The live video chat has to be postponed today until 4:00 Mountain time; my dog Canis Minor had a small injury that required stitches, and I’m not sure I’ll be back from the vet in time to start the chat at 3:00. It’s possible it won’t go off at all today if it takes longer to get her than expected. I’ll have an update soon. But just in case, below is the info you need to participate, as usual.
If you look below and see/hear me jawing about astronomy or Doctor Who, then you’re good. I urge you to go to the UStream page, though, so you can participate in the chat room (or find/use an IRC client you like; the channel is chat1.ustream.tv and the room is #bad-astronomy). If you want to change your nickname there, type "/nick David Tennant" (or whatever) in the text field.
May 11th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Poor doggy!
May 11th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Your dog is named Canis Minor? Really?
Wow, Phil. You’re nerdier than I thought
May 11th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Get better soon, Canis Minor.
May 11th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
A big woof and a lick to canis major….get well soon buddy.
May 11th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Family always comes first.
May 11th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
‘Small Dog’ what an appropriate name for a dog. I hope the injury isn’t very bad, paws crossed
May 11th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
hopefully it is not all that sirius.
May 11th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Definitely family first. I hope all goes well with Canis Minor and that he heals rapidly. Give his ears a scratch. And he needs treats - had a rough day.
May 11th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
“the channel is chat1.ustream.tv and the room is #bad-astronomy”
Just nitpicking here, but the former is the server and the latter is the channel.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Phil, this is Curious-9457, obviously, whom you asked why I had used ‘9457′ in my name. To answer your question, I did not put the number in their on my own, Ustream did it. I just put ‘/nick curious’ in and that was the result, it would seem I am the 9457th user to name themselves that.
Good work, I will make it a point to watch your future broadcasts!
May 11th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
and yes, I can’t believe I wrote ‘their’, that should say ‘there*’.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
I got my question answered on my first viewing! I’m so happy.
I asked “If the Daleks turned out to be real, would you join them?”.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
This time (as compared to last week), it worked much better. Very little breaking up of the audio, but video was “frozen” a few times.
i’d suggest something like MenuMeters (system status display in the menu bar) to keep an eye on memory filling up, and of course congratulations on the idea of maxing out the RAM in the box. That worked wonders for my Mac mini, that started out with 1 gig - “nicer” than the 512 meg standard config, but video chat compression via flash in a browser (or just about anything above web+mail) eats through a gigabyte in mere minutes…
It might be that your computer’s simply running out of RAM, and skips on the video compression to maintain the audio stream. Since i’ve learned you’re using Mac, too
May 11th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Great broadcast, but you better go do that research on kilometer and it’s associated pronunciation. From m-w.com:
Pronunciation: \k?-?lä-m?-t?r, ki-; ?ki-l?-?m?-t?r\
usage In North American speech kilometer is most often pronounced with primary stress on the second syllable. This pronunciation is also heard frequently in British speech. Those who object to second syllable stress say that the first syllable should be stressed in accord with the stress patterns of centimeter, millimeter, etc. However, the pronunciation of kilometer does not parallel that of other metric compounds. From 1828 to 1841 Noah Webster indicated only second syllable stress, and his successor added a first syllable stress variant in the first Merriam-Webster dictionary of 1847. Thus, both pronunciations are venerable. Most scientists use second syllable stress, although first syllable stress seems to occur with a higher rate of frequency among scientists than among nonscientists
Thank you for answering my question (Full moon and Venus)
JC
May 11th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Thanks Phil!
.
May 11th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
My cat’s name is Copernicus. He is still thinks he is the centre of the universe though.
Hope Canis Minor is well.
May 11th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
When you point to the IRC chat, you can use a URI: irc://chat1.ustream.tv/#bad-astronomy
And a nit: the server is chat1.ustream.tv, the channel is #bad-astronomy.
May 11th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Hope Canis Minor gets better.
This is one of the cutest and most unique names I have ever heard of for a dog. Hey, why not Canis Major?
May 11th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
I had to miss the postponed web chat ( yes, absolutely, family comes first ) can someone update me on Canis Minor’s condition please? What was the injury? Is the little star all better now? Hope to see you all next time : )
May 12th, 2008 at 2:42 am
I had chop.. chop… choppy sound and a series of still pictures and had to give up, I think it might be a bandwidth problem to Europe.
Anyone else in Europe with the same problems?
May 12th, 2008 at 3:16 am
Shakespeare (as well as the rest of us) sends doggie well wishes to Canis Minor, Dr. BA.
Sorry we couldn’t tune in yesterday.
Kisses
May 12th, 2008 at 3:37 am
@Thomas Siefert: No, had some freezes on the video and some jumping ahead in the sound, but nothing too disrupting. Southern Germany, on an alleged 16 Mbit down/1MBit up line (with 14.8 MBit reported by hardware)
May 12th, 2008 at 7:44 am
@Mark: Thanks, I only have an 8MBit down line (reality = 2MBit), but normally it doesn’t cause me any such problems.
It might be my UK ISP that have particularly low bandwidth to Ustream.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Phil, did you notice that your logo exactly crops out the most interesting part of the “Fickle Finger of Fate” cloud in the Eta Carina nebula?
It’s the one I always use when someone shows me an example of pareidolia. I say, “Here. God’s sending you another message!”