There are over 70 languages in the world with just whistled sounds. They are spread around the world, from The French Pyrenees, the Canary Islands, Turkey, the foothills of the Himalayas, and the Amazon Basin.

They are usually used in areas where there are hills and valleys, or forests, where the normal human speech does not spread readily.

The following articles explore more this fascinating topic:

The members of the Saguaro Astronomy Club (SAC) have a long history of producing useful data from observations, and making it available for download by amateur astronomers worldide at no cost.

One data set that they produce is SAC DeepSky list which is currently at version 8.1, from 2010.

The data is provided in a variety of formats, from Microsoft Excel to comma separated variables.

Taking pictures of the night sky almost always involves exposure times that are more than 30 seconds. This is often couple with taking many pictures for later stacking into better images.

For this, the camera has to be set to Bulb mode. You can automate taking multiple exposures by using an intervalometer, which is a remote release with a device with some electronic circuits and LCD screen to make all this possible.

You can also automate this using a Linux computer running gphoto2 software. The computer can be as small as a Raspberry Pi, or a laptop.

Vinton Cerf, one of the founders of the internet, is echoing something that I have been concerned about for a long time: We are going backwards.

When I was running Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS on my home server, I had installed minidlna as a media server that is accessible to DLNA capable clients, including a Smart TV where one can view photos on a large screen.

However, when the server was upgraded to 14.04 LTS, minidlna stopped working. Searching Google turned up forum posts from 2014 with instructions that no longer work.

Yesterday, I gave a talk at the KWLUG.

It covered the following:

When an Arabic speaking person starts to get interested in Astronomy, he will immediately notice that many stars have Arabic sounding names.

For example, the other day, I was in the backyard with a 20 year old relative. I was

The reason for this is historic, and has to do with how the knowledge of sky with its constellations, and stars moved from one civilization to the next. First, Ancient Egypt to Babylon, then to the Greeks, then translated into Arabic during the Islamic golden age, and from there to Europe via Latin by yet more translation.

Recently I got a Raspberry Pi 2, which is said to be 6 times faster than the original Raspberry Pi B. This makes it more suitable for tasks like being a media player.

Getting a full CanaKit Raspberry Pi 2 Ultimate Starter Kit adds many components for experimentation (LEDs, resistors, breadboard, 40-pin ribbon cable, ...etc.). The price was attractive since with Amazon you get free shipping, and therefore it will be cheaper than getting it directly from CanaKit.