Sell-out? Pragmatist?

So, am I a sell-out or just a pragmatist?

Long ago, nearly ten years before Linux was released, I enjoyed the simple, no-nonsense, high-performance properties of the UNIX/Linux culture.  The belief that a tool should only be as complicated as required by the task and no more, truly resonated in my young mind.  Being a down-home, poor farm boy, I had very little appreciation for "bells and whistles".  And, as such, over the years I have enjoyed Linux.

Unfortunately my inner pragmatist needs to come out of the closet.  Why?  There are two hobbies that I would like to enjoy more fully: photography & ham radio.  Certainly there are great programs that run in Linux for both hobbies.  Unfortunately, aside from a few exceptions, I must admit, the better applications run under Windows.

Still on the fence, I evaluated my complete set of needs.  Certainly, programs running on Linux could support my basic list of user requirements.  There are some ham radio programs out there.  There are some great photo utilities like RawTherapee and ImageMagick on Linux.  Still walking that fence.

But there is one additional requirement...  I want to spend some time honing my C# and .NET skills.  Sure there is MONO on Linux; spending an afternoon with MonoDevelop and MONO pushed me in a different direction.  There is no way I could hone my C# skills using MONO.

So...  I re-evaluated...  Sure, Linux has RawTherapee, but Windows has ACDsee, the Canon DPP and a host of other photo management and manipulation programs.

Certainly, there are some great programs under Linux for amateur radio, but I want to get back into PSK31 and maybe SSTV and HSCW.  The programs in Windows are far more flexible than those for Linux IMHO.  And, honestly, there are no decent, up-to-date logging programs for Linux.  Certainly there are some ham radio logging programs for Linux but they don't meet my requirements.

And so...  I made a change.  Earlier this week I backed up my Linux machine and installed Windows 10.

Honestly, it has issues that I will write about later, but I am not ashamed.  Already I have ACDsee Studio running for photo management and DPP & RawTherapee installed for image development and manipulation.  OpenOffice runs well and I have Microsoft VisualStudio 2015 installed for programming and honing my C# skills.

No, I am not a sell-out.  I am a pragmatist.

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks.

Regardless the age of an old programming dog, new tricks are pretty important to learn.

My initial success with night sky photography with my Canon EOS Rebel T3 tumbled in my mind over the last few days.  Recorded remnants of a thought from a few years ago popped up when searching an old personal hard drive...  An automated search for meteor photos.

Well, I was nearly there.  After spending a few nights with ImageMagick and some meteor photos, I built a basic recipe to find meteor strikes in night sky photos.

Hey, I thought...  I have a PINE64 on order.  Wouldn't that be cool to make one of these tiny ARM based computers comb through photos for meteors?  Ohhh...  With a little thought this could be easily scalable.  What about controlling my camera with one of these PINE64 computers?  Maybe a loosely coupled cluster of these $15 computers to search these photos in different ways?

I needed a control language for this; something interpreted and not terribly complex.  It only needs to be able to run shell commands, copy files and talk to MySQL.  Lua had my vote until I tried MySQL.  After two hours of trying to make it work on my Windows 7 computer, the necessity for a different language became apparent.  Sorry Lua.

A buddy of mine at work likes Python.  My daughter learned a little Python at college last year.  Python is a language specifically being ported to the Pine64.  The memory footprint of Python is larger than that of Lua but should work fine in the constrained environment of the Pine64.  MySQL Connector was easy to install and setup.  After a running a few little trial scripts, I was convinced Python would be my control language for this little project.

So, over the last week or so, this old dog has learned a few new tricks; and he is enjoying it!

First Dark-Sky Photo! May have a new Hobby!

After reading a little bit following a few frustrating attempts at dark-sky photography, I think I might just have a new hobby!

Actually came out better than I thought it would.  Orion, Gemini, Cancer and Canis Major are all obvious.  The star cluster M44 is easy to see and with a little squinting, M67 is there. 

Some fine tuning is still necessary - the focus is still not as sharp as I would like and less trees would be nice.  Our backyard is an OK spot for now.  Getting the focus properly set and fine tuning a few other things just might let me see some decent objects down to 7+ magnitude or maybe even more dim! 

Photo date/time: 2016-02-12 at about 2248 Central Time. 
Camera: Canon Rebel T3
Lens: EF-S18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS II
Focal Length: 18mm
ISO: 1600
Aperture: 4.0
Exposure: 25 seconds
Tripod: Super cheap (and I mean CHEAP) Targus from Walmart.

What is my goal?  I want to see meteors!!! 

Astrophotography - might just be a cool little hobby!

Photography - Just a Little Hobby

Ham radio, shortwave radio, electronics, motorcycles...  These are all things that have faded from my life over the last ten years or so.  Occasionally this fact weighs heavily on my little inner kid; he just doesn't understand how avocations and interests in my life tend to be cyclical.  In the mid to late 80's I was active in amateur radio and electronics; then again in the late 90's and once again in the mid 2000's.

In the late 2000's motorcycles and motorcycle repair were very important activities.  One might say they were vital activities in my odd little world back then.  Not only did I nearly completely restore a vintage Suzuki VX800 but I rode across the county solo, not once but twice.  Memories of my motorcycle past are a bit melancholy at times.

BUUUUTTTT....  An old interest is rising again and I like it; photography.

Specifically, I enjoy making landscape and agricultural photos.  There is just something fulfilling about recording a certain moment in time.  When the moment and light and camera settings are just right and the shutter snaps, honestly, I get goosebumps.

Standby - new photo website coming soon.  :-)