Sentinel

Yesterday I stumbled to the good old music from Sentinel, a computer game we used to play a lot with Amiga when kids. The eerie music (here in Youtube) and the constant panicky feeling when playing the game were rather captivating. It's a game I'd still gladly play today. Anyway, after checking a couple of shots from the game boards I decided to give a try and build a small 3D paper model of the Sentinel itself. It took me a while to figure out how to make the hat, etc., but it didturn out to be quite ok in the end (except that it looks a bit like a duck if you watch it from top).

It is disturbing, though, to sit here my back turned to the thing. A part of me is waiting to hear that turning sound... Maybe one day I'll build a lamp or an alarm clock or a burglar detector out of it. (It would be a great outfit in a party, too.) Would scare the hell out of me, anyway, to add a motion sensor and make it turn. Hmm, I definitely see some stop motion possibilities here...

Gravity Pinball

I'm still writing my final thesis and still creating some concepts for interactive astronomy stuff. Today I tested an idea I've had for some time, just to see if it would work. I've been wanting to include some kind of a pinball machine that would use small gravity fields to guide the ball. I build a very crude version this morning out of plastic wrap and push pins, but it actually worked surprisingly well when I rolled small wooden pearls along the wrap. Einstein's theory of relativity, anyone?

More jigsaw puzzles!

As some of you might remember from my previous posts, I love to do jigsaw puzzles. Well, not all of them, but the big and challenging ones (preferrably with science / industrial related pictures). Late last year I found one which I just could not let slip from my hands. (Especially since I still haven't found those ones I lost.) I've been doing it every once in a while and today I finally managed to finish it! One of my characteristics I'm most happy about is my patience. Or is that persistence? Well, who knows, but now I'm already rather worried about what should I do next. Good jigsaw puzzles are so hard to find...


(Clicketi click to the pic to make it a bit bigger.)

Northern lights

Last time I've seen the northern lights I was on the ferry on my way to Germany - two years ago. I was terribly disappointed last season when I didn't manage to see any show at all and I was rather worried that this season it might be the same. (In Finland the nights are not dark enough for star/aurora gazing after mid-April.) Yesterday, though, I noticed that the aurora radars were quite active before the sunset. I kept an eye on them, since I know the situation might change very fast, in both directions. When the next hour with decent activity started I packed my camera and headed for the lake nearby (it's still frozen) to the spot where I had been observing the comet Panstarrs the last couple of days.

What resulted was one of the best aurora shows I've ever seen in my life. I remember one really good one from a couple of solar cycles ago and one from my childhood in our holiday home, but for this I had really prepared since I was on the spot right from the start when it became dark enough. Finnish Meteorological Insitute has aurora alerts and when the magnetic field gets active in Nurmijärvi, which is about the same latitude as Tampere, it is seen as bars in their watch and as possible auroras, too. As seen from the graph, the bar went through the roof around eight o'clock. Normally they say it's "active" when it's 30. So, 570 would promise pretty good auroras, I'd say.



When that show at 8 pm started I danced, cursed, shouted, screamed (very typical of me when I see auroras or meteors) and took shitloads of photos. Yes, I was very happy. (More than 25 years of amateur astronomy still hasn't made me love it any less.) When I started to freeze and walked home I mentioned pretty much all the passersby that there is an amazing aurora show just going on. They were happy that I said that since it's hard to pick behind the streetlights.

It was amazing.

Final thesis getting on

Since I should be graduating this spring I've been quite busy with my final thesis lately. I've finished with the theory part and am now trying to create the concepts for a hypothetical astronomical exhibition - interactive of course. To get ideas I've had to revive my knowledge about astronomy and physics. Not bad, actually, it is a lot of fun even if some of my ideas for possible concepts are probably not exactly sane.

Yes, final thesis, what a great excuse for reading quantum physics!

Brooding cards

I've been proned to depression and other difficulties with my mental health most of my life. I often try to analyse too much and as often it never leads anywhere, since e.g. feelings are not terribly easy to explain with logic. To my irritation I've noticed that lately my state has been slowly falling down towards depression again. Luckily at least, nowadays I can recognise the symptoms and do something about them before it is too late.

One thing which I hate is that there are certain thoughts that haunt me over and over again. It does not matter how many years I would have tried to resolve them, they always return and never seem to change much. When I get the mood, I can just contemplate for hours without any other result than getting me more and more angry at myself. (As often, it is typical for people like me to be extremely harsh on themselves.)

To prevent the excessive torture of the thought that lead you nowhere I handicrafted brooding cards for myself. The text states: "Brooding card. This card gives you the right to brood over any preferred area for 20 consecutive minutes. Use max. 1 time per day." There are three cards, so all in all I am perfectly allowed to ruminate my things for one hour each day. (It might sound a lot, but believe me, it is very short period of time indeed in the life of mentally disturbed.) I will not allow myself to exceed that quota, though. If I'm not able to find the answer in that time, either there is none or I'm not ready to face it yet. Whatever the case, it's not useful to waste the time for pointless mulling. I much rather read a book anyway, and my always exaggerating conscious has no proper way to force me feel guilty anymore. :)

Ender's Game

The one most influental book I've ever read in my life is definitely "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. I was around 12 when I got it from Ursa (Finland's biggest amateur astronomy association) as a freebie since I bought so many other books from their bookshop. I've read it countless of times after that and I still find new aspects every time I read it. It's also always makes me cry.

Some time ago I found out that they are doing a movie out of the book - a thing I've been waiting and afraid of for abour 20 years now. There's been comic series available for some time now, and even if I'm not terribly fancying the idea (the book is pretty much perfect in its own account), I ended up buying the collections for "Ender's Game" and "Ender's Shadow" (a parallel novel Card wrote 14 years after the original Ender). From these two the latter is better. In the "Shadow" the people actually look different and it's clearer to read then the "Game". The "Game" also falls short in several pretty important plot twists (e.g. Locke and Demosthenes is completely left out). The reason why I love the book so much is the deepness in the characters, especially Ender, naturally. That doesn't come that much out in the comics, but I guess it's not needed in such entertainment.

Here's a picture from the novels as well as my copy of Ender. The movie will be interesting, this book is one of those things that is impossible to film, because 6-years-old kids with IQs of 170 is hard to find. But I'll see the film nevertheless.