Highfield House

Interest number 1

MUSIC:

Blasts from the past include: Fairport Convention, Spandau Ballet, Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Toyah, Jethro Tull, Dublin Reels from The Chieftains, Melanie, In addition to the classics like The Who, Stones, Hendrix, Kate Bush, Genesis, Pink Floyd & Nepali Folk Songs (or maybe not).

One day I will transfer these to disc and probably regret it. Current group worthy of a mention: Nightwish

Interest number 2

Gymnast

Favourite pastime at the Gym making three visits a week. Fortunately something to look forward to rather than a chore.

Interest number 3

I also have a passing interest in astronomy, I've been known to wander out on a cold winters night to view the night sky. From my travels I would rate views of the large and small Clouds of Magellan as seen on a clear sky high in the Andean mountains as the most spectacular. These two fuzzy star cloud-like objects easily visible from the southern hemisphere are now understood to be dwarf irregular galaxies, satellites of our larger spiral Milky Way galaxy. The night was made complete with the sight of a fireball streaking across the sky.

The Best Shots Of Hubble - video powered by Metacafe and the music's not bad either.

Some of the images show the battle between gravity, dark matter and dark energy. An interesting thought when viewing these is that all the elements we know of exist in space culminating in the most complex of life form called the human race. In other words we all came from stardust and one day we'll all end that way.

Venus

The following photo shows the transit of Venus across the Sun's disk as witnessed on Tuesday 8th June 2004. The photo was taken with an old digital camera hand held through the eyepiece of my Mead ETX-90 Schmidt-Cassegrain Spotting Scope complete with solar filter in order to protect the telescope's eyepiece, camera and my eyes when lining up the image.

Venus Transit

By observing the apparent shift in position of Venus against the background of the Solar disk as seen from two different places on Earth, one can, using a bit of trigonometry, derive the distance to Venus which when coupled with Kepler's 3rd law of planetary motion will yield the distance from the Sun to all the planets. The result of this shows Venus is 12,100 km in diameter circling the Sun in just over 224 days at an average distance from the Sun of 108 million km. When compared to the Earth at 12,756 km diameter and 150 million km from the Sun. This makes that full stop on the image 42 million km (26 million miles) away from us.

This celestial event had never been witnessed by anyone alive until this time, the next transit will occur again in June 2012. Due to the angle of Venus from the Earth the full occultation will only be seen from the Pacific, Europe will only observe the event when Venus is on the limb of the Sun.

The Sun

This next photo taken using the same technique as above shows sunspot activity on the 29th October 2003 following the peak activity in 2000. Unfortunately I don't have access to an H-Alpha filter that would show up the Sun's prominences, filaments and other surface detail.

Sun Spots

Over the centuries Sunspot activity has been well documented, it has been noticed that periods of Solar inactivity appears to coincide with global cooling from recorded observations of snow cover. The jury is still out on this one, but has been tabled as a possible cause of climate change alongside the periodic movement of the Earth from the Sun. The magnetic activity that accompanies these sunspots can produce dramatic changes over the solar cycle and if directed towards the Earth can have important consequences for the Earth's upper atmosphere.

The sun generates new jet streams near its poles every 11 years, these streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22 degrees, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear. The current Solar minimum has been long and deep with a dearth in the Sun's activity, but fear not the internal magnetic dynamo is still working.

Interest number 4

Historically I've always had an interest in programming computer languages. Retirement has given me more time to revisit this pastime so I took the opportunity starting with the original PC disk operating system or DOS for short. Being less than satisfied with the current proprietary backup programs on offer, I managed to construct my own program for files routinely changed in multiple folders and at the same time incorporate a restore routine to recover files on your memory device. With devices now capable of storing many gigabytes of information I decided to write a routine for checking several folders containing many files that get modified during a day on the computer, and to archive them to storage. Only new files or those that have been modified get backed up.

Using compact removable memory has the advantage that the device can be easily stored away from the computer in case of theft and protects your data from a major system crash. Being quick to run, taking around 30 seconds in my case makes this convenient to use regularly, several times a day if necessary. The program however does not delete files that have been removed from source. This can be useful if a previously backed up file is deleted in error. Eventually the medium storing the files will fill up and an archive to DVD will be necessary before clearing out the memory device. A data file containing all the folders whose files are regularly modified is needed for the program. A complete drive can be checked, but the time to check many gigabytes of data will take longer. The backed up files are not zipped up as used in the propriety programs, any corruption of just one file can render the whole backup useless, also compressing a large archive can take a long time and needs lots of free space.

You can download a zipped file containing all the files for your own use, extract and save them to a folder on your system. If you wish a shortcut can be placed on your Desktop, right click the Backup.bat file and 'Create Shortcut', drag this link to the Desktop. This version of backup and restore works on any PC using DOS Version 6.0, circa 2009. The zip file contains a text file (.txt) describing the codes used in the program, the batch file (.bat) that you can alter if you wish and will run the program, a bare log file (.log) that will contain a history of your backup dates and a recent log file that will get updated on your first run. A sample data file (.dat) is added with instructions on the format, these files are assumed to reside in the same folder. You may have to run the program with elevated priviliges, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.

I took the opportunity to expand my knowledge of DOS and incorporated a list of files backed up, a date and time stamp on the resulting log file, the number of files copied, runtime and number of files on the device. None of these are important to the actual backup routine. Some of the codes used may not work on earlier versions of DOS, but by reading the notes the routine can be located and left out of the batch file, or alternatively run the shortened version that just carries out the backup and restore part of the routine.

The restore routine can check through your memory storage device for your file or files if more than one with the same name to the destination drive. The file doesn't have to be saved using this backup routine to recover it, but it will assume the same path as that saved in the memory device. With some knowledge of DOS, modifications to the backup and restore code could be made to suit your needs for example storing your program, data file and log files in separate folders.

I would welcome any comments you have on the codes used in the program or problems encountered with its use, just email me at the address shown in the left navigation bar.

Interest number 5

Executive member of the East Midland Care Association Emcare acting as Membership Secretary and Webmaster. The association represent's Care Home owners registered with CQC. More information can be found on our website at www.emcare.org.uk

Emcare contact link

A Facebook Group exist for our members. This Matrix barcode can be used with a smartphone able to read QR codes.

My lifestyle