total.pardo

Celestia is a free and open source space simulator that allows you to explore space right from your computer.  Celestia is available for download on Windows, Mac OS X, and even Linux.  Celestia has many very cool features, including an eclipse finder.

Not only does the eclipse finder allow you to find solar and lunar eclipses on Earth, but you can seek eclipses on other planets as well.  I found out something really cool when checking out eclipses on Jupiter - because Jupiter is very large and has many moons, solar eclipses are very common.

There are even days when multiple solar eclipses take place on the same day on Jupiter.  I found an article about a triple lunar eclipse on Jupiter that Hubble captured back in 2004.  I used the eclipse finder to find the day it happened (March 28, 2004) and was able to simulate it.

WIth Celestia you can view celestial events that have taken place in the past or will take place in the future. Events can be viewed as they would have occurred in real-time, or time can be sped up. You can also run slower than real-time, but I don’t find that feature all that useful since most celestial events take place over several hours or years.

There are numerous add-ons and textures available at the Celestia Motherlode.  The add-ons provide additional celestial bodies and spacecraft not included by default.  The textures provide more detail for planet surfaces, stars, and star systems as well.

If you are viewing the earth, you can enter specific coordinates you want to visit and use the surface view (CTRL-G in windows) to see the night sky as you would from your backyard.

This is a great way to learn where the constellations are and which ones you can see during what time of the year. Celestia is like having a planeterium right on your desktop!

Explore Space Right From Your Computer With Celestia
Jorge Sierra
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:01:41 GMT

fairly cool – runs well on osx.  what do you want for free?

tree at sunrise

a moment later, a bit closer…

the last time any philly team won anything - i was 13. that’s a long time ago.

its about time.

now, they can have their parade.

yes, the phillies. you are not reading some of my painful fiction.

i live in the philadelphia region - i grew up on these sports teams, following the eagles through thick and thin. i remember the pain mitch williams caused in 1993.

but what i am seeing down there in south philly is encouraging. this could be something. the stick-to-it-iveness of thursday night’s game was something else.

it was a thriller. lets hope the remaining 6 games (and i predict it will go six more) are just as amazing as this one was. at the very least the games are a distraction from the LARGE trouble in the world today.
a sox/phillies world series would be a nice shot in the arm. i guess all things are possible.

photo posted from my iPhone

for 12 plants, the yield was 146 good tomatoes.

not too bad.

TUAW alertly reports:  http://tinyurl.com/3qpxkf

Long-time TUAW readers know that I’m a fan of geocaching, and that I wrote a post about using the iPhone 3G for geocaching back in July. At the time, there were no true geocaching apps available for the iPhone 3G, so I talked about how to use the software that comes on the phone to find hidden caches.

Since July, a number of apps have appeared (Geopher Lite and iGeocacher to name a couple), but I’ve been holding out for one from Groundspeak, the folks who first started up Geocaching.com back in 2000. While listening to my favorite podcast, Podcacher, this morning, I heard co-host Sonny talking about the upcoming release of the "official" geocaching iPhone app. When I returned home from a walk I was tracking with TrailGuru, I visited Geocaching.com and read the details in their online forums.

The app has been submitted to the App Store, will cost US$9.99, and will initially allow iPhone owners to find caches near them, look up trackable items like travel bugs, save cache information for use when outside of phone network range, and limit results to save bandwidth. The next version will provide the capability to log found caches while in the field.

Be sure to check out the Geocaching.com forums for more screenshots.

i visit geocaching.com all the time, and an app like this would be nice.  the price point is very high, considering the value of the GPS data with it not being as accurate as geocachers would like.

i really wish you could demo these apps.  reviewers are not always accurate.

i awoke today to find these in the front yard:

all told, there were about a dozen of them, with the largest:

this one was the biggest and grew VERY rapidly…its after every drenching rainstorm that these buggers arrive on my lawn. fungi. not so good.

i heard an interesting program called “What Lies Beneath - Fungi, the Fifth Kingdom”(It appears the program is no longer available on BBC4 - you will need to find it elsewhere, or email me and I will send it to you.)

i never knew fungi were so important. i mean, i know gnomes dig them - but not all humans do.

this guy has been living outside on a humongous web attached to the house and deck for the past few days:

his web is huge!

there was talk of asking for rent from this fellow.  i don’t like the taste of mosquitos and such.

however, this guy could make some serious cash as an architect. (or bite a few people).  this pictures are linked to higher res ones but i dont have a good night time camera so the photos are not the greatest.

i wonder what else is residing in pardoland…(or pardohaus, for that matter)

fta @:

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/05/1231228&from=rss

"With the recent discussion of the ISS having to dodge some space junk, many people’s attention has once again focused on the amount of stuff in orbit around our planet. What many people don’t know is that USSTRATCOM tracks and publishes a list of over 13,000 objects that they currently monitor, including active/retired satellites and debris. This data is meaningless to most people, but thanks to Analytical Graphics, it has now been made accessible free of charge to anyone with a copy of Google Earth. By grabbing the KMZ, you can not only view all objects tracked in real-time, but you can also click on them to get more information on the specific satellite, including viewing its orbit trajectory. It’s an excellent educational tool for the space-curious. Disclaimer: I not only work for Analytical Graphics, but I’m the one that wrote this tool as a demo."

just wow.  every sat can be clicked, tracked, and the trajectory plotted in google earth.  2008.  something else. it is amazing to see the amount of “stuff” up there.  and, i am sure there is more than we are being told.

very cool to look at the equatorial parking orbit.  lots of birds there.

http://www.stormpulse.com/

interesting site for tracking these heavy hitting storms.  lots of info and a full screen mode as well.

looks like hanna has her eye on the coast this time around…

credit necine

interesting how much the twittersphere updates with mentions of gustav:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23gustav

w2jig is reporting (or re-reporting) on the arrl freqs here:

http://tinyurl.com/65msmb

* 20 meters: 14.325 MHz USB

* Main frequency during Hurricanes — 40 meters: 7.268 MHz LSB

* Water Way Net (secondary frequency) Maritime Mobiles Net — 80 meters: 3.815 MHz

* Caribbean Net (alternates: 3.950 North Florida / 3.940 South Florida)

all freqs were full of chewed rags and war time hero fools. nothing gustav related. i heard more off established freqs on 80m than anything else. leads me to believe this twitter i read earlier from WA4D:

After Gustav fades Ham Radio propagandists will proclaim they made a difference. No metrics. No verifiable data. And the myth continues.

i hadn’t thought about it all that much before. what DO ARO (amateur radio operators) REALLY do before, during, and after a large scale disaster/emergency. how much of it is truly hype created to justify the continued existence of this hobby in the US? i guess when you are on board like i am, it takes a swift kick to the mouth to get me to look at it from another angle.

seriously, what will the average ARO do to assist with what undoubtably be a tragedy in NOLA? H&W messages? really? i am sure there will be AROs on the ground after the hurricane has done its worst, aiding the “real” rescuers and such (and that, readers, is another story for another day - the attitude your average first responder has towards the “unprofessional” radio operator) but will AROs in NJ be involved in passing traffic from lookie-lou’s in the garden state to loved ones on the ground in and around NOLA? if they had the resources, and the time, they should be up in georgia, etc - out of harms way. i imagine ma bell’s old system won’t be overloaded that much into the outlying areas, right? (snicker)

at least, WA4D’s comment has me thinking now. he could be wrong, but i think he is on to something.

i was surprised at one of my few visitor’s comments:

http://www.totalpardo.net/2008/08/29/by-2pm-labor-day-gas-prices-will-be-up-by/#disqus_thread

perhaps my sarcasm was lost? i realize the extraction infrastructure will be washed away - but i don’t get why the price of gas goes up BEFORE the actual event and increases precipitously (or at least it would seem) in the coming days (considering the contracts were signed WAY before this potential disaster). we’ll see.

wikipedia reports:  @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Gustav_(2008)

Hurricane Gustav is the seventh tropical cyclone, third hurricane and second major hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season. It formed on the morning of August 25, about 260 miles (420 km) southeast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and rapidly strengthened into a tropical storm that afternoon and into a hurricane early on August 26. Later that day it made landfall near the Haitian town of Jacmel. Between 59 and 78 deaths have been attributed to Gustav as of August 30, 2008.^[1][2] It intensified from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane in less than 24 hours,^[3] and is now expected to become a category 5 hurricane.^[4]

From this website, the AARL Web: Link

WX4NHC will be monitoring the Hurricane Watch Net on 14.325 MHz. Secondary HF frequencies will be 7.268 MHz and 3.950 MHz +/- interference, should we lose propagation on 20 meters.

EchoLink “WX-Talk” Conference Room and IRLP node 9219 will also be monitored. WX4NHC will also monitor CWOP, APRS and MADIS/MESONET automated weather stations in the affected area. Surface Reports using our online Hurricane Report form will be monitored. Amateur Weather Enthusiasts and ON-NHC Volunteers may report directly to WX4NHC online.

Go here to put in a form report on weather conditions.

Link

i have been monitoring the 80M freq and there is nothing on there but rag chewers.  the others are dead.

a cnn alert just came across saying the mayor of NO called gustav - “the mother of all storms.”  wow.  cat 4 in 24 hours.  maybe my prediction of high gas prices on tuesday was a little short…

Update: Maybe not so much. Thankfully for all the people in that region.  9/3/08

above is the excuse you will hear used for the gas price gouging raise you will see when you fill your tank to return to work on Tuesday.  follow this storm and others at:

http://english.wunderground.com/tropical/

in other news, Sen. John McCain picks Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate on GOP ticket for White House.

i avoid politics on this blog, so i comment here from a purely historical perspective…

history will be made this fall in the united states.  another line will be crossed.

think about it.

UPDATE:  Thankfully - many were spared destruction and injury while this storm was a dud.  Keep your eye on the storms in the queue.  9/3/08.

the “jersey tomatoes” are growing with the usual summertime vigor one would expect from the soil in the “garden state”

yield to date is 7 in july and 19 so far in august. not too shabby.

strangely, however, is the amount of green tomatoes there still are - almost as if these big boys don’t want to turn red.

i better learn how to can these - or - eat A LOT of tomato sandwiches this coming month!

i consolidated the fat crap pile, put up a nice retaining fence, now we have a decent place to put greens and browns for composting.  hopefully the space to the left of the pile can be reclaimed with grass.

photo posted from my iPhone