It's now later in the year - after the Southern Winter Solstice - and while the Sun creeps back into our hemisphere, paradoxically, it just gets colder here in Eastern Australia. It's not Northern Hemisphere cold with snow, ice and blizzards. In fact the temperature in most places barely gets below 10°C which would be a summer's day in many places. Here, we do not dress for cool weather. We wear shorts and thongs all year round and as a sop to winter weather, we wear a woolly jumper. The houses are built to survive the scorching summers and winter is an afterthought. Cool winds may come and go as they please through houses where any sort of sealing is an accident. I have swum in tidal pools all through Sydney winters (hardly cooler than ours) but a couple of seasons in the North and I feel the cool weather as much as any local.
This time of year is often good for astronomical viewing and I have bought myself a pair of Fujinon 10x50 FMTR-SX binoculars. They are superb and I am in the process of building a set of parallelogram arms to hold them still. Keeping binoculars still is the best way I know of extending their view. My interests now extend to tracking down those Messier objects that left early astronomers scratching their heads when they were looking for comets. The Messier catalogue is an eighteenth century list of those faint smears in the sky that might be comets - but were not. Messier decided to catalogue them so that he did not waste time watching them from night to night. They are everywhere in the sky and often objects of interest in themselves - but they are not comets. The view through the Fujinon binoculars is stunning and cries out for a decent mount.
I'll be looking for some decent places with a dark sky for observation once I have a decent mount. It seems to be my experience that counter-weighted systems are much easier to use than friction locks - this is opposite to my experience with cameras. I am not really interested in any particular style of astronomy just yet - I'm more interesting in learning how to find my way around in the night sky. Not unsurprisingly, the 6X binoculars are extremely useful for this objective as they are steady in the hand and take in a full 8° real field of view - their apparent field of view is not great at 48° but seeing how I started with an AFOV of 45° and was happy, it's not something that bothers me. I'm glad I opted for the 10x50s as I can no longer see any change in apparent brightness with 7x50s - old eyes! 5mm aperture eyes is what I've got and 5mm is what I'll use. I'm looking forward to my first astronomy club meeting this weekend.
Sailing weather is intermittent but when the Southerly Wind blows it's good but cool sailing. Bert, the skipper of our rescue boat, is unhappy with me at the moment but Bert is often unhappy with people for no apparent reason, so I'll let time go past on that one and see what develops. Dolphins (not Mahi Mahi) are chasing schools of pilchards around the Broadwater and there seems to be plenty of both dolphins and pilchards. Life is good. Carolyn (and for a time Lizzie) is buzzing around Italy with Rachel and Hugo and sending occasional blogs and emails back which I am saving and backing up for safe-keeping. The second disc drive is good and it is much faster to copy files to than to the USB drives.
My back has healed and, although I am moving around like an old man, I expect to get full mobility back soon. Not working on the rescue boat is good for my sore ribs. And I really need to do lots more cycling. Bye for now ~ Christopher
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
It's been a long, long time ... not many musings, mostly news
Much has happened. My poster girl, Jessica Watson, has ceased to give me sleepless nights and is safely back in the Land Down Under. Jessica called in here briefly but I didn't even know it was going to happen and she was off up the coast to her final port before I even knew Pink Lady had even visited. Oh dear! Abby Sunderland has been rescued. I admire her optimism in choosing an Open 40 for her circumnavigation but she finally came to grief in that black hole 2000nM south west of Perth and had to be rescued. A French fishing boat picked her up repaying us for the rescue of Thierry (cranky) Dubois and the irrepressible Tony Bullimore many years ago. It's a bad spot and many people have simply disappeared down there. Abby liked giving the Open 40 its head to race away and, given that she was only sixteen and on her first circumnavigation, we can forgive her optimism and poor judgement in such a place. More experienced and older sailors have done the same. I question the role her land-based team played in such a situation. The Australian government acted quickly in sending a Qantas jet to the spot where her EPIRBs (2) were signalling and all ended well in a French fishing boat. Quick reaction with the jet was laudable. I don't know what they could have done but there is no telling what the experience and equipment on board the plane was, so I won't second-guess them. The government, the jet, AMSA, Abby and the fishing boat all did well in their respective roles.
The Wandering W***** Women are off again and the advance team of three is now checking out Rome - Liz follows soon and Europe and North Africa will be closely examined. Carolyn is scoping out teaching positions around the world as she goes. Hugo's hair is getting longer and his body fatter. We seem to be headed in opposite directions as I lose weight and keep (?) my hair short. I haven't heard anything from Alex in ages and can only presume no news is good news. He is proselytizing for Utah in the south of Malaysia which seems to me to be a tough call and I wish him well. Mum is OK and hasn't fallen over in ages but another fall could see her in a nursing home and I would not wish that on anyone.
Both my 6X binoculars and my 10X Fujinon binoculars have arrived and the Fujinons would have to be the far better buy of the two. They are a heavy lump, big and difficult to focus and don't close focus at all but they are truly wonderful binoculars to look through. I am sceptical of all this "SX-2" and "Flat Field" stuff but they are, as I said, very good and that is the point. I had a good look at Jupiter rising last night and saw one moon apparently occult another at about 1am AEST local time. The 6X binoculars are just fine for the bike and the boat and it's good to know that, when I fall off the bike, it's not going to cost me three thousand dollars to replace my Leica binoculars - a most sensible purchase. They have been tried on the water - the 6X binoculars - and work very well indeed. The 6X magnification is excellent to hand-hold in a rocking boat.
All around me, things seem to be mostly going well at the moment. The only change I need to make is to get more exercise. That's a big one and I'm working on it.
Our elected Prime Minister has been deposed by the unions and never mind who the voters put in the job. I reckon it's the job of the voters to choose who our Prime Minister should be, not unionists in Sydney and Melbourne. I'm old fashioned enough to believe that the voter has a big say in a democracy. As the saying goes, democracy may be a lousy system but it's better than the next best system. At least we get a say every three years. As many people have by now found, I guess there's no use crying about it.
The Wandering W***** Women are off again and the advance team of three is now checking out Rome - Liz follows soon and Europe and North Africa will be closely examined. Carolyn is scoping out teaching positions around the world as she goes. Hugo's hair is getting longer and his body fatter. We seem to be headed in opposite directions as I lose weight and keep (?) my hair short. I haven't heard anything from Alex in ages and can only presume no news is good news. He is proselytizing for Utah in the south of Malaysia which seems to me to be a tough call and I wish him well. Mum is OK and hasn't fallen over in ages but another fall could see her in a nursing home and I would not wish that on anyone.
Both my 6X binoculars and my 10X Fujinon binoculars have arrived and the Fujinons would have to be the far better buy of the two. They are a heavy lump, big and difficult to focus and don't close focus at all but they are truly wonderful binoculars to look through. I am sceptical of all this "SX-2" and "Flat Field" stuff but they are, as I said, very good and that is the point. I had a good look at Jupiter rising last night and saw one moon apparently occult another at about 1am AEST local time. The 6X binoculars are just fine for the bike and the boat and it's good to know that, when I fall off the bike, it's not going to cost me three thousand dollars to replace my Leica binoculars - a most sensible purchase. They have been tried on the water - the 6X binoculars - and work very well indeed. The 6X magnification is excellent to hand-hold in a rocking boat.
All around me, things seem to be mostly going well at the moment. The only change I need to make is to get more exercise. That's a big one and I'm working on it.
Our elected Prime Minister has been deposed by the unions and never mind who the voters put in the job. I reckon it's the job of the voters to choose who our Prime Minister should be, not unionists in Sydney and Melbourne. I'm old fashioned enough to believe that the voter has a big say in a democracy. As the saying goes, democracy may be a lousy system but it's better than the next best system. At least we get a say every three years. As many people have by now found, I guess there's no use crying about it.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Canada, Joannie Rochette and the Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010
# #
Recently, like many people in our society, I found myself caught up in an unfolding story about which I might have had an interest that approached zero. It was the Winter Olympics 2010 in Canada. At first it was just curiosity about whether Australians would be involved in making snow where there was none - unsurprisingly, they were. It's an odd solution when so many other places have more of the stuff than they want. But here in Oz, we sometimes have to make our own. And having developed the techniques, we sometimes help other people. So there we were, making snow and trucking (helicoptering?) it in from other places.
And unavoidably, another story came to my attention. It wasn't what you might expect - the lovely Torah Bright had a gold medal and a smile that could be studied for nuclear fusion. It was the opposite - someone who didn't have much to smile about and "only" won a bronze medal. Her name was Joannie Rochette. Joannie was facing something that we will all face sooner or later but in her case the timing was terrible. Her mother died suddenly the week before her competition.
It looked to me like she skated with tears in her eyes. It must have been bloody hard. Sometimes it's not always the person who wins the gold medal that's the biggest hero. Sometimes the hero is a real surprise. She carried the flag at the closing ceremony for Canada and I don't doubt that she was the only flag-bearer who wasn't wearing a gold medal (OK - some countries didn't win medals - point.). Joannie Rochette's medal is possibly irrelevant. It's her courage and her dignity that distinguished her. I reckon the Canadians need to take a bow for choosing Joannie when they were snowed under (no pun intended) with a record number of gold medals - the most gold medals ever won by any country at a Winter Olympics. People sometimes wonder why we place such an emphasis on sport when the world has so many other problems. It's not just the competition that counts. It's the time when we get real about our own abilities and most of all, our own inner demons. No one but Joannie and her demons were on the ice when she skated, no matter how much we were all with her in spirit.
The greatest thing that the Canadians did at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010 was not to win a lot of gold medals. It was to recognise the courage, the grace under enormous emotional pressure and the dignity that a team member showed in extraordinary circumstances. They recognised Joannie Rochette for her heroism.
And Joannie carried their flag.
I'm proud to be an Australian. But I'm also immensely happy that we have such people as Joannie Rochette in the world. We are all the better for it. Thanks Joannie. Christopher Woulfe
~~~~~~ Courage is where you find it ~~~~~~
# #
Recently, like many people in our society, I found myself caught up in an unfolding story about which I might have had an interest that approached zero. It was the Winter Olympics 2010 in Canada. At first it was just curiosity about whether Australians would be involved in making snow where there was none - unsurprisingly, they were. It's an odd solution when so many other places have more of the stuff than they want. But here in Oz, we sometimes have to make our own. And having developed the techniques, we sometimes help other people. So there we were, making snow and trucking (helicoptering?) it in from other places.
And unavoidably, another story came to my attention. It wasn't what you might expect - the lovely Torah Bright had a gold medal and a smile that could be studied for nuclear fusion. It was the opposite - someone who didn't have much to smile about and "only" won a bronze medal. Her name was Joannie Rochette. Joannie was facing something that we will all face sooner or later but in her case the timing was terrible. Her mother died suddenly the week before her competition.
It looked to me like she skated with tears in her eyes. It must have been bloody hard. Sometimes it's not always the person who wins the gold medal that's the biggest hero. Sometimes the hero is a real surprise. She carried the flag at the closing ceremony for Canada and I don't doubt that she was the only flag-bearer who wasn't wearing a gold medal (OK - some countries didn't win medals - point.). Joannie Rochette's medal is possibly irrelevant. It's her courage and her dignity that distinguished her. I reckon the Canadians need to take a bow for choosing Joannie when they were snowed under (no pun intended) with a record number of gold medals - the most gold medals ever won by any country at a Winter Olympics. People sometimes wonder why we place such an emphasis on sport when the world has so many other problems. It's not just the competition that counts. It's the time when we get real about our own abilities and most of all, our own inner demons. No one but Joannie and her demons were on the ice when she skated, no matter how much we were all with her in spirit.
The greatest thing that the Canadians did at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010 was not to win a lot of gold medals. It was to recognise the courage, the grace under enormous emotional pressure and the dignity that a team member showed in extraordinary circumstances. They recognised Joannie Rochette for her heroism.
And Joannie carried their flag.
I'm proud to be an Australian. But I'm also immensely happy that we have such people as Joannie Rochette in the world. We are all the better for it. Thanks Joannie. Christopher Woulfe
~~~~~~ Courage is where you find it ~~~~~~
Friday, January 15, 2010
A Mobile Phone in 1990
When mobile phones were first sold in Australia in 1981, the people who sold them were shysters, crooks and thieves. It's 2010 and nothing much has changed. By comparison, used car salesmen and real estate agents are trustworthy, honest, upright and worthy citizens. That said, I paid $1700 and a $300 deposit which after I left Telstra, took me over two years to get back. It was the best money I ever spent. This is not a diatribe against salesmen - I've been one - so if you're one of the good guys, read on.
Twenty years after my first mobile phone, it is interesting to note that my original Motorola 8800 analogue phone had 50 speed-dial numbers and moving them around was considerably easier than my current phone with ten speed-dial numbers. Technology doesn't always move forward.
To say that phone saved my life may be a stretch but it felt like it at the time. I was working night shifts as a cab driver in Sydney which no matter what you hear is lots of fun. But I was uncontactable and losing all my few friends at a rate. I was meeting a tremendous cross-section of society in the cab and they were vastly entertaining but those I held nearest and dearest were slipping away from me.
Once the mobile number got around, Carolyn, my dearest but almost estranged sister (I can think of no other way to describe her at the time), rang me and talked to me for 45 minutes. Gee. We'd hardly spoken twenty words in as many years and she rang me and spoke for 45 minutes! I don't want to hear about the good old days and complaints about bad mannered people with phones and kids making video of violence. A phone is phone and my life changed forever. I have hardly ever been without a mobile phone ever since. That said, that old analogue from Motorola was some phone - I made calls from places I still can't believe - out at sea twenty miles, under the Harbour (tunnel), out fishing on the rocks and many late night calls from a hard working
taxi which kept my friends close and social life alive. In places like the taxi and on the rocks, I sometimes left it turned off but it was great comfort to know that it was there.
I made calls from Dee Why Headland late at night while rock-fishing and the connection went through Gosford! I was alive and well on the rocks and "Please don't call the Police". These days they have GPS chips and Policemen can find lost bushwalkers who are in range of a tower and have their phones on. What's up with that? Sure, it will be abused but would you change it. No way. 2010 is a nice place to be for all the troubles in the world. At least, because of improved communications, we now know what's going on out there. Some of the time ...
Christopher
Twenty years after my first mobile phone, it is interesting to note that my original Motorola 8800 analogue phone had 50 speed-dial numbers and moving them around was considerably easier than my current phone with ten speed-dial numbers. Technology doesn't always move forward.
To say that phone saved my life may be a stretch but it felt like it at the time. I was working night shifts as a cab driver in Sydney which no matter what you hear is lots of fun. But I was uncontactable and losing all my few friends at a rate. I was meeting a tremendous cross-section of society in the cab and they were vastly entertaining but those I held nearest and dearest were slipping away from me.
Once the mobile number got around, Carolyn, my dearest but almost estranged sister (I can think of no other way to describe her at the time), rang me and talked to me for 45 minutes. Gee. We'd hardly spoken twenty words in as many years and she rang me and spoke for 45 minutes! I don't want to hear about the good old days and complaints about bad mannered people with phones and kids making video of violence. A phone is phone and my life changed forever. I have hardly ever been without a mobile phone ever since. That said, that old analogue from Motorola was some phone - I made calls from places I still can't believe - out at sea twenty miles, under the Harbour (tunnel), out fishing on the rocks and many late night calls from a hard working
taxi which kept my friends close and social life alive. In places like the taxi and on the rocks, I sometimes left it turned off but it was great comfort to know that it was there.
I made calls from Dee Why Headland late at night while rock-fishing and the connection went through Gosford! I was alive and well on the rocks and "Please don't call the Police". These days they have GPS chips and Policemen can find lost bushwalkers who are in range of a tower and have their phones on. What's up with that? Sure, it will be abused but would you change it. No way. 2010 is a nice place to be for all the troubles in the world. At least, because of improved communications, we now know what's going on out there. Some of the time ...
Christopher
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Pink Lady and Centaur - Success for Both
There is good news for both. One is successfully rounding the Horn after a big build-up - Jessica Watson's Pink Lady. The other is now found at last and is being heavily documented. The navigator of the Centaur, Second Officer Richard G. Rippon, has at last been vindicated as the Centaur has been found very close to the position he gave at the time. Wikipedia says that the position of the Centaur as found is withing one nautical mile of Rippon's position which he calculated from his dead-reckoning position fix ten minutes before the sinking. Given the accuracy of the navigational tools of the time, the position is pretty good. These days with GPS, finding a position within a few feet is not much trouble. But in 1943, the instruments and methods of navigation in general use had changed little in more than a century. Any position that was within five miles was pretty good and it took a good professional navigator (Rippon) to do any better. Jessica may or may not be able to use a sextant but the electronics are holding up and she is doing very well. I was concerned about the way the Pink Lady was set up and I was especially concerned about how well Pink Lady would behave if she took a wave over the bow. So far, she's getting away with it and she sure has got a big smile on her face right now. It's a tiny little boat to be rounding the Horn in but, what the hell, it's still afloat and going really well. I am absolutely delighted that my worries have been put to rest. My next worry is the Great Southern Ocean in that part of the world between the Southern Indian Ocean and South of Western Australia (around 50°S 100°E). A couple of real pros came to grief there a few years back - Tony Bullimore and Thierry Dubois - and their rescue was part miracle. Jessica is not in a race, so she doesn't have to "push the edge of the envelope". I'm still a bit edgy about getting Jessica back on dry land but, now that the Horn is past, I'm much less worried than I was. Fair sailing, Jessica!
Monday, January 11, 2010
Jessica, Pink Lady and Cape Horn
I am following Jessica Watson and her boat Pink Lady closely on the net and I'm worried by what I see on the synoptic charts of the area. Jessica is not experiencing much bad weather and has just found a bit of wind at 12 knots. For the Cape, this is no weather at all. The synoptic charts look quite grim by comparison. I shall follow closely and say a prayer for her. From what I've read on Google Earth clicks in the area, it's possible for her to wait in the lee of one of the many islands if the weather turns bad. Then she can proceed again when the weather clears. She could get a rough time of it if she is unlucky. Sir Francis Chichester had a bigger boat and when it got rough, he continued at a rate with a storm sail. Observers said that the sail was about as big as a bath towel but enough to keep him going at quite a rate. His boat was a bit of a pig to handle but it was very strong - it was timber but made from hand laid timber laminate and was quite thick - he never had to worry about rough water. Here's luck and a prayer to Jessica. For the charts relating to weather go to the link at http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/nmoc/latest_D.pl?IDCODE=IDX0532
Sunday, January 10, 2010
A new day dawns ...
Here 'tis - it's gestation has been closer to that of an elephant than a human and a whole wave of technology has swept past but no matter - it's utility is the whole point.
Welcome world to Christopher's world!
Welcome world to Christopher's world!
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