ISSwave - 30 December 2010 - 17:29 - Shelly Lake Dam

If the sky is not cloudy at 5:29PM Today I'll snap a picture of the Northwest Horizon ... Where according to http://www.heavens-above.com I will be able to see the International Space Station just above the horizon.

Here is the web page for ISSwave "http://www.isswave.org/" Here is how you do it:

[1] Go to http://www.heavens-above.com and enter your latitude/longitude and click on the link that will find when and where from your location the International Space Station will be visible.

[2] Send a "tweet" in the following format: "[your message] #ISSwave [your zip code] US" leave out the double quotes and replace the [stuff] with your stuff.

Once you do the 'tweet' your 'wave' will show up on the isswave.org web site map.

If you live outside the united states you can still do this. If you do not have a 'twitter' account you can still do this by sending the isswave.org site an email message.

And you can use other sites than heavens-above.com to figure out when and where to look for the International Space Station in your area.

Here is a graphic of the details of the pass for my location (this afternoon).

Well it was cloudy - But - I still went to the Shelly Lake Dam and waved in the direction that the ISS would have been visible if there had been no cloud cover, and here is a graphic of my wave (I do have twitter so I could send the tweet):

I also snapped a picture of the North West Horizon and that picture is below. If you look at the picture you can imagine the ISS appearing in the breaks in the clouds (but ... no luck I did not see anything that looked like a moving light - except for the usual airplanes).

3-D Snowflakes

The snow flakes that are '3-d' you open the image in a new tab then view full screen then 'un-focus-your-eyes' (sort of like looking at something 'cross-eyed') and concentrate on the 'MIDDLE' of the three images that emerge and that one is the 3-D picture.

Here is the link to the page:

"http://emu.arsusda.gov/snowsite/stereo/stereo.html"

This one is my favorite:

2010 Christmas Pictures

Some Pictures From The Christmas Season 2010

If it snows this afternoon I'll add more :o)

2010 Christmas Pictures

And we got snow last night (and it is still snowing this morning) --- at the end of the picture album are snow pictures:

Christmas Pictures

We were going to travel to Asheville today but the road conditions are not up to driving anywhere.

Here is a video of the snow this morning:

Snow Video


We had a quiet Christmas here at Davidson Street, Just me, Evelyn, and Rob.

We all enjoyed watching Robert fly the remote controlled helicopter, that Betsy and Frank gave him, around the living room, here are a couple of short clips of the helicopter being flown:

RC Helicopter Video

Lego Antikythera Mechanism

This is really cool. I've been following this for years. Now we see the latest, the mechanism has been duplicated using legos.

How cool is that?

Here is a web page about the computer:

http://acarol.woz.org/antikythera_mechanism.html

Here is a video that discusses the computer (and the making of the video):

http://blog.smallmammal.com/post/2156532687/behind-the-scenes-lego-antikythera-mechanism

Hard To See --- The Future Is

Here is a good article (and the comments are just as good)

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/12/security_in_202.html

That 'on-line/connected' devices will be ubiquitous is a given, this very event I think ---
'Changes-Everything'.

That 'everything-is-in-the-cloud' additionally 'Changes-Everything'

2010 Water Year

A "Water Year" is defined as the period from October 1st to September 30th and its value is the same as the calendar year of the month of September, so the the year ending September 30th was the Water Year 2010

Here is a recap of The 2010 Water Year at Davidson Street as I reported it to the http://www.CoCoRaHS.ORG web site.

I do enjoy this activity.

What will happen Tuesday 21 December 2010

What will happen Tuesday 21 December 2010 which last happened Tuesday 21 December 1638?

At 6:38PM the Winter Solstice occurs, and at 3:17AM (nine hours earlier) a Total Eclipse of the Moon will have occurred. These two events last occurred on the same day 372 years ago.

Here is a link to the totality graph for this event. And here is a nice discussion at the US Naval Observatory.

The next total eclipse of the Moon that occurs on the same day as the winter solstice will will be in the year 2094, I'll only be 147 years old then, I look forward to it :o)

Back In The Northern Hemisphere

This morning the temperature was 40F and I walked out to the street to pick up the newspaper I could feel the the damp cool fog around me ... The ground was wet with yesterdays almost 0.20 inches of rain. The feeling was wonderful!

I did enjoy my two weeks on the Tropic of Capricorn (São Paulo, Brazil). Since it is very near the solstice, the sun was almost vertical, the small shadow that was cast around noon fooled you into thinking that south was north and north was south.

My hotel window looked out to the south but each morning when I woke up I instantly identified it as north. This was my first trip to to the Southern Hemisphere. And I did suffer from "Northern Hemisphere Bias".

It is good to be back on the "top-half of the planet" (top-half: If you think of the rotation of the earth and its motion around the sun using the 'Right-Hand-Rule').

How Far Apart Are We

So... I am on business the first two weeks of December in São Paulo Brazil... And Evelyn is visiting her niece in Jupiter FL...

So how far apart are we ...

[1] We are both in warm places the first week of December, and bothsee lots of Christmas decorations when we go 'down-town'

[2] Or Evelyn is located at 26.93° N and 80.1° W ... while I am locatedat 23.5° S and 46.5° W.

[3] Or I am 1834 nm more toward the equator and eastward than sheis.

[4] Or I am 2 hours and 20 minutes of solar time east of her.

[5] Or I am (via great circle) 3,913 nautical miles from her (or4,503 miles away)

[6] Or I am (not as the crow flies but as the mole tunnels) located... (well I'm still working on this one but will post the answer as an edit to this post) ...