Hobbies 'n stuff

Post by **Daddyo** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:16 pm

What kind of things are you guys doing to keep yourself happily busy?

I just got a R/C sailboat for over 1/2 off and raced a bit on a lake against another guy, easy fun.

I've also been trying to make an underwater motor from a computer fan for a remote submarine:
http://files.filefront.com/cold+fusionm ... einfo.html

I'm doing that because I always wanted to, and think the kids could help someday. I'm using a few used computer fans because they're cheap, brushless so can work under salt water as long as I coat it with protective paint, could work at any depth, and has a fan blade that I cut down to work better in water. Others someday may be interested to make one themselves - pretty cheaply. After this I have to figure out how to get video up to the surface.

I mess around trying to make tunes on the computer too which is really rewarding after creating something that you can enjoy (often only me haha), and don't know the first technical thing about music. I really need lessons...

Post by **xistence** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:34 pm

Not surprisingly : creating stories, fictive worlds, all stuff about graphic or design, programming and i also made music years ago with a good friend of mine. Would like to do more, but no time for it at all. That's pretty much all of that what i do in all of my free time.

Post by **data_ghost** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 9:35 am

i recently got a telescope to get into astronomy properly instead of just looking at picture of galaxies on google. the spanners who sent it though have missed a part off the 'pre-built' mount so we're guna send it back for replacement.

writing more stuff in my blog. GO READ IT FOOL!

also plenty of stuff at school being juggled around. orchestra's been a pain before, what with me having to count a million bars just to play a few notes on the triangle (yes you read that correctly) and return to counting bars. but i recently got told im on the timpani with another guy for the next piece and we are guna ROCK!

to visualise that imagine a nerd behind these

Post by **TRON.dll** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 1:49 pm

data_ghost wrote:i recently got a telescope to get into astronomy properly instead of just looking at picture of galaxies on google. the spanners who sent it though have missed a part off the 'pre-built' mount so we're guna send it back for replacement.

writing more stuff in my blog. GO READ IT FOOL!

also plenty of stuff at school being juggled around. orchestra's been a pain before, what with me having to count a million bars just to play a few notes on the triangle (yes you read that correctly) and return to counting bars. but i recently got told im on the timpani with another guy for the next piece and we are guna ROCK!

to visualise that imagine a nerd behind these

Timpanies are fun. Just make sure you get the pitch right. Even if it's a little flat or a little sharp, it can totally ruin the song. It's hard to get it right when you have to adjust in mid-song, because you have to hit the timpani really light so that the audience can't hear it over the other instruments, but yet you still have to make sure the note is correct.

But if you can ace that then it's really fun during loud segments.

I spend my spare time working on games, playing Guitar Hero or Spore (or some other game), or drawing a cartoon. I made some cartoon the other day of two F-22's pursuing Michale Phelps through the Pacific Ocean at Mach 5. lol

Post by **Daddyo** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:08 pm

data_ghost wrote:i recently got a telescope

What kind of scope did you get? Check out this monthly newsletter http://www.ocastronomers.org/e-zine/sir ... 200809.pdf. I skip through the front couple pages and read the 'aerospace update' section, real brief notes on the cool things that are being found & discovered. It looks like you can look at many of them if you change the file name above, for instance SA200809.pdf is year 2008, 09 is September. So for last months try SA200808.pdf.

Post by **data_ghost** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 8:32 am

i got a 130mm newtonian scope, http://www.telescopeplanet.co.uk/ViewPr ... N07B000014
i really regret getting a equatorial mount instead of the basic alt-azimuth (the one that goes up and down)
this is the kind i should have brought

pretty cool stuff going on in that newsletter though, LHC's guna start up albeit at 9% power, helium is found to be in a liquid metallic state inside a gas giant, another random planet is named a plutoid and the guys down under (australia) missed a naked eye obvservable supernova.

Post by **Daddyo** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 3:47 pm

That is a nice scope. You can still track things in the sky alright with the alt-azimuth if the magnification isn't too high. I've got a dobsonian that has a sticky mount, so is probably worse than your alt-azimuth mount.

Let your eyes adapt to the dark for like 5 minutes or more, try to get 15+ miles away from the city lights, use a red light to read sky maps/books when out there, and use averted vision to see things much brighter. That's when you train you're eyes to look slightly away from what you really want to see, because they are way more sensitive to light away from the center of your vision. Who knows why that is.

Finding things in the sky is alot of work, starting from bright stars as references, it's much much bigger than you think once you have some magnification. See if you can find an open star cluster like in Messier 13 in the Hercules constellation

You won't see much color if any, and nearly as many stars as this picture, but I see something that isn't captured in any photos that's hard to describe, almost a 3-d look, an apparent depth. I know that's not real but I think it's the unsaturated light that a long duration photo might mess with. Or maybe the stars are more point-like.

If your interested in programming I still got a cheesy program that models gravity between particles, so looks like your watching an open cluster of stars move around. I wanted to figure out 3-d graphics but don't think it'll work that great with thousands of rendered stars, so blew that off. It's just plotting pixels with different colors now.

Post by **SweatyPyro** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 12:39 pm

Oh Lawd. Hobbies? Well:

Listening to Music, Playing some Day of Defeat and Spore are a few obvious ones.

The swim team is starting up soon, so I will have a busy winter with that.

I take Physics this year, which may turn up to be a real life hell, but so far, so good.

I'm learning JUST Basic in my Computer Science class, and am trying to remember what I learned on my own on C.

I currently play A few Popular Browser Multiplayer games, talk to a lot of people I met there.

That's practically it for me. Sorry If my life is boring.

Post by **data_ghost** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 1:36 pm

oh man yeah im taking all three of the sciences this year 'cos im a super nerd

physics is only bearable because of a decent teacher, chemistry is a lot more interesting since its changed the most since last year. and biology is the SAME shite we did last year re-visited.

its the rugby season as well and im in the team, albeit with less enthusiasim than last year. probable because we havnt won a game yet, and we've played around 6 so far. the numbers get even more depressing from there, our last game was lost 71-0

Post by **Daddyo** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 1:42 pm

They never taught rugby in california, not sure if in the US. It's like hockey on grass?

Physics is kinda tough, I liked looking at the end chapters that talk about quarks and tiny stuff like that

Post by **TRON.dll** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:44 pm

Daddyo wrote:They never taught rugby in california, not sure if in the US. It's like hockey on grass?

Physics is kinda tough, I liked looking at the end chapters that talk about quarks and tiny stuff like that

I think rugby is the british name for what us stateside programs call football.

Basically:

US - Europe

Football - Rugby
Soccer - Football

Am I right? Or is rugby some kind of sport I've never heard of?

Post by **data_ghost** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:20 pm

that is true however rugby is different from american football

i think the only major differences are that american football consists of short bursts until the ball is down whereas in rugby when the ball-carrier is tackling the game carrys on as both teams try to push the other team off the ball (rucking).
and rugby players wear no protective clothing except a gumshield although i guess the tackling rules are more strict: no tackling on the neck, no tackling of people without the ball, tackling means you gotta grab the other guy and bring him down to the ground not just ram or barg him.

Post by **TRON.dll** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 1:57 pm

Alright, but the ball used looks the same right?

Just kinda wondering, because I was playing this game once and it said I unlocked a rugby ball, and it looked like a football. I thought to myself, "Oh, so that's what they call football in Europe!"

Post by **Daddyo** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 4:21 pm

I found this program after searching all morning while bored at work http://gravit.slowchop.com/
It has a much much better interface and graphics than my cheapie version I made. I got this guys version to compile after hours of toying with openGL and other external libraries. You can tweak the 'gravit.cfg' file to increase screen size.

If anyone wants tweaks on it, like more stars, etc, I can do. I'm using visual C 6 (from back in '98) to run it. If you want to experiment programming and have VC 6, lemme know and I'll send u the files. It is pretty complicated unfortunately.

I was looking for this method of figuring out the gravity between stars which is supposed to be way faster than what i did, but mines still faster... Maybe it doesnt come out ahead until you've got 10k stars or more.

When you run it, press F8 a few times to set up your galaxies, then press F6 to run it. Press F5 to playback at any speed you want. It just records to memory. Press Q or W during playback to change the speed.