Dreamsongs vol. I & II by George R.R. Martin I picked up up this two volume set of short stories from the sale rack at Barnes & Noble for a bit of light, casual reading with no real expectations. This is my first experience with Martin's work and I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. The stories go in chronological order of writing, and the first few were what can best be described as derivative and stilted. But they just kept getting better, deeper, more thoughtful and interesting. Now I suppose I'll have to seek out more of Martin's work.

When I redesigned and rebuilt the telescope, one thing that I didn't change was the primary mirror cell. A few weeks ago I decided to clean the mirror and reached a few conclusions: 1) it was highly inconvenient to remove the mirror from the cell, 2) the cell did not allow for any air circulation at all and 3) the design was just sloppy. So I cast about for ideas and happened upon Gary Seronik's simple design. I especially like that, instead of having springs on each of the 3 collimation bolts to provide tension, Gary's design has the collimation bolts pulling the mirror cell tight against an acorn nut which provides a central pivot point. I didn't follow his plan exactly, but adapted it to the design of my telescope.

Images of my new primary mirror cell are in this photo set.

Gary Seronik's primary mirror cell design can be found on his site.