Daily Archives: 12/13/2008

KB2HSH talks about High Speed Meteor Scatter, the Geminid Shower, and FSK441

John, KB2HSH, whom I chatted with a few times on the #amsat IRC channel has been writing up his experiences working satellites and the like. This morning, he was taking advantage of the Geminid meteor shower, and doing some listening for high speed meteor contacts. Very interesting, and even inspiring. I’ll have to do some of this soon myself.

The KB2HSH Radio Experimentation Page: High Speed Meteor Scatter, the Geminid Shower, and FSK441.

Addendum: John also has a very nice video on how he constructs eggbeater antennas. These are omnidirectional antennas that many use for satellite contacts. Since they are omnidirectional, they don’t need any pointing.


httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u7aoHDc-gw

Short Movie Review: Twilight

Okay, it was Carmen’s turn to pick. I wanted to go see The Day The Earth Stood Still, but I usually pick movies, and Carmen has been wanting to see Twilight since it opened, and I can (usually) deny her nothing, so Twilight is what we saw.

It’s complete drek.

It’s not that it’s badly made. Technically, it displays a certain competence. The performances are reasonable. The problem is that the plot is basically what you would get if you let a fourteen year old virgin write a love story about vampires. It’s just hideous. Painful. Even the sixteen year old girls in the front row broke out laughing at some of the “dramatic” moments.

It’s trying to be all psychological. Loner girl meets loner guy who acts like he hates her. But he likes her. But he can’t be with her. Because he can’t resist her (she’s just too darned snackable). Gee, do you think they are trying to draw a parallel between the vampire’s thirst and the teen desire to have sex? Betcha nobody caught on amidst all the clever innuendo.

Watching this movie was like watching fifteen year old pop stars sing about love and relationships. I suppose if your teen daughters wanted to go see it, you could do worse: it’s only rated PG-13, and frankly is about the most tepid movie I’ve seen. There is barely any kissing, much less any violence. They won’t learn much bad by watching this.