Commodore 64 Christmas Memories

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When I was a kid in the 1980s, our first computer at home was a Commodore 64. Before that, our English-teacher Dad would bring home an Apple II+ for the summer from his high school, but although that was the same kind computer we had at school, it wasn’t ours. So when my twin brother John and I were confirmed, we pooled our money and bought a Commodore 64 from the local Toys R Us. We hooked it up to an old black & white 13″ television and borrowed a Vic-20 tape player from our friend who has upgraded his C-64 with a floppy disk drive. That Christmas, my brother and I asked Santa for a joint gift of a 1541 floppy disk drive of our own. and Santa not only came through with that, but ALSO a genuine Commodore 1701 color monitor! I still remember how blown away and excited we were; I’m sure my Dad’s desire to use the setup for making tests and quizzes for school had something to do with it, as well.

Commodore 64 - The Interface Experience: Bard Graduate Center
Stick an Okimate 10 thermal-transfer printer on the right side of this picture, add two Atari joysticks, and it’ll look like our childhood setup.

I’ll leave the tales of epic video game battles, writing my first “real” computer program (a database for the NCSF), and trials with Dad working on a 40-column screen but printing on an 80-column printer for another time. No, this blog is dedicated to the first electronic music playlist I’ve ever had: the Commodore 64 Christmas Demo program of 1982.

The C-64 has a lot of things going for it, and two of them were Sprite Graphics and their SID chip for sound. This made the C-64 superior to the Apple II+ for many home applications — including games. To make the less-expensive and retail-friendly C-64 appeal to the more technically-minded, Commodore created a program to show off the C-64’s capabilities with a holiday-themed demo program, which ran on the floor models in the stores. Of course, people wanted this for their own home setups, and we managed to procure a copy of the program, which we played and played every Christmas season. Thanks to the modern Internet, it’s easy to find video captures of the C-64 Christmas Demo, and I present it here in this blog for your enjoyment. Happy holidays!

Commodore 64 Christmas Demo program of 1982 — my first electronic “playlist”

Comet NEOWISE

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This video was created from a series of 224 images taken from 8:58pm to 10:46pm on Thursday, July 16 at Harrington Beach State Park. 

To take these images, I used a Canon M6 Mark II mirrorless camera coupled to a Canon EF-M 32mm f/1.4 lens, mounted on a tripod. I shot at ISO 3200, and in Aperture Priority mode set to f/1.4 and allowing the camera to automatically set the exposure. Exposure times varied from 1/4 second in the beginning to 4 seconds at the end, with a 30 second delay between each exposure. A wired remote Canon TC-80N3 intervalometer was used to set the interval time and run the exposure series. 

The series of camera RAW files were brought directly into Apple iMovie, without any post-processing, and the length of display time per image was adjusted to create a video nine seconds long.

This time lapse has been viewed roughly twelve thousand times on social media over the first week it was posted, including over eight thousand times on Facebook alone. I have a direct link to the video on my personal website, www.astrosetz.com for those who would like to see it without the compression that social media sites impose.

Exactly One Year From Now…

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…the first total solar eclipse to visit the continental United States since 1979 will cruise over the heart of the nation. The 47-mile-diameter shadow of the Moon will streak across the land at 1,800 miles per hour, starting near Salem, OR and leaving over Charleston, SC. The United States will be the only country on Earth that will witness this eclipse over land, and so it is being called the Great American Eclipse.

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I have a page devoted to this eclipse, but since today marks the beginning of the 1-year countdown to the actual event, I thought I’d share a few thoughts.

My first thought: one year is not a long time to prepare.

  • If you don’t know where you’re going, you better get on that quick — especially if you’re looking for hotel accommodations. Even if you plan to camp out of your vehicle, you need to figure out where you’re going to be, and likely make some kind of reservation.
  • During totality, you can directly at the eclipse, so you really don’t need any instrumentation to experience the most majestic phenomenon in nature. However, leading up to totality — and again after totality ends — there will be about 90 minutes of partial solar eclipse, and you’ll very likely want to have a way to safely view that as it progresses. To do that, you can use simple “eclipse shades” or other safe solar filter. If you don’t have those things, you’ll want to get them ASAP.

My second thought: one year is a long time to prepare.

  • The total solar eclipse will be even more meaningful when you understand just how coincidental and rare this celestial line-up is, so bone up on your eclipse science. How big is the Sun? The Moon? What are the distances between Earth and these two objects? Figure out where that 400x size-to-distance ratio comes from, and you’ll own it in your mind. While you’re at it, find out why don’t we have a total solar eclipse every month.
  • Did you plunge in and get a solar telescope? When you receive it, use it on the sun right away. Get very comfortable using it, so on eclipse day you’re as proficient with the instrument as you are with riding a bike or driving a car. You don’t want to spend time figuring out a solar telescope while the event is happening!
  • If you heed the advice to make a weekend of it, check the Internet often over the next several months to see what other attractions and events are happening in your viewing area. As businesses and municipalities become aware of the eclipse, you can be sure there will be additional events coming together all over the path of totality!

My final thought: tell everyone you know about this event.

  • Got kids? Let their teacher(s) know. Some schools will still be out on 8/21/2017, but teachers may well want to let their classes know about the eclipse, as well as experience it for themselves.
  • Bring the family! And I mean extended family, too. This is certainly something family members will remember and talk about for years to come, so even if there are a few who are less than enthusiastic at the outset, I guarantee if they see the total solar eclipse they will be impressed — even moved. It’s a primordial experience, and they are NOT going to want to be ones in the family who missed it.
  • Send folks to this blog, or whatever your favorite eclipse site is, and get them thinking right now about viewing this most rare and awe-inspiring of natural spectacles. Remember, partial eclipses are NOTHING compared to a total solar eclipse, so unless you live in the path of totality, staying in your backyard isn’t going to cut it. Get yourself to totality, and try to sit on the centerline as close as practical!

Making A Stargazer’s Lantern

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The official date for (Inter)National Astronomy Day was today, May 14, 2016. The astronomy club to which I belong celebrates on Memorial Day weekend instead, since the weather in our region of the world is consistently poor from mid-April to the beginning of May. However, I wanted to do something for the occasion, and while shopping at the local Menards for Shop-Vac replacement parts, I stumbled upon Coleman’s Soft Glow Table Lamp.

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I thought it would be a good project to turn this into an astronomy-friendly red lantern. How hard could it be? The thing cost less that $20, so I threw it in my cart.

How to make it red? A quick Google search gave me the idea of using the flexible, squishy “gel” material from which decorative window clings are made. A stop at Hobby Lobby netted me a “Fourth Of July” pack of small clings — including a few red stars! Of course I laid down the $3 for that, and went home with my goodies.

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Once back at the ranch, I unboxed the lamp, admired it for about ten seconds, and then immediately set about taking it apart. It was fairly obvious how to do so once the (empty) battery pack was removed: there are four cross-head screws that mate the base to the large white shade. So, time to gather all the items so I can work efficiently (I’m also a big fan of mies en place when cooking).

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I found out a few things that you’ll want to know if you try this yourself:

  1. You’ll need to use a slightly-small Phillips screwdriver with a shaft long enough to reach the screws in their recesses.
  2. You don’t have to remove the screws completely to free the white shade from the base.
  3. There a small plastic spacer that lies behind the power button membrane on the front of the upper shell; it will probably fall out when you take the lamp apart, so just make sure you keep it safe. In my case, I kept it in a drawer until I was ready to reassemble everything; a reflexive behavior learned by living with thieves cats Elsie.

I decided to use both of the small red stars to get a deeper red, and used a square of clear packing tape to simultaneously squish them against and secure them to the LED and reflector assembly. Be sure to use a square of tape large enough that the edges wrap around the edge of the shield, to make it extra secure.

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After that, it was a simple matter of putting the shade back onto the base, and tightening the four screws to mate the two together again.

Putting in the battery pack (now fitted with 4 D-cell batteries) allowed me to test the lamp. And, amazingly enough, it worked great right off the bat! I prefer the lower brightness setting for personal use, but the brighter setting will be good for public events.

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There are a few irregularities in the illumination of the shade near the bottom — there were some crinkles in the tape that appeared as I formed it to the round shield. I suppose I could cut out a circular piece of tape and replace what I did, but I doubt I’ll ever get around to it. For $23 and about 10 minutes of time, I’m quite happy with the results, and I expect this lamp will see a lot of use on the deck and in the field for years to come.

Back To Charter

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Charter Speed Test

After two and a half years of using AT&T U-Verse, I’ve switched back to Charter for my home services. AT&T nearly doubled in cost after the 2-year intro pricing, and they were inflexible when I called them to see what could be done to mitigate that. That wasn’t the reason I left, however; it was the Internet speed. I’ve always had problems with U-Verse Internet, never getting anywhere near the 18mbps I was paying for. Speeds averaged around 5-6mbps, and sometimes would get into the 10-12mbps range, but not very often. It became very frustrating to try and stream from a webcam or use FaceTime. Charter has changed a lot since I left them, and they promised 60mbps minimum speed. Couple that with essentially the same TV lineup and home phone service for $100 LESS per month than what I could get AT&T down to, and it’s pretty much a no-brainer.

Although their service technician was a little “rusty” in doing installations, everything was up and running inside of 90 minutes. I was blown away by my new Internet speed, and in fact I haven’t had a speed test come in under 60 Mbps! What does that mean?

  • YouTube plays at a wonderful 1080p with no buffering. Last Week Tonight, Smarter Every Day, Vintage Space and The Brain Scoop as they were meant to be seen!
  • iCloud is super-fast (my upload speeds are about 4x that of U-Verse). When I take a picture on my iPhone or a screenshot from an iPad, it appears in my Macbook’s Photos app almost immediately. I used to have to wait for the better part of an hour sometimes for this to work on my old network.
  • FaceTime is high-res and solid.
  • Streaming music from Apple Music doesn’t affect my other Internet work.

I haven’t tried Netflix yet, but I’m guessing it’ll be the same type of experience. Downloads from the App Store across all devices has been stellar.

What don’t I like about Charter? I was surprised to see that the old, low-resolution menu system was still there on the DVR box. I really do like U-Verse’s interface, and their mobile app is top-notch. Charter’s TV picture is excellent, but going back to the old box was a little disappointing; I thought for sure they’d have an updated and more modern system by now.

The mobile app (Spectrum TV) is a good app. At first, it appeared to be everything the U-Verse app was: streaming live TV, changing channel on the TV box, and setting the DVR. Unfortunately, I can only stream on the app; apparently, my model of TV box isn’t controllable by the app. I’ll certainly be asking about that when I get a chance to contact Charter.

Overall, I’m very happy with the switch. As a one-person, one-TV household who’s primary need is fast and steady Internet access, Charter seems to be a better solution — that just happens to be less expensive, to boot.

Astronomy Gear & Sheboygan Brats

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On March 28, the 8th annual Astronomy Swap N Sell event will take place at the Aviation Heritage Center in Sheboygan Falls, WI. Created and sponsored by the Sheboygan Astronomical Society, this has become a favorite event amongst area astronomy enthusiasts. Late March is the perfect time to dust off the cosmic cobwebs that set in over the long midwestern winter, and the prospect of seeing friends from across the state — and even the region — really gets my astronomy juices flowing.

It begins with breakfast at a nice place on the way. My go-to for this was the Madison Avenue Inn nestled in the tiny town of Cascade, WI — but now it’s gone. Hopefully, we’ll find an alternative to Taco Bell’s “AM Crunchwrap” that one of my friends likes so much.

The Madison Avenue Inn of Cascade, WI was an eclectic little place that had the most wonderful egg bakes. Too bad they closed permanently last year :(

The Madison Avenue Inn of Cascade, WI was an eclectic little place that had the most wonderful egg bakes. Too bad they closed permanently last year 😦

How do you get to the Aviation Heritage Center? Just drive to the Sheboygan County Memorial Airport, and the building you’re looking for is hard to miss!

Parking under a USAF jet is only part of the fun -- there is a "sound effects" button on the mounting post that will really add to the experience!

Parking under a USAF jet is only part of the fun — there is a “sound effects” button on the mounting post that really adds to the experience!

Once inside, you pass through the little museum into the main room, where all the action is. It’s important to know that there is a full kitchen off to the left of this picture, where you can get Sheboygan-style brats (yes, a double-brat on a Johnston Bakery hard roll). You can also get “regular” brats if you want, as well as other snack-type items and beverages. I heard that this year they are adding a “Pluto Burger” so we’ll just have to see what that’s all about…in the interest of documenting the event, you understand.

Plenty of astronomy people and gear at the Sheboygan Astronomical Society's annual Swap 'N Sell event!

Plenty of astronomy people and gear at the Sheboygan Astronomical Society’s annual Swap ‘N Sell event! Cafe tables are shown to the left and stretch back to the serving counter at the kitchen.

You can find all kinds of telescopes, binoculars, eyepieces, books and other fantastic stuff. It’s different every year, and the more people who attend, the more there is to choose from, which is great because as word gets out the event is getting bigger.

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Everyone has such a great time, regardless if you’re buying, selling, or browsing! It’s nice to see old friends and make new ones.

Mickey and Charlotte are two of the many members of the Northern Cross Science Foundation who attend the Swap N Sell.

You never know what you’ll find at the Swap N Sell. I’ve been looking for a copy of the Glass Giant Of Palomar for years, but didn’t want to pay the huge asking prices for the relatively rare book. A few years ago at the Swap N Sell, I found a copy at an excellent price, and in fact, I gave the seller more than he was asking. The Stokes Sandpiper 15-45x65mm angled spotting scope is long out of production, and I was delighted to find it as well.

In 2013 I scored some awesome stuff at the Swap N Sell, and then joined some friends in a trek up to see Dr. Phil Plait at UW-Fox Valley, where I got a signed book!

In 2013 I scored some awesome stuff at the Swap N Sell, and then joined some friends in a trek up Menasha to see Dr. Phil Plait talk at the Barlow Planetarium, where I got a signed book!

Each year there are a few astronomy-related talks as well. People such as Michael Bakich from Astronomy Magazine have spoken in the past; this year, I’m giving a talk:

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So, mark your calendars and tell your friends about the Astronomy Swap N Sell on March 28. As the event runs from 9am to 2pm, early arrival is advised. I hope to see you there, and maybe we can even do a little business to boot!

Songs Of The Season … from a long time ago.

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Songs Of The SeasonMany years ago (back in 1988) a Christmas album was recorded by the choirs of Port Washington High School in Port Washington, WI. I was on Facebook tonight and a few people started posting about this album, talking about how great it would be to have it in digital form. That’s when one of my old classmates, Michele Champeau-Krueger, indicated she had a CD made from it and the files resided on her computer. Well, after a few more Facebook posts and some emails, I had the files on my Macbook. After a little bit of work, I was able to create MP3 files with tags and album art (iPhone 5 in one hand, album jacket in the other). Michele had all 13 songs, but I didn’t realize two songs were on the same track at first, so I initially uploaded a “weird” set. I’ve since split the two songs into separate tracks, fixed the album name tags so they have the correct title, and have updated the set on this blog (you’ll see it as “Songs Of Christmas.zip”. So, thanks to Michele, I can now offer the fabled “Songs Of Christmas” PWHS Choirs Album to the infintesimally-small portion of the Internet that is interested in such a thing. There is no copyright on the album jacket or label, and the original performers are asking me for this, so I think we’re good. If not, just let me know.

Merry Christmas PWHS Grads Of The 1980s! Songs Of Christmas

AstroChef?

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I’ve added a new section to my blog for Food & Cooking, where I’ve published my own version of jambalaya that’s diabetic-friendly and healthier than the traditional recipes I’ve come across, but still true to the signature flavors of the dish. I’ll share other recipes, cookbooks, and restaurant dishes here too, and would love to see your comments and feedback.

The Everyone Tripod Design Change & Drawing Publish

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A lot of people have been asking me for the design details of the Everyone Tripod. It’s been a long and cold winter, so I’ve not had a change to put it through its paces until recently.

One thing I learned from using it “in the field” was that having the leg sides exactly parallel didn’t make for easy height adjustment, since the side clamping force was therefore produced equally along the full length of the leg assembly. A simple solution was to slightly increase the width of the brace plate “ears” so they stay clamped tightly when the lower bolt is loosened for height adjustment. Since this set up a gentle “wedge” shape along the length of the entire leg, I needed to increase the width of the top of the leg assembly (where it attaches to the hub) a little more than the brace plate ears. If you’re making your own hub, that’s a simple dimension to change, but if you’re putting this on an existing hub, just add some extra fender washers between the outside of the hub and inside of the leg pieces. In my situation with the Celestron Nexstar 102GT, three washers on each side produced the necessary spread.

After making the necessary design adjustments, I am now publishing my SolidWorks design drawings in PDF format. Note that I’m still showing the leg sides as parallel, but you can also see where the extra washers and brace plate ears seem to “interfere” with the legs. Depending on your exact cuts and design, the leg sides will have a varying about of “wedge” to them; using the dimensions and BOM I’ve included, it’ll work out fine for the Nexstar 102GT and similar mounts.

You can find the PDF drawings below; be sure to download all four. If you make your own version of the Everyone Tripod, please let me know how it works for you and include a picture of your creation!

Everyone Tripod Assembly Drawing
Everyone Tripod Leg Side Drawing
Everyone Tripod Leg End Drawing
Everyone Tripod Brace Plate Drawing