PupCam

Morning! Welcome to the new world of better customer service .... Absolutely! No respect required, just a flippin' idiot. These people walk amongst us. Not so much a retaining wall more an ultra thin skim of concrete. And I thought oil on water and graphene were the only things you could get one atom thick. I miss going to work ........ like a hole in the head. Happy belated birthday! That would explain it, about time somebody did something about it. ION Had friends round for the day yesterday which was most enjoyable. Mr Friend begged to see the RD. Who was I to refuse? Mr Friend and I bought identical RDs from a local dealer back in the mid '70s. You can take the man off of the RD but you can't take the RD out of the man (or something). I also introduced them to the joys of planet spotting with your very own eyes when it got dark. I think they were impressed. Got an offer of a lift to the motorcycle auto-jumble at Kempton Park today. I've never been and keep thinking I'd like to but WAY TOO COLD today for Puppers so another time then. Talking of planet spotting. I had yet another go at Jupiter the other evening. I took 10 videos, each of about 210 frames and processed the resulting 2100 frames to give a total exposure of ~ 45 seconds. Probably the best yet but I seem to have lost a couple of moons along the way* during processing. Here's one of the many source images and the result. Very clever software ... * Because of poor alignment the image kept getting close to the edge of the frame and so on many frames the moons were out of shot. TTFN

Evening All! 20 MINUTES !!!!! I was going to add a comment exploring that but I'll refrain for fear of offence. So everyone will just have to put up with my incredulity and wonder exactly what I think this mad world is coming to! I bet a few can guess ..... ION Not a huge amount to report. A trip to beam land to extract the old photo archive. Youngest Junior Puppers was after a few photographs of her in her "relatively freshly hatched" form. Suitable photographs were found, scanned and dispatched by the wonder of the Interweb. I also found a couple from an interesting part of my working life when I was involved with putting a fairly large chunk of an airliner into an even larger tank of water and then constantly abusing it for something like 40000 simulated flights. A period when I leant a lot about control systems, 3 term controllers, hydraulic servos and Cheese &.Onion Toasties* * You've got to have something to look forward to on a cold winter's night at 2:00 o'clock in the morning when you've just done an inspection of the test facility stuck in the open on the middle of an airfield. A trip to the local (this time) hospital this afternoon for more blood tests. I was rather pleased at the end when the phlebotomy nurse thanked me for making her laugh, she said it had brightened up her day. She "told herself off" when she said to me the standard statement "You'll feel a small scratch" and then said many people say "That's not a scratch you're going to stab me" which of course is rather over-dramatic. I said that I had noticed they'd changed the script from what they used to say a few years ago; she laughed and said "I know exactly what you mean and we're not allowed to say THAT any more!" I mentioned I would have been terminally offended (it's all the rage) if she had 🤣 And that's it really. Night All

I lied! I was going to do some more disk sorting but I stumbled on yet another astrophotograph processing package on the interweb so I thought I'd give it a try with one of my recent Jupiter videos. Whoop-de-doo! Very, very* pleased with how that's turned out! You can even see some of the white cloudy bits (technical term). * Best make that Very, very, very, very, very I hear the cooker beeping, it must be dinner time .... TTFNQ

Afternoon All Street Level Models (Charlie Connor) IIRC. Looks like things have moved on; the physical and web addresses in the CMRA programmes are obsolete This appears to be the current website with trading via an EBay store. Having said that, the tram related stuff seems to be conspicuous by its absence now. That's some seriously dodgy track! Not even the S4 Society's Deputy Chairman's Cup dodgy test track is that bad! I love COLD baked beans! Just open the tin and give me a spoon. If you don't mind me saying, that shows restraint above an beyond the call of duty. ION Another trip to a local B&M store was made this morning. Purchases included more Really Useful Boxes and B&Ms seem to be the cheapest best value for money source although locating the ones you want can be tricky as they seem to be spread randomly around the shop. Puppers needs quite a few, stackable, relatively small jobs for storing his growing collection of metallic and non-metallic material stock in the garage. The boxes currently used are too big and I can barely move them. This afternoon I have been looking down the spark plug holes of a friend's newly acquired Vincent Black Shadow. He wanted to check the bores and pistons so Dr Puppers called round with his endoscope. Seems alright as long as those streaks are streaks of oil and not gouges in the bore. Looks like it's got a very fine magneto on it as you could almost arc weld with the sparks! And now back to disk sorting ... TTFN

I'd have to have a machine it could learn on ..... Perhaps a simpler route would be for Puppers to just get better at astronomy/astrophotography and not fill the disk up with junk in the first place? Not attempting to do it when the atmospheric conditions were "inappropriate" might be a very good start 🤣

Evening All Makes the VMCC boys in Puppershire seem very tame by comparison. Come to think of it there is no comparison !!! And on a motorcycling related note; I was persuaded out for a ride and brecky this morning, sort of against my better judgement. Boy oh boy it was perishing cold and depressing out! We didn't venture far, about 10 miles. Breakfast was good as was the company but really, as a fair weather rider, I should have stayed at home tucked up in bed. ION I've been going through one of my big but just about full hard drives today. This Astrophotography malarkey doesn't half consume some disk real-estate! "Relentless deletion" has been the order of the day (sounds like a Punk group?) although I can't say it's freed all that much space up. The trouble is that it is a very time consuming processing, looking at hundreds of images and trying to work out whether they are worth keeping or not and then if they are going through and deleting just the ones where individual frames are poor due to variations in the "seeing" (astronomy term referring to the degradation of an image or view caused by atmospheric turbulence.). Puppers fears he has not been relentless enough and a 2nd and maybe even a 3rd pass might be needed ... TTFN

Afternoon All I wouldn't have thought so. The only thing they are likely to have found is larger backpacks! We're firmly in the "cook-your-own frozen ones at home" are best camp and the frozen ones can generally take the knocks whilst getting back home. 160 degrees, 20 minutes, allow to almost cool - lovely! Reminds me of the description of the engines in the Sepecat Jaguar aircraft; "Constant thrust, variable noise". ION It appears that I need to increase the frame rate not the duration of my Jupiter videos to get more frames due to its relatively high rotation rate. Could be tricky on the ageing laptop used to capture them! TCs It appears I missed seeing a Deltic on the ECML yesterday. TCs squared. It also appears that it will be travelling past Hitchin / St Evenage at ~ 19:30 tomorrow evening. Should I go and take a look in the dark I wonder? TTFN

Evening All! Very late on parade. A trip to B&M's (the cheapest vendor I could find) for some Really Useful Boxes (can't be doing with the cheap & poor imitators) to house the Brio railway of the the grandkids. This has recently swelled by a donation of redundant said items from next door. After lunch a thrash was thrashed on the RD. Now the mixture has been richened by two needle notches it's going nicely and no sign of it cooking so that's a big tick. As the sky was mostly clear this evening an early start was made on the astronomy. Fortunately I got reasonably lucky with the polar alignment and I was able to track Jupiter reasonably well with the remote control of the mount. If the polar alignment had been spot-on no intervention should have been necessary but I was prepared to fiddle to get a decent sized set of data as in this game there is no substitute for cc's. In all I took 10 videos totalling something like 8400 individual frames. A quick process of just one of the videos this evening has produced this ... I think that shows real promise and I feel like (at last!) I might be getting somewhere. I'll do the full processing tomorrow and it will be interesting to see how much better I can get it with a heap more data. Anyway, time for bed said Zebedee

I'll have you no that that Email address is* confidential !!!! * was There, fixed it for you. ION I'm tired. I think it's bed time. Night All

I've just remembered, I can't participate in it. I'm washing my hair that weekend. One of the neighbours, today 🙄 Mine did! Night All!

Pre-Muunch All! With friends like that stuff the Templot! We haven't been to Hughendon for absolutely ages. Hmmm, perhaps it's time for a visit?🤔 Well, well that's not too shabby at all. Is that the giant red spot I spy? Slowly, slowly. catchy monkey (no, not you Chimpy!) although there's still a long way to go. Where is the colour advisor when I need her to assist the colour-challenged amateur astronomer? ION The carb needles have been raised another notch to richen the mixture on the RD. Just waiting for the drizzle to B OFF so that I can go and give it a quick try. TTFN

Early evening all! I had to move the axe only the other day when re-arranging the bikes! The cards are just a nice-to-have aren't they? The full details will be on your NHS record and in some places (not here AFAIA) you can actually gain access to them and have a look. If I recall, the last time I looked in my case it was one of the many "Greyed Out" options that had not been enabled by the GP on the website 🙄 What would Puppers do in such a situation? Silly, silly, silly. Puppers wouldn't get in that situation. Remember, Puppers doesn't "Do" rain! BTW Leathers are OK although I have recently added a yellow high-viz vest to go with the yellow high-viz full face crash helmet I've always worn (since my return to biking overe 6 years ago now - my, my how time flies). But what happens if it's tipping down ..... See, Puppers always on the look-out for not "Doing" rain 🤣 What a heart wrenching story along with the one referred to earlier. If this doesn't moisten an eye or two you have no soul Whilst in full agreement once again with Bear's sentiments on this the argument, as with many things in life, generally is not binary ...... Is the predicament in the health department I find myself in these days my fault? To which I believe the answer (no one actually knows) is probably not. Have things that I've done / not done in the past contributed to the situation? Probably yes. Although, given the specific choice of helping a seriously ill through no fault of their own young child with their whole life ahead of them OR helping some complete, repeat offender, waster through <insert your own self-inflicted abuse of choice here>* Well, I know which way Puppers' mop flops! * I could add some other things here relating to some "contentious" treatments but I won't for fear of banishment. That looks like it is residing in the wrong county! Quick, send it Puppershire (and stuff the cat! - your mind @polybear) ION I squeezed in a bit of astronomy last night with Jupiter once again the main focus of attention trying to capture yet more imagery. This evening I will see if I can do anything with it. The new "Phone Mount" used to level and align the tripod and telescope was tried out. The Clinometer app worked perfectly for setting it level. As for the alignment app, well, not quite so good as would be expected because it uses the magnetometer sensors in the phone which are influenced by any great chunks of ferrous metal nearby of which there are a few. The compass can only ever get you somewhere close when polar aligning (just thought; could a bear help with this?) and use of the pole star (and an offset) is required plus a view of some targets near the east and west horizons none of which were on hand in the "front porch" observatory. What is clear though is the inclination adjustment = setting the lattitude of the telescope needs to be much finer and precise and, as I mentioned many moons ago, so does the azimuth/heading. Yet more improvement projects then. A couple of runs on the RD today as fortunately the fuel line air-locks were not causing too much havoc. Was s going well to start with but performance started dropping off as it got hotter as indicated by the two digital thermometers installed just above the exhaust pipes. A gentle nurse home to check the plugs revealed that they were very dry and indicating relatively weak mixture although to be fair I haven't actually been very far to get a really true reading. When I checked the needles they were set 1 slot leaner than "middle". They were reset to be richer by moving to the middle slot and another quick run was tried. Much better but still getting warmer towards the end with a consequential drop off in performance. Me thinks I'll try another slot richer tomorrow. I've just been reminded it's time for me to go and cook the dinner. TTFN

Morning All You and I are of the same opinion although I suspect that in both our specific cases they don't make an awfully large amount out of us these days. Certainly isn't the UK. Even I could predict that based on my own grumpiness! 🤣 I'd rather have a couple of Deltics ..... ION I made the mistake of looking out of the window just before I went to bed last night and saw a sky full of stars. Puppers thought to himself "Drat! I should have got the telescope out". Oh well, never mind. I went for a quick blow round on the RD this morning just to make sure I hadn't mislaid any airlocks. I hadn't and had to take one pipe off and prime it before I set off. TCs! Just as I was about to leave the neighbour came round to say he and another friend were going to take a run over to Hitchin on their bikes for a coffee and in the case of the other friend no doubt, posing with which ever steed he was on. Undecided I said I might meet him up at the friends after a quick thrash to make sure the bike would keep going. Anyway, it was not at all pleasant on the bike this morning; very gusty with damp, slippery, leaf covered roads to contend with so I thought being at home with the bikes tucked up in the garage was a much more appealing option. I may have mentioned several hundred times before, I ride bikes purely for fun now and if it ain't fun I'm not interested. They'll be other days when it is. It seems Mrs Puppers is to venture to a local garden centre with Daughter-Puppers-in-law and I was asked if I'd like to join them. Hmmm, using every last ounce of my skills of tact and diplomacy I think I got away with it. TTFN

Reed valves. I couldn't say that on this occasion there was "plenty" of fuel in the tank as I wanted to minimise the amount to be drained out should the need arise again however if the pipe to the carb is removed there's sufficient head for fuel to absolutely pee out of the tap. The only way to encourage fuel down the tube initially is actually to pressurize the float bowl by blowing back up its breather tube. I had wondered if the original problem was due to the design (conical seat with ports) of the tap that was stopping the air travelling back up the pipe through the valve and into the tank (and no, the tank breather is fine) however the replacement has a completely different design (flat face with disc and ports) so presumably it's not that. I'm tempted to follow the lead of WW1 British aircraft and use a Rotherham pump to pressurize the fuel tank by a couple of psi to force the flaming fuel down the pipe! * Here's the 1/3 scale one I made for the Tripehound, a nice little Unimat 3 project. Really must finish that beast sometime. * Where's the Tongue-in-cheek Emoji when you need it? I first became truly aware of this nonsense in Hitchin station car park on a dark, cold November morning at 06:30Hrs when the contactless machine said "NO" you need to download this app, register for an account and then enter all your credit card details. I was on my way to my first consultation at the big hospital up-the-smoke and, as Mrs Puppers may have spotted at the time, I was in no mood for such b*ll@cks! No! Making a simple contactless payment (or even using cash) at the point of use is far more sensible PARTICULARLY as there is no standard app to use. That is of course a complete red Herring though as not everybody has the wherewithal (equipment, physical, mental or any combination) and therefore excludes them from using the car park and therefore the railway. Of course, if the person concerned was a one legged, lesbian of colour (any) who identified as cat there would be laws against such discrimination and that most definitely is a rant but I'd best leave it at that before I get evicted for stating something which should be common sense. Perhaps I need to move to Northumberland? Have you got any good cardio & respiratory hospitals to hand and do the houses have nice big garages in which vast collections of motorcycles can be stored? TTFNQ

Afternoon All Funny enough one of this mornings jobs was cleaning down the Myford and hoovering the garage floor .... Way behind the times! Paying by card? That's so last year you can't do that any more in your local railway station. Ask an exceedingly annoyed and Peed Off PupCam how he knows. Shooting is too good for these herberts .... Good luck with that! 2 years will be closer if my recent experience of white goods is anything to go by. Best washing machine we ever had was the Zanussi (ie when it was a Zanussi) bought in the early 80's to equip a newly-weds flat. Best, most long lasting, work anywhere fridge freezer? The Frigidaire that was bought to equip a newly-weds flat in the early '80s. Yes, there's a theme there. I just wouldn't bother. That looks like it's an interesting publication. Shame it's only a preview. I also noted an article in there on DCC Oh FFS! Will someone please do an authoritative study on the global spread of these ridiculous "speed reduction" initiatives. Might I suggest that you adopt the "it's really bad for the environment, we've got to get down to net zero and slowing down and speeding up all the time is a really stupid idea"* angle. * I'll just jump on the environmental bandwagon on this one occasion as it happens to suit my purpose here. ION New fuel tap fitted to the RD, some fuel added to the tank and a quick roar (well more of a Ring, Ding, Ding, Ting, Ting really) down the road. It seemed to work. Late last night I noted a drop of petrol around one of the two mounting screws. I nipped it up. Drip ..................................................................................................................................................................................... drip. The new tap has a better seal design than the old one. The seal extends all the way round both bolts. Unfortunately the petrol has a direct route from the tank to the bolt hole so bypasses the seal anyway and relies on a fibre washer (recently purchased) on the bolts to block its path. It didn't work. I may have mentioned before it is impossible to completely drain the tank and of course that remainder shouts Yipee! when you remove the tap, turdycurses. So, new 1mm thick washers were punched out from gasket material to replace the newly bought fibre jobs. For "Belt & Braces" the washers were made very tight on the the bolt thread and all surfaces were covered in "Wellseal" (a thick treacle-like sealer) and the tap replaced and the bolts done up as tight as I dare. It seems to be working. Hooray! Fuel line airlocks? Still present. Turdycurses squared. One of the little remote control modules in the telescope remote control handset seemed to have lost two of the four channels. A new module has been installed and both telescope focusing and Right Ascension slewing functions are now fully operational. If only one could look up into the Heavens and have a chance of viewing twinkly things. Oh well, as it's Strictly Come Prancing tonight perhaps I'll have another crack at processing some of my previous astronomical data. TTFN

Yes the key was fine as was the key to the points cam. High-res DTI reading is tricky it would appear (for the incompetent and embarrassed 🤣). Puppers is still confused but pleased.

Evening All! I can see what you've done in this post Flavio and you are a very naughty boy .... 😉 Less is more .... Who's my friend then ..... 🤣 ION After a very severe coat of "looking at" which involved fitting the new ignition points and replacing the super accurate DTI (but apparently difficult to read correctly) with a "standard" metric one it appears that not only are the point* gaps now correct but it has been possible (at flaming last!) to set the timing correctly with the adjustment plates somewhere near the centre of their travel. Flushed with this success I thought I'd attempt to set the dynamic timing reference pointer correctly from its "as-received" position right up one end of the slot. Setting the left hand cylinder to the firing position I noted with some glee that to line up with the reference line on the bit that whizzes around and around** the fixed reference has to be set near enough spot-on in the middle of its slot. Whoopee do! So, a job for tomorrow is to get back onto draining the tank, fitting the replacement fuel tap and seeing if it goes. * Look away, nothing to do with parallel strips of metal here ** A technical term A small modification is required to the astronomy remote control unit so I fancy a bit of breadboard experimentation could be on the cards for this evening. TTFN

Evening All! As-in the GE's Sports & Social Club? Who can forget their Cheeseburger with the boiling hot melted cheese cunningly contained within the burger ready to spurt out and scald a passer-by from the first mouthful of the unweary eater. I remember an incident where one such high pressure jet of molten cheese and fat happened to strike a cold glass of refreshment. It rapidly congealed into a yellowy/white slime on the way down the glass. Ummmm, nice! Ah! I missed the fact that it had come from Chris! That's very nice, as was the coach. Hear! Hear! Yes I'm always amused at how much people will pay to go and see the over-paid kick-ballers 'perform' whilst potential getting cold, rained on and/or physically abused but each to their own. With respect a Nikon (other makes are available) might cost more than a "Big Nosh" but you can use a Nikon more than once ...... Just like the knowledge gained at Missenden (other course might be available) . I would suggest there's a mighty fine line somewhere between getting really excellent but expensive nosh from those that really can and do and just expensive nosh with people being taken for a ride because they have more money than sense. The trick of course is to stay on the right side of that line wherever it may be. How on earth are they allowed to cull so many elephants for their legs! Isn't Big Mac Meal an oxymoron?🤔 ION I had a couple of trips up-the-smoke at the end of last week. Friday saw us visiting the big hospital for a consultation. Very good and very efficient. I had blood tests, a chest X Ray and an ECG done and the consultation with a consultant and two registrars. In and out in 1.5 hours! It would take that long to get the phone answered at the GP's (OK, slight exaggeration but the difference in service is staggering). After that we went for some scoff and then as our "Year Ticket" to visit St Pauls expired the very next day it would have been rude not to go for another walk round. Then as has been mentioned elsewhere, it was up there again on Saturday for a BT gathering which was most enjoyable. It was made even more enjoyable by revised transportation arrangements which did not at any time involve going on the UndergrounD so that was an extra big tick. I've finished off the RD generator extractor today and it worked a treat. The rotor came off without even a whimper. I've also been re-processing some of my videos of Jupiter (it's usual to use video for solar, lunar and planetary imaging) and many many stills for stars and deep sky objects (e.g. nebular). Like @polybear's Templot learning curve, the one for processing astronomical imagery is a very steep one, with many different tools available and no "right-answer". Anyway, I've re-processed one of the videos from last week doing it twice in effect; "exposing" one for the planet itself and then another for the moons. The two being re-combined to make a composite image. You can't even see the moons in the original video but they are there lurking in the blackness! I think it's my best one yet but I've still got miles to go! I wonder if I could persuade Mrs Puppers that splashing out 60 Deltics on a decent telescope, another 60 Deltics on a decent tracking/go-to mount and possibly another 60 Deltics on some really good astro-cameras and the necessary filters would be a really good idea. No, thought not. I'll just have to try harder with my 3 Deltic setup then. Here it is for what it's worth. Better go and start cooking dinner before Mrs P gets home. TTFN

Not so much an Early Riser, more a Late Going to Beder because I've been outside again fiddling with the telescope because that bright little dot in the sky called Jupiter is still presenting itself conveniently. I still don't really know what I'm doing and all though it remains far from a perfect image it's a big improvement on my previous attempts. It's even got two of its moons for company. All four were visible first thing this evening but one was very close to Jupiter and it had disappeared by the time I packed up and the other is out of shot. I just had to have a few goes processing some of the results before bed. If only I had a clue as to how I got there and more importantly, how to do it again but better! Night Awl!

Afternoon All! A Junior Junior Puppers "looking after day" today which included a drive (to get him to sleep) which just happened to end at a Garden Centre. That was convenient, someone having said only yesterday they wanted to go and a have a look around one for something for the front garden. Anyway, while we were there Bear was spotted. Clearly he's been doing a bit of moonlighting. Isn't the pension adequate I wonder? 🤔 TTFN

Yes I think he's fine, he's just been pre-occupied for the last couple of days.

Evening All As they used to say on Crimewatch. Neil, don't have nightmares .... I've got a feeling Sulzer used to use the same source of background music for corporate videos as the Great Empire 🤣 Rabbit per chance? Can't wait to see the finished model! Hmmm. Perhaps I need a Norton as well in the garage? ION We ventured over to Pegsdon Hills in Puppershire earlier for a walk. The hills are the last gasp of the Chilterns. Talking of gasp, Puppers actually made it to the top but was left gasping somewhat as we haven't been up there for ages and let's just say Puppers is out of condition. Anyway, it's a nice view when you get to the top and it's always nice to give the Trig Point a friendly pat as you pass it. Time for an early night methinks. Night All

No, they truly are carp now. Bring back James Burke I say! ION A nice Beeza chug was chugged this morning in the sunshine. Although the sky was looking "a bit threatening" when we set off it behaved itself nicely and the sun came out to play. It was a bit parky though! Amazon goods arrived this morning while I was out. That's good, I only ordered them yesterday afternoon and of course, being Puppers, selected "Super Saver Delivery" (aka Slow) when I did so. I still don't get the point of Prime UNLESS you want to avail yourself of the video content etc which I don't. The goods included some AAA rechargeable cells which were required for the telescopes focuser stepper motor driver. I found the stepper motor wasn't doing its stuff and I thought it had jammed/failed but no, the lashed-up AAA Duracells were just flat so that was an easy fix. Having done a VFM comparison between a four pack in local stores (Argos, Toolstation, Screwfix) and compared it with offerings from Amazon I'm afraid there was simply no contest. I think I got 20 high-capacity (1100mAh) ones for between 1/2 & 2/3 that for a low-capacity 4 pack! The first tranche of printer cartridges arrived too. The remaining two are not coming from an Amazon warehouse but direct from the suppliers one of whom is in Jersey! I suppose that might be delayed as they might be nailing the roof back on and bailing out the building after storm Cretin or whatever it was called. Which reminds me. Many years ago I was trying unsuccessfully to contact the ADT Alarms office in Hemel Hempstead. As it happened, it was shortly after the minor explosion that was Buncefield (look it up if you are unfamiliar with it). As we were passing through Hemel I thought I'd swing by the office (in the industrial estate) and visit it in person. When we got there we could see why they weren't answering the telephone as it seemed to have lost all of it's windows and other bits of its structure 🤣. I remember the outrage at the time about how stupid it was that they built an oil storage depot right in the middle of the industrial estate. What the outraged idiots didn't realise was that when it was built it was as far from the original industrial estate and the M1 motorway as it could be given geography. Later the higher-paid help in the local council "allowed" (encouraged?) the industrial estate to expand and surround the oil depot. That'll teach them! Although no doubt it didn't ..... I did a bit more "Front porch astronomy" this evening with the now fully functioning, remote controlled focuser. Jupiter was looking good again although one of the four moons was hiding this evening. The two main bands clearly discernable through the eyepiece now that precise focus can be achieved. I've also been playing around abit more with the camera & software. Some progress in the understanding department was made unfortunately no progress was made in the results department! Right Oh, it's bed time. Night All

What? 😀 This one? Bring back any memories? Great photographs! Nanna Puppers used to smoke Craven A. I believe the advertising used to go along the lines of "They are good for your throat". I think they lied ..... As young children, Puppers and his slightly older sister used to have to walk around the corner to the local newsagents which had a great view of one of the stations on the Hertford Loop to buy Nan's cigarettes when visiting. We were ~ 7 and 11 years old at the time. Different times! I'm very pleased to say the experience did not induce Puppers to smoke (or even lightly fume). There are similar photographs of Puppers at such an age with a similar amount of hair. Hair? Yes, I remember that. In Other Late News I had another quick play with the telescope this evening on the front door step. Jupiter was looking splendid in the sky and it would have been rude not to have a closer look. The mount was very crudely polar aligned and was tracking so some twit didn't keep moving it quite so quickly. I'm still stunned by the sight of Jupiter and its 4 Galilean moons when viewed through even my modest telescope All 4 were clearly visible and nicely spaced this evening. I also had a quick go with astro-camera and failed once again to really get to grips with the exposure settings in the software so although I took a sequence of images they were all under exposed so the moons were not visible (not helped by imperfect focusing but that's another story) but with a bit of Tom-Foolery in Affinity Photo I managed to tease this not-very-good image of Jupiter itself. As I say, it's not very good but I can distinctly see some bands on there which gives me hope for the future! Night All!

Afternoon All. A trip was made to a quaint old thing called a "Department Store" (JL, Welwyn Garden City if you are that interested) this morning as Mrs Puppers wanted to buy some fabric. I can't remember the last time I went in such a shop which is probably why they are becoming rare objects. None of the products on display matched the requirement specification no purchase was made. Shame, I'd like to support such facilities if I can so that they are available when I want them in the future. Astonishing news! Last night starlight was viewed through the telescope for the first time in months. It was only a half-hearted attempt with the scope indoors and looking through an open door. As the mount had not been polar aligned the biggest problem was of course some twit kept moving the stars as I gazed. I also very quickly tried the astro-camera module I bought earlier in the year. I'm struggling with getting the exposure settings correct either in the capture software that came with it or in SharpCap. More practice required. I'm also rather alarmed by the apparent number of dead pixels present although the use of suitable calibration frames should get round the problem. Anyway, the camera experiment wasn't very successful and that was probably due in a large part to the aforementioned twit who kept moving the stars as I tried to gaze. A suitable 10mm bolt that will form the basis of the starter/generator rotor extractor for the RD was blagged off of the neighbour yesterday. Oh yes, I need to put my credit card into intensive care as I've just had to purchase another complete set (6 off) cartridges for my Canon printer. Whilst the cost made me wince a bit at least I know that when the old cartridges finally run out I can just put the new cartridges in and it will continue to work without further attention* unlike that huge pile of HP junk that was a Which! Best Buy (Yeah, right!) that I once had the misfortune of owning. * i.e. Numerous repeated ink-wasting "Cleaning & Alignment cycles" that still left it dirty, misaligned and most importantly not working and all that after accusing me of using fake cartridges (which they never were). I wonder what the weather will be like in the morning? Will Puppers be venturing out on the bike I wonder? TTFN