The tiniest yet real telescope I've built

I always love the moment in blog posts like this, where the writer with their esoteric knowledge of the project will say something like "I almost considered reflaboring the exahenge, but of course it would be a ridiculous prospect for a project of this type". And then always, inevitably, there is the followup edit; "I reflabored the exahenge."

Too rarely in life are things made better than practical consideration would dictate, just because of dedication to the craft.

Your comment brings me back to my first mirror making adventure, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the jargon and acronyms used by the mirror making community... a few years later I internalized it and use it as if it was common knowledge. I should put little explanations or details in my posts.

A friend of mine once told me - learning a new field is all about learning the language of that field

There was enough there for me to get the basic idea, which is fine I think. Can't really expect every niche post to have all the details necessary for a general audience and it's fun to get a glimpse into these worlds anyway.

Thanks for sharing the post!

That's a big part of it, but far from everything.

I'm not really sure - I deliberately stopped there because the concepts related to that field are a part of the language learnings.

What they hear:

"Exorcise the lattice hoard to siphon the new incarnation."

What we said:

"Purge the web cache to download the new version."

I just love the fluent use of terms, and the whole ontology of the subject itself just seems so appealing to me. For a moment, I felt like others feel when listening to me and my colleagues discuss kernel build issues or other software challenges - befuddled, bemused, enchanted.

I guess, if/when I retire to that remote mountain hideaway, I might just get into this hobby. The idea of grinding my own mirrors to look at dew on the spiderwebs of the neighborhood is just so appealing.

A friend of mine asked me why we have such precise terminology in IT; I asked her why English has so many different words for "chair".