The image below was produced during a test run of an all-sky camera based around a Raspberry Pi computer and a Pi HQ camera wrapped in control software from Thomas Pacquin and available via GitHub. The images were taken from my cottage on the Saugeen Peninsula, Ontario, which is nominally a Bortle 2 site.* I’m right on the border from Bortle 2 and Bortle 1, and I like to think of it as a Bortle 1.5 site – i.e., very dark.

*Bortle numbers are a measure of the sky visual quality based around the level of light pollution on a scale 1 to 9, with 9 as the worst level. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale&gt;

The Milky Way is visible with dark lane on the left side of the image and the Summer Triangle is just rising. North should be at the top, but I was slightly off in placing the camera – rotate the view slight clockwise. You can find the pole by following the pointer stars of the Dipper to Polaris, just to the left of the tree at the top of the frame.

Normally when we look at a map with North at the top, West is to the left of the map, but in this image that’s not the case. Remember, the camera pointing straight up! East is on the left side of the image, so your viewpoint is a little skewed – disorienting, if you will.

To get the correct perspective here, try holding your copy of the image above your head with north up and aligned with the pole. East and West will then be in the “normal” positions.

Well, no, not really—it’s a bit of a metaphor: the posts are those made to this little blog, and I’m still not doing well in making posts at regular intervals.

On the other hand, the staggering is real: I’m currently experiencing intermittent episodes of dizziness, particularly when switching between horizontal and vertical positions. Getting up in the morning or falling into bed at night have become problematic activities since the entire world appears to swing into motion and spins for a while before settling down – in other words, I’m experiencing vertigo.

According to various reliable (?) medical sites this is most likely due to benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, BPPV, one of the most common causes of vertigo, especially in decrepit individuals over 50 (which would be me), and most commonly in females (not me, I think, based on the last time I checked, but then what do I know?). Here’s my understanding of the cause:

Normally there’s a labyrinthine structure (semi-circular canal) in the ear which keeps track of the movement of the head by detecting swirling fluids in the labyrinth. Change orientation too fast and tiny hairlike sensors in the labyrinth pick up the swirling motion and report the movement to the brain, which then coordinates the signal with other messages and confirms, “Yep, we’re moving around.” Or not: when the swirling doesn’t track with the other signals the brain reports a problem, and you feel dizzy, sometimes to the point you feel nauseous. To avoid this sensation, we learn as kids not to spin around too much – a little can be mildly entertaining, but a lot can be more than a little unpleasant.

There’s another structure in the ear, the otolith, which is also concerned with head movement. It monitors tiny crystals to figure out how you are positioned with relation to gravity. Unfortunately the crystals can leave the otolith and blunder into the semi-circular canals.Once there, they interfere with the swirling fluids and fool the semi-circular canals into reporting movement – and whoops! – everything seems to be spinning. This can last anywhere from seconds to hours (my episodes last no more than a minute, so far). It’s not usually harmful, just inconvenient, so we label it benign. It also comes on suddenly and can go away just as fast, so we term it paroxysmal – thus it’s a benign but paroxysmal attack of vertigo triggered by changes in position, or Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo, BPPV for short. Think of it as dizziness caused by the rocks in your head.

Fortunately there are corrective actions and procedures you can follow which will move the crystals out of your semi-circular canal and relieve the symptoms. The canalith repositioning procedure can be done by a specialist, but patients can also do this at home. Unfortunately you first need to be taught the procedure, and in these days of COVID precautions getting access to a therapist who can teach you is a touch problematic

There are surgical steps if the canalith repositioning doesn’t work. This involves plugging the semi-circular canals so the crystals don’t wander in, and it has a success rate of about 90%. So far the emphasis in my (presumed) BPPV has been on benign, so I’ll wait until a therapist is available. It’s cheaper than getting ‘falling-down drunk!’

Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa!

I confess, O Gods of the Intertubes, that I have been remiss in my posts.

It has been three years since my last update.

Now, perhaps that’s less of a sin than it could be: there are many many more crappy posts than anyone can encompass (hell, The Turnip has an entire mini-universe dedicated to him as the anointed of God [apparently Turnip-heads think God—assuming He exists—has nothing to do but anoint low-level grifters and con artists as His representatives [see also Prosperity Gospel]]) and we’ve all been hurtling down the Rabbit Hole since the Republicans lied, cheated, and gerrymandered their way to victory in 2016. Whew! Long sentence – let’s skip to a new para!

So, 2020 rolls around, the Repugnant Ones get complacent and believe their own propaganda, and we wind up with a Democrat in the White House again. As the droids of Turnip’s ramshackle machine gape in astonishment the Supreme Leader (now starring as Humpty Dumpty) declares himself the winner anyway (because really, who wouldn’t choose him as the most obvious PoS to be President?) – and his followers delude themselves into accepting that. [SEND ME ALL OF YOUR MONEY. IGNORE THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!] Cue slow insurrection, currently ongoing….

Oh? Apparently it’s time for my meds again.

It’s been a while. Again.

I have two sites, but one is completely down and will have to be reinstalled. For the other (this one [!]) I have only now reset the password through the WordPress website: resets through my tablet app were unsuccessful.

So now, perhaps, I’m back. It’s late in my day, so I’ll defer a true update until tomorrow. Or the next day….

A while back we took a two-week trip through China. During the river trip the fog rolled in and we were unable to travel for several hours. Eventually the fog began to lift, and I captured this image….

I really must add an item to my Reminders list. Otherwise this blog will only be updated when I run across the maintenance app on my iPad, and that is becoming a rare occurrence as my iPad habits become more ingrained.

And while I’m here, let me note that posting and updating through the app has been a lot smoother than trying to connect over Safari on the iPad, where any attempt to go back and modify a post has resulted in a crash. I haven’t tried to make edits in quite a while, so I’m not certain whether this is new behavior or not, but it’s certainly irritating right now.

I’ll try to post a couple of LX-7 images in the next week or two. I picked one up through Kijiji a couple of weeks ago, but I haven’t done much with it yet as I am wrapped up in a reno project at home. I can say that the improvements over the LX-5 are somewhat mixed in value. The lens is better, but I can’t attach the camera to a telescope anymore. I was trying out the LX-5 for solar observations (difficult to get the exposure correct) and had hoped to replace that camera entirely, but it looks as though I’ll have to hang on to it until someone figures out a method for attaching the LX-7 to a scope. Bad news for birders, I suppose, but not a major disadvantage for other users.