Wesley's Tool-Box

If you're playing Simpsons: Tapped Out game (iOS / Android) on your spare time like me, and also happened to be a developer that upgraded your phone to iOS 7 (beta 1), then you may encounter a bizarre bug where you automatically get login to a completely random, but different account.

Some leafing through the web yielded some clues on what was likely going on. It seems to be caused by the way EA implemented the device and account management.

Apparently, EA decided to keep session information of both the device and the account that it's logged in on the server. When a user exits the game and comes back, the game checks the device and automatically login to the account it was last associated with. Seems harmless, right?

The superzoom SX50 HS was looking out the window again to shoot Saturn. This time, my three-year old daughter wanted in on the action, so she looked at the viewfinder and took a few shots with my help. She was amazed at how a tiny star in the sky is actually that planet with rings she saw in a book.

The setup was identical to the previous post yesterday except that the shutter speed was slowed down to 1/10s. This made for brighter photos. You can see a hint of Saturn's own shadow on the rings just behind the left side of the planet.

UPDATE: The photos I took tonight shows the shadow that Saturn is casting upon its rings much clearer.

I'm getting better results thanks to finding a more stable tripod configuration, leading to sharper images and less frames thrown away due to blurring.

This seems to be about as good as this camera gets, unless some more optical equipment is thrown in. Cassini division on the rings would not be visible unless much more significantly advanced optics come into play.

UPDATE 2015-04-12: Nearly two years later, I now have that "more optical equipment" and for the first time, I was able to resolve the Cassini Division.

These are untouched photographs of Saturn taken by my new Canon SX50 HS digital camera on a tripod without any additional equipment. The 50x optical zoom seemed to be just at the edge of producing some interesting photographs of the planets, which was the motivation for the camera's purchase. Saturn was the first candidate to test this out. One, it is up in the night sky for several hours these days, unlike the other planets which go down the horizon after early evening. Two, its rings made it easy to identify.

Power supply/demand situation is getting a bit tight in Korea this year - there's this unusually hot weather coming up, and several large nuclear plants got shut down due to faulty parts being put into due to corruption.

As a result, power grid situation room is up and running early, and I'm taking part in the operation. This means I'll be showing up in the news broadcasts a few times throughout this summer. Yesterday saw some significant coverage from the media, and here are the results.

TV:
KBS News 9, May 30, 2013 (#1)
KBS News 9, May 30, 2013 (#2)
SBS 8 News, May 30, 2013
YTN News, 4PM, May 30, 2013

Photos:

Wesley's Tool-Box was offline for a 53 days since February 2, 2013, when the iMac (Early 2008) that ran the website since May 2008 broke down.

Replacement system was sought, and a souped-up Mac mini (Late 2012) was chosen to pick up the task. Unfortunately, there had been a few issues - recovering the files and database from the iMac didn't go as smoothly as planned; Mac mini didn't get along with certain brand of SSD; family stuff.

All that's behind now. Enjoy the site once again - thank you for your patience.