A Blend of Rendering and Camera Work

November 17th, 2011 Thomasso

It has been cold out, so I have been staying indoors, both at home and at work. With all this time hiding from the cold, I am spending it with my camera, and using it with the instruction handbook that I never read since I bought it. Also, I have been seriously working with some of the these 3D graphic programs that I had downloaded last month. It has been so nice to get better acquainted with the computer and camera.

The first image came from my new camera. I was taking photos of the Moon, using my 18-55mm lens, that came with it, when a seagull flew by in front of my shot. After looking at it on the monitor, the photo jumped out at me as being a very good image, so I processed it and posted it on Twitter, and now here on the blog. I do not own a telephoto, yet, but when I do get one, I want to do more shooting of far away objects with the camera. I am still drooling over that DSLR, the rang of options are incredible compared to my point and shoots cameras.

The next two images are from the same program I talked about earlier this week, called Wings3D, that renders using Povray. I am just starting to see the cool stuff that I can do with this program. I hate that this software has next to no help files, compressive guides or user manuals with it. There are some YouTube videos, and a very basic PDF files to download, but that is it. You are running it strictly by trial and error; which is sad when I am finding that it is a wonderful program to use, but it is complex and has unusual mouse and menu options.

The end results of working with Wings3D are very cool. I can now see why this is a heavy-duty modeller program. You can take a primitive object, like a sphere, and turn it into a 3D face by stretching and manipulating the mesh. I am still finding some options difficult to figure out, but I am making progress.

So this is what I have been up to when sitting idling by at my computer, or outside, going to and from work while it is still daylight.

I am waiting for the sky (weather) to clear up so that I do some night time photography. One of my primary goals with the DSLR is to take shots of the stars using long exposures and apertures adjustments. I have a 25.5cm reflector telescope, and for it I have purchased a mount to use with my DSLR, so I want to start using it for taking photos of celestial objects.

I cannot wait!

Posted in Around Town, Art, Astronomy, General, Photographs, Software, Twitter | 2 Comments »

Great, Fall Already?

September 23rd, 2011 Thomasso

When I got up this morning and I look outside, I thought to myself, “great, it’s fall, and I miss summer already.” But the day turned out really muggy and humid. It felt like 30C, rather than the 23C the outside thermometer was reading. I was sweating when I was moving stuff outside today. It also explained why the office had the air conditioning turned on during work too.

Even tonight it is really, unusually, warm out. Here it is, almost 7:00pm and it is twilight, and yet, the air and humidity is still warm enough to complain about the muggieness.  This is a screen shot of my Gnome  Calendar/Weather apt., from my Desktop:

What is cool about the screen-shot (above) is that it shows the night time period in real time, or dark side of the Earth, and it is a perfect rectangle, meaning that the Sun is right over the Equator. Usually either one of the poles is completely dark.

So, prediction time: What will this fall/winter be like? Comparing it to last year, I hope we get a better (shorter) winter for 2011-12. I am still bummed out from last winter.

Posted in Astronomy, Bitching about weather, Diatribe, Events, General, Photographs | Comments Off

Summer – At Last!

June 21st, 2011 Thomasso

OK, this year has been a dismal one for a prolonged winter/spring weather, so far, that just seemed to go on and on and on. Finally hitting the 20C mark for the first time since last October in the first week of June 2011, is just weird, and a sign that Mother nature can still rule our lives any time she wants. No wonder everyone was feeling so down in the dumps-I was too.

I hope we never have another spring and winter like this one for a long time! Anyway…

The summer Solstice has finally arrived. The longest day of the year for us folks in the Northern half of Planet Earth. It is a time for celebrations, BBQ, camping, getting out into nature, mosquitoes, and time to jump into the bathing suite for some splash-time. The ritual of observing the Solstice is a special becuase it is real, it marks time, and marks a turning point in all of us that we can enjoy the Earth around us for the next four months without the effects the cold and wet of the winter months. To wear shorts and a shirt, is sweet.

Today was a really go start for the summer season. It reached 21C, and remained only partly cloudy, and then cleared right up for the remainder of the afternoon into the evening. I wanted to go to the river and jump in, but it is still very high, and will probably flood in mid July, as it always does. I stayed at home and opened all the windows and enjoyed the breezes that flowed through the screens, filtering out the mosquitoes.

So, yay, summer has finally arrived! Yes! Hopefully we are good until, say, October? Oh wouldn’t that be nice?

Posted in Astronomy, Diatribe, Events, flood, General | 3 Comments »

If I Had a Spaceship

May 14th, 2011 Thomasso

If I had a spaceship, where would I go? What would I do with it?

I have had a fascination with astronomy as far back as I can remember. With intense interest I would look through an old three inch refractor telescope that my father owned, and I would point it at anything in the sky that was bright enough to look at. Back then I had very little understanding of planetary orbits, and huge distances, and why the objects kept moving through the stationary field of view in the eyepiece. I remember looking through the eyepiece as the scope was pointed at the moon and seeing the craters so clear and bright on the moon’s surface.

Since those days of my youth filled ignorance, my knowledge base of physics and astronomy has exponentially leaped forward, and my seeing power has grown too. I remember when I had to calculate the distance of each planet from the Sun, scaling everything down, then measuring each plant’s elliptical orbit to the nearest kilometre, all on a roll of toilet paper to a ratio of 1mm:124^14km. It was fun, but nerve racking as my scale needed two rolls. It was good becuase I was using three-ply paper when everyone else was using single ply rolls.

So, if I had a spaceship, where will I go?

First my ship would have to go super fast. If the Sun was 10cm big, and the Earth was lass than 6mm in diameter at a distance of 3.27m from the Sun, then the nearest star would be just over 2000km away in Calgary. So the need for speed is indeed needed for the trip.

Second, I would need lots of time. Even with a super fast ship, just our galaxy alone has several billion stars in it, so I would need lots of sightseeing time.

Third, lots of friends, and food. Which would mean the ship would be fairly big. Anyone who thinks their Volkswagen would be ideal is not only stupid, but not at all that classy. I would want big, like hotel size, with lots of room and spacious accommodations. With all that time travelling between stars, we would need lots to do, so some recreation rooms are needed to pass the time away.

Once the ship is packed and everyone is aboard, then there is the question of where to go first?

I would start in the local group of stars, our stellar neighbourhood, then working my way further out towards the next groups of stars, somewhere in the vicinity of 6000 light years from Earth. That would probably be all the time I would have in my spaceship.

Posted in Art, Astronomy, General, Humour, Photographs | Comments Off

Super Moon Over Fort Langley: the Video

March 23rd, 2011 Thomasso

I almost gave up on this video. I had never had so much trouble with grabbing a video from a digital camera before.

I have a little Samsung mini Digital video camera that I have had for a long time. I think the camera is over six years old now, and just barely works. I think the battery has had it?

Anyway, my problem was first setting up the camera so that it would fit on my new tripod. Then came the three hours of figuring out how to kick-start my firewire or IEEE1394 connection because the camera seems to only want to work with legacy drivers. This is the story of my life. Oh, but it does not stop there. I had to download a whole new set of CODECs for it becuase I never used DV CODECs in so long, my stuff was outdated compared to the latest greatest. Well, the whole process took a long time.

Then there was the task of getting it uploaded to YouTube. For whatever reason, I had to compromise on the shittiest video CODEC I had becuase with my top-of-the-line video drivers, all I could see was video-noise. So that took about two hours to figure out, including the time it took to re-edit it on my Desktop. Just to put things into perspective for you, the raw DV was 1.5GB at about twelve mins long, and the finished product was a crappy MS, AVI file that was less than thirteen MB in size at two mins long.

So here it is on Youtube, the Super Moon from last Sunday, March 20th, 2011 just as the Moon was rising.

Posted in Astronomy, Blog and Web Tech, Diatribe, Events, General, Socail Media, Video | Comments Off

From Supermoon, to Spring

March 20th, 2011 Thomasso

Today, starting at 4:21pm, spring will start. I cannot tell you how much I have waited for this day to finally arrive. I am tired the of the cold days that have dragged out through the winter period. All of this had been compounded with not having to worry about the rigours of classes, so there is this huge empty space in my daily routines, and it leaves me wondering if I am not doing enough these days to keep busy?

Well, hopefully, with the onset of longer days and warmer nights this will all change.

The so called supermoon appeared last night. I bet you are wondering what is so special about the Moon, of all nights, that we gave it such a name this time?

The Moon orbits and rotates around us, the Earth, once a month, and that orbit is elliptical. Its rotation is once a month. During this orbit the distance between us and it varies. What made last night’s Moon so special was that not only was it “Full,” but it was also at its closet point to us in its monthly cycle. And being so close, the Moon appears to be proximately ten/fourteen percent bigger in the sky than usual, giving it the name, “supermoon.”  These events happen about once every two decades. Other than that, it is just a regular full Moon. The next one is in Eighteen year from now.

I did take some video of the moon with my digital video recorder with a 400mm telephoto lens, but I need to setup my fire-wire on this PC to capture it first before I could upload it.  More stiff to add to my “to-do” list. But hey, it is spring now. Starting tomorrow, the day will look brighter!

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General, University classes | Comments Off

My Camera at Night

February 18th, 2011 Thomasso

Tonight’s full moon is rising in the East, so I thought I had to at least try and get some photos of it because I have the perfect vantage point. It was big and bright, and the night sky was cloudless as it made it’s way from up behind the far end of the valley. Accept for the Moon, it was a reasonably good night for start gazing too. So I braved the cold and stood outside in the complete dark watching the sky like a lunatic hypnotised on the Moon. I know someone was watching me – that creepy feeling.

Try as I might, without my SLR, these little point and shoot cameras just do not cut it. Though, I was quite amazed at how well this little Kodak camera worked?

I did not know that I could adjust the shutter time up to four seconds, and play around with the ISO settings too. I just barely pushed the little camera to its limit taking timed exposure images outside in the dark with very little light. I was surprised!

I have done night shots before with my Kodak M1063 in the dead of winter when there was lots of snow, and the light could reflect off the snow adding much more light than normal. But the results were fifty-fifty, as it was hit and miss on each shot without the extra light. But one out of every ten snow shots turned out really good. I have posted some of them on the blog just this last month.

But nothing prepared me for these shots tonight when I discovered that I could manually set the shutter speed, with pre-set times, for timed exposures. So I cranked it up to its maximum, four seconds, and away I went. With four seconds, I could just barely capture enough of the faint light, and get some of the brighter starts up in the sky. What this night showed me, working with this camera, was that if the conditions were better, say no full moon and less smog, I could get twice as many stars with a four second exposure. Not bad for a One-hundred dollar camera?

This shot, you can see the Orion star constellation, and part of my trailer, lower Left. Of course I cropped the image down, as it was originally a 10 mega byte size, and resized the image to a quarter of its original size to fit it on the web site. I did no other manipulations to the image. But this is cool! I’m very happy that I can do some night time photography with it. However, nothing beats a good SLR.

Note: For all of these shoots, I did use a good sturdy tripod. You really need to the keep the camera still while doing long exposures with your camera.

Posted in Astronomy, Bitching about weather, General, Photographs | Comments Off

Northern Lights in Vancouver?

February 17th, 2011 Thomasso

I love astronomy, and have being since I was a little kid big enough to look down the eye piece of a telescope. So whenever I hear snippets of news about astrological events taking place, or about to take place, I usually jump on board and try and follow them. Today, I was haphazardly surfing the channels on TV when a news story broke out stating that there were reportedly three mass ejection from the Sun at the beginning of the week. Wow, I thought, Power grid failures, Northern Lights, how cool is that!

So I started surfing the net to find more information about the Solar event taking place. In the usual two to there seconds it takes to Google “Solar Flares” I got my answer. It appears that the Sun made up to three coronal mass ejections around Monday and Tues, which means that they should be heading this way, reaching us, by today and tomorrow.

For those who are not into astronomy, I think some things need to be cleared up and explained before you all get excited and start building bomb-shelters and buying up a years supply of food and water. The Earth will not be destroyed from this event. We get them all the time. But Solar Flares effect us in two ways.

First, they give us Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights. However, becuase of the mass ejections, and their effect on the Earth’s Magnetosphere, people a lot further South will see them too. And the Lights should be entertaining with all the extra energy out from the ejections. So, if the clouds are not too overcast in your area, you should be in for a real treat.

Second, becuase these are charged partials hitting the Earth with lots of energy and speed, they play havoc with our technology, mainly our power grids and communications networks. Radio and power disruptions have happened before, so be prepared for that, but it will be temporary.

It takes light roughly Eight minutes and Thirty seconds to reach earth given off by the Sun. Since these particles are made of energy and matter, they travel a lot slower than light. It usually takes about three days for these particles to reach Earth.

So starting tonight, look up at the sky, if you can, and hopefully you will be entertained by the Northern Light reaching this far South. However, Vancouver, BC is notorious for its clouds, so do not hold your breath as the weather forecast does not look good.

Source:

Solar Flare 2011: Northern Lights So Hot They’re Cool

Sun Unleashes Biggest Flare of the Current Cycle

Keep tabs on the Sun, Up to the minute Data: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General, Video | 2 Comments »

Solstice, Oh Happy Day of the Year

December 21st, 2010 Thomasso

It is finally here, the shortest day, and the longest night of the year, and now the longer days are a coming.

This is going to be a action packed day. Once I’m done with work, I’m off with my friends.

Even though the day looks very miserable, it did show promise this morning when the sky cleared up for a brief moment and allowed the sun to shine. But now as the day progresses, it is probably, more than likely, going to rain, continuously. But that will not dampen our celebrations.

Today is also the last official day of the Fall Semester at Kwnatlen. Yes, there are some who are still writing exams. I feel so sorry for them because the time off starts tomorrow. Most of us were fished our exams two weeks ago, and some, even earlier because of having in class exams. Oh, well, I’m finished, I did my time with it, and I’m not going to rub it in for the next generation of students goring through the bowls of Kwantlen. I wish them good luck and happy times.

Tonight I meet up with some of my old classmates. I am looking forward to that very much. I miss the old gang. We did a lot. We shared a lot. We survived it together. You just don’t throw that kind of friendship out to easily, no matter how far apart our lives will go in our separate carers.

I know, I’m sounding kind of mushy right now. Just a minute…

OK, that’s better.

I’m still waiting on my grades. I thought by today I would have them, but I guess my profs were heavily loaded up with marking. Hopefully by tonight I’ll know where I stand. Fingers crossed. I’m so nervous and excite at the same time!

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General, Homework and deadlines, University classes | Comments Off

Solstice Eve and Lunar Eclipse

December 20th, 2010 Thomasso

Tomorrow will be the Winter Solstice, and added to that event will be a total lunar eclipse to add to the excitement. In the afternoon I will be joining some friends for our annual Solstice gathering, to celebrate the astrological event, and enjoy the festive atmosphere. Last year I met up with about twenty friends from the Surrey campus, and we toasted the event while watching the Sun set that day. We may do that again this year.

The main reason we use the Solstice as the annual date to gather is that it falls right before everyone is getting their time off from work, so it kinda acts like a prelude to meeting friends before you head off to meet with your families. Two years ago we had one crackpot who had to be hauled off by police because he was so drunk. Actually, there were a number of them who thought it was a drinking event. That kind of wreck it, but we continued on.

I’m hoping to meet a lot of friends from my classes this turn around. Now that I graduate, I will not see most of them ever again. So, this will be my last chance to say good bye and farewell to them before the graduation ceremonies and we go our separate ways.

Tonight the Earth’s shadow will block out the Sun for 72 minutes of totality, just after midnight, officially kicking off the Winter Solstice. From start to finish, the Lunar eclipse will last about three hours. One of the problems with living in the Pacific North Coast, and this time of year, is that usually the weather is very bad. Tonight will be no exception as weather warnings and heavy overcast skies are on the weather menu for tonight.

So, I guess tonight is “Solstice Eve.” Enjoy!

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General, University classes | Comments Off