Security Now Audio Show & Podcast

I have always been a big fan of Steve Gibson's website (www.grc.com) with all his neat little programs. After using his hard drive repair utility (Spinrite) years ago, I have tried to follow what he is doing.

Now he has an internet audio show with Tech TV's Leo Laporte and talks a lot about computer security and new network ideas. It looks like they make a show every week that last about 20-30 minutes.

Check the show out: http://www.grc.com/SecurityNow.htm

I am listening to episode #20 now about the new Windows security problem and his show is quite informative. I like that he gives you more technical explanations. I learned about the security issue after my father told me about a story on NPR. That story was pretty vague about the issue except it be triggered by looking at image files on webpages. They interviewed someone from McAfee. Refer to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5076721

Microscope Pictures of Water Particles

This Christmas season I have been sick with mostly a cough that does not want to go away. A number of days ago I bought a Vicks vaporizer to raise the humidity in the room I was sleeping. The instructions said black particles could appear in the water tub after a while. The device seems to work by extending a column down into a tub of water. Inside the column is a heater that heats the water to a point where it turns into steam. A small plume of steam appears about 10 minutes after the unit is turned on. After it had run overnight I looked in the tub and grayish flakes were sitting at the bottom of the tub. These flakes looked like good candidates for the microscope. I am guessing they are small pieces of charcoal used to filter the water at the treatment plant. Why the form into flakes is a question I cannot answer.

Mars Pictures

Well, my pictures of Mars are not all that great. Getting the camera locked on Mars turned out easier than I thought but getting it focused proved elusive.















Here is another picture of the moon that I took last night. It has not come out yet tonight so I might try and image it tomorrow morning.

More Telescope Pictures

It must be 20 degrees outside which just adds to the fun of trying to take a picture of Saturn. I was having a lot of trouble focusing even though it was a clear night. Lots of Christmas lights in the neighborhood so that always makes for good astronomy.



As you can see from the next picture my Saturn image did not turn out. I could not get it into focus.

My pictures of the moon did not do so well either.

Processed Moon Image from Last Night

Here is my first processed image from RegiStax. It is a neat program and I picked out 8 images and stacked them.

Moon Picture

I have taken my first image with the NexImage camera attached to a Meade telescope. The quality is poor due to several factors: 1) cloudy skies made the moon hazy, 2) I did not read the manual for the NexImage so I was muddling through the program while capturing images, 3) I need to read the manual for the image processing program as well. After capturing the images, I will probably upgrade to a faster computer to grab images. Also after finding the manual on the CD, I found that I was not using the maximum resolution to capture images. Also my exposure was not correctly set.

Microscope Pictures 3

The image to the right is of white house flour illuminated with the bottom light on the microscope.










The image on the left is of the same flour sample but illuminated from the side with white LEDs that seem to make the flour turn blue.







The image on the left is the same flour sample but illuminated with a red led from the side.

Microscope Pictures 2

An American Eagle coin magnified 60 times. The surface on this coin is rough and not smooth like other coins I have seen. Very coarse looking when magnified 200 times.

Metal fragment found in a piece of shale. It original was a sphere about the size of a BB. I broke it apart to see what the metal looked like inside.

The nose of a buffalo on a new nickel.

More Images from the Microscope

Using the Intel play microscope I took some more images for items I found in the kitchen.



Artificial sugar magnified compare it to the later images of sugar.








The right image shows several sugar crystals illuminated with a red LED from the side with small amount of the tungsten light on the microscope. Magnification I think is 60 times.





Here is a sugar crystal magnified 200 times with side illumination by a white LED. I noticed that the white LED makes items appear slightly blue.





Parsley flake magnified by 200 times. Focus would have been helped if I had a flatter specimen.








Popcorn shell magnified 60 times.

Cold Weather and Tires

The onset of cold weather in northern Kentucky got me to check the air pressure in the vehicles. I found that pressure in about all the tires was about 5 pounds per square inch lower than it should be. The tires were inflated to match the pressures shown on the label inside the driver's door.

Doing a little research I found this website about vehicle tires:
http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/cars/tirecare/tirecare.txt

The item that relates to what I saw is this, "Every time the outside temperature drops 10 degrees Fahrenheit, the air pressure inside your tires goes down about one or two pounds per square inch." So I need to reduce the pressure once the air temperature warms up again.

Edwin Hubble and His Connection to Louisville

The Courier-Journal posted an interesting article today about the astronomer, Edwin Hubble who the famous space telescope is named after. The piece chronicles Edwin's life and how his father moved the family to Shelbyville, KY in 1910 where Hubble would witness the return of Halley's comet. He traveled to Oxford to study law instead of astronomy. His father died in Louisville in 1913. Edwin returned to Louisville and taught high school in southern Indiana in 1914. In 1915, he moved to the University of Chicago to study for his PhD.

It is a very informative article written by a local science teacher. The only odd thing is it was in the editorial/opinion page. Check it out at: http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051120/OPINION04/511200428/1054/OPINION

Woodman's Pal

Reading the Pursuits section of the Wall Street Journal today I found an interesting ad. It showed a machete like tool that has a curved blade on one side and hooked shaped blade on the other. I have been looking for something like this to clear brush on some rural land that has quite a few briars and overgrowth.

The company that makes it is in Pennsylvania since World War II. Reading their website it appears to be a tool the military used when serving in jungle environments.

Check out this tool at: http://www.woodmanspal.com

Pictures from the Microscope

Today I will post some pictures taken from a electronic microscope.

The image to the right is of powdery mildew on a petal of an African Violet.

This image is a close up of fool's gold. Notice the crystal formation rising from the rock surface.

The metal in the image to the left is not identified. I was digging holes in a backyard to plant watermelon. The tool I was using was a post hole digger and it was going through a slate bed. A piece of slate has a shiny pellet in it and when I broke it open these fragments made up the pellet.

This picture is an EPROM that has been magnified 60 times.

Christmas Gift Idea

Christmas is a time for giving and not just receiving. So it might be a good idea to make a donation to your favorite charity. I know I will. A neat site I found that rates charities is at: http://www.charitynavigator.org/

Right now I am looking at several local 4 star charities: Dare to Care Food Bank, Public Radio Partnership, and Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust. Also one international one: Food for the Poor.

Nova on PBS

I just finished watching Nova on our PBS affiliate. The show was entitled "Hitler's Sunken Secret". It was about heavy water production and shipment in Norway during World War II. Very interesting show, I learned that heavy water in the containers could be determine by the pH. The researchers brought up barrel #26 and found that it did indeed contain 1.1% of heavy water. Later research found that the Germans were just experimenting with the water and were not very close to building a nuclear bomb. Check out more about the show at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hydro/

A somewhat related topic, during the show a scientist showed electrolysis in a flask. I found a site on the internet that allows you to easily break water into hydrogen and oxygen. Check it out at: http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Stories/001.1/

Next week's show about Isaac Newton and his interest in alchemy looks good as well. I am glad to see Google putting some of their wealth to work by supporting the science show Nova. The world needs more scientists figuring out how the universe works.

Star Wars Episode III

I rented Episode III earlier in the week and watched it again. Definitely, the best of the newer trilogy. I liked seeing the deleted scenes and hearing George Lucas's commentary. They let the graphic supervisors discuss their scenes as well. In the opening space battle, one pointed out they actually had a kitchen sink fly out of an exploding ship and hit another ship.

Another neat feature on the bonus DVD was an analysis of 49 seconds of the light saber duel at the end. The documentary makers showed how all the people involved in the making of that section of the film. Let's just say, a lot of people are involved! It looks like a lot of work on the movie was done in Australia. I thought they would have done a majority of the work in California but apparently not. It was also interesting that they traveled to China to take pictures of the hills there for the Wookie planet.

One other thing that I learned was that the actors are in front of a lot of green and blue screens. It must be quite hard acting when you have no idea what your surroundings look like. They seemed to have had a lot of computer generated backgrounds. Also they put the heads of actors on stand in doubles.

It's Getting Cold

Over the last week, the temperature has been down right cold. I decided to finish putting extra insulation in the attic. When I wired an overhead light in the extra bedroom, I discovered an area in the attic that did not get any blown insulation. This area would explain why when feeling the ceiling in the master bedroom this summer and it was hotter than the rest of the dry wall.

I took some more fiberglass insulation up and filled in the area and added some more through out where I traveled to get to that area. As I moved through the attic, I found it to be very tight quarters up there. A very useful tool was Brinkman headlight that has several white LEDs. I really needed both hands free up there to contort around that small space and move insulation to and fro. It was good to have it.

An added feature to the headlight is that it has a red LED for night work. When I was out working on the telescope it is nice to have a red light so the eyes are more acclimated to the night. When I made my Mars post last night, I thought the planet was overhead but looking at my telescope this morning it was elevated to 63 degrees. After more thought, I did have the telescope on a slope. I will try and look at it tonight as well.


Went to a very nice wedding this weekend. Here is a picture the church ceiling while I was testing my camera before the ceremony.

Mars

I just came in from looking at Mars in the telescope. It is very bright and very large in my viewfinder. The image I saw was white circle with dark pattern near its center. I was viewing as it was almost directly overhead which means it did not have as much atmospheric distortion.

I only wish that the neighbors would turn their lights off more. My neighborhood is not the greatest to for sky viewing.

100 Things About Louisville, Kentucky

The Courier-Journal produces a free weekly called Velocity. I pick it up time to time and enjoy reading its younger, hip content. They recently had their 100th issue and commemorated by publishing a "100 Things You Didn't Know About Louisville" section. The full list can be found at: http://www.velocityweekly.com/100things.html

Things I found interesting:

#21 Louisville has a company called National Products that produced disco balls. I wonder what kind of market there is for this product?

#37 The steamboat, The Belle of Louisville, is the oldest in operation in the United States. It was built in 1914. I remember the Sunday morning I was cycling down by the riverfront and thought the Belle was sitting in the water funny. It turns out someone had tried to sink her. The boat was repaired but it was not cheap.

#67 That Jefferson Memorial park is the largest American urban park at 5,500 acres.

It an interesting newspaper. Check it out at http://www.velocityweekly.com/

Trip to Indianapolis to See Whad'ya Know

Over the weekend, we visited Indianapolis to see the public radio show Whad'ya Know? It was an interesting show but the crowd seemed a lot smaller than the one in Louisville. The audience seemed low key as well. I gathered that the public television and radio stations are tied together in Indy. The show was at an arts building at a local high school. They had a nice facility and plenty of parking. The picture to the right shows the stage the show was broadcast from. It is somewhat blurry since the area was pretty dark and I could not hold the camera steady with the longer exposure time.

The Louisville crowd may have been in a smaller theater and having the host open the show by opening a bottle of Woodford Reserve Bourbon and start drinking definitely set the stage for that show. The band was definitely enjoying it as well. At the Indy show, we were seated on the left side of the theater. Michael Feldman comes down the right during the first half show and interacts with the audience and then the left half at the second part of the show. He got within 3 seats of us and this picture was taken. It is pretty cool that they allow cameras at the show.

During the show, he interviewed a writer from the Indy Star who was pretty good. He also interviewed a writer who was professor at Butler College (or University). She wrote an interesting book about Indiana manufacturing, called Fabrications. I might read it, if I can find it in the library. I found it nice that after the show, the cast stayed around and allowed the audience to come up on stage and have their pictures taken. You can learn more about the show by going to http://www.notmuch.com

Here is a picture of a waterfall on a river that runs through part of the city. Very relaxing area.