Dan Tell's Progressive Populist Planetarium Projects, Programs, Philosophy, Paraphernalia and Periphera.

HOW TO REPAIR KODAK EKTAGRAPHIC III SLIDE PROJECTORS: A VIDEO TUTORIAL

Kodak Ektagraphic Repair and Maintenance from Daniel Tell on Vimeo. I presented a workshop at the 2008 GLPA conference on how to repair Ektagraphic IIIs. A number of people who couldn't attend requested I make a video to show the steps I do. These repairs have taken my facility from being on the verge of complete breakdown to the best working condition we've ever been. I also review a few steps of regular maintenance I do every 1-2 years. I hope that is helpful! If you have any suggestions for improvements/other things you do/I'm totally wrong on something, please, let me know! Other videos: Anim8or Tutorial Series (learn how to make planets with anim8or): 1: Tour of Anim8or.
2: Making a Sphere and Basic Texturing
3: Ambient/Diffuse Texturing Basics
4: Setting up a Scene
5: Animating Simple Rotation
5: supplemental: Render Output.
6: Animating an Orbit
6: supplemental: Render Output
7: Bump Maps

Next part will be animating a moon's orbit, and maybe a planet's too (there's a trick that makes moons easier than planets) (early next week (hopefully)).

Anim8or is a free 3D modelling utility available from anim8or.com. It is not open license so it doesn't develop as quickly as Blender, but it's still pretty powerful and has a very easy-to-use interface.

I've had a few questions about Anim8or, so I thought tutorials of what I do help. I'll try to add one or two a week, and each time we'll look at things to do to make your planets prettier (but also more complicated). Many of my textures are from JHT's Planet Pixel Emporium, Björn Jónsson's page and NASA's Blue Marble project. I have a lot of custom textures soon that I am trying to work out the best means for distribution for still.

Don't like Anim8or? Waylena McCully has great Blender tutorials on the same subjects. Blender's way more powerful than Anim8or, I'm just too inept to use it.

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Other stuff:

In summer of 2008 the Battle Creek Digistar I (which began its life at Johnson Space Center, I have been told) was retired and was going to be scrapped. Luckily, a few of its parts were saved. Its lens, I understand, has become an allsky camera (I didn't get the lens). Its hardware has been converted to a new useful and aesthetic life: