First telescope

Quick review/initial thoughts of the SkyWatcher BKP13065EQ2 telescope I just brought.

As the model name suggest its a 130mm (5.1″) Newtonian Reflecting telescope. It has a focal length of 650mm and a focal ratio of F/5. For more detailed spesifications see the  SkyWatcher BKP13065EQ2 page. The scope cost $500 NZD before shipping.

The first thing to note is how easy the setup was. I found instructions very easy to understand and follow and had the telescope setup under and hour (all tools were provided in the box). And seeing as this was the first time I’ve setup a telescope I don’t think thats to bad. The instructions are well written with easy to follow diagrams. They also contain details on how to polar align the scope, collimating the optics, even calculating the magnification and true field of view.

The scope looks nice all in black with a slight sparkle to it.

It comes with 2 eye pieces, a 25mm and a 10mm. These are probably fine for a first telescope, but I’ll likely want to pick up some more and maybe some filters at a later date.

The mount feels quite sturdy, with adjustable height. Seems to manage the scope and 3.5 kg counter weight easily (once balanced correctly).  One of the main criteria I was looking for a first telescope was portability. Once fully assembled the whole thing is difficult to move around, but can easily be broken down to manageable pieces in a couple of minutes.

I can’t really comment on the viewing experience as I haven’t had a chance to do any night viewing yet. I’ve only had the scope for one night and it was clouded out. Expect a follow up

Conclusion:
I can’t really find a fault with the SkyWatcher BKP13065EQ2 telescope. It looks good, has excellent instructions, simple to setup and reasonably portable.

Move Music Into Artist Folders

I like my music in artist folders so I created this little VB Script to move music albums into single folders.
It takes a folder full of albums in the format “Artist – Album” and creates a folder for each artist, then moves the Albums into that folder.

For example if you have a folder C:\Music and sub folders in the format ”Artist – Album” like below:

C:\Music\Artist1 – Album1
C:\Music\Artist1 – Album2
C:\Music\Artist2 – Album1

It will turn it into:

C:\Music\Artist1\Artits1 – Album1
C:\Music\Artist1\Artist1 – Album2
C:\Music\Artits2\Artits2 – Album1

Just copy the below code into a text file, rename it something like “music mover.vbs” put it in your root music directory (C:\Music\ in my example) and run it. Your music should now be in folders by artist.

Script is:

Dim fso, folderObj, folders, outputFile, currentDir, newFolder, dashPos, folderName

Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
currentDir = fso.GetAbsolutePathName(".") + "\"

Set outputFile = fso.CreateTextFile(currentDir&"\FileList.txt", True) 'file for loging things
Set folderObj = fso.GetFolder(currentDir)

Set folders = folderObj.SubFolders

For each folderIdx In folders
	newFolder = ""
	dashPos = InStr(folderIdx.Name, "-")
	folderName = currentDir + folderIdx.Name

	if dashPos <> 0 then 'we found a dash in the folder name (asuming that there are no artists or albums with dashes in their names the format is Artist - Album)

		newFolder = currentDir + Trim(Left(folderIdx.Name, dashPos-1))

		if not fso.FolderExists(newFolder) then
			fso.CreateFolder(newFolder)
			outputFile.WriteLine("Created new folder (" + Trim(Left(folderIdx.Name, dashPos-1)) + ")")
		else
			outputFile.WriteLine("Folder already exists (" + Trim(Left(folderIdx.Name, dashPos-1)) + ")")
		End If		

		outputFile.WriteLine(" - Added (" + folderIdx.Name + ")")
		Call fso.MoveFolder(folderName, newFolder + "\\")

	End If
Next

outputFile.Close

If I feel like it I might write a script that does the opposite, takes Music\Artist\Artist – Album and moves them to Music\Artist – Album.

More Lotus Notes table problems

Sort of an addition to my previous post, Notes doesn’t like large tables being created with AppendTable().

You get this error “Illegal column width – check Left and Right margins”. The work around is to create the table with only one row and the desired columns and then use AddRow() to add up to 255 rows.

See the IBM technote for more infomation.

First try at astrophotography

I was recently in the about back of Australia (in and around Alice Springs). So while there I thought I would try using my cheep point and shoot Cannon Power shot to take some photos of the night sky.
These are the results

Somewhere along the galactic plane (this was actually taken by my friend with a similar camera but I tweaked it in Photoshop a bit)

Taken early morning, the two stars arn’t actually stars they are Venus (the bright one) and Mars