Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Star Angles

    We've had quite a few clear nights this last week or so, but I haven't been able to get out much, due to tiredness and scheduling restrictions related to my work schedule, family commitments, and church commitments. I saw a bit of green aurora for a few minutes, during that big solar storm recently, but was only able to stay outside for a few minutes before needing to drag my exhausted self off to bed.

    One idea that I have been interested in recently is producing accurate star sketches using angular distance measurements. The basic idea is, if I can measure accurately the angular distance between any two arbitrary stars, then I can reproduce the exact shape of a group of stars on paper, either by calculating the angles with trigonometry, or just using a drafting compass.

    The first question was how to measure the angles. I have a sextant, which is a very accurate tool for measuring angles, but unfortunately it doesn't work so well for pairs of arbitrary stars. The problem is that you have to get the two stars you want lined up next to each other inside the two tiny viewing windows. With that small FoV, it is hard to get them pointed in the right direction, and of course most of the stars look very similar, so you don't even know if you are star in the window is the one you meant to point at. This is a different use case of a sextant from the usual one where you measuring the angle between the horizon and some bright navigational star.

  • Sunny mountains

    Yesterday's cold night turned this morning into a crisp sunny day. As the sun warms up the snow capped mountains on the other side of the lake, I feel very good.

    It all started with the realization of what is mine and what isn't. This concept completely change my perception of reality, and since then so many changes happened.

    The family constellation came topping up that transformation, informing the generational healing that was needed.

  • 🔤SpellBinding — CEKPRYU Wordo: NUDES

• Technology and Free Software

  • Omarchy

    Sometimes you see something that provokes an idea, and a vision how things may unfold. For me, such a moment was a couple of days ago when one of our apprentices in the company told me with pride he ditched Windows and installed this cool hacker system. Omarchy.

    Honestly? DHH did everything right with this system. It is totally different from Windows, so it doesn't trigger any "uncanny valley" effects. It simply looks cool, in an 80s kind of way, if you can follow my train of thoughts. I think, back in the day when i was playing around with an C64 and someone would have asked to describe how a OS in the far future of the year 2025 would look like, something like that would have come to mind.