somnambulant,, I can see the milky way faintly from the LeslieStreet spit and from any of the piers along the lake in the east end and from center island. but light pollution is getting worse so way up North or South to get a good view.. I can pick out Galaxies in my scopes from the backyard and did get a Quasar once. it ain't as good as from a dark site but you can do a TON of stuff from the city ,Planets, Asteriods,DoubleStars, cool picture I have that as a screen saver ;;EDITE:: LOT"S of naked eye stuff from around the City the clubs put on pubic viewing sessions all the time just check out the science center. you can bike up to any of the viewing sites.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'd love to do a night ride someplace with some halfway decent viewing.. especially with a scope. Beer 'n stars ride? :)

I was surprised to hear a friend tell me that she has seen the Northern Lights from as far south as Wasaga on a number of occasions. That's on the list of things to do/see before I check out.

I saw the sky go red here in Toronto a few years ago and you still can see spikes from the norther lights in Toronto now and again and the sun is going to go active cycle again soon so we should be able to see some of it BUT not like you can from highway nine where it looks like wavey curtains of light AWESOME

One night we'll all meet and head out on the spit with travel scope before winter but most of the planets will be below the horizon so we could do a Lunar Moon tour if you want P.S it's ok to be high and look through my scopes but not on booze if they get knocked over I'd have to break your legs and through you in the lake:)

dude.. I'm about 42x more klutzy high than I am with a couple beers in me. :P

edit: speaking of lunar observing: http://skytonight.com/observing/highlights/3745876.html

offtopic: I think I've asked this before.. but do we have any musicians in the house? I'm listening to Mono right now, and it's making me want to have an hours long reverbed out smokey jam session.. :P

edit: I have now moved on to more long feedback-filled instrumental rock, this time from Mogwai. :)

Here is a free planetary program for your computer just donwload what you want,, http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/download.html

/me has been known to get on the guitar and jam...fingers are rusty tho...

I have an Apple laptop at home, so that ain't gonna work. :) There's a bunch of unix/mac astronomy apps out there though, but I'm preparing to reinstall the OS on my computer so there's no point in putting new stuff on there right now.

somnambulant - now i'm going to dig out my old mogwai disks. maybe some godspeed you black emperor too...

after much consideration i'm leaving the threesome comments alone save for the fact that you left french accents off your lists of arousals. that is all.

I know king duppy wants to play some spaced out echoey dub.. :D

can definitely get down with some echoey dub.../me also likes to get down with the blues...;)

can anyone tell is a procrastination day at work for me today? Friday before a long weekend = productive

I second Keith's Scandinavian accent comment.. It's so ****ing hot. Speaking of Scandinavia, there's a post about the SSWC that just happened around Stockholm on the Surly Blog. I can't believe that happened the year AFTER I was living there. I remember reading about the one in PA last year while I was in SWE... d'oh!

"None of us wanted to leave Stockholm, to the point where I thought about selling half my belongings to move there. Have you ever wanted all your friends from around the world to live in the same city as you? Or have you ever been to summer camp and didn't want to go home at the end of the week?"

That is EXACTLY how I felt leaving Stockholm last year. Of course, that was during the Summer. I'm sure in the Winter I wouldn't feel that way with the crazy darkness ~20 hours a day. :)

I wish they would tour again. So good.

My Bad.

The limiting magnitude downtown is around 3.0 on a good night. In Richmond Hill it's about 4.9, and you can almost convince yourself you can see the milky way. Realistically this is the difference between seeing the little dipper and half of it.

Probably be best downtown to pick say Finch or where I live and ride northeast, or from downtown go east past Kingston. Or close to it. Driving one hour in any of these directions will yield fairly dark skies already, so adapt to fixie parade speeds.

Yep, several times i've seen it up here in R.H, once during a tour night as well. You can actually see in real time when these things happen thanks to the internet. If you go here:

http://www.sec.noaa.gov/ace/ACErtsw_home.html

You can access the soloar wind velocity data and if you suddenly see a giant spike in the chart: Look outisde (within an hour or two). There's also www.spaceweather.com which issues alerts/predictions based off this data.

Edit: Free planetarium program for teh multiple Os'es - http://www.stellarium.org/
PS: My frame is finished powdercoating today! Woot!

i was on the roof of my building during a meteor shower in japan (kawasaki) and i could see the damn SMOKE TRAILS on the meteorites as they burned up in the atmosphere. they were coming fast and furious.. something like a half dozen/minute. i don't think i'll ever forget that. some guy had a huge telescope on the roof of my building but i swear he was doing more peeping than star gazing.

looks like alot of rain this weekend :@

hahah.. yeah, I saw one of the regular big meteor showers (I can't remember which one now) about an hour outside st. John's back in maybe 1998. It was absolutely stunning. There was one every 30 seconds or so at least. There was one fireball bright enough that it cast really sharp shadows from everyone while I had of course glanced away from the sky momentarily. :P

shiznaz - i saw you crossing bathurst at king today at around 2:00. i was ashamed to be driving a car so i didn't honk. is that a new frame?

if the weather this sunday turns out to be as bad as promised, i wonder if anyone else would be interested in donning their waterproofs and doing a pub / brewery ride. ie. riding straight to a pub or some such thing and tasting a few before riding home or to moonbeam or what have you.
there's a good scotch pub on kingston road (feathers), or the amsterdam or mill st brewries are always offering tours. something to think about.

I may be out for Sunday night as it turns out. Earlier in the day is a go, though.

Hey guys, is it safe to unspread frame from 126 - 120?

If you can deal with the minor inconvenience of adjusting the wheel with the extra space between dropout and locknut, don't bother for now. Tightening the wheel with 3mm on both sides will not hurt anything. Trying to respace the dropout without the right tools will hurt it. If it really bothers you have it cold set at a framebuilder shop ie: Biseagal, Bike Specialties.
You can respace the hub to 126 as well. 2 3 mm spacers on each side of the hub axle.