LCDs give off blue light.

Blue light is really the enemy of both sleep and dark.  I mostly care about the dark part, because my interest is for Astronomy.  It takes at least 20 minutes for your eyes to really dark adapt when you go outside.  If you want to see other Galaxies from your back yard, dark adaption is really important.  We call them “faint fuzzies” for a reason.  Last month at our astronomy party someone brought an iPad with some astronomy application to let them know what to look at with their telescope.  After 30 minutes of it blinding them, the finally turned it off and started asking some of the rest of the folks there what they should be looking at, and where to find it.

But, an eink tablet would be great.  You could use just enough red light to see what’s going on, and be able to zoom in to your charts.  There are 2 things that come close right now, the nook and the kindle, but neither would work without a lot of effort.  To do your own apps on the nook you have to hack the thing, and you’ve still got this pesky lcd you’d need to put a filter over.  The kindle is a physically better device for this, but it’s not android, so it’s another sdk to learn, and they have all manner of restrictions because the user doesn’t pay for their data usage.  As far as I can tell it would be too restrictive for this.

The ideal device would be something like the kindle dx, have a gps, and be based on Android.  This device doesn’t exist, but heres to hoping that someone makes one eventually.

Many Java developers have vowed to fight back against the unwelcome opening of their open source. League of Agile Methodology Experts (LAME) spokesperson Billy Blackburn says that work has begun on a new, even more complicated Java build system that will refuse to link in Opened Source Java code. The new build system will be released as soon as several third-party Java library vendors can refactor their code to make certain classes more reusable. Blackburn declined to describe these refactorings, claiming it was “none of y’all’s business.”

Guy Faulkner, a 51-year-old Python developer in Seattle, was amused by the Wikileaks announcement. “When Python developers release Open Source code, they are saying: Here, I worked hard on this. I hope you like it. Use it however you think best. Some stuff is documented as being subject to change in the future, but we’re all adults here so use your best judgment.”

Faulkner shook his head sadly. “Whereas Java developers who release Open Source are code are saying: Here, I worked hard on this. I hope you like it. But use it exactly how I tell you to use it, because fuck you, it’s my code. I’ll decide who’s the goddamn grown-up around here.”

Which is even funnier because I was having exactly this conversation last night at the HV Programmers Meetup.

One of the problems with using an Android-based smartphone such as the Droid, Droid Eris, or Droid X as a hiker’s GPS is that maps don’t work when there is no cell coverage, which is common in areas where people like to hike or bike recreationally.

Google Maps will pre-cache some maps but it’s unpredictable as to whether it will fetch the right maps or delete the cached maps altogether. The real solution is to use an offline GPS program instead of the Google Maps program, which still requires access to the Internet

…

For those willing to put the effort, a free program called OruxMaps can make use of GPS maps stored on a Android smartphone’s SD card. The process of getting the maps is actually very straightforward by using another program. For most people, it should take no more than a few minutes to begin downloading the correct maps for use on an Android device with just GPS signals.

Very cool stuff.  I’m going to have to check this out for the next time we head to Vermont.

Click for full size version.

Phil Plait’s Bad Universe is coming to Discovery this fall.  Can’t wait.

At a press briefing here at its headquarters, Google announced a new version of its Apps suite designed specifically for government customers. This tier will be sold alongside the existing version of Google Apps and priced the same as the company’s premiere license–$50 per user, per year.

Google Apps for Government features all the same applications that can be found in other versions but comes with a higher level of security, which Google says meets the requirements set forth by the Federal Information Security Management Act. This includes segregated data centers, which Google says goes beyond FISMA regulations, and will keep government e-mail and calendar event data within U.S. borders.

This is probably the biggest tech story of the day.  A lot of FUD around cloud will be dismissed if we see large government sign off on it.

I think those a pretty good words to live by.

As soon as it was replaced we had at least twice the water pressure in the house.  I regenerated our water softener, and now our dishes are getting clean again, the shower up stairs has much more sane water pressure, and the tub faucet no longer has orange water come out of it when you first start it.  Yay for that.

Via reddit.  (click image to enlarge)

These images are always created by taking pictures of our sun then scaling them up and changing the color.  It makes me wonder though: are really big stars are actually round?  there seems to be some evidence that at least Betelgeuse is not.

Glass is not a high-viscosity liquid at room temperature: it is an amorphous solid, although it does have some chemical properties normally associated with liquids. Panes of stained glass windows often have thicker glass at the bottom than at the top, and this has been cited as an example of the slow flow of glass over centuries. However, this unevenness is due to the window manufacturing processes used in earlier eras, which produced glass panes that were unevenly thick at the time of their installation. It is common to find old windows which are thicker at the sides or the top.^[114][115]

Wikipedia has a pretty good list of Common Misconceptions, with references explaining why they aren’t true, and what the real story is.  Unlearning a wrong fact is one of the hardest things to do as a human being, so do yourself a favor and unlearn something wrong today.

Futurama Cupcakes by Unicorn Magic Baking Co. (photo courtesy of Unicorn Magic Baking Co.)

Want!

More interestingly, it turns out that this is the only piece of software, pay / free, regardless of platform, that does this.  There is nothing else close.  There are plenty of planetarium software, free, open, and pay, on every platform that you can imagine.  That’s a crowded space.  But to solve this very specific problem of generating good visual observing lists there exists only one software solution.

It got me thinking.  When we talk about cross platform software, and getting people to consider open source alternatives, people always focus on the crowded center.  Debates over word processors and browsers, email and graphics tools.  These all have pluses and minuses, but in the crowded center there are plenty of options.

Out at the edge of software there aren’t options or alternatives.  The market is too small to support more than one, and you are lucky if even one tool exists to do what you like.  These pieces of software are the tent stakes that keep Microsoft as the 90% platform for personal computers.  At least with virtualization it means that I won’t have to run windows on real hardware to run Sky Tools, but it does mean that I’m going to be running windows in a VM a lot more often than I was before.

The whole event, for the few of us that came out for it, was great.  I ended up chatting and joking with 3 other completely random folks near where the AP had set up their video camera.  It was that perfect sense of community, even though no one knew each other, we were there for a common event.  Even when there were discussions around the walkway, which is our local contentious issue, and it was clear that people had different points of view, it was a level of civil and jovial discourse that just doesn’t exist in politics any more.  It was refreshing and wonderful.

A perfect way to end a day in the office.

I took this before fireworks this year on the 4th of July, and quite like how it turned out.  I love a good sunset.

I learned a number of things about the experience.  First, a critical list of Astronomy gear I don’t have.  This includes a weatherproof scope cover, a 12v hair dryer (for dew elimination), and a portable deep cell battery for said hair dryer.  Being the odd one out I had to keep shuffling my scope back and forth between cover and not as we were dodging the storms that rolled through.

I also learned that most amateur astronomers are not campers.  We had at least a couple of inches of rain up there this weekend, and only a few tents stayed dry.  Rookie mistakes about how to setup the ground cloth were prevalent.  It’s understandable as camping is a means to an ends (being where the skies are dark), but I was surprised that more people hadn’t experienced this enough times to still be caught by that.  I tried to be helpful where I could, but didn’t want to impose too much, being one of the new guys there.

I learned that I don’t need to be too envious about other people’s scopes.  Even though my 8″ dob put me on the smaller size up there, I’m just very comfortable with the scope now.  I know exactly where to put my eye, how to tweak the focus, and with my astronomy chair can really relax with my views in the scope.  There are clearly things I can’t dial in that Rudy and Rick could get in their 18 and 13 inch scopes, but for all around usability, I’m just really happy with this scope.  I saw the veil nebula in my scope via an O-III filter (which is the only high contrast one that I’ve got for viewing Orion), and realized there is a whole other set of things I can see in that scope with a dark site and some additional filters.  I’m definitely going to have to invest in those.

And lastly, I learned, the 3am sky is a different sky than I’d ever seen before.  Once civilization has gone to sleep things get darker yet again, as no place on the east coast is immune to at least a little light pollution.  I doubt the site we were at was much darker than my parents place in VT, but I realized I’ve never gone looking for stars after midnight.  With my new found dew management knowledge, I’m really looking forward to my next venture up there.

Even though we only got 1/2 a night of observing in (Saturday/Sunday after 1am it started to clear out), I had a really good time with some great people this weekend.

Looking forward to doing more of this in the future.

Opaque means you can’t see the sun, moon, or stars through them (so wispy clouds don’t count). Terms like “Fair” are specifically deprecated (though defined), and there is even a list of words that “are viewed as hedge terms and should be used sparingly and with great discretion”.

Notice, the warmest city tonight is New York.  Hotter than Houston, hotter than Vegas, hotter than anything in Florida.  Oooof.