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Recent Blog Entries:

Sunset from Science B Category: Astronomy Photos calgary moon
My first trip onto the roof of Science B of the University of Calgary was timed nicely with a gorgeous sunset... ... here you can see (what I think it is anyway) the ski jump that Eddie the Eagle must have jumped off back in the 1988 games. I didn't just go on the roof to look at the sunset, tho...

My first hockey game Category: General Me Photos Sport calgary hockey ice
I went to watch my first hockey (oh and for any Brits by hockey I mean the ice variety) game the other day. It was at the Father David Bauer arena here in Calgary. It was a game between the National Women's Team (the Canadian Olympic team basically) and the Calgary Royals. It was actually quite ...

Olympic Flame at UofC Category: General Me Photos Sport calgary olympics
Last Tuesday the University of Calgary got into the Olympic spirit that is slowly ramping up in Canada ahead of the 2010 Vancouver games. As the torch makes its journey through Canada it made a nice stop at the Calgary Olympic Oval (Calgary was the host of the 1988 games, if you are a Brit you will...

2009: a review of my year... Category: General Me me
Hmm, I know this is a bit late but given my flying back to the UK for Christmas and then coming into a busy work schedule of just not had time. I thought that I probably should write a few things down though. So 2009, a good year and can be summed up by three things. Got engaged. Passed Phd. Move...

Football Manager 2010 on Ubuntu Category: Computing Sport Football Ubuntu
By far my favourite computer game is [Football Manager] and for Christmas I was given the latest incarnation, FM2010. Now I could just play it on Windows, and indeed I probably will at some point, but that's not me. I never use Windows unless I have to these days (I only ever need to windows to play...

-40C, yikes! Category: General Me Photos cold me
I now know what it is like to be at the same temperature on both the Celsius and Fahrenheit scale... yep a lovely -40C/F. Yikes. I decided to go for a walk... that was a bad idea.. but I got some nice shots. City Hall... Not the weather for a tea party.. and yep my windows, not that I wan...

Converting Video for the Ipod on a linuxbox Category: Computing Film Ubuntu
After my flights to and from Puerto Rico the other day I decided it was about time I put a few other video clips onto my ipod (I've watched Master & Commander way too many times on it). The problem is how the heck did I convert them in the first place. I actually have this awful feeling it was q...

Going from sexigesimal to decimal... Category: Astronomy Computing software
I decided (and since I had todo this today) that for consistency (see [my post from there other day]) I should post how to convert between astronomical sexigesimal and decimal coordinates in awk: awk '{h=($2*15)+($3/60)*15+($4/3600)*15; h2=$5+($6/60)+($7/3600); print $1,h,h2}' input > output s...

How things change in a week... Category: General Me Photos me
The beach in Arecibo (around +35C)... The tundra that is Calgary (around -20C with wind chill anyway)... Oh the life of an astronomer......

Using Awk to add a column to a file Category: Astronomy Computing software
I had a need to add an extra column of numbers (all the same) to dataset the other day... so simple todo with an awk script #!/usr/bin/awk -f BEGIN { } { printf("%10d %10d %6d\n", $1, $2 ,"10"); } Just save the above input like something like add_column.awk, make it executab...

Convert decimal to sexigesimal in awk Category: Astronomy Computing
Yesterday I had the need to convert a decimal number to a sexigesimal one - I know there are lots of astronomical tools out there todo this but I felt then need to do this in awk... so here it is: awk '{if ($2>=0) {h=($1/15); h2=h-(h%1); m=(h-h2)*60; m2=m-(m%1); s=(((h-h2)*60)- m2)*60; d=($2-$2...

A day out in San Juan Category: Photos San Juan travels
Whilst I was at Arecibo I got to spend an afternoon out in Old San Juan. For a Caribbean town I was surprised to how European it looked: One of the most interesting buildings was the tiny Chapel of Christ the Saviour: and all of the pigeons that congregate in the park next to it: The street...

Arecibo Observatory Feed Movie Category: Astronomy observing radio
While I was out the other day I made a short movie of the Arecibo feed moving. This is of course the only way the telescope "tracks" any source as the dish (being 305m in diameter) doesn't move: (if you can't see the embeded video see [here])...

Colraf: making colour astronomical images Category: Astronomy observatory wast hills
Earlier this year I put together a few scripts that takes rgb FITS files and makes nice colour images. This was completed as part of development of tools for the University of Birmingham Observatory. Anyway, I meant to make this available before but I didn't have the chance to make it friendly. Its ...

Arecibo observing day 2 Category: Astronomy observing radio research
Last night was pretty cool, I got to be in control of Arecibo on my own (quite a scary and proud moment to be honest) and it all went according to plan. I get to start the observations on my own today too, so that's going to be fun (just better make sure it all goes according to plan!). I have to sa...