Blown Away

Go ahead and laugh at this right out loud. I did.

Wordless Wednesday

... but I have.  Lots.  :)

Skating the Cup

The season is over.  Tonite the Los Angeles Kings hockey club won an improbable Stanley Cup championship for the first time in their 45-yr history.  Improbable because they came into the playoffs as an 8th seed, yet on their way to the finals they easily disposed of a #1 seed (Vancouver) in 5 games, a #2 seed (St Louis) in 4 games, and a #3 seed (Phoenix) in 5 games.  They won the cup with a 16-4 record including an amazing 10 of 11 games on the road.

It looked like it would be an easy run to the cup when the Kings won the first 3 games in a race of the best out of 7 against New Jersey, but the Devils were not done when they won Game 4 in LA and again in NJ in Game 5 to force a Game 6 back in LA today.  Game 7 became unnecessary when the Kings blew NJ out of the house with a 6-1 win today.

Skating the Cup is tradition in hockey, and a goal of anyone who plays the game seriously.  It's that rare opportunity to raise the most hallowed trophy in sport above your head and take it for a spin around the rink.  It's 35# of precious sterling silver engraved with the names of the greatest players to ever strap on a pair of ice skates and risk their body for the fastest sport played.

Congratulations to the LA Kings!  Congratulations also to Jonathan Quick, this year's Conn Smyth winner as most valuable player in the playoffs.  For all of you, enjoy the summer, and enjoy your upcoming day with the cup... another tradition unique to this professional sport.  You deserved it.

Transit

EXIF:  1/500s f/11 at 300mm iso1600.

Every once in a while I still enjoy a little astronomy... no where near as much as I once did, but when something like today's transit of Venus across the sun happens I need to find a way to be a part of it. No one will get to see this happen again for another 105 years!

Years ago I bought a small Questar telescope. Its mirror was only 3.5" diameter but it was perfect for planetary astronomy. What I used it for most however was for watching and tracking the movement of sunspots because of the handy little built in solar filter it had. It was the perfect rig to set up in the backyard on weekend and just observe. I used it more for sunspots than anything else.

One of my early observations with it included at night watching Io transit the face of Jupiter. I didn't even know it was going to happen but as I noticed Io getting closer to one edge it began casting a shadow on the face of the planet. Over the course of the evening I watched the tiny speck of Io's light go out, the shadow transit, then disappear, and then Io pop out the other side. It made an impression.

Watching Venus move over the face of the sun today was no less impressive. I made this image in the middle of my workday hand held with a Nikon D3 DLSR and a home made solar filter taped (draped is a better word) over the lens. Nothing fancy... just good old backyard astronomy. Something must have gotten a little wonky on the second image. I'm just happy they all came out as sharp as they did.

You'll surely see better images on television or in the magazines, but there's nothing like seeing something like this with your own eyeballs. That quality simply can't be beat whether you record it somehow or not.

Dynamic Hold Lines

(Click the little gear and set 720p HD for the best view)

Tonite I rolled the calendar back to a deferred (and self-imposed) project to see if I could make something of it. Several months ago while working on a "real" project at work I discovered that many of the airfield hold lines in our airports CAD files had been done pretty much, "the hard way". They had been built with a mixture of lines, solid hatches, not a lot of accuracy, and are pretty cumbersome to modify. I don't get upset about these things when I find them because most finds are legacies of far older work, and because of lot of this is as new to me as anyone around here. This particular problem felt like it might become a nice update however, especially if it could be done with a dynamic block or two. So I suggested as much. The thing is that I'm the only one who ever messes with dynamic blocks! So the whole idea was bound to sit idle until I could find some time to have a shot at it. The video above shows the solutions I came up with after a couple hours of messing around tonite.

These are custom AutoCAD (2012) dynamic blocks that I've created and stashed on a tool palette for easy access. They include linear stretch and array actions, and an alignment setting. To use them I've drawn disposable construction lines where the hold lines are needed (the cyan lines in the video - typically they might be on a non plot layer) and then dropped the blocks on them. I made three different types of line blocks tonite as shown. Once placed they are stretched to complete the line work. This is considerably faster than anything done by hand. And all of the widths and spacings are in conformance with the most current FAA Advisory Circular 150/5340-1K for Standard Airfield Markings.

I've made dynamic blocks with the linear parameter/action before, but this was my first shot at anything using an array or the alignment parameter. It's all kind of cool.

10 Days

You have to envy the courage it took to go through with all this. So whatever you do tomorrow...

Make it Count.

Fermentation

It's a good thing, right?  Ethanol fermentation gives us material for use in food, alcoholic beverages, or fuel, and effectively is the process of converting sugar to carbon dioxide... a metabolic process where electrons are released from nutrients and ultimately transferred to molecules obtained from the breakdown of those same nutrients.  Most of the time we, or industry, embark on the fermentation process deliberately.  For the past several weeks apparently I have been doing it unintentionally.