Brian Kloppenborg - Astrophysicist and Entrepreneur on Brian Kloppenborg

Initial issue I recently purchased a new computer and installed Ubuntu 24.04 on it.

In this blog post I explain how to use your mobile phone and some cross-platform software to create a custom fisheye landscape for Stellarium.

In my previous post on the Adafruit Ultimate GPS with USB-C, I explored an issue related to the PPS signal being connected to the Ring Indicator (RI) pin, but undetectable by ppscheck or gpsd.

While exploring methods to receive PPS signal over USB, I purchased the Adafruit Ultimate GPS with USB-C thinking that it offered everything I needed to receive the PPS signal over USB and route it to GPSD.

Introduction Since returning to astronomy as the Executive Director of the AAVSO in September 2022, I’ve been participating in more public outreach events and attending star parties in different states.

Completing my series on restic backup solutions, this post describes how to automate Restic backups on Windows.

Initial architecture was written as a single python script discovered that the pi didn’t have enough horsepower to do that split script into multiple parallel processes that communicate using ZeroMQ messages introduced some custom C code to interface with…

Before continuing my series on the Open Source All Sky Camera (now abbreviated as OSASC), I thought it prudent to step back and discuss what I hope to achieve with this project.

This is the second post in a series which discusses the development of an open-source all sky camera built on top of the Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi HQ camera.

Over the last two months, I’ve been experimenting with the Raspberry Pi HQ Camera to determine is suitability for cloud monitoring, wide-field photometry, and detecting bright moving objects (meteors, airplanes, satellites, etc.).

Shortly after COVID hit in March of 2019, it became apparent that I couldn’t keep my business running doing data science, machine learning, and GPU acceleration.

Every decade or so some new technology comes along that vastly simplifies the maintenance and operation of my personal website.

For matters related to business, astronomy, astrophysics, or the AAVSO, please use Email: bkloppenborg@aavso.org For personal correspondence, please use: Email: brian@kloppenborg.net

Here is a list of long-period variable stars that have anomalously long eclipses.

This tool converts a Revelation XML export files to a CSV format compatible with KeePassXC.

After upgrading from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 over the weekend, I was surprised to learn that my go-to password manager since 2008 had been discontinued.

This post is a continuation of my bcache installation instruction series that began six years ago with Ubuntu 14.04 This edition includes instructions for setting up bcache on Ubuntu 20.04.

When I was in my teens I was obsessed with Maxis video games.

This is the third post in a four-part series which discusses my backup solution which uses dedicated backup machines, restic, and the restic REST server.

In my previous post discussing backup software I outlined why I selected restic as my preferred backup solution.

Over the last six years I’ve tried out a variety of synchronization, mirroring, and backup software looking for one that does not preclude application of the 3-2-1 backup strategy while supporting multiple operating systems and I’m happy to report I’ve fo…

Introduction While doing some spring cleaning, I found a hard drive which contained backups of all of my websites from the early 2000s and a few photos of the equipment which I used to host said sites.

In 2002 a friend and I attempted to start a wireless Internet service provider, called “Hastings Wireless” in our home town of Hastings, NE.

This post is a continuation of my bcache installation instruction series that began three years ago with Ubuntu 14.04 This edition includes instructions for setting up bcache on Ubuntu 17.10.

Recently a client expressed interest in developing a pre-built Home Theater PC (HTPC) solution with Digital Video Recorder (DVR) functionality for Over The Air (OTA) broadcasts.

I wrote a new, massively parallel photometric reduction pipeline for the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) AAVSO Photometric All-Sky Survey (APASS) program.

Several months ago we purchased an Arduino Starter Kit from OddWires to experiment with during downtime.

A few days ago I attempted to upgrade my Gigabyte P34w v5 from Ubuntu 15.10 (whose installation I documented in a previous post ) to Ubuntu 16.04 using the auto-upgrade functionality.

Through much experimentation I have finally been able to get optimus to work on the Gigabyte p34w v5; however, the specific implementation is far from flawless.

A few weeks ago I picked up a Gigabyte p34w v5 from Excaliber PC to replace my previous work laptop.

A few years ago I had an HP Envy 6T ultra book which shipped with Intel Smart Response software that permitted me to use the SSD as a cache for my hard disk.

Background During graduate school my wife and I had an awesome apartment that featured a wonderfully large, 8 x 30 foot deck on the 8th floor of an apartment building.

It seems that every July or August I get the sudden urge to blog and this year appears to follow that trend.

It seems that every July or August I get the sudden urge to blog and this year appears to follow that trend.

I wrote the benchmark library for the ArrayFire GPU computing library.

The instructions for setting up bcache on 14.10 are nearly identical to what Wei Dong wrote on his blog, except I had to create a manual addition for the bootloader before grub2 would recognize the bcache device.

While doing a little spring cleaning today I found one of my old Linksys WRTSL54GS router I purchased back in 2007.

Continuing my posts on getting Ubuntu to run on the HP Envy 6/6T, we have a (belated) update on getting Ubuntu 13.04 to run on this machine.

When I first migrated from Gnome 2.6 to the 3.x branch I hated it.

Several months ago I picked up a Nook Tablet on sale at Radio Shack.

As with my previous post on installing Ubuntu 12.04, the HP Envy 6 is not supported by Ubuntu 12.10 out of the box.

Shortly after starting my job at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy I received an HP Envy 6 to replace my older MSI MS1719 (GX700).

Now begins the story of the move and our first few weeks in Germany, all compressed into one post.

One of the most important things for geeks is keeping in constant communication.

I have often heard people say “as one door closes, another one opens,” but few have said exactly where that second door may reside.

I wrote new control software for Optec Inc’s SSP-4 Near-Infrared (NIR) photometer.

The SImulation and Modeling Tool for Optical Interferometry is a fast, GPU-enabled geometric model fitting program for optical interferometric data.

The OpenCL Interferometry Library (liboi) implements several commonly needed routines in optical interferometry in the a heterogeneous computing environment using OpenCL.

Standards of Fundamental Astronomy (SOFA) is a FORTRAN/C library from the IAU that provides a variety of useful functions for astronomy that deal with time and astrometric calculations.

The OIFITS SIMulator is a tool to assist in observation planning or in reconstructed image artifact analysis.