Now the table tennis season is over (I think) let me summarise how it’s gone this year…

Newbury League
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My 2nd season in the Newbury league and my first in Division 2 and as captain. I was planning on avoiding relegation but we got off to a storming start and we were 1st or 2nd for a good chunk of the season. We ended a bit poorly, losing several matches including a disappointing 10-0 defeat at AWE Aldermaston in a match I thought we had a good chance in. An 8-2 win in the final match means that we end up with a three-way tie on points for 2nd place. In the Newbury league this requires a playoff but I haven’t heard if we need to play this yet. In the cup competition we had a terrific run and ended up in the final of the Pembroke Cup against very tricky opponents. We lost (no surprises really) but a runners up trophy in our first season was a good result. I was aiming for a 33% average for the season and won 19 of 44 matches (43.2%) so very pleased with that.

Didcot League
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Reading AS held their first ever Star Camp last weekend. We took the Eriba and joined some hardy souls on a hillside in Powys on a working farm. Some stayed in the B&B in the farmhouse and others chose nearby self catering accommodation. We were blessed with four clear nights although it was bitterly cold. I managed to get some imaging done on the final night and I will be posting the results in the Astroimages section. It was a really good social weekend and I’m hoping we can make it a regular thing within the society.

Yep, we lost the final which was only to be expected as our opponents were generously handicapped and we went in with just a 28 point lead. Most of that evaporated in the very first match as I lost 21-8 21-12. Needing to stay level to stand any chance from then on, we were dead and buried by the halfway stage. Still not too bad for our very first season in the Newbury league to get to the final. One of our opponents had been trying to win the trophy for 62 years and this was the very first time he had won it! And we get a runners up medal so it wasn’t all for nothing.

I splashed out on a new CCD camera for astronomy this week. An Atik 16IC-S which is a 16-bit monochrome camera with peltier cooling, resolution is 782x582 pixels. The chip is progressive scan as well. This is a big improvement over the Watec I have been using, which is great for live views of objects but its 10s maximum exposure and noisy output is restrictive for deep sky imaging. The Atik can do unlimited exposures but since my telescope is not autoguiding (yet) I’m limited to about 30-60s which is about as good as my mount can do. You can see my first efforts from last night in my photo gallery. I’m thinking of splitting off the astronomy images into their own gallery by the way.

This morning was the conjunction of Moon, Mercury and Venus. Due to various astronomical variables which I won’t bore you with, the southern UK was not the best place to see this. However, I got up at 5.30am and drove up to Wittenham Clumps (a nearby Iron age hillfort and just about the highest point within easy reach). The sky was just starting to lighten as I walked up from the deserted car-park. There was frost on the ground and the car temperature was reading -3.5ºC. It was perfectly clear right down to the horizon.

Then I spotted the slender Moon rising, an awesome sight and started snapping off some pictures. Soon afterwards I could just glimpse Venus, easy in binoculars, but couldn’t see Mercury. I continued taking photographs at various exposures hoping that one would capture the inner planet. As the sky began to brighten I knew my chances of spotting Mercury were dwindling, especially as it was 40x fainter than Venus and I could only barely see that. I never did spot it in the binoculars. The sky was by now too bright to even spot the Moon, so I waited for sunrise about 15mins away. It was …

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Got up at 6am this morning to try and spot the conjunction of Venus and Mercury. Unfortunately it is very low in the sky and the horizon which I thought I might be able to spot them on wasn’t as good as I was expecting. Still, I get another opportunity in early March but I need to find a hill with a good low Eastern horizon this time.

By the way, due to the stupid nature of the handicap system in the Didcot league (which is mainly my own invention) we failed miserably to make the second cup final. The opponents may as well have emailed me their proposed team and saved us the trip.

My first table tennis final for many years! Last night my West Ilsley team took on a 1st Division team in the semi-final of the Pembroke Cup handicap competition. And we played out of our skins, the best table tennis I’ve ever played at times. I actually beat two of the 1st Division players from scratch!

The final is in a few weeks and might be played during the closed championships, which means we will have an audience. Next Tuesday I’m playing in the semi-final of the Bidmead Cup in the Didcot league, could it be two finals in one season?

The annoying thing is I’m playing a Division 3 league match tonight and I know I will revert to defensive mode as it’ll work against the opponents, instead of the exciting free-flowing table tennis I played last night.

No pictures of the lunar eclipse last night, it was mostly cloudy although I did glimpse the eclipsed Moon very briefly.

Seems to generate as much comment as anything on my site! Is it really that bad? The irony of asking for comments on leaving comments isn’t lost on me! I have to have the captcha to stop the spammers and I want to leave comments open to all. I still get the occasional spam comment and am considering upping the security a little more (it won’t change the current comment method).

The other option is to only allow comments from members, which would mean you would have to join the site to post comments. Or to require email confirmation for every single comment left. I think both of these are more of a pain than how it is currently set up.

Please tell me what’s wrong with it and what would make it better for you.

I’ve also noticed I’m not getting informed when people leave comments as it should be doing, I need to fix this.

Isn’t free WiFi brilliant? This is my first blog entry from a moving train and it isn’t costing me a penny. I’ve managed to finish my monthly what’s up newsletter for Reading AS and send it off to be printed. I’m bound to be staying in a hotel this evening that seems to think it’s reasonable to charge £15 an hour for internet access, I saw this recently at a seminar. Money for old rope.

The talk at the Reading 41 Club went very well. I was pleased, although it may have carried a tad too much information. Timings were spot on, the dinner was very pleasant. A good evening, if a bit of a rush to get there on time and then get back to pack and get to bed to catch a stupidly early train this morning.

Happy Valentine’s Day BTW. I won’t be home for a romantic evening with Mrs jochta this evening, so we’ll have to postpone. Hope she likes the rather pleasant card I managed to find this year.

I’m off to our Edinburgh office tomorrow and Friday, I usually fly up using BMI or BA from Heathrow, but their prices are silly. If you don’t book a month in advance all the cheap seats get sold and you have to pay over £200 to do a few hundred miles. So I’m going by train, I reckon once you’ve taken into account the faffing about at airports and taxi journeys it won’t actually work out taking much longer. Still the same journey by train costs £190 as I’ll be travelling at peak times, so not much of a saving! It’s a long while since I did a long train journey, I wonder how bored I will get. So shall I take the GB Micro with Polarium Advance or the DS with Slitherlink for the journey? Maybe both!

Oh and the laser is absolutely awesome for pointing out stuff in the night sky. A super-thin green beam, I could easily show the children where things are in the sky rather than trying to point them out with a finger. I’ll try and get a photo of it, I reckon if I stick it on a tripod I can do it. …

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