Matt Daubneys Blog

So,  the third epic astrophotography adventure was this evening. The first night, I had lots of frames of black, no stars at all. The second night was done by means of cheating, and I haven’t yet sorted the photos…. the third night and……

The Moon

But more exciting than the moon (taken with a blue filter in case you where wondering…)

Jupiter and 3 Moons (out of focus)

Yup, Jupiter and 3 moons. A bit out of focus, but you can just about see them. A bit more practice and I might get a nice shot!!!

All of these images where converted out of RAW using FOSS. I’ll blog a bit more about the set up on a later date.

For a couple of weeks I’ve wanted to get out and sort out the front garden, as it was full of dead plants and overgrown creepers. I’d had a brief idea of putting in some veg and some herbs (a bit of mint, some basil, maybe some thyme) as herbs tend to be a bit hardier then some plants. First though, all the rubbish needed to be cleared out, the beds dug and turned, and some compost needed to be worked into the soil. So a quick trip to Homebase was required.

We acquired a few bags of compost, a garden fork, and some plants (a foxglove, some pansies, some tulips a ficcus (I think!), some cucumber seeds and some spinach seeds) and started digging out the beds. Several hours later (try 5 or 6), after a lot of digging, some turning and some planting we had a nice new flower bed and a turned bed ready for the veg and herbs when they come out of the propogator

See my flickr for some pics!

The landlady’s son found this hole in the roof, leading into one of the rooms in the property we don’t have access too. Annoying isn’t it? If the vandals caught, I hope they get time.  Explains why the house has been so cold though.

For the past year I’ve been really hitting myself for not being able to find a work ethic, but since this morning I’ve actually managed to slip into one. It seems I just need to go hide myself in the library and actually get my head down and do some work. I will need to put some more videos on my iPod though… Anyway, managed to get a significant chunk of my lab report written today in the beginning of my monster week of catchup work and revision. Hopefully have it written and submitted by tomorrow afternoon so the revision can begin properly.

Really starting to pick up the banjo again now. Shall have to start learning some new tunes and try and get into a practice routine. It’s really quite stress relieving.

Well, only 1 exam left, and having (hopefully) scraped through the last 4 I shall be heading home on Sunday. Also a new picture on Flickr, from a BBQ-ing night

Anyway, since MSN is doing its normal routine of pretending to work but actually not working I think I shall go to bed. There is much revision to be done tomorrow! Also, electromag sucks.

Was another day of revision really. Watched a few episodes of Farscape while on the revision trail and then went for a walk before lunch. Wandered along to Rosehill Quarry Community Park before lunch. It’s a really nice green space that’s just down the road from me. Having walked past on the way back from Uni several times I thought I should really go take a look and it’s really green, really pretty and has some spectacular views. There are some pictures on my flickr.

Anyway, I need to go to the library today to hand back a book and pay some fines, then I shall come back and hit the revision again. Whose idea where exams anyway?

I spend this weekend in, a very drizzly, Exeter. Was a very nice weekend with Kat, and even managed to get some new bootlaces. Wandering around the grounds of Exeter Uni, it makes Swansea feel very small. Maybe that’s why I like the place so much.

Managed to get a fair chunk of revision sorted today. Started to go through the maths past papers, became very aware that there was a question coming up regularly that wasn’t covered in the notes. One email later and I quickly discovered that it wasn’t covered in the course this year and hence won’t be in the exam. So no Linear Transforms this year. I also noticed that the Physics courses tend to cover far and away more material then the maths courses. As we don’t seem to have any modules run by the maths department next year, it makes me wonder if this has always been the case.

Also today I started pondering my summer PC upgrade. This year it’ll consist of a new hard drive (no. 3) and possibly a new CPU. It’ll also contain (if I can get it to work!) a new TARDIS shaped case, with easy slide access to major components (less the mobo due to all the connections going out the back. I shall start designing after the exams have passed.

Also today, my new T-Shirt arrived. Expect images soon….

As I’m sat in the Physics undergrad common room, writing my lab report, I can now listen to the music on my home computer thanks to sshfs. Using this I can mount any folder on my home computer on the laptop using ssh. It’s fantastic, ’cause now as long as I’m connected to the interwebs somehow I can access all my data at home as if it where a removable drive!

Also, lab reports take forever. Too much brainwork.

Another day is drawing closed. Spent today largely doing assessed work which is due in this week. Maths sucks, and Waves are confusing. I still need to finish my lab report and then make sure my lab diary is indexed properly, then I’m done…. until exams in 2 weeks time

Managed to get in some banjo practice today though. Have a few practice session ogg’s

• The Old Gray Goose (Forward Roll)
• The Old Gray Goose (Pinch and Forward-Reverse Roll)
• More Old Gray Goose Practice

Still need to tidy up my room after having reams of notes spewed everywhere while I work, and shall probably do some more Banjo stuff this afternoon. Ah well, tomorrow is a Heroes afternoon afterall!

Out with the old and all that I suppose. I decided today to get rid of all my excess domain names and try and concatenate everything here.

My old system wasn’t up to a lot, so I’ve also started playing with this here wordpress stuff. Seems to be quite easy to use so far. Also decided to investigate flickr properly. So I’ve spent the day playing with this software, the daft ensim manager thing the server uses and also kflickr which is a KDE based gui for uploading photo’s to the flickr website. Seems quite good so far, shall be interesting to see how quickly I manage to go through my 100mb upload limit though.

I suppose a few life updates are also required as my mind goes wandering further into its own scary depths! I am now no longer single in every sense, being engaged to the most wonderful young lady on the planet, who has just departed to go home to Exeter.

I’ve also been continuing learning the Banjo, and have recently started to make significant progress. Hopefully I’ll feel confident enough (and be good enough) to go do open mic night at the Uplands Tav one of these days!

Oh well, back to transferring things over and then some revision I suppose.