Welcome to Aimee Jean
Born on Monday 16th January 2012. Aimee Jean Beck, the latest addition to the Beck household.
Kath had a quick 2.5hr labour, and Aimee and Mum came home on Wednesday.
So far so good. Mum and baby doing well. Cameron (2 1/4 yrs) is still very curious about his new sister.
It has been great to have my Mum here for the week, and Dad comes back up to help out tomorrow.
My jobs for the next few weeks is building a Cameron prrof fence so he can play outside without the risk of running away, and building the last deck on the South Eastern corner of the house. Only 4yrs late! And a herb garden for Kath. That'll pretty much take care of the 2 week parental leave.
Hopefully we'll also get some clear skies, as we have had not one this year! Looking at the Observatory webcam history page shows a constant layer of cloud.
New Anemometer

I installed a new anemometer today. My old one had one of the three wind speed cups broken off. So now the wind speed will be more accurate.
Should be able to measure down to 2km/hr and up to 160km/hr. Hopefully it'll never be tested to 160km/hr.
Webcam History
I have created a self-indexing page that shows a history of webcam captures. Currently it updates with a new image every 30mins, but I may change that to 60mins.
To access, just click on the webcam image on the main page, or click this blog screen capture image.
For the tech geeks out there, the page is a php script that automatically scans all images then sorts them by reverese date.
On the weather station PC, I had to write a C# applet that automatically renames and ftp uploads the webcam image every 30mins. The applet will only update to the ftp site if the image is taken in the daytime and the image has not already been uploaded.
Starmate Kenya
Doing a search on google maps for Starmate and found the Starmate Hair Salon in Nairobi Kenya! Far our. No street view here, so I will have to visit there one day for a cut and blow.
Unidentified bird
The observatory snapped this shot this morning. I have no idea what sort of animal it is.
Looks like a kaka or kea, but we ain't got those around home.
Anyone got any ideas?
BoP Rain
Crickey it's wet. Any hope of seeing Lovejoy naked eye is well and truly gone :( Certainly has been wet here in Matata. Although my weather rain guage in Waiuku is showing 0mm. I think it must be blocked again.
Bay of Plenty Rain Radar 8pm 30/12/12 courtesy of NZ Metservice
30/12/2011 8:20 PM
Comet Lovejoy
Comet Lovejoy, or the great christmas comet of 2011, is so far alluding me.
Great images and observing reports are coming in from around NZ and Australia, but to my frustration I have yet to catch a glipmse. Early morning wake-ups culminated in hourly alarms from 2am this morning, olnly to be denied by cloud. The west and north were almost always clear, and my view from the window in my bedroom is facing west, each alarm gave me hope with a clear sky out of the window!!
And now we have an ex-tropical cyclone heading south from the coral sea, the next few days might also be in vain. With reports of the tail being circumpolar now, and the head up by 2am tonight, we'll keep persisting. But with each night the comet brightness dims as it moves away from the sun and back to it's cold normality.
Keep looking up.
27/12/2011 9:19 AM