Martin Olsson

Doktor A builds custom toys: all fabulous and some for sale. (Unfortunately not these little steampunk androids.) More if you click the image.

jtotheizzoe:

Meteor Showers 2012

A calendar of all the major meteor showers taking place in 2012 that I drew up.

Of course, this isn’t all of the meteor events this year. Only the ones with the best chance of being visible. I chose only events with a Zenith Hourly Rate (ZHR, the number of peak events per hour) above 10. You should also consider the moon phase for that date, which I did not include.

How to use this: 

1. The date on the left is the early morning after midnight on the day it will peak (so “October 7” is between midnight and sunrise on the morning of the 7th). 
2. The constellation represents the point in the sky that the shower will “originate” from. 
3. Choose someplace dark, away from city lights, and bring a blanket and a friend.
4. Enjoy.

To calculate the sunrise/sunset for your area on a specific date, go here. Many more details about each event can be found in this summary from EarthSky. Some events will favor the North or South Hemispheres, but such is life.

Feel free to distribute freely!

(Link to hi-res version)

(via itsfullofstars)

The Bolshoi Simulation via KurzweilAI

Jonathan (my oldest son) getting a Finnish beating at bike polo. A couple of Finnish players took the ferry to play some Swedes. Mayhem ensued. (Click through to see more pictures, taken with my spanking new Nikon D7000.)

dadsaretheoriginalhipster:

Your dad rode a fixie before you did and he’s got the track stand skills to prove it. He was a fearless street champion of the blacktop velodrome that fought steel giants for riding room. He gave the pedal honeys hot saddles when he showed off his fixie tricks and made road bikers look like bitches. He was rolling seduction with a single speed and the cadence of a hell-beast. 

So hipsters, next time you’re skidding the back tire around or blowing through a stop sign because you can’t stop, remember this…

Your dad was the first to know you don’t brake what is already fixed. 

Thank you to njsideshowbob-tumblr for submitting today’s photo. 

Keep submitting your photos to have your dad featured. 

In his There Is No Mobile Web presentation at Breaking Development in Nashville TN, Jeremy Keith outlined why Web designers and developers need to embrace the flexibility inherent in the Web…

jocke:

(via Nicholas Hughes)

More dingy sailing

Today was the second day out with my Flipper sailing dingy. No camera this time since I was alone. I didn’t have Rasmus as crew, and there was quite a lot of wind. I managed a fairly graceful launch and headed for the open water, tacking a few times in the harbour and only screwing up slightly. Outside of the harbour pier the wind picked up and I started getting a feel for the balance of the boat, hiking hard and nervously controlling the mainsail to adjust the power: to get this thing to really fly I need to install the trapeze or sail with a friend for extra weight.

I made it across to Nacka Strand in no time at all, planing at what felt like at least ten knots at a close reach with slightly slack sails to moderate the power. I turned around and started sailing in the other direction. The hiking straps had pulled a couple of large stailess steel screws loose so I headed back to do some repairs. Suddenly my coordination failed, I was late in letting the mainsail loose in a strong gust, and the boat capsized. I used to sail Lasers in Dar es Salaam, so I knew (in theory) what to do. Grab a hold of the centerboard before the boat turns turtle, and pull down. In a Laser this works every time, but the Flipper is a bit larger, and has a much higher mast and more sails, so no matter how hard I pulled on the centerboard the boat remained on it’s side. 

My drysuit was keeping me … well dry … but hanging on to the centerboard, doing chin-ups to apply more weight was becoming tiring. A family sailing boat stopped to check on me, but couldn’t do much to help. I swam around the boat to check if the sheets were loose and undid them from the cleats. I tried again, unsuccessfully, for about ten minutes until I realised that the way to do it was to chin-up and then wrap your legs around the centerboard, hoisting yourself out of the water completely to use all your weight to right the boat. I finally got the boat right-side-up and headed back to the harbour, exhausted but pleased.

All in all I love sailing this thing: it is quite challenging, but goes like a #€@%!. Lessons learned: trapeze needed for single-handing this thing, always let sheets out before trying to right a dingy, and get a whistle so you can attract attention if you get into trouble. Upside down in the middle of a heavily trafficked shipping lane is not a good place to be.