Ross Cunniff

Today, the morning was spent on work email. But this afternoon, Ken and Fred arrived from Germany, and Jeetendra joined us to go on an excursion. We started with some shopping in one of Pune's shopping districts - Ken wanted to buy some things. I may or may not have bought anything - only me and Mr. Visa know for sure. Anyway, I caught this picture of one of the oldest wooden buildings in Pune, with hand-carved wooden decorations: After wrapping our shopping up, Jeetendra took us to a combination theme park / restaurant named Chokhi Dhani - it's kind of like a Rajasthani Cultural Center, or maybe a North Indian Standing Renaissance Faire. The buildings are decorated up like historic buildings in Rajasthan, and there are various exhibits, activities, shows, food, etc. scattered throughout the park. Here are Ken, Fred, and I saying " Namaste " to you all along with Chokhi Dhani's plaster host: This is the main entrance. They really go for the electric light...

It's been a while, so it's time for another business trip to Pune, India. This is the first time I've been here in spring (the previous two trips were in November and June). It's pretty nice here in March - decent temperature, clear skies. This is the view to the southeast of my hotel - what look like Ashoka trees and others that I'm even less familiar with: And the view to the northwest - NVIDIA Pune - very convenient walk: It will be pretty much all business again this week, so I don't expect to get out much for sightseeing.

My mom came across this 1967 or 1968 newspaper clipping from the Kansas City Star. You can read the caption for yourself, but the reason she saved the picture is because our family is actually in it: Look just over the right shoulder of Shorty Powers to the mother, father, and child looking on: That's my mom Donna, my dad Roy, and me. I was three at the time. So, probably, my sister is there too but not visible to the outside world :-) My family was always very good about nurturing our interests - space, dinosaurs, chemistry, engineering, music, books, you name it. Combine that with the fact that my dad's military career gave us many opportunities for first-hand experiences that otherwise would not have been available - including, during my early elementary school years, monthly visits to the Smithsonian. The result was three successful, engaged adult children. All kids should be so lucky! Thanks, Mom & Dad.

The Moon occulted Venus this morning. I took some pictures, tweaked their brightness and contrast, and glued them together. This was a bit tricky due to the fact that the sky was fairly blue when I took them, and it was hard to focus. The pictures were taken over a 17 minute period from 6:00 AM to 6:17 AM MDT. All were shot at ISO 400. The first picture was taken with a 560mm telephoto lens at F/8 (the crop factor of the EOS 40D makes this roughly equivalent to a 900mm lens), with a shutter speed of 1/100". The rest were taken at ISO 400 through my 12.5" F/6 telescope, with a 2X Barlow lens, making the effective focal length 3800mm and focal ratio F/12 (6100mm equivalent with the 1.6x crop factor). Shutter speed was 1/50".

Here's a photo of the dual conjunction that just happened this evening. In the upper left are the Moon and Venus. In the lower right are Mercury and Jupiter (Jupiter is slightly brighter on the right). It was shot with a Canon EOS 40D at ISO 1600. The lens was a Canon EF28-135 IS lens. It was shot at 35mm and F4.5 at 1/10 second. Some minor processing was done in Photoshop (just tone curves and resampling to half resolution). Happy new year!

My previous major obsession before beginning electric car conversions was telescopes. I built two - a 6" f/8 Newtonian (which I ground my own mirror for), and this beast - a 12.5" f/6 Newtonian: I was getting it out of storage and cleaning it up in preparation for taking it to a Boy Scout troop meeting. And then I realized - this would be a fun model to Sketchup. So I did. Here is an "x-ray" view: You can find a PDF wireframe of the same perspective view here . Some statistics: Weight: 120 lbs (including 40 lbs of steel shot and a 10-lb counterweight at the back) Height: 84 inches Primary Mirror Diameter: 12.5 inches / 320mm Focal Length: 75 inches / 1920mm Focuser: 2" NGF Crayford-style low-profile Finder scope: 8x50 with crosshairs It's not the best scope for astrophotos (no motor drive), but I did do a composite photo of the moon with it a few years ago:

It's time to play a game I like to call... Scenes from a Window. Today, on the way back to the hotel from the office, we managed to find ourselves in the middle of a huge pilgrimage - related to the Palkhi Festival . This necessitated a scenic tour through Pune, since the main roads were blocked. So, I got a couple of pictures along the way. First, a temple (it looks like the god Ganesh peeking through the door there): Here are a few pilgrims. Many of them carried these orange flags. In addition to the people walking, there were thousands of people lining the route. Quite a cultural experience... The next morning, I snapped this picture from my hotel window. This being the rainy monsoon season, the air is generally clearer than when I was here in November, so you can see all the way to the mountains (when it is not raining). In general, I was surprised to find that the summer monsoon climate was not as hot and muggy as I was lead to believe. It was *much* better than Atlant...

I'm back to India for work this week. I won't have really any time for sightseeing this time, so instead, I will treat you to an installment of "Things I Could See Out My Window" First, the coast of Greenland - rising out of clouds over the North Atlantic: Next, crossing the coast of the Caspian Sea: The fun thing about this trip was that I got to see two sunsets on the same flight. We flew into shadow just outside Chicago, but as we hit the northernmost point of our great circle route, we got back into sunshine, and then sunset just before we landed in Delhi. A 10-hour layover in Delhi was entirely at night. So, this is what I could see out my window: And, finally, here are some nice mountains I could see out the window of my car as we drove from Mumbai to Pune: There may or may not be subsequent installments of "What I Could See Out My Window" for this trip.

Way back in 1987, Tim Brengle and I created Adventure Definition Language and released the source code to Usenet. A small community has followed it over the years, and I even designed and implemented a successor language in the late 1990s, OADL. Recently, there has been renewed interest in ADL, so I thought I would post the documentation for OADL. You can find it here . Unfortunately, I don't have time to support it, so I won't be posting the source code to OADL for now. Maybe someday... Edit - here is the source to a program written in OADL for your entertainment - 99 bottles of beer .

The DXG group and I took a trip to Sinhgad today as a team-building exercise. It was very fun and educational, and I got to see much more of the countryside around Pune. I rode in the car (along with Swapna and one other alternating DXG engineer depending on who wanted to ride a bike at the time). The rest of the DXG group rode bikes - here is the DXG-Pune Biker Gang riding off into the hills: We stopped for breakfast at a little roadside restaurant. They served rice and chai. Finally, after roughly 30km of driving over rough, twisty roads, we arrived. All the subsequent pictures are labeled relative to the numbers on this map (you can find an aerial photograph on Google Maps - note that it is turned 90 degrees - on this map, west is up). Point #1 - the entrance - here is the group, trekking through the gate: We climbed up and turned around for a quick photo: ...and then headed across the plateau. Just across the narrow point from the entrance gate (approximately at point #2 - ...