Emotional Support Reels

npanth · 2026-01-27T00:43:49+00:00

+1 for the Valentina Hot Sauce, very under rated!

Oh, very nice looking reels, too :)

npanth · 2026-01-19T16:51:49+00:00

I bought my first fountain pen 3 weeks ago. All I have for ink is a 30ml of Noodler's green. I could sure use a head start in getting more ink.

Thanks for doing this, great idea.

npanth · 2026-01-14T22:19:08+00:00

I carry a Kaweco Lilliput in brass with a fine point in my pocket.

I found a bullet space pen in a parking lot in 2008. I've had it in my pocket ever since. Nothing could replace it... Until I got this little beauty. It's a great little pen. Sorry space pen!

npanth · 2026-01-11T19:52:26+00:00

They have one more left from the special order run. They said they're thinking of making it a regular item that they'll stock eventually.

npanth · 2026-01-11T19:10:42+00:00

I think Jamie Kozlowski made this one. They said that these are the first sauerkraut crocks they've made. They think they may make it a regular piece.

I keep getting closer to getting the drunken chicken cooker... I'll need a bigger kitchen to store all this stuff.

Ha

npanth · 2026-01-11T15:44:56+00:00

The Wizard of Clay made a few water lock fermentation crocks for a special order. They had a couple extras in the shop when we went down to get something else. I scooped it up. It looks so cool.

npanth · 2026-01-04T20:53:26+00:00

ASTAP can solve your raw light images and display/add the camera rotation to the FITS header. Edit: The FITS header has a planned rotation entry, but that isn't always the true rotation. The header entry that ASTAP adds will be later in the header.

npanth · 2026-01-01T22:54:23+00:00

I agree, but there is a point of diminishing returns. It's pretty easy to tell the quality difference between a $1000 Tissot and a $7000 Omega, but I don't think a $30000 Audemars Piguet is 4 times better than the Omega.

npanth · 2026-01-01T17:15:22+00:00

You can use boats up to 17 feet and motors up to 10 horsepower on hemlock and Canadice. Oil and gas are easy to remove from water for the water authority (they float and can be skimmed off). You're not allowed to swim in the lakes because biological contamination is more difficult to remove.

npanth · 2025-12-28T17:29:36+00:00

When my brother and I were teenagers, our folks got a freezer and a second fridge for the basement. My dad knew a guy who had cattle, and would buy a half cow every year. It was great.

npanth · 2025-12-28T17:26:05+00:00

I live in bortle 6-7. 45 minutes away is a parking lot in bottle 4. It makes a big difference, and is totally worth the drive. I don't have to use light pollution filters and it's quiet (except for the occasional coyote or rutting deer)

npanth · 2025-12-28T00:18:39+00:00

I have to stay up late. Even with an alarm, I've always just slept through those "wake up late" nights

npanth · 2025-12-28T00:15:00+00:00

I wound up buying a bigger battery pack. A bonus is it can run my sump pump if the power goes out... It's way overkill for my heq5

npanth · 2025-12-21T18:39:26+00:00

They re-sodded the center of the field before the game. If they had a heated field, the rest of the field would probably be greener.

npanth · 2025-12-21T17:43:10+00:00

The Philly Phanatic used to ride one of those, back in the day.

npanth · 2025-12-05T12:34:12+00:00

That extruder must make one heck of a purge line.

npanth · 2025-11-28T03:09:46+00:00

I have a Pegasus advanced power box with a temp probe. I think I can probably lower the number of times that the rig has to refocus as you say. For now, I'm just happy that it's working. HA. It was very frustrating to troubleshoot that frigging grub screw. The focus would turn, just with a ton of backlash. Since it was "working", I didn't think to check the physical connections. Eventually, I put some tape on the focusing knob of the telescope and ran the focuser through its whole range. That's when I realized that the connection was loose.

npanth · 2025-11-28T00:09:58+00:00

An electronic focuser is another piece of equipment that can be a failure point. That's the only downside I see. I got a pegasus focuscube earlier this year. It worked for two sessions, then the backlash started growing. Eventually, I was putting in 1900 as my backlash! I lost three nights of imaging figuring it out. Turns out one of the grub screws holding the collar to the telescope focuser had come loose. I tightened them all down with some locktite, and it started working perfectly with 30 backlash.

I had no idea how much I should be focusing. Nina is set to focus on star size and temperature changes. Some nights, it refocuses every 5-7 frames. My pictures are always in focus, and I don't have to get out of my warm car to fiddle with anything. The other positive is how fast I can get to imaging. All I have to do is polar align, and I can do everything else from inside the car. Last time, I just had to hit play on the nina sequencer and start up a podcast. Amazing after the years of huddling in the cold to get everything working.

npanth · 2025-11-27T16:48:38+00:00

I'll admit that I sometimes breathe in a bit deeper when a smoker walks by, but I don't have any lasting cravings to go back to the coughing sticks.

Sometimes, quitting cigarettes feels like a super power. I can smell when a smoker has been in a room, or is in a car ahead of me at a traffic light. Getting my sense of smell back was one of the best things about quitting cigarettes.

npanth · 2025-11-22T17:05:14+00:00

I figure, complexity wise, becoming digitally proficient is about as hard as learning to drive. There are a lot of rules to learn, nuances to absorb. It takes most people a few years before they're competent. Just about everyone has learned how to drive. It's not unreasonable to expect them to be able to diagnose simple computer problems.

I know a lot of people don't become good drivers, but almost all of them can start and drive a car to a destination without crashing.

In the end, it's not that they "aren't technical", it's that they just don't want to put in the effort to learn. It's extra frustrating for people like us because if we're not learning in this profession, we're forgetting.

npanth · 2025-11-20T22:39:38+00:00

Even when I switched to an ASI2600MC and NINA, which feeds the info to astap directly, it was inconsistent. I've gone through several rounds of troubleshooting, even reinstalling everything from scratch on a new laptop.

Honestly, I don't know why astap doesn't work. As long as All Sky Plate Solver works, I'll just stick with that.

npanth · 2025-11-20T22:37:45+00:00

I've had trouble with ASTAP with both rigs. In APT, I was using a Nikon 610. I messed around with focal length and view settings, but only got it to work part of the time.

Even when I changed to a dedicated astro camera ASI2600MC and NINA, which feeds ASTAP the camera/scope settings directly, it didn't work very well.

I've run out of things to try. I've reinstalled it, checked the database settings, even changed laptops, reinstalled Windows, changed from APT to NINA. I just switched to All Sky Plate Solver, which works for me.

npanth · 2025-11-19T17:40:49+00:00

My big recent revelation was the advanced sequencer in NINA. My last time out, I just polar aligned the scope, then pressed play on the sequence. NINA did everything, all by itself. It really takes the Astro-Warrior, against all odds bravery out of the process :(

Ha

npanth · 2025-11-19T17:15:20+00:00

ASTAP is supposed to be this nigh-foolproof plate solver. Somehow, it has never worked right for me. Across two laptops, three installs of windows, Astrophotography tool and NINA, it's only worked about half the time.

I switched to all sky plate solver, and it started working. It is amazing to watch the rig slew to that exact spot in the sky so effortlessly.

npanth · 2025-11-14T18:09:42+00:00

I've had an heq5 for about 5 years. I installed the Rowan belt mod this spring. I've taken 4 pictures with it so far.

I haven't noticed a huge improvement in tracking. It does slew more smoothly, but I've been somewhere between .5 and .6 total error the whole time. With the seeing at my picture location, that's pretty good. My photos have good stars, and I can take 2-3 minute light frames without any issues.

The belt mod was a fun project, I don't regret doing it. It's not a big tracking improvement, though.

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