A geomagnetic storm hit the planet last night (and tonight too, though less severe) so after Brandon’s BJJ I took Maggie out to find the auroras and we were successful!
I was running two cameras but for some reason set them up looking in the same general direction ugh what a newbie mistake. Anyway a quick timelapse that I thought turned out pretty well. 🙂
Well this was fun, a Crowdstrike update from the IT security company took down a lot of companies today (mine included) and this should clearly demonstrate the fragility of the systems that we depend on. Some airports, airlines, hospitals, 911 services & more were down which is definitely causing havoc around the world. Glad I WFH and the worst thing that happened to me was that some people were offline part of the day. Maggie’s company is still in the dark and I suspect some people at Crowdstrike are going to be let go due to this.
The sun ejected a few CMEs the Earth’s way last week and the first hit our planet on Friday and continued throughout the weekend. Since it was clear, I took Brandon hunting for auroras and it was an amazing experience to s hare with him, to say we were successful is an understatement!
The first photo is of the sun, the suns pots on the right side of the picture, that’s where the storm erupted from. Friday night the Kp index which gives you a rough idea at how significant the storm was at max, Kp9 and rated as a G5 geomagnetic storm (analogues to hurricane category ratings) and the auroras were so bright, you could see the greens, reds and purple colours with the naked eye! Each photo is either a 2 or 4 second picture, absolutely wonderful!
Unfortunately Maggie had a badminton game early Saturday morning so she didn’t come with but yeah I was able to share this wonderful experience with the boy. 🙂
Obviously the last two photos have nothing to do with the auroras, that’s actually from a few weeks ago when we went to take pictures of the solar eclipse that came through, also shared that event with Brandon. Definitely feel very fortunate that I can share these types of things with my boy and I hope that he remembers them forever! 🙂
There’s an interesting report in the US Right to Know site talking about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. This is a non partisan site and the reporter has done good work in the past, anyway I’m going to highlight some points that I thought were important.
- Specifically, the scientists sought to insert furin cleavage sites at the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein; to assemble synthetic viruses in six segments; to identify coronaviruses up to 25 percent different from SARS; and to select for receptor binding domains adept at infecting human receptors.
The genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, matches the viruses described in the research proposal:
- SARS-CoV-2 has a furin cleavage site positioned in the spike protein at the S1/S2 junction. The furin cleavage site supercharged the virus into the worst pandemic pathogen in a century. Virologists have yet to identify one in any other related coronavirus.
- This language in the newly revealed documents echoes a 2022 analysis that uncovered a pattern of two restriction enzymes, BsmBI and BasI, that segmented the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome into six even pieces. The scientists estimated the likelihood of observing this pattern of evenly spaced segments in nature to be highly improbable.
- This American virologist, University of North Carolina Prof. Ralph Baric, was set to engineer twenty or more “chimeric” SARS-related viral spike proteins per year of the proposal, and two to five full-length engineered SARS-related viruses. Documents previously reported by U.S. Right to Know show that some of the experimentation could secretly occur in Wuhan at a lower biosafety level than specified in the grant, apparently to save costs.
Source: US Right to Know
I’m not a scientist nor is my opinion on the origins of COVID-19 important, what I do think is that this raises the question should this type of research be allowed? I understand the logic that nature can throw us curveballs and release something very deadly but has there been a case where an engineered monster saved us from something? Especially with the risk being so high of it escaping? I’d vote no and the scary part is, I know that this type of research is still continuing so who knows what else may pop up in the future.
Met Mario today for lunch and it was fun just to catch up. He went to Indonesia for the month of Oct, was telling me about his trip and I definitely want to visit there in the future. Also from watching some videos, it looks absolutely beautiful. I also borrowed his PVS-14, I went on night walks with Brandon and once with Maggie and tonight we got out as a family which was fun. 🙂
I’m starting to hate WordPress and the way they handle images, why is that one photo’s thumbnail a different size than the rest?!? Argh anyway the walk was a lot of fun, we weren’t out too long and we did see some other people walking around with flashlights but they didn’t see us lol. Hopefully we can get out one more time before it gets too cold!
Last night Brandon and I went for a walk in the local conservation area and it was great. 🙂
Glad he likes the outdoors and to play with nods at night too, it’s always more fun when there’s company. Maggie stayed home, perhaps I should get a 3rd night vision device, then we can go as a family! 😉
So my desktop is pretty damn old (Intel Core i7-2600K based), I built it around the time that Brandon was born I think so that would make it 11 years and I decided over the weekend I wanted to build a new rig. Today I went to Canada Computers to pick up a few parts, an Intel Core i9-12900K, an Asus Prime Z690-P D4 memory, a be quiet! heatsink, a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro PCIe SSD and a case.
I ordered 64GB of DDR4 memory (store only had 16GB modules and I wanted two 32GB ones) and will reuse the power supply, HDDs and my eVGA GeForce 2060 Super videocard. I did want a new videocard too but finding one of the current generation cards is impossible and I don’t really play games anymore. Most of the components are the best of the best so hopefully this new machine, once it’s built lasts a long time too. 🙂
Took a time lapse when I was in Algonquin, too bad we got kicked out as you can see the core start to rise, oh well next time will try it again.
Was using Brandon’s Canon EOS RP & the Canon RF 35mm F1.8 IS STM lens.
Last night just after the sun set, I went to the park behind Brandon’s school as the International Space Station was set to fly over and woo I was able to capture it!
It’s very small because that’s all the resolving power that I have with my Canon EOS R5 & Canon RF 100-500mm lens but I thought it turned out quite well! I’m getting the RF 2x extender on Friday so I’ll give it a shot again at a later time and see what I see.
Canada is receiving more AstraZenica COVID19 vaccines and don’t have a plan for them yet. I’d certainly prefer to take a second AZ shot than mix & match as there’s no science to back up that efficacy yet and the AZ despite its problems is known to be effective.
I also agree that Canada needs to get it shit together, our vaccination rates compared to other G7 or developed countries is pretty poor and all level of governments need to do better!
