UPDATE – Tracking Bands on Gray Jays in Algonquin Park

A response from Mr. Dan Strickland

Read the first post here: http://realworldnumbers.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/tracking-bands-on-gray-jays-in-algonquin-park/

Hi Justin,

The jays Mr. Best photographed are members of the Arowhon family group who nest south of Arowhon Pines between the Arowhon road and Joe Lake (north of the old track). There may have been 5 birds in the group but his e-mail showed only three separate birds. ROSLPORR (Red Over Standard Left, Purple Over Red Right) was a nonbreeding extra attached to the breeding pair from fall 2008 up to the 2009 breeding season and is obviously still there. YOBLYOSR (3 photos of the same bird; Yellow over dark Blue Left, Yellow Over Standard Right) is the breeding male on the Arowhon territory and he is at least 13 years old. The third bird photographed is POSLTOTR (Purple Over Standard Left, lighT blue Over lighT blue Right) although I admit it looks very much like POSLWOWR (two white bands on the right leg instead of light blue). That bird was banded as a nestling in the 2009 Arowhon nest this past May 2nd.

Mr. Best says there were 5 birds and that he has other reference photos so I am asking him by copy of this e-mail to see if he can see any other colour band combinations and, if so, if he could forward the photos. I expect there should have been at least one other bird (the old or a replacement breeding female; last spring it was GOSLKOOR, namely dark Green Over Standard Left, pinK Over Orange Right). Also, if Mr. Best was not confused by the comings and goings of 4 birds, there should be yet another combination as well to make up his reported total of 5 different birds.

Thanks for sending this report and the photos to me and I look forward to any other information and photos Mr. Best may have.

Dan

Here’s the original gallery of crops… I need to make some more.  Some may not be so clear.

Tracking Bands on Gray Jays in Algonquin Park

We were enjoying the quiet of the lake when they descended on our campsite all-together.

The exact coordinates of our campsite were 45.589433N by 78.7138W on August 28, 2009 @ 13:28 EDT.

I wrote around and finally got ahold of Justin Peter with Algonquin park… he writes:

Thanks for your message, which was forwarded to me for reply. These jays are part of Dan Strickland’s 30+ year study of gray jays along the Highway 60 Corridor. We are always interested in their whereabouts and social organization. But I can’t tell you much about these specific birds without knowing the combination of coloured bands. Can you please send images (< 300 kB) of the bands? Were all 5 birds together or were they seen in different groups? It would help to have that information also. I’ll await information from you.

Can’t wait for the update!

Ancient BBS Receipt for our Atari 1040ST. Canada Remote Systems.

A nostalgic view from history (I call 1988 history).

Know how everyone pays for internet access? Back in the day, we used to pay for BBS access.

What’s a BBS? It’s another computer that you dial up to in order to download files, post messages (kind of like email between users of the same system).

The ATARI 1040ST was not exactly our first computer, but it was our first computer with a MOUSE! It was kicking the shit out of any machine any school-chum we knew had? Why?

1. PC’s were clunky, iron, and only in monochrome. We had 256 SCREAMIN’ COLOURS!
2. It wasn’t a video game system, it was a shit-kicking GUI OS (looking similar to the modern Macintoshes and Amiga’s owinng to the the Motorola 68000 chips that were used in Macs until the late 90’s)
3. 3.25″ FLOPPY!!!!! MEGA STORAGE (DoubleDensity)
4. It had F1-F12 keys that were angular !!!! F12 baby!
5. We had an AWESOME 300 baud cup-modem. Downloading a file? SHHHHHH…. quietly walk out of the room, and gently close the door behind you. For a few hours.
6. It had a kick-ass serial port that my DAD made a home-made serial cable for to retrieve his old word-star files from his Kaypro IV.
7. It worked with the daisy-wheel printer we had leftover from the Kaypro.

Our favourite games were “NeoPaint”, “Mercenary (with the X-rated credit, so dad would send us out of the room while the game loading credits were off-screen) and some kind of game , I think called “Mud Pies” where you used to run around throwing pies at everyone.

I think CRS was great, because it was the first time we got to communicate to the outside world with our computer! WOW! computers could use the phone lines. Amazing. They had all kinds of files (we kept our membership even when we moved over to a portable 286 laptop a little later on). They had local numbers in our region too.

Anyways, thanks dad for giving us a jump start.

It’s amazing what $65.00 in 1988 money would buy for a year.

Amateur Astronomy – Watching the sky for the ISS

 

The next couple of weeks are the perfect time to seek out the International Space Station.

The ISS just got a bit bigger over the past week, as they have deployed a massive solar panel, and the space shuttle is currently docked. The extra solar panel makes the ISS brighter. Not that we need the ISS to be brighter in the night, it’s extremely bright and you just can’t miss it.

There is also a remote chance you will be able to see the Space Shuttle chasing behind the ISS, after it un-docks on Monday morning and prepares to come home.

It doesn’t matter where you are on the planet, from time to time, the ISS will pass by. The visit is usually only 3 or 4 minutes until it’s gone from one side of the sky to the other. Usually, from Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, ideal conditions exist at least once per week, sometimes more.

Isn’t it wonderful to see something with the naked eye? You don’t need a telescope, all you need is a sense of direction and time.

What you’ll need to accurately find the ISS as it passes by:

1. A compass. Any old compass will do.
2. An inclinometer. What’s that? It’s quite simply a tool to tell you how high up you’re looking in the sky. Here’s a link on how to make a Home Made Inclinometer for $0.00.
3. An accurate watch. You will need the seconds to be as accurate as possible. Syncronise a wristwatch to just about any computer that’s on the web, or go to the National Research Council of Canada for the official time.
4. A “prediction” web site that will tell you when the ISS is going to pass over. I use Heaven’s Above. Although we call the task of calculating when the ISS will be visible a “prediction”, the truth is that it is accurate. Deadly accurate.

For the Greater Toronto Area, the predicted passes are every morning this week and next!

Some passes are better than others.

Not all predicted passes have a preferable magnitude (brightness). This can be for many factors:

• Day or Night pass
• Angle of the Sun
• Angle and phase of the Moon
• Most of all, because if the ISS does not pass directly overhead, it can be thousands of kilometers away, which means that it will cross the sky low to the horizon. Lower to the horizon means that you look through way more dirty atmosphere – and to be quite honest… it’s just not as exciting.

The best time to view the ISS, is when it passes at night and almost directly overhead. Unfortunately, the ISS will not be swinging around during the night, and all predictions for the week ahead have it passing just before sunrise. This is OK, and should make for an interesting start to most people’s commute.

Here’s a breakdown of the predictions of magnitude (brightness) for the week ahead:

Date, Magnitude, Start time.
5-Nov 0.4 5:52:32
6-Nov -1.8 6:14:35
7-Nov 0.2 5:04:32
8-Nov -1.9 5:27:17
9-Nov -2.1 5:49:47
10-Nov 0.8 4:40:42
10-Nov -1.1 6:12:05
11-Nov -0.1 5:02:52
11-Nov -0.5 6:34:38
12-Nov -0.6 5:24:55
13-Nov -0.5 5:46:53

Given that the lower number magnitude (and even better if it’s a negative number) are the best brightness for viewing, we will narrow down our choices to the better ones.

Date, Magnitude, Start Time, Altitude, Direction, Max Brightness Time, Altitude, Direction, End Time, Altitude, Direction

6-Nov -1.8 6:14:35 10 SW 6:17:23 59 SSE 6:20:16 10 ENE
7-Nov 0.2 5:04:32 17 SSE 5:05:22 19 SE 5:07:33 10 E
8-Nov -1.9 5:27:17 40 SSW 5:28:01 57 SE 5:30:51 10 ENE
9-Nov -2.1 5:49:47 31 W 5:50:49 51 NNW 5:53:39 10 NE
10-Nov 0.8 4:40:42 15 ENE 4:40:42 15 ENE 4:41:21 10 ENE
10-Nov -1.1 6:12:05 16 WNW 6:13:45 26 NNW 6:16:17 10 NE

I have included a little more data on the above chart. As you can see, there are 3 distinct phases of an ISS pass

• Beginninig – this phase is where we hunt. Grab your compass and inclinometer, and stake out a spot in the sky to begin scanning. As the time for the initial visibility comes closer, you may think you’re seeing an airplane, far away… it’s moving slow, REAL slow, but then, it starts to speed up. Then it *REALLY* starts to speed up. It’s moving to the your next milestone in the sky – the Maximum Height. It will be there only another 45 or 60 seconds, so don’t be thinking you can dart inside for a camera.
• Maximum Height – at this stage, it’s really rockin. It’s moving SO fast, you can’t believe it. It’s at this point that the ISS has reached it’s maximum brightness. If you’ve chosen a night where the maximum altitude is around 90 degrees, then your neck should be craned almost directly up.
• Fade away – the ISS will appear to slow down now, and get dimmer as it moves across the sky. It will slow down to almost the rate you saw it appear. Sometimes, the ISS doesn’t just disappear below the horizon, sometimes it disappears in the middle of the sky! The reason for this has to do with the earth’s shadow. Expect this kind of a dissappearing act about 50% of the time.

Time to Choose a night.

I choose:

9-Nov -2.1 5:49:47 31 W 5:50:49 51 NNW 5:53:39 10 NE

for the following reasons:

• Time in the morning is ok – I can get up early to watch it. (what a way to start a day!)
• It will start to appear at 31 degrees up. This means I can see it above my neighbors’ houses
• The whole shebang will last for almost 4 minutes
• The maximum height is 51 degrees up, very high.

Pass Details

Date:	Friday, 09 November, 2007
Satellite:	ISS
Observer’s Location:	Newmarket ( 44.0500°N, 79.4500°W)
Local Time:	Eastern Standard Time (GMT – 5:00)
Orbit:	340 x 344 km, 51.6° (Epoch 02 Nov)
Sun altitude at time of maximum pass altitude:	-13.5

Using the predictions web site, let’s click on the November 9th event and find out more specific details.

By selecting November 9th, we are able to get more accurate information about this pass. Importantly, we can have a better idea of direction, and an idea of the distance in kilometers between me and the ISS. (It’s suprisingly less kilometers than you might think!)

Event , Time, Altitude, Azimuth, Distance (km)
Leaves shadow 5:49:47 31° 274° (W ) 627
Maximum altitude 5:50:54 50° 340° (NNW) 442
Drops below 10° altitude 5:53:39 10° 51° (NE ) 1,297
Sets 5:55:41 0° 57° (ENE) 2,135

Wow! At 5:50 and 54 seconds, the ISS will only be 442 km. away from my eyeball! It’s going to look so close, you WILL want to reach out to it with your hand. I promise!

Some final advice.

BE PUNCTUAL! The ISS waits for no one. Most events, from start to finish, last only 4 minutes at the longest. Imagine the ISS crossing the entire sky in 4 minutes. When the predictions web site says 5:49:47AM, it really does mean 47 seconds!

Line up and identify the 3 positions ahead of time. This will allow you to visualise how the ISS will move across the sky, and will help you identify the best viewing location. (ie. Front yard, backyard)

Photography. Take some pictures of the sky (without flash) in advace. This will give you the opportunity to play with some settings. If you have a simple digital point-and-shoot camera, switch it into the “Shutter Speed Priority” mode, and start off with about a 5 second shutter speed. A tripod or sturdy angled base is very necessary for this amount of shutter time. You will end up with a streak, so it helps to visualise the path of the ISS ahead of time, and position your camera to the known point in the sky where it will cross.

Be excited and pass it on!

Just imagine how those first viewers felt looking at Sputnik for the first time. What a world we live in.

Here’s some pictures I recently took.

The numbers of the final moments of the Hindenburg

There’s a SKUNK in my garage… and my BUDDY IS IN THERE TOO!

Here’s the obligatory garbage post for this weekend.

My neighbor Kyle and his buddy Keith were in their garage when they noticed a skunk. Only 1 got out, the other man was left behind as a sacrifice to fight for his own escape. This is how the events unfolded.

Watch the video. Click here.

What makes Lottario a better game than Lotto6/49

Lottario gets no love.

Sure, the 6/49 prizes might look tempting up front, but look a little further down the line, and you come to a neglected little game called Lottario.

In both games, 6 numbers plus a bonus number are chosen for each draw. This makes them very comparable.

Lottario

• Costs only 1 dollar
• 1 dollar will get you 2 sets of numbers (1 you choose, and 1 random)
• Guaranteed minimum $250,000 Jackpot.
• Draws once per week.
• EARLY BIRD jackpot (4 numbers chosen on the Friday before, must have all 4 numbers, like a whole seperate game with your ticket).
  

Lotto 6/49

• Each play costs $2.
• Draws held every Wednesday and Saturday.

The immediately visible benefits of playing Lottario are:

• cheaper
• 2 draws (including the early bird) on each play
• 1 dollar buys you 2 plays for each draw!
• That’s 4 plays for $1

Now, as my brother pointed out in the comments section of my previous article, what’s the comparison of prize? It’s tough to match apples to oranges, but we’ll give it a try using some numbers and various graphs and tables.

 Odds Tables

Lottario

Number of Matches	Win	Odds
6 of 6	44 % of the Pools Fund	“1 in 4,072,530.5″
5/6 + Bonus	5.4 % of the Pools Fund	“1 in 678,755.25″
5 of 6	19 % of the Pools Fund	“1 in 17,862.24″
4 of 6	31.6 % of the Pools Fund	1 in 366.6
3 of 6	$5	1 in 22.53
EARLY BIRD	“$50,000 (share equally)”	“1 in 4,966.75″
	Any prize	1 in 21

Lotto 6/49

Number of Matches	Win	Odds
6 of 6	80.5 % of the Pools Fund	“1 in 13,983,816″
5/6 + Bonus	5.75 % of the Pools Fund	“1 in 2,330,636″
5 of 6	4.75 % of the Pools Fund	“1 in 55,492″
4 of 6	9 % of the Pools Fund	“1 in 1,033″
3 of 6	$10 prize	1 in 57
2/6 + Bonus	$5 prize	1 in 81
	Any prize	1 in 32

 Odds of winning any prize

This one will be easy.

Winner: Lottario, 1 in 21
Loser: Lotto6/49, 1 in 32

Odds of winning a low end prize

Winner: Lotto 6/49, there are 2 different low end prizes ($5 and $10)
Loser : Lottario, only a single low end prize ($5)

Odds of winning medium and high range prizes vs. prize pool

In order to present this data to you, we’re going to have to make up an example minimum prize amount. We know that the published minimum for Lottario is $250,000 , but because the Lotto6/49 can grow over time, the jackpot prize can balloon to as high as $30,000,000 dollars. Because the last prize was won, I see the new jackpot number has been ‘reset’ to $4,000,000 dollars.

As you can see from the charts below, the distribution looks close. A few points I can see in the 3 charts below:

1. The odds-to-payout ratio seems to be a lot closer for 6/49, meaning, worse odds for a slightly elevated payout.
2. The games are designed similarly, they just operate in 2 different planes.
3. If you’re after the jackpot, Lottario may not be for you. Put it all in the 6/49.

What are the odds of this lottery ticket?

Answer: Pretty good and pretty bad.

You see, once in a while I’ll play Lotto6/49. It’s a Canadian game, doesn’t pay like the US lotteries, but I enjoy it. Sometime’s when I’m around a lotto machine, I’ll have an extra $2.00 and lust longingly after whatever jackpot amount they post in front of me. I’ll then turn to the man and say “Quick-pick, 6/49, no encore”.

That’s it. That’s my chance. I’m in, and so far, my odds of winning are way better than a few minutes ago. What was a 0% chance just became a .000000009% chance.

A “Quick-Pick” is a quick ticket that a machine prints. I don’t have to circle my numbers, fill in an examination, or anything. The computer picks 6 random numbers, from 1 to 49, and spits them out on a ticket.

It’s all so easy, and happens within 5 seconds. So I thank the man, he tips his hat, and I walk out to find something to do on a Monday night.

Attraction to my wife happened in one half a second.

I personally think it was quicker

Here’s an interesting article on exactly that, attraction time when seeing a beautiful member of the opposite sex.

The article is a great intro into an interesting experiment.

http://aldn.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/attraction-studied-at-fsu

The REAL numbers on carbon emissions for my car.

You’re sitting there. Idling in traffic. Stop. Go. Stop. Talk radio’s on. Cut to commercial. Feel bad and buy Carbon Credits. “Did you know your car creates 10 trillion tonnes of CO₂ per day/hour/year”?

What are these numbers? Where do they get them? What are they talking about? 1 Tonne, or 1 ton? Is that metric? Is it imperial? How is that possible? How can air possibly weigh 1 tonne?

We’re going to give you the REAL numbers here. In the process, we’re going to learn about cars, combustion, and corruption. How much you burn in gasoline depends on a lot of different input.

• Engine Size
• Fuel Type
• consumption over time (RPM, tanks per week, average length and speed of a commute, etc.)
• Air Density (Sea Level, +/-)

But the reality is, the only way you put CO2 into the atmosphere is by burning gas. It doesn’t matter if you have a 4×4, a compact-car, or a motorbike. If you burn gas, you’re contributing to the CO2.

Let’s Begin. Click READ MORE.