Lauren at the piano













Marina singing







Derek and Airdrie invited us to come to the annual Halloween recital which Lorraine's music students put on every year. This time, it took place at a well-known local pizza restaurant. Both Marina and Lauren displayed their great talents for all guests. A huge surprise for us was that Marina also sang ("Butterfly" was her selection). She has an amazing voice, and a totally relaxed poise in front of an audience. We were all totally thrilled. Marina must have inherited some of that talent from her dad, as well as her Great-Grandfather (my wife's father and Derek's Grandfather), who was a singer, musician, and composer.

A moonrise from the window

Having just returned from California, it is a nice surprise to have a beautiful, clear day and evening - free of all the smoke. Even more lovely was the full moon rise over the northeast mountains, as viewed from our living room window (see picture).


The full moon always appears opposite the sun in the sky. At this time of year the sun sets fairly low in the southwest (and it'll get lower still until December 21). This means that the full moon rises high in the northeast, and sets high in the northwest. In the summer, the sun rises and sets that way, and at that time the full moon rises low in the southeast and sets low in the southwest. A quick rule of thumb: summer sun equals winter full moon, summer full moon equals winter sun. You can also say that sun and full moon are always two seasons apart.


The picture on the left was taken through a double-paned window and shows some faint smudges and reflections as a result. It is actually a combination of two pictures, one exposed to show the bushes, trees and mountains, the other to show the details in the moon's "face". In the first picture the bushes and mountains are correctly exposed, but the moon is overexposed and shows no detail. In the second picture (not shown in this posting), the moon is correctly exposed, but the bushes are barely visible. Consumer type digital camera CCDs do not have the dynamic range of the human eye; the eye perceives detail in both bright and dark areas at the same time. Using Photoshop, the two pictures were combined to give the same impression that I had when I looked at the scene.




This picture is one of several which were taken from the front steps a little later. The histogram of the moon's image in this picture was adjusted to bring out the detail, and the contrast in the whole picture was increased to enhance the appearance of the bushes. This is a single picture, not the combination of two. It played no part in the combined picture above.

Smoke gets in your eyes

We have just returned from a short trip to San Diego. Most of you are aware of the extremely vicious wildfires currently affecting that area. While the location of our stay with friends at La Jolla Shores was not directly in the path of the fires, their effects could be felt, none-the-less. There was a constant trickle of fine ash particles; my wife found that the smoky smell affected her breathing, and I had an irritated feeling in my eyes. None in our group was seriously inconvenienced, but in general, the media reported a prevalence of breathing problems.

We have our share of natural disasters here, but I cannot think of another calamity short of an earthquake which would be as destructive as these fires, and so far beyond human control. The only option if you don't want to take chances is not to live in the areas subject to disasters. That's like saying that if you don't want to get rained on, move to a place where it doesn't rain. Generally, desirable locations (mountain slopes, picturesque valleys, lakeside or oceanside viewpoints, etc.) are also subject to some sort of problem (slides, floods, wave erosion, and so on...).

No enjoyment without some risk...


Here are some pictures:







an eerie sun



















orange beach scene















From the plane on the way home: smoke as far as you can see.

The next cycle

Dereks' started a new cycle of chemotherapy, which was planned some time ago. So far he has few side effects. We're glad to hear this. Derek says that is feeling reasonably well, which is wonderful, considering what he's had to go through this year.

On a different note:

A few days ago, I bought a Samsung mp3 player and a little FM tunable transmitter. The idea is to be able to play mp3 music through the car radio/cd player in my van, which can't handle mp3 natively. This seems to work quite well. Both units can work on their internal batteries, or you can connect them to an external power supply (including the cigarette lighter) for external power. The mp3 player's battery can be recharged through a USB connection to a computer.

In use, the trick is to find some unused portion of the FM band, to minimize interference from FM radio stations.

I've found one quirk: if you connect both the player and the transmitter to the cigarette lighter, there is some kind of positive feedback which generates an inordinate amount of noise in the radio. If you connect one or the other only, everything's fine. So, I'm using the mp3 player on its internal battery, and the transmitter is powered through the cigarette lighter.

The sound quality in the car is quite good. The mp3 player has a standard headphone output connector, which allows it to be hooked up to external sound equipment, with excellent results. As I type this, I'm listening to it via the computer speaker system normally connected to my laptop.

Music selections are copied to the transmitter from a computer via USB, using software which comes with the player. This software also manages (delete, sort, etc.) what is stored on the player. Capacity is 2 Gbytes, enough for about 500 music selections. At an average of about 3.5 minutes each, that translates to about 30 hours worth of music.

You can also store photos, videos, text files, and games on the player, as well as listen to FM radio or use it like a voice recorder. Versatile enough for me.

Giving thanks

Here in Canada we celebrate thanksgiving day in October. This year, even the weather was worth some thanks. Our sister-in-law and brother-in-law invited the whole extended family. We do have a lot to be thankful for. Dinner was plentiful - obligatory turkey, ham, several "ethnic" dishes (we counted French Canadian, Native Canadian, Danish, Finnish, German, Austrian, Scottish, Ukranian, and Carribean ancestry in the "family" tree). As usual, a great time was had by all, thanks to everyone's efforts. The dining room overflowed. We see our family expanding.

My wife and I appreciated that Derek much enjoyed the dinner, too. You can see that he has a lot of backup, if needed.