Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

OK, this just creeped me out. According to the Dayton Daily News, a mysterious howl has been heard near Liberty, Ohio, at this location, since the spring. Nobody can identify what animal is making this noise.

Let’s have some fun. Listen to the howl for yourself, and post your thoughts about it to the comments section. I don’t want to prejudice listeners by revealing too much information about the howl, so this post is purposely short on details.

MacTech Magazine recently published my article about creating a serial cable that can be used to remote control a telescope from a Mac. Helpful reader David Whipps, Lead Software Developer at Imaginova, the creators of Starry Night, e-mailed me this afternoon with some additional information about such cables:

Aaron,

Just wanted to thank you for your excellent article in MacTech magazine about Starry Night. It was clear, well-written and exposed the MacTech audience to just the kind of stuff about our app that we want them to know about, the fun, technical stuff.

I did however think I should mention that you can actually just buy the scope cable directly from the manufacturer (we use them on our Macs with the Keyspan adapter). We do make our own occasionally too (because it’s fun, and relatively easy), but if anyone asks you, you can tell them that these things are generally available from the manufacturer.

Thanks again,

- Dave

This week I started using Microsoft Entourage to connect to the Exchange server of a company I work for. After running the setup assistant and filling in what should have been the correct values, I received this error message after attempting to verify my account settings:

Verification Failed: “The end of file was reached.” (-39)

My account couldn’t be verified, and I couldn’t retrieve my e-mail. This one was a real dome scratcher, but after I figured it out, I was forced once again to ask the (probably pointless) question: Do developers bother to actually use their software before they ship it?
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After watching quite a number of news stories and TV specials today commemorating the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Japan, most of which portray America’s decision to use the bomb negatively, I have to wonder: On December 7, does the Japanese media engage in the same angst over the victims of Pearl Harbor?

I’m proud to announce that I’ve been published in two separate places today.

AFP548 published this article about Tiger Mail and certificates, which also appeared on this very site a while ago.

Second, MacTech Magazine published an article I submitted titled “Point-and-Click Astronomy With A Mac” about controlling your RS232-enabled telescope with Starry Night by creating a simple cable.

Hey, it’s not often I have good days like this, so I feel a need to share. Yay me!