Seeing as the sky was so clear last night I tried out my digital camera with the telephoto adapter for moon and stars.

I’ve put the photos here, they aren’t cropped and are pretty raw.

The moon was taken with a tripod but it didn’t need it as at F2.8 the best photo (DSCF0246.JPG) was taken at a shutter speed of 1/100th second.

The star photos were taken by focusing on the moon and then setting the camera
at F2.8 for 15 seconds. As you can see in 15 seconds at a magnification of
x9 there’s quite a lot of  movement.

DSCF0251.JPG
is a picture centred on the centre star of Orion’s Belt with the orange line
going through the centre being one of the high tension power lines which
is nearby reflecting the street lights.

Oh, and the first picture is just of some interesting clouds I saw last week.

Before I forget, the timestamps on the moon and star pictures are one hour out as I forgot to reset the clock on the camera to GMT until after I’d taken the pictures.

Help! Brain, power, fading…. *phut*

Seeing as the name MROD comes from the Magic Roundabout Of Death on the Bullet bulletin board, it sounds an apt description.

Well, this is another of those sporadic updates to my journal.

It’s still pretty busy at work, mostly now catching up with the things I
couldn’t do earlier due to the preparations for the start of the new academic
year. I’ve just got one more thing to do on that front, tell the new postgrads
how to use the computing facilities they’re already been using for the last
fortnight! I know it’s silly but it has to be done so that  a little
tick box can be ticked on the NERC form stating that the new students have
had some induction training.

I’ve just realised somethign though. I’m meant to be doing this induction
thing at 3:30pm tomorrow.. Now the termly IT committee meeting is at 2pm
tomorrow.. Which means I have a useful excuse to escape from it half way
through.

As for the important things in life, well, I’ve not had the energy to do
much in that area. I did manage to get enough energy to go to the happy hour
on Friday evening but flaked out early, got home at about 7:30 and was in
bed by 9.

Saturday was again an unenergetic day, though I did manage to get my car
taxed for another year and my credit card bill paid. Oh, and having bumped
into one of the new postgrads, I was informed by them that HMV had a sale
on.. So I spent *FAR* too much money on CDs and a couple of DVD’s. I’m not
sure I should have taken Isabelle’s advice about taking a look there. 🙂

Still 50 quid for 7 CDs (including the 3 in the boxed set of Madness) wasn’t
half bad, and the 2 DVDs for £20 at Virgin (which temped me afterwards)
means my DVD collection has expanded (to include The Matrix and The Hunt
for Red October).

Sunday morning was spent in bed.. Firstly watching telly, then, after deciding
at 10 am to have a quick doze before getting up, woke up at nearly half eleven.
By this time the weather had closed in so what else could I do other than
watch “Saiko Exciting” on the SciFi channel rounded off by the rest of the
afternoon watching the new CNX channel (Cartoon Network eXtreme?).

Still, the lack of doing anything yesterday plus all the extra sleep has
helped, dispite having a bit of a dodgy tummy yesterday and first thing this
morning.

Well,
it’s a soggy Monday morning. I’m still tired from the combination of being
out late/early Saturday night/Sunday morning, getting home at nearly half
two, and the change of daylight due to the season. My sleep patterns get
thoroughly messed up by the accelerated day length change at this time of
year.

BTG was fun, pictures from it can be found at here.
And no, Moreen doesn’t usually look like that or wear such strange things.
The pictures themselves are the raw photographs and i know now that I need
to remove the skylight filter if I’m going to use the flash. Oh, and the
extra dark pictures are caused by either my finger accidently being over
the flash sensor or the subject being out of the range of the flash. Oh well.
(And, yes, Myk DID spend a lot of the time laying down on the floor and that
was even before the shampers came out.)

Yesterday was spent recovering with an interlude to put the pictures on a
CD, drive into work and install them so other people could have the viewing
pleasure.

I missed the end of Scrapheap Challenge last night due to a power cut.. I
was just tucking into my dinner, had watched the first team do the first
part of their challenge and sail off down the track when the telly and lights
went out. Apparently, most of East Oxford was plunged into darkness. Anyway,
it was 1.5 hours before the electricity returned. I must admit it was quite
pleasant having no lights around.. though the sky glow from the light polution
generated by the rest of Oxford was annoying and lit everywhere to the same
level as the brightest full moon.

The two things I hate about living in (or rather on the edge of) a town are
(a) noise pollution from annoying humans with engines, stereos or voices,
and (b) Light pollution from streetlights, high powered security lights which
are never turned off and car headlights. If I could afford to I’d live back
in the country where there are less of these humans making a mess of the
place.

Anyway, today is the day I take my little practical with the fresh faced
kiddies where those who know enough to be dangerous with computers will race
ahead dispite my warning at the beginning and screw up their e-mail set-up,
leaving the last 20 minutes for me to try to clear up the mess. Which reminds
me, I could do with finding some people to help demonstrate.

It’s
just about the time thinks become desparately busy here.. the new Undergraduates
and Postgraduates arrive. Before they do I have make sure that I’ve got all
their accounts set up, all the undergrad PCs are updated and fixed and everything’s
ready for the fresh faced youths to think that everything works and hence
nothing has had to be done. Such is the life of a SysAdmin.

Anyway, I’ve got the undergrad computers done now, the user accounts have
been set up, including the three dropped on me earlier this morning that
the admin types forgot to tell me about. Now I’m just waiting to go and give
the new account details to the new students and get their university ID card
numbers from them for our security system as they queue up witing for their
photo to be taken.

Monday afternoon I have to teach these 1st years how to log into our system
and set up their e-mail. This is going to be painful as those who think they
know how to use computers will race ahead and do it all wrong. This is dispite
being told at the outset that it would not be wise to do so. C’est la vie.

Anyway, getting away from work issues, tomorrow I’ve a busy day. In the morning
I’ve got to do all the normal weekend jobs before going off into London to
meet up with people for the last BTG (By the Gods) meeting. It should be
fun as it will include lunch, wandering aimlessly around central London for
a few hours, probably drinking lots of coffee, followed by a celebratory
final event at Page’s Bar in Westminster. So, anyone who likes Xena: Warrior
Princess (which I find as fun, but I’m not a fanatic over) or likes to watch
lots of lesbian women being bawdy and generally laddish, turn up and have
a fun time. It starts at 6pm and costs £3 to get in. 🙂 (Note: not
all the women are lesbian or bawdy and there are some reasonably normalish
people there too.)

Hmm.. maybe bawdy isn’t quite the right word as they aren’t really overtly sexual, more boisterous.

Anyway, tat’s the plan for the weekend.

Congratulations, you’re a Brownie, a household helper.
What kind of male faerie are you?
Take the male faerie quizby Paradox

Well, Grim has started the avalanche, so it’s too late for the pebbles to vote. It seems that I am closest to being:-

Congratulations, you’re Ambassador Kosh, the mysterious Vorlon ambassador.
Which Babylon 5 Character are you?
Take the Babylon 5 Quizby Paradox

And my answer to your next question is:-

Perhaps.

I
seem to be getting some sort of social life, mostly revolving around one
of the postgrads, John Hillier, his girlfriend, Katie, and the people they
rent rooms out to.

Thursday evening I went out with them to see Signs, the new Mel Gibson film.
Now, I’ll try not to spoil it for those reading this who haven’t seen the
film but I’ll give my opinion of it. Well, the characterisations were fine,
the emotions shown seemed genuine. However, the message of the film, faith
is important and everything happens for a reason, including the bad things
was put over as subtile as (to paraphrase Douglas Adams) having your brains
smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick! Add
to this REALLY stupid aliens (if you’ve got a problem with being disolved
by water, why invade a planet that’s 2/3rds covered by the stuff and has
the stuff falling from the skies and walk around naked without an environment
suit?! Oh, and if you’re stealth technology is so good that you can’t be
seen at all by day, why leave the lights on so your ships can be seen at
night?! Oh, and wouldn’t it be a good idea to learn how to get out of closets?)
and I’m afradi I couldn’t suspend my disbelief long enough to enjoy the film.

Anyway, Friday night was uneventful.

Saturday was a mixture of the normal domestic duties with the addition of
taking some old computer junk down to the local “recycle centre” where I
asked if I may remove an old OnDitigal box from the computer skip and was
told no, ‘cos they didn’t want to be sued because of the possibility of it
being electrically dangerous.. and I couldn’t smuggle it out either. (In
the same place were such delights as a ZX Spectrum 3, an original PowerMAC
and an Amiga 500.. poor things.. they’ll be removed from the recycling part
(read refurbishment and resale) and crushed in the landfill to become archeological
artifacts in centuries to come.

The evening was spent at John and Katie’s place being sociable with an evening
dedicated to the leaving of one of their housemates and the arrival of two
others.

Sunday morning was spent in bed reading the end of The Hobbit. That’s taken
me a little over a week.. a far thinner book than The Lord of the Rings and
definitely a children’s book in the language used but the story itself was
far more grown up, though you could tell that the form of Middle Earth had
as yet not been fully formed in the mind of J.R.R.Tolkien.

Seeing as the weather was so nice I decided to go out in the afternoon. I
popped up to one of the places where the Ridgeway meets a road, parked and
took a nice long walk with my camera taking pictures of the scenery. I managed
to see a field vole scamper into the grass.. about 15-20 pheasant, mostly
males, walking ahead of me on the path, disturbed by other walkers before
I could get a good photograph, oh well. I wish people would stay out of my
way in the country, it spoils the whole thing as they scare the wildlife.

The evening was spent watching telly, finally retiring to my bed at around midnight after watching Sharpe on UK Gold.

Following on from Grim’s posting..

	You are Rowlf! You don’t draw attention to yourself much, preferring to keep your cool and stay in the background.
Take the What Muppet Are You? Quiz!