Astrophotography - hobby with nice views and lots of hardware
Next day and another PC hardware benchmark, product rumor or new CPU specifications, not to mention some OS updates and so forth. But there is PC technology and software that can see and study places where no man has gone before. I would want to showcase to you astrophotography in a hobby form factor. 10 nm may be a cool thing, but 628 743 036 kilometers definitely has more mystery to it.
Idea for future WoW leveling and world design
There was some talk on future of levels and leveling in World of Warcraft during Blizzcon as well as some ideas and comments from WoW content creators like Thete or Preach. Taking the opportunity I want to show my idea on how leveling and in bigger picture expansions could look like. Looking to hearing your opinions too!
Right angle 90 degree ATX adapter
Cable management is usually a quite important element of a custom made PC - wherever for good looks or for best airflow or thermal performance. There are custom cables, cases with very good cable management design solutions but usually there is something that may stand out among the cables - arched ATX motherboard power cable. If the bundle of cables won't be flexible enough the arch will be quite big. Solution - right angle (or 90 degree) ATX connector-adapter.
Showcasing my planetary Dall Kirkham telescope
Solar System imaging on high resolution requires very good setup in order to get good images. The optics, mechanical design, atmospheric conditions - all of that has to line up. I used a 14" Celestron SCT and I had some problems with thermal lag or lowered UV/Blue image quality due to spherochomatism and spherical aberration. I solved them by replacing my SCT with a 14" planetary Dall Kirkham telescope.
Are cheap low power x86 CPUs an alternative to higher end makers ARM boards?
Single board computers with ARM chips are flooding hackers/makers market. More and more models are released but they are getting stuck in a state of limited I/O support and limited software and drivers support when compared to what current x86 Intel and AMD platforms can provide. So let us check if cheap low power x86 CPUs can perform similarly or better while solving problems of most ARM SoC by offering more interfaces and better hardware support.
Past and future of VIA Technologies x86 CPUs
VIA Technologies started in 1987 was a quite successful company making chipsets and controller chips, it had large market share in Intel and AMD motherboard chipsets where it compete with companies like Nvidia. After Centaur Technology acquisition VIA become a third company with a x86 CPU license but was unable to grow to the size of Intel or even AMD. Nowadays VIA is returning to the news stories with a Chinese child-company called Zhaoxin that claims to be releasing modern x86 CPU competing even with AMD Threadripper.
Fallout 76 PC BETA - questing and testing hardware
During the second Fallout 76 Beta I've managed to do some more hardware testing, including a ultra-wide 21:9 resolutions as well as some questing and events to check how the game longevity may hold.
Fallout 76 PC BETA - my impressions and findings
The Hunt for Red October have begun... or at least PC B.E.T.A. of Fallout 76. As it's a BETA, and Bethesda BETA at the same time there were issues but even against such odds I managed to play and test the game a bit. Here are my findings and impressions.
20 slot filter wheel in a QHY MiniCAM6F camera
On Facebook QHY showed photos of a new camera they are working on - miniCAM6F. This camera, just like ASI178MM is equipped with IMX178 and has a built in filter wheel that can hold 20 custom sized 12mm filters. The camera should be released in march 2017.
What about imaging sodium and sulphur clouds in the Jupiter - Io system?
Jupiter system is full of action and there is always something interesting to photograph. For example sodium clouds created by Jupiter magnetosphere interacting with Io atmosphere. It's just 300 Jupiter radii wide gigantic nebula in our Solar System.
Let us have a look on how to photograph such clouds and how Jupiter makes them.