The Lockwood Blog

It has come to my attention that there continues to be a lot of confusion about what is happening in the night sky. I’m currently doing my teaching-assistantship at the University of Alberta’s Observatory, where I tutor students interested in learning about amateur astronomy, and expose the public to the wonders of our (visible) universe.

One of my all-time favourite tools for predicting interesting events in the sky is Heavens-Above.com. With the website you can check the configuration of the planets and stars for almost any night (a reasonable time past and present), check the rise and set times of the Sun and Moon, and predict what satellites will be visible, and where and when they’ll appear in the sky. I’ve even found it useful for identifying an object after I’ve seen it. I’ll give you a quick run down of how to use it and what cool things you can see (no telescope or binoculars required)!

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Actun Tunichil Mukal was absolutely my favourite part of my Mayan Adventure. I can’t believe I didn’t write a post about this while I was on my trip. Blame it on my inability to find an internet cafe in San Ignacio. That or spending too much time at a bar called Faya Wata:

The ATM cave was so cool that I’m going to hit you with a read more link to get the rest of the goodness, see you after the jump!

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It’s been a year since my trip and I’m itching to write down my last thoughts on my Mayan Adventure so I can start planning my next big undertaking. The trip spanned 22 days, 3 countries and countless adventures. Because of the unreliable internet and the fact that I didn’t bring a computer along with me, I posted relatively few of the over 1500 pictures I took over the course of the trip. In the gallery below, I’ve selected some of my favourite pictures from the trip to help supplement the writing that I did. Hit the read more link below the picture to read my final impressions and see the photo gallery.

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Canada loves Tim Hortons’ “Roll Up the Rim to Win” contest. I was curious to know what the expectation value of the contest is, given all the prizes, so I thought I would compile my results here. I used the In-Store Contest Rules available from the Tim Horton’s website.

35 Toyota Venza’s ($32,000) + 100 Cash Prizes ($10,000) + 1,000 Toshiba Laptops ($700) + 25,000 Tim Cards ($100) + Winning Rim Tabs = $38,019,185

Total number of cups: 281,686,000

Overall expectation value: $38,019,185 / 281,686,000 = $0.134970091

There is more data available in the Contest Rules, but strictly speaking I’m not interested in what my expectation value is for winning the Toyota, nor do I want to complicate things by recalculating my odds based on what province I’m in. So you can expect to win 13-ish cents on each cup you buy.

Happy rolling!

Here I sit, at an internet cafe in Caye Caulker and I really have to ask myself, “Why am I sitting in front of a computer?”.

Well, at least there aren’t rules against drinking in public (or internet cafes for that matter), *sip* ahhh.

Every restaurant has the motto “slow down”. Everyone here will tell you if you’re walking too fast. I was told to relax by a chef on the street, and I was already pretty friggen relaxed. I’m burnt as hell, the SPF 45 is almost meaningless. Tomorrow I’m SCUBA diving in the Spanish Bay and having a night dive at the local reef. Today I snorkled with nurse sharks, eagle rays, sea turtles, and saw those neat fish in symbiotic relationships with other fish. There are thunderstorms over the horizon which illuminate the clouds shrouding the moon.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy in my life.

So I’m not going to use the internet for the rest of the trip. We’re leaving for Playa del Carmen the day after tomorrow, and I’ll be home Saturday night. I’ll do a big round up post, and a couple of packing advice posts about what I used and what I didn’t. But other than that, I hope you’ve enjoyed the last couple of posts and I encourage you to post your questions or e-mail them to me so that I can answer them in the big round up.

The beer is beckoning. Over and out.