So after about 7 weeks fermenting its nearly time to bottle the elderberry wine. It’s cleared and I’ve added some fermentation stopper. I’ll chuck in a campden tablet and bottle it on Sunday hopefully. Tasting it tonight its clear that its going to need to mellow a bit. Well, a lot. I might try a bottle after 6 months, but this stuff might not be drinkable for years! Still, once this is in bottles I Read more
As part of the 2009 International Year of Astronomy our Colleagues at the Kuffner Sternwarte Observatory in Vienna produced a light meter that could be used to monitor light pollution. More details on the project and the meter are available at lightmeter.astronomy2009.at (use login Guest and IYA2009). There are three stations in Ireland. One in Monasterevin (I’m not sure if it is active), one on the roof of the physics building in Trinity College Dublin, Read more
As part of the 2009 International Year of Astronomy our Colleagues at the Kuffner Sternwarte Observatory in Vienna produced a light meter that could be used to monitor light pollution. More details on the project and the meter are available at lightmeter.astronomy2009.at (use login Guest and IYA2009). There are three stations in Ireland. One in Monasterevin (I’m not sure if it is active), one on the roof of the physics building in Trinity College Dublin, Read more
As part of the 2009 International Year of Astronomy our Colleagues at the Kuffner Sternwarte Observatory in Vienna produced a light meter that could be used to monitor light pollution. More details on the project and the meter are available at lightmeter.astronomy2009.at (use login Guest and IYA2009). There are three stations in Ireland. One in Monasterevin (I’m not sure if it is active), one on the roof of the physics building in Trinity College Dublin, Read more
As part of the 2009 International Year of Astronomy our Colleagues at the Kuffner Sternwarte Observatory in Vienna produced a light meter that could be used to monitor light pollution. More details on the project and the meter are available at lightmeter.astronomy2009.at (use login Guest and IYA2009). There are three stations in Ireland. One in Monasterevin (I’m not sure if it is active), one on the roof of the physics building in Trinity College Dublin, Read more
I have some data that I need to come up with a way to graph. I’m using the Light Pollution from Thüringer Landessternwarte, Tautenburg, Germany and our friends at Kuffner-Observatory, Vienna, Austria. I have this unit hooked up to take a reading every second. It records the temperature, and data from three light meters, one designed to capture low levels of light which is of interest to us for light pollution (plotted logarithmically below). Anyway Read more
Woke up to a garden full of the little fellas today. Plenty around the estate too. Not a great photo but you get the main features. I noticed the local mistle thrush getting very worked up about them suddenly appearing on its turf! More info from Birdwatch Ireland. Read more
TED: Derek Sivers: Keep your goals to yourself This video from TEDGlobal 2010 confirms something I have always felt. The warm fuzzy feelings you get when you tell people what you are going to do, gets interpreted by your brain as a reward for doing it, or at least for making steps towards your goal. You have done nothing, but your mind feels it has made some progress. I suspect we’ve all been here. I Read more
Here’s what the arch looks like today: Under those 8 inches of snow you would see a roof. The roof itself is made from a red ‘coroline’ bituminous sheet from B&Q. It supported by the frame that you could see in the previous blog post; the support isn’t designed to hold much weight but it seems to be doing ok with the snow. And overall has a bit of a chinese feel to it. The Read more
A couple of months back Min went on holidays to the UK for a week. While she was away I brought my Mum to a local nursery to buy some plants. While there she found a honeysuckle plant and I thought it would make a nice addition to our garden to cover up wall that prior to that only had ivy growing on it for 15 years. I’m sure it looked nice back when the Read more