Scattered Thoughts . . .

I 've made a couple of homemade solar finder scopes in the past and have written about them here in this blog.  I made two additional solar finder scopes over the past few days out of unused parts for two reasons...  first, I could always use an extra solar finder scope for a second or third telescope, and second, we have an upcoming solar eclipse and I plan to have a few telescopes set up for viewing that day.   The upcoming solar eclipse has prompted me to jump on this little project just in case the weather is good enough for us to view the eclipse (which still does not look promising).  I plan to have a few telescopes in the backyard so that a few people can view at the same time and there really should be a finder scope on each telescope to make pointing the telescope at the sun much easier.  You'd think it would be easy pointing a telescope at the bright sun but the sun is so blindly bright that this usually becomes an exercise in frustration.  I've had two small 30mm

I've been using an old Olympus telephoto lens on my Panasonic Micro Four Thirds camera bodies for wildlife photography.  Well, I also use my Sony camera bodies at times but I'm lacking fast-focusing long lenses for my Sony bodies so I lean toward the micro four thirds bodies for this purpose.  These micro four thirds cameras and lenses are indeed "micro" sized and that is one of the major reasons I have this Panasonic gear.  Relatively small and lightweight is a very good thing when it comes to my extensive spinal injuries. I've used this long Olympus telephoto lens quite often when in my kayak shooting loons, ducks, hawks and eagles but this old lens is just a little too large and a little too long for easy handholding for such a fast moving type of photography.   Of course, when I'm sitting in a small kayak, I don't have much of a choice but to handhold this lens.  It is a challenge to keep such a long lens trained on my subject especially when in a roll

W hile Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us for a few days (mom was in the hospital giving birth to Sophia), we spent some time in the backyard.  We had a fire in the firepit, nice Adirondack chairs, a putting green, and the new homemade Giant Jenga game.  Later in the evening, I made some Shish-Ka-Bob on the grill in the outdoor kitchen, we had S'mores and we played a few games of Dominoes.   We had a good time playing quite a few games of Giant Jenga!   I shot video as well as photos but I'll put together a video soon for another blog entry.  Hmmm...  maybe I'll put together a video of all the things we did in the backyard on this evening.   For now, here are some photos of Giant Jenga with Gee, Lukey, Kenzie and Pop... We had a really nice time on this afternoon and night!   We're looking forward to the next time some or all of the grandchildren are at the house.  It is always fun to play!

T he other day, I went out to the shed in the rain to cut out a couple of aperture masks for my small 50mm guide scope.  I want to try to use this guide scope as an imaging scope for imaging the full disk of the sun.  I have previously worked out a potential configuration to do the same using my 72mm ED refractor but I want to compare the two and then continue to use the one that produces the best images.   I need these aperture masks because I need the guide scope's focal ratio to be in the f5 to f6.5 range.  Without these aperture masks, my guide scope is at f3.2 which is too fast for this particular use.  I'm using my Quark Chromosphere solar filter so I need the focal ratio to be between f4 and f8.  I'm thinking that closer to f4 might be better for capturing prominences while closer to f8 will be better for capturing details on the 'surface' of the chromosphere.  This surface isn't really a hard surface though...  it is a surface of plasma gas in the form o

T he other night, Sheila and I had no energy to cook a full meal nor were we all that hungry for a typical dinner so we just made some hot buttered pretzels fresh out of the oven with a homemade beer cheese dip that I threw together.  That definitely hit the spot!   I took some notes on how I made the beer cheese dip and then, after eating the pretzels and the dip, I adjusted the recipe and ingredients so it will be even better next time.   We'll definitely be making this again!

Liza and the kids spent some time at the house after Kenzie's and Gee's 5K run the other day.  They had a little time to kill before Lukey's baseball game later in the afternoon.  While we killed time, we set up the newly finished homemade Giant Jenga game in the backyard so the kids could play a couple of quick games. The weather was chilly, windy and it looked like it would rain at any moment.  We could definitely use the rain but we didn't get any.  It actually feels like September and the lawn looks like a typical dry September lawn.  We really could use rain...  a lot of rain at this point.  We were able to squeeze in a couple of quick games before Liza and the kids had to run to Lukey's baseball game.   Lukey played against Gee in the first game.  Kenzie had the winner in the second game.  Unfortunately, Ace wouldn't allow Kenzie to play so the game was cut short when Ace knocked the tower of blocks over.   Gee and Lukey played a very good game though!  Th

O ur homemade Giant Jenga game is now ready for playing in our backyard! After I finished sanding all the 2x4 pieces with 220 grit sandpaper (which was after 80 grit and 120 grit), I waxed every piece and then polished the wax until it was smooth and slick.  I also waxed the top of the leveling base.  Now every piece is very smooth and looks nothing like a typical framing 2x4 which is how this wood started!  Each of these pieces started very rough when I first cut the 2x4s to length.  Now they are looking nothing like a typical framing 2x4. For some reason, I thought that the relatively easy process of applying wax and then polishing it would go very quickly but, as usual as my health worsens and I get older, I was very wrong in my time estimate.   I think the waxing required even more of my time than sanding with the last grit of sandpaper did and that took far longer than I anticipated!   I found that I could only wax and polish 12 of the pieces in an hour.  There are 54 pieces so th

M y first springtime woodworking project was a small one but one which will be very useful this summer.  I decided to start my annual woodworking projects by making a Giant Jenga game for the backyard.   I cut up all the wood... 54 pieces in all...  then cut some additional pieces to replace any pieces that weren't looking so good in the first batch.  As I was cutting the initial batch of pieces, I noticed that some of them would not work well so I cut up an additional eight foot 2x4.  After I cut all the pieces, I started working on cutting and assembling a leveling base.   This leveling base has leveling feet at each corner so we can have a level playing surface even on uneven ground.   The great thing about the leveling base is that it can be turned upside-down to store all the pieces (see the last photo, at bottom).  I'm thinking I might need to make some handles for it too.  It is exceptionally heavy with all of the pieces stored in it.  Sheila and I did move it but quickl