Journal Entries
Astrophotography
Posted Apr 25, 2004
Joined the UK Astroimaging forum late last night and had five replies by the morning. Friendly crowd.
Once I've found a way of attaching my camera to my telescope so that I can still see what I'm looking at and therefore focus it, I might be able to take some decent pictures. Now is the time for listening and learning though.
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Latest reply: Apr 25, 2004
Last Chance to See
Posted May 26, 2003
Just found the 42 game so, naturally, had to try mine. After struggling with it, then sleeping on it, the solution came very quickly the next morning: 2+2+5x9-7-0=42. Simple really. It set me thinking about Douglas Adams again.
Number 1 son recently bought me Douglas Adams' latest book "The Salmon of Doubt" which I devoured (the book, not the salmon) over a couple of days. It contains some chapters from a new Dirk Gently story and, while I was reading it, I suddenly realised that there would never be another Dirk Gently story. No more Douglas Adams, so no more Dirk Gently. It reminded me of Arthur Dent trying to come to terms with the Earth not being there any more and not quite getting it until he thought of the absense of MacDonalds. So, not just Dirk Gently. A real person has gone. We never knew each other, yet I still feel a loss.
Why Dirk Gently? I thoroughly enjoyed the HitchHiker books of course. I saw it on television first, and didn't hear the radio version until I got hold of the audio cassettes sometime later. I've got the trilogy in five parts, seen it on stage, and I've even got the Restaurant at the End of the Universe on vinyl (couldn't get part 1 unfortunately). But he did go out of his way to wind the story up, with every What, Which, Where and When version of the Earth becoming even less than harmless. I loved Dirk Gently even more. I always imagined it as a film with that guy from Moonlighting in the lead role. No, not Bruce Willis, silly; the little guy who played his boss - I can never remember his name. I think he'd have made a great Dirk Gently. Ah well.
So, with the book token I got as another birthday present, I went out and bought another Douglas Adams book: Last Chance to See (written with Mark Carwardine). And I'm glad I did. Poignant tales of endangered animals, written with Mr Adams' eye for the ridiculous. I especially liked the bit about the rhino. The people are the strangest animals though, and I suspect that's what he was trying to tell us.
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Latest reply: May 26, 2003
Newbie alert!
Posted May 5, 2003
Before registering with h2g2 in April (2003) I spent some time wandering around looking at various articles and user pages, especially those chained off the help pages. It seemed a sensible thing to do and, after registering, I revisited some of them. One of them, which I'd viewed minutes earlier, now had a message saying "Please feel free to wander round my space Kemlo and say hello if you like".
I assumed that I had been spotted by the owner and the page had been updated as I watched. It was an incredibly spooky experience being 'spoken' to, when I thought I was lurking alone, and only minutes after logging in for the first time!
A few days later, I happened across another personal Space with a very similar message, which seemed like too much of a coincidence to me. The fact that both of the users were ACEs made me even more suspicious. I realised that there must be some code on the page that was recognising visitors and - as I now had a nickname - it had sent me the 'personal' message. I really should have cottoned on to that earlier, having started my career as a programmer!
I thought other newbies might find this tale useful, so here it is: my first journal entry 
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Latest reply: May 5, 2003
Kemlo
Researcher U225970
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