follow that qar!

Unwrapping a Hawaiian Sun box is a happy-making gift experience. I love those chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, regardless of the ultimate quality of the confection. Thanks for the present! These were from last Christmas. I was just looking back through holiday-letter-worthy photos from 2012 and remembered these crunchy candies. Yum. Only nine pieces in the package. Gotta savor those. One by one through February, some for myself and some to share. Make a nice after-dinner treat. What a shock, then, to have a BLECH! moment while crunching down on one of these little morsels one evening. Acrid. Ugh. Pitooee. What was that? A little closer attention to that final wrapper told part of the tale, but it took a magnifier to allow adequate inspection. After discovering this little beauty, that moment a few nights earlier made much more sense. A girl's dessert request was met by the box. Appreciative and content, she sat as the post-dinner conversation continued. Suddenly she p...

In December 2008, numerous images were transmitted from the International Space Station to Earth using amateur radio slow-scan television. I copied the following images during four passes over northeastern North America. A few weeks earlier (October 2008), space tourist Richard Garriott was aboard the space station. In addition to making lots of contacts with Earthbound hams, he sent many SSTV transmissions and I was able to copy these. The final one, which I attempted in early morning darkness on his last ISS day, says "Goodbye From Space - From Richard Garriott". All these images were recorded using an Arrow antenna feeding a Vertex-Standard VX-150 2-meter handheld transceiver and a Sony voice recorder. The recordings were later played back through MMSSTV to acquire images, which were then labeled using Photoshop. This series was originally posted as individual nodes in Drupal, but with the demise of that website have been moved to Flickr and c...

I was preparing a rare bird documentation form for the Maine Bird Records Committee when I discovered this is not a review species. Rather than discard it, I'm copying it here. Kentucky Warbler Berwick, York County, Maine May 13, 2012 approximately 19:20 These notes were made about a half hour after the observation after consulting field guides: Peterson, Sibley, Golden, iBird. "Flushed at close range on side trail. Gave sharp tchew! note and moved quickly low in thick vegetation. Appeared for less than a second in plain view, though poorly lit. Immediately struck by facial pattern, which I registered as a bold yellow eye ring extending and drooping behind the eye. Dark olive green above with no wing bars, tail spots, or other distinctive markings. Rich yellow below with no streaking seen. First reaction: Kentucky. Did not observe black "moustache," but reasonable (?) to assume it blended with the dark upperparts in the poor light. (And I was distracted by...

Did the Belief-O-Matic survey in March 2007. This is what it spat out: 1. Unitarian Universalism (100%) 2. Liberal Quakers (94%) 3. Neo-Pagan (87%) 4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (86%) 5. New Age (82%) 6. Reform Judaism (78%) 7. Secular Humanism (75%) 8. Bahá'í Faith (72%) 9. New Thought (69%) 10. Scientology (68%) 11. Theravada Buddhism (66%) 12. Taoism (65%) 13. Mahayana Buddhism (64%) 14. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (59%) 15. Orthodox Quaker (58%) 16. Sikhism (56%) 17. Nontheist (51%) 18. Orthodox Judaism (49%) 19. Islam (42%) 20. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (42%) 21. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (40%) 22. Jainism (35%) 23. Eastern Orthodox (31%) 24. Hinduism (31%) 25. Roman Catholic (31%) 26. Seventh Day Adventist (26%) 27. Jehovah's Witness (13%)

ARISSat-1 aka Radioskaf aka Radioscaf-B aka KEDR aka RS01S more here 29 entries on my voice telemetry chart, the first on August 4 at 10:47 UTC (Mission Elapsed Time 967). On August 9 I got MET 8166, but a week later MET was already resetting during eclipse. Last voice heard January 3 at 21:19z (MET 51), with my first IHU report exceeding 50 degrees. 43 entries on the CW chart, the first on August 18 at 00:30z, the last January 3 at 21:20z. Copied 16 callsigns (and ?3IOR), some of them multiple times... RF ranged from 305 to 541 mA. 54 frames on the data chart, putting me in the sagging middle of DK3WN's list (261 submitters). Call Kursk Spacecraft Total ------------------------------------ ZL2BX 7969 8959 16928 N8MS 7556 8544 16100 N0JY 5063 5884 10947 VK5HI 4933 5210 10143 JA0CAW 4162 4610 8772 N8MH 3711 4249 7960 KD8CAO 3673 3992 7665 DK3WN 3732 ...