40-70

Last weekend, Derek organized a Bar-B-Que in the house and garden for Airdrie and my wife, who are turning 40 and 70 respectively. Derek and I are both lucky to have these intelligent and attractive women share our lives. And it looks like the line of women like them will continue on in our family. Both our granddaughters (Derek and Airdrie's daughters) look like they are already well on their way to that admirable state.

This party was a potluck dinner, so there was lots of food. Derek and Airdrie invited all their friends and gave us a free hand to invite ours, too. Our rec room saw an unaccustomed party as well. Derek's friends obviously had read my previous blog, and gave the old sound system a good workout. A good time was had by all, Derek's cousin Tarya had organized a fire dance performance, and the party, which started at 2pm, finished around midnight. Most of the food went - we finished eating leftovers yesterday.

Thank you, Airdrie and Derek for organizing everything, and thanks to all our friends for making it such a big success.



More pictures here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/penmachine/sets/72157607173855831/

Recycle

I haven't been blogging much lately, because with the schools and universities starting up again, I've been busy. But today, I read Gary Mason's article in the Globe and Mail regarding the increasing popularity of the old vinyl records (33 1/3 and 45 rpm records) and it prompted me to make some comments. "Vinyl" was the leading technology for recorded music (the word "record" was used for individual vinyl disks - as in: did you listen to Elvis' latest "record"?) at an earlier time.

I've stayed true to my roots in that regard. I still own a fine Dual 33 rpm record player with a Shure M93E dynamic cartridge mounted in the "tonearm", and from my days in the coin music and vending business I still have two "jukeboxes", one designed for 33 rpm records and the other for 45 rpm. The jukeboxes and ancillary loudspeakers were built by a company named Seeburg (there were other companies in that business, too, for instance Wurlitzer).

This is all "stereophonic" technology of about 40 years ago (the electronics are transistorized). Here are some pictures:



The 33rpm jukebox. It was built as a "home unit" - you can see how it looks like furniture. Each of the 'slanted' sides contains a 12" woofer and cone tweeters - and crossover networks. You can play records, or listen to am/fm radio.















The 33rpm "record rack". It holds 50 33rpm records (LP - "long playing" about 15-20 minutes per side with about 6 or 7 "records" or "cuts" on each side).













Each 33rpm record side is selected by a rotary dial - just like the old telephones. You can select one, several, or all records in the machine. There are about 700 cuts available (it all depends on the number of cuts per side). And here's a mix of old and new: the system sounds great still, at least to my aging ears - so I play my little mp3 player through one of the auxiliary audio inputs.

An afterthought (added Sep 1): Looking at the mp3 player, it has more functionality than the home unit. At 2GB, it can hold about the same number of music selections. It also has radio, and can store videos (impossible with the home unit). It does this in a space volume which is many hundreds of times smaller than what technology needed 40 years ago.












The two twin 15" bass reflex woofer with exponential horn tweeter loudspeakers with internal crossover networks. These will rattle the house if I turn up the volume too much.












The prototype of the colour organs I used to build is still running - it responds to the bass beat of the music being played in the "home unit".

























The 45rpm jukebox. It holds fifty 45rpm records - one cut per side, usually. Again, you could choose one, several, or all of a hundred possible selections.












The 45 rpm record playing mechanism - the 33rpm juke box has a large scale version of this, too.




















The 45 rpm record rack behind the playing mechanism.
These are the toys my wife I enjoyed in our young years - when we had many parties in the "rec room". Our granddaughters, who live next door often play the music on them, too; maybe the equipment will enjoy a "renaissance" as they grow up.

Playtime continued

Yesterday, the forecast was for reasonable weather (it turned out to be a really nice day). While Derek and Airdrie are attending Gnomedex in Seattle, we're taking care of the granddaughters; it was their wish to go to the PNE again.

Well, we (the gandparents) walked a lot and supplied the necessary food and drink, and they (the granddaughters) took in the rides non-stop (except to take time out for the food and drink). A great time was had by all.

Playdough Olympics

Sometimes we wonder whether the advent of video games and other screen-based entertainment has today's kids unaware of the rewards and enjoyment of real personal and physical effort. Our granddaughter Marina disproved that notion with her creation of some of the Olympic disciplines by the use of playdough. She was obviously watching the TV coverage, and it has left an impression.

At left: rowing

You can see some more pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mimiandpapa/sets/72157606760982676/

Another poison day

Today is a another scheduled day for Derek's chemotherapy treatments. As a result, he'll likely feel sick for the next couple of days and may not be blogging. We hope that this won't be the case, but past experience tells us to expect it.

Really cool

When the days get really hot, trust the kids to come up with a neat solution to cool off. Here's our granddaughters so cool idea:










Hooray for the nice days of summer, and... no school!



(Click on picture for large view)

Light pollution

As most of you know from my previous post, one of my hobbies is astronomy. Every now and then, I take a some photos, too.

Last night, seeing that there wasn't a cloud in the sky, I decided to set up scope, and attach my DSLR (digital single lens reflex) camera to it. The reason is that that telescope follows the rotation of the sky (caused by the turning of the Earth); astronomical photos normally require several seconds to many hours of exposure time, because we're dealing with very faint light here. Therefore, the camera has to follow the night sky, otherwise the images get "smeared" by the sky rotation.

As it turned out, after only about 3 seconds, the stray light in this city - in my neighbourhood caused by a large shopping centre nearby - and the myriad of unshielded streetlights which throw so much wasted light into the city sky caused the picture to "wash out". Some of this can be overcome by using the current graphics programs (i.e. Photoshop) to overcome some of these problems. Here's an example:





"Orange" light pollution, mostly from sodium vapor lamps












"processed" image.


Click on each image for more detail.

Long weekend

With the long weekend coming up, we're looking forward to better weather (it's been cloudy and rainy for the last several days). Sunshine is in the weather forecast, but let's take that with a grain of salt. I put weather forecasters into the same group as economists, and their track records aren't exactly stellar, as far as I'm concerned.

Derek just went through his second chemotherapy and monoclonal antibody session, and hasn't been blogging - the chemo is having some fairly pronounced side effects. He's beginning to feel better, so I expect that he'll be blogging soon.

Fireworks

Today was Derek's scheduled chemotherapy day - and he's not feeling so hot right now. To give both him and Airdrie some rest tonight, we have our granddaughters here for a sleepover. We haven't seen them very often in the last three weeks. They spent almost a week with their "other" grandparents in Maple Ridge (where the granddaughters have many friends) and then almost another week with Derek and Airdrie in Whistler. Fortunately they all came back a couple of days before the large landslide, which is currently blocking the highway to Whistler came down.


Last night we were invited by our friend in West Vancouver and sat on her balcony to watch the Celebration of Light fireworks. This time, it was China's turn. Here are some pictures, taken with my general purpose 18-200mm Tamron zoom lens:









For more images, click here:



http://www.flickr.com/photos/mimiandpapa/sets/72157606503877604/

The music which was part of this presentation was transmitted by one of our local FM stations. I did not get a sense that this music was well co-ordinated with the visual display - the display was very nice, though. Now, to be fair, our location had us watch the show "sideways". I'm sure that the fireworks were "optimized" for those people who looked at them more directly and were much closer. We were about 5 km (3 miles) from the fireworks barge anchored in English Bay, but there was of course no delay in hearing the music, since it came from the radio next to us.

Derek's on vacation

For those of you who wonder why Derek's last blog update was a couple of days ago: Derek and family are taking a well-deserved break at Whistler this week. I expect that he may be blogging occasionally from there. We're holding the fort here - i.e. watering the flowers, making sure their house is ok, etc. Since we share a duplex, this is an easy task.

I also uploaded a couple more pictures to the "casual" folder - they are "sunset" pictures taken from the living room window a few days ago.

mp3 player comments

Derek has had a frustrating time installing the Zune software. I bought a Samsung mp3 player some months ago, but didn't have anywhere near those problems. The software installed without major bumps along the way, although I seem to recall that a couple of things had to be repeated before things worked correctly (I've never installed a Windows program that didn't have a hitch somewhere during installation). None-the-less, the mp3 player works well - it has most of the options Derek is talking about regarding the Zune player. By the way, the Samsung software runs on the same computer which Derek used to install the Zune player a second time.

The main purpose for which I use this player is through the radio in my van (my radio does not have native mp3 capability), and I listen to it when I'm using the excercise bike on miserable days when the weather makes walking for exercise a challenge.

All-in-all, I haven't had the problems Derek ran into with the Zune software.

A few random photos

The nice thing about digital cameras is the instant gratification of seeing your pictures right after they've been taken. With the proper equipment, you can also have almost instantaneous colour prints (no wonder that the Polaroid Company went out of business). Derek has lately acquired the top model of Nikon's 35mm film cameras (the F4); he's going to experiment with film/digital techniques.

I don't often print of my digital pictures myself. If I want colour prints, I submit the appropriate files to a photo service - the costs per print are much less than using my own colour printer. If you're in a hurry, you can have your prints in about an hour.

So most of the time, I download the digital pictures from my camera to my laptop, and enjoy viewing them that way. I also back them up to various other computers and drives, as well as to an offline service.

For quick viewing by all, I also post them to Flickr. So here are a four random shots I've taken lately

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mimiandpapa/sets/72157606106885238/

Divebombed

A few days ago, some members of our local astronomy centre of the RASC and I set up telescopes for teenagers with cancer at Camp Goodtimes in the UBC research forest. We did this in an open field next to Loon Lake.

We set up starting at the beginning of dusk. It seems that we had been eagerly awaited - not only by the people, but even more by the resident mosquitos. These little pests must have internet access, because they must have known that we were coming. They had organized themselves into a veritable airforce, complete with attack squadrons.

The squadron leader (from Wikipedia):

Of course we had prepared ourselves too. I had slathered copious amounts of "Off" on my exposed skin, and was wearing a heavy, long-sleeved shirt (it was about 28 Celsius at the time, not exactly cool). None-the-less, these dive bombers got to me through that shirt (no "Off" under there) and had a veritable orgy. Even now, my back is covered with mosquito bites. It looks like I have the chicken pox (which I had as a kid).

The things I do for Astronomy....