Sailing in the Nevada Desert

I want one of these!


Found via Lloyd Khan's excellent blog.

UCAP pal Jamie Beckett goes private

Congrats and good luck to UCAP pal Jamie Beckett on his new role in Winter Haven.

...the chain of events that led to me accepting the position of V.P. of Operations for SunState Aviation Flight School in Winter Haven, Florida.

Read Jamie's explanation of how he got here, and what it means.

"Hobbit" reviewers don't like HFR 3D

While "The Hobbit" movie seems to be getting reviews that range from decent to great, the HFR3D technology that I wrote about in a previous post is getting panned pretty badly.

Bryant Frazer of studiodaily.com presents a collection of excerpts from a wide range of reviews. His preface includes:

...some observers have variously complained [the new technology] makes the film look cheap, sped-up, and-or nausea-inducing. And it's true — writers seem to have mostly gone out of their way to pan the format, with critics for both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety saying the cons of HFR outweigh the pros. 

Some web-based reviewers were harsher, while a few more seemed to reserve judgment, noting that the negative effects of HFR seemed to be lessened over the film's running time and suggesting that moviegoers will eventually grow accustomed to the process and its improved temporal resolution.

Vincent Laforet of Gizmodo writes a pretty interesting treatise on why HFR 3D fails. This guy seems to know what he's talking about, but I wish he'd been able to include HFR 2D in his comparison.

Tonight I went to see his latest film in all three flavors of its release: 3D HFR, Standard 3D, and in 2D. 

On one end of the spectrum I had one of the most disappointing cinematic experiences in recent memory, and on the other extreme I fell into the film and enjoyed it very much—all watching the EXACT same film mind you. Here's how they compared, and why it matters.

For myself, I still think that at least part of the problem here (and if you read closely, some of these writers occasionally say something similar) is that HFR and 3D require a new cinematic grammar. The composition, camera motion, and editing must be different for these new ways of seeing a scene.

It may be that quick cutting, dramatic changes of angle and distance, and even actor pacing, must be different when you're gonna show a scene with this much visual realism.

I've avoided 3D in the movies 'cause it's always hurt my head. And maybe I can just continue to do that. But 3D doesn't seem to be going away, so maybe I'm gonna have to learn more about it.

The Hobbit "review" (no spoilers)

I got into the HFR 3D showing of The Hobbit yesterday.

I think it was a terrific movie, but a more complete review is going to have to wait until I've had a chance to see it again.

Maybe this is just me, but I had real problems with the 3D aspect of it. I found the image quality to be diminished and dimmed. Plus wearing the glasses and, frankly, seeing things in 3D, never stopped being a distraction for me.

In spite of all that I think the movie is pretty great.

This movie is part one of three that will present the story from the classic fantasy novel by J.R.R. Tolkien.

I read the book a really long time ago, so I can't really say how faithful this telling is (so far) to the original, but my gut feeling is that it's OK. I can't remember that the dialogue was as clever and humorous as this one occasionally is. And I think they've restructured the story somewhat, in order to tell it on the screen and to a less devoted audience. But if these are changes from the original text, I like them.

The movie's preamble, with older Bilbo setting the stage, does a very good job of explaining the backstory here. The story is more clear to me now, in a way that I don't remember it ever being just from the book.

So many dwarves! But Jackson does a good job of communicating the important energy of that group, while focussing on the handful that are important, and that we can keep straight in our minds.

Martin Freeman's Bilbo is excellently played in this first episode. In many ways it's more well-played than Elijah Wood's Frodo was.

No surprise, Sir Ian's Gandalf steals the show, regardless of whether the beat calls for action, exposition, humor, or pathos.

If I'm remembering the book correctly then in part one we've now seen all of Gollum that we're going to in these movies, and that's a shame, because Andy Serkis's reprise of the role is better than ever. (Am I right about this? Do we not meet Gollum again until LotR?)

As I said, the 3D disappointed me, but the reason I attended a 3D showing was for the HFR, High Frame Rate. HFR means that the movie was shot at, and in this theatre was being displayed at, 48 frames per second, as opposed to the traditional 24 fps. HFR is a process which is known to provide a dramatically more realistic image quality. And I was looking forward to seeing that.

Sadly there were very few moments when I noticed any improved quality due to the HFR. I blame the 3D for this. The image quality "surcharge" of the 3D -- the awkward glasses, the dimmed screen brightness, and the parallax overload -- seemed to cancel out all the benefits of the HFR. I repeatedly lowered my 3D glasses to see the actual screen image, and when it wasn't blurred by the stereo doubling I could see the very high quality. But for me anyway, it was mostly lost, to the 3D. I'd like to find a theatre/screen that is showing HFR 2D, but I don't know if there are any of those.

If you have experienced 3D movies before, and like them, then see the 3D of this one, otherwise use caution.

This is a really good movie. Not as great as Lord of the Rings, though the subject matter is less weighty. But this is a great adventure yarn, told by a skilled filmmaker, with great actors and stunning settings. I'll try to give you more detail after my second viewing. But I highly recommend The Hobbit.

Sensory Overload

Heading out this afternoon to see The Hobbit. I'm hoping to attend a showing that is in HFR 3D.

HFR is High Frame Rate. The movie was shot, and in this theatre will be shown, at 48 frames per second. Double the normal rate. I've heard for years that this produces dramatically superior picture quality. Looking forward to this a lot.

3D is of course, 3D. This will be the first mainstream movie I've EVER seen in 3D. My limited experiences with 3D on the big screen have left me cold. But Peter Jackson says it's a good thing, and he hasn't let me down yet.

I'll report.

The future according to the movies.

The Future from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.

How snowflakes grow

I found this at boing boing.

Too Cute

Big Bang Theory flash mob dance number

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln

This week's movie was "Lincoln" the Spielberg epic, with Daniel Day-Lewis.

I liked it.

But I should disclose that I'm a huge Lincoln buff. One of my all-time favorite books is Gore Vidal's historical novel "Lincoln". And I read, and enjoyed, Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals" soon after it was published.

So I came to this movie with a lot of expectations, and I wasn't disappointed.

Baseball is more popular than football.

Just watching a report on TV about the increasing problem of extreme injuries in the sport of US Football.

At one point they referred to football in a way that is very common: "the most popular sport in the US."

I've always had a problem with this claim, let me tell you why.

Disclaimer: This is a quick and dirty analysis of numbers I quickly dug up on the net. The data might benefit from fine-tuning, but I believe the underlying conclusion has validity.

Let's start with football.

There are 32 teams in the NFL. Each team plays 8 home games. According to wikipedia the average stadium size is about 70,000. If we assume that every game is a sellout then football sells almost 18 million tickets in a season (17,920,000).

Baseball.

There are 30 teams. They each play 81 home games. The average ballpark seats 43,000. Again assuming sellouts then baseball sells over 104 million tickets in a season (104,490,000).

That makes baseball almost 6 times as popular as football.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_stadiums>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_National_Football_League_stadiums>

Now I realize most baseball teams don't sellout their parks. I'm thinking that maybe some football teams don't either. So what kind of numbers can we find for this.

According to ESPN's 2012 attendance numbers. Football averaged 96% turnout. Baseball averaged 72%.

<http://espn.go.com/nfl/attendance>

<http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance>

Do the math and that makes football's tickets sold 17,167,360, compared to baseball's 74,710,350. That makes baseball over 4 times as popular as football.

OK so this is a pretty quick-and-dirty analysis. And if it was close I'd wonder what a more diligent comparison might show.

But it's not even close. Baseball is the most popular sport in America.

Cool or Creepy? You decide.

Modern farming not so good.

Here's an opinion piece about a govt study that shows that modern farming methods are not good for us, and not even cost effective.

src: NYT

IT’S becoming clear that we can grow all the food we need, and profitably, with far fewer chemicals. And I’m not talking about imposing some utopian vision of small organic farms on the world. Conventional agriculture can shed much of its chemical use — if it wants to.

This was hammered home once again in what may be the most important agricultural study this year, although it has been largely ignored by the media, two of the leading science journals and even one of the study’s sponsors, the often hapless Department of Agriculture.

Read the whole opinion piece.

I originally found this through one of my most favorite bloggers, Lloyd Kahn.

Notes on James Bond, Skyfall (no spoilers)

Went to the 11:30 am showing of Skyfall yesterday (opening day in the US). Here are a few thoughts. No spoilers here.

I haven't been to many James Bond movies recently so what do I know, but...

I like the Adele theme. I've been hearing it on the radio, and liked it there. And it works well in the title sequence too.

I also liked the incidental music throughout the movie. The Bond riff, and bits from the Adele theme kept fading in, and nicely underscored the emotion of the scenes.

I've never been a big fan of Daniel Craig as Bond, but I liked him much more in this one. I think seeing more of his vulnerability and backstory helped a lot.

They did a real nice job of mixing modern Bond with vintage Bond.

I don't hate the new Q, but I don't think he comes close to the wonderfulness of past incarnations.

Stating the obvious, but Dame Judi Dench is an awesome M. A real bad-ass grandma.

I won't go so far as to say the movie ever dragged, but I felt that at 2 hours 23 minutes, it was maybe 20-30 mins too long. Cutting one action sequence, or trimming them all by a few mins, might have helped.

Two thumbs up. If you like this kind of movie, then you'll be happy.

Jack Interviewed by Airspeed's Steve Tupper

Way back in May Steve Tupper, of the Airspeed blog and AcroCamp, got me on the phone, and we talked for almost two hours. I've listened just now to what I said, and it doesn't horrify me.

From Steve's shownotes of the interview:

On UCAP, Jack spends much of his time eliciting reactions from co-hosts Jeb Burnside and Dave Higdon and directing the conversation.  I had always wondered what it might be like to give Jack a free hand to talk about stuff as a featured guest.  It’s not that Jeb or Dave crimp his style by any means.  They don’t.  But solo solo Jack is a different thing from UCAP Jack and I wanted to explore that.  So I called him up earlier this year and he agreed to jump on Skype and hold forth for an hour or two. 

During the conversation, we talked about Jack’s flight training, airports, the pilot population, the aviation podsphere, and lots of other topics.  There’s something in this episode for everyone.

Direct link to the episode's audio (mp3).  Or better yet subscribe to Airspeed.

President Obama's final 2012 campaign speech in Iowa

While we're all sitting around waiting for the results to start coming in, here's President's Obama's final campaign speech from last night in Iowa. Good stuff.

(Jump ahead to about 12:10 for the beginning of the President's talk. Or jump even further, to 30:30, to hear Obama's remarkable "Fired Up!" story.)

Could Christie Restore the GOP?

I'm a big fan of Dave Winer as a tech visionary, but I don't usually think of him in terms of political thought. But this idea is intriguing.

My wish if Obama wins tomorrow is that he start building a cross-party coalition with his new buds Chris Christie and Bill Clinton. Go to a Jets game maybe. Ask Christie which Repubs are fun to party with.

The idea is that Governor Christie -- who's shown that he's a real Republican, but not one who's afraid to tell truth to foolishness -- might be the guy who can bring the adult Republicans in from the cold.

It's encouraging to think that Christie might be able to gather other sane Republicans together into the beginnings of a new faction of the GOP that will maintain its basic values, but is willing to work with others.

Ballot scanner momentarily jammed at my polling place.

Prob not a big deal, but for the record...

While I was at my polling place this morning, here in Nottingham NH, the ballot scanner was jammed for a few minutes, and they were collecting ballots for later scanning.

I asked to wait until it was unjammed, which it was within a few minutes, and I then put my ballot into the scanner slot.

Just for the record.

Flying with Friends

Here's a mini-essay I posted as a comment to a post on the facebook:

A couple thoughts on this. Although TV and other "modern" conveniences have had an impact, I am convinced that humans are, and always have been, social creatures. Given the proper circumstances we crave company. We naturally form into groups, and families (of all sorts), and clubs.

One remarkable result of the online "social media" movement is how much it has resulted in people who interact online also searching for opportunities to gather face to face. See the plethora of meetups and tweetups and just plain getting together for a beer.

And pilots are no exception to this. We love getting together for pancakes, or fly-ins, or just to hangar-fly over a cup of coffee.

A couple Saturdays ago I spent the day at an event of a regional soaring club. This was not simply a flying club, but a club made up of other clubs. They had gathered way up north here in NH to spend a week flying together in some unique conditions.

What I saw in them is that the special circumstances of soaring (it's very hard to do alone) gave them the little push they needed to be a vibrant group of flying friends.

There's a lesson to be learned there. To expand and strengthen the nation's flying clubs we must not only emphasize the financial benefits, we must learn how to make them a better way for us to fly with friends. To learn together. To share our passion.

Because bowling with friends is way more fun than bowling alone.

Lucky

Just outside again, looking for a pic to post here. Really couldn't find any dramatic images here at Lookout Point. Just a lot of small-medium branches down. All-in-all we were pretty lucky.

Initial look around

Just out surveying our property. No real damage. Lots of branches down, but not really even very much of that (*). 

Two observations: First, it's weirdly warm out. Like 60F, and the sun us just up, so it's probably gonna go up further. 

Second, I don't think we've yet seen the the bulk of the rain that we're gonna get from this system. The Dollof Dam gauges haven't updated since yesterday aftern

oon, but the Manchester Airport weather station is saying we got only 1.5 inches since the start of the storm. I think there's more rain coming.

(*) I've thought for a long time that the 1-2 big windstorms that we've gotten each year for the past 4-5 years have brought down all the weak branches. I'm surprised that there's anything left to be brought down.

(Originally posted by me on the facebook)

Still here.

Good morning. Still here. 

Power went out here at Lookout Point around 845 last night. I lit a couple candles and crawled into bed for a long winter's nap. 

Wind had dramatically quieted by 1100.  I happened to be awake at 330 when pwr returned. 

From what I've been reading, my two outages, totaling 9 hrs, makes me one of the lucky ones. When it gets light I'll head out and survey the wind damage. #sandy 

(Originally posted by me on the facebook)

Couple more Sandy status updates.

7:30 -- Intellicast.com is forecasting that the wind speeds will peak after 8pm tonight, then fade throughout the night. (the facebook)

8:21 pm -- Maybe just wishful thinking, but the wind seems to be subsiding here at Lookout Point. Gusts further apart, weaker, and shorter#sandy (twitter)

Dark and stormy night

Just outside investigating a big thunk on the roof. Branch fell. It's really wild out there. Wind blowing about as hard as I've ever seen it. A little spooky. "It was a dark and stormy night" (the facebook)

Collected status posts during Sandy.

12:30 pm -- Here we go. Power is out here at Lookout Point #sandy #nhec (the facebook)


1:59 pm -- I've now become a refugee at my sister's place in epping nh. #sandy But the power could go her at any moment. (twitter)

2:12 pm -- Well there we go. Five mins after arriving the power is now out at my sister's. #theendofcivilizationasweknowit (twitter)
5:13 pm -- Heard that pwr was back so Ive returned to Lookout Pt. If my days trajectory continues pwr  will now return at my sisters & go back out here (twitter)
6:19 pm -- Totally dark now at Lookout Point. So I can no longer see the effect of the wind, but it's howling louder than ever. #sandy (twitter)

6:31 pm -- Lights flickering ominously here at Lookout Point. This could be it. #sandy (the facebook) (twitter)

Joss Whedon On Romney

I think he's on to something here.



(Originally shared by me on the facebook.)

President Obama talks about his childhood with The Donald

On the Tonight Show: the president's explanation about why Donald Trump is so hard on him. Awesome.

 

I found this on talkingpointsmemo.com

Can 3D printing make the world more local?

"3D printing may put global supply chains out of business: report" -- smartplanet.com

3D printing (or “additive manufacturing,” as it’s called in industrial circles) takes offshore manufacturing and brings it back close to the consumer. It has enormous potential to shift the trade balance. Goods will be cheaper to reproduce within the domestic market, versus manufacturing and then shipping them from a distant low-wage country.

I found this story at kurzweilai.net.

BILL NYE-SCIENCE STYLE

Source: Boing boing

Hi, my name is Spot, and I'm a stoner. Hi Spot!

It's a sign of our times.

It seems that it's bad to get your dog stoned.

I remember back in the day, there was a period when it was considered fun to "shotgun" your dog, and then watch the hilarity that followed. But it turns out that marijuana is bad for your dog's metabolism, not unlike, what is it? chocolate, avocado? there's some common food that you're not supposed to feed your dog or he'll die.

So now, with the increasing number of places where medical marijuana is legal, people are leaving pot cookies and brownies lying around the house, and rover is scarfing them up, and getting sick.

So, don't do that.

Dick Will Make You Slap Some Body

Do not watch this. It is crude and rude and totally Not Safe For Work. It's also hilarious.



Originally from Boing Boing.

Conformity

What's not readily apparent, if you can't read the text, is that the surface they're sitting on is free floating, and its movement is driven by the motion of the metronomes, which in turn influences the metronomes themselves.

From about 2:00 on keep your eye on the second one back in the far right row. It tries to remain independent, but is eventually brought into the fold.

Fascinating, and maybe a little sad.




Originally from Boing Boing.

Nice View

"Fundy" section of Pawtuckaway Lake, Nottingham, NH.

LEGO Great Ball Contraption

Oh my god this is AWESOME!

Walk and Talk the Vote

Walk and Talk the Vote - West Wing Reunion - Bridget Mary McCormack

Shame Glasses

The Streets of New York

Pretty awesome.

VP Biden at the Flight 93 National Memorial

"Pray I will, and sing I must, but yet I weep."

Climate change: Wet wetter, dry drier?

Climate change is real. And we need to understand it as best we can so that we can adapt and make ourselves stronger as a result.

I can't say whether this analysis is accurate, but it's interesting, and points us in what I suspect is the right direction.

Story and video here.

Stand-up bike

Wanna go for a walk-bike ride?



Read more details here.

Andrew Sullivan on President Obama's Convention Speech

Andrew Sullivan on President Obama's acceptance speech last night:

I loved him. But I'm biased. I think he's been the best thing to happen to America in a long time and he has achieved more in tougher circumstances against historical odds than anyone has a right to expect. I cannot justify supporting this man and his ambitious attempt to re-balance America at home and abroad in 2008 and not helping him see it through to the end.

Read his entire live-blog of the evening.

Being Bobby Valentine

What is going on inside Bobby Valentine's head?

Bobby V is of course the 2012 Manager of the Red Sox (so far anyway). Many believe he was chosen for his reputation as a no-nonsense disciplinarian. But from almost the beginning he's done a poor job.

I find compelling the idea that a lot of Valentine's failure is due to the mixed, variable, ill-defined mission that he's been tasked with by the higher-ups in the Redsox. But it seems pretty clear that another big factor has been his poor communication skills.

And it's not just that he's not good a expressing himself. It seems that he often doesn't understand what's happening in front of him.

Over the past few weeks Valentine's been having increasingly bizarre encounters with the media. He get's asked a question -- admittedly these are often questions that are intended to expose some shortcoming of his -- and instead of answering, or NOT answering, he challenges the question.

Suggesting sometimes that it's a foolish question. Or one that the asker should already know the answer to. Or some other complaint about the nature of the question.

I get that these question are often intended to get Valentine to look bad, but hey, that's the game.

Here's the thing that puzzles me about Valentine. He's a lifelong baseball guy. He's been there and done that. How is it that he seems so naive about how the media and the manager are supposed to dance.

If they're asking a question that's intended to trip you up, hey that's what they do, and you can parry it. And if they seem to be asking a question that they know the answer to, that's their job too! They need to know what you think the answer is. That's reporting.

So I can't figure out what's going on in Valentine's head. I can't imagine he's that naive. Is he just too angry at the situation to be willing to play? Or is he on the verge of snapping. I've never thought he was the right manager for the Redsox, but I don't wish that on him. That would be too bad.

I wonder what's next.

Robot Running Cheetah

I think it's only a matter of time until we replace the wheels, on recreational All Terrain Vehicles, with legs. It'll be like having a robot horse.

Michelle Obama Speech at DNC

I've been hearing all morning, in the professional and the personal media, how terrific First Lady Michelle Obama's speech last night to the Democratic Convention was.

And they were right. Take some time and watch.

Wine in a Box

My wine lover friends tell me this is OK.

All I know is it tastes good, and it comes in a pretty cool box.

Dark Days in Red Sox Nation

It need not be said that these are dark days for Red Sox fans.

I'm pretty sure that we've all accepted (quite some time ago) that the 2012 season is over. But I think we had held out hope that we might get our act together, and see some things that we could take as signs for a more positive 2013. And not embarrass ourselves.

Nope.

As I write this we've lost 7 in a row. NESN said the other night that this is the longest losing streak since 2001.

Apparently the entire leadership of the Sox met yesterday in Seattle, where we're playing (?) the Mariners. Some think Manager Valentine won't last the week. Others think there's no reason to make a change before the end of the season.

Our next game is tonight (Tuesday) at 10pm. Lester is pitching.

Just close your eyes and think of Britain. I mean, we can't lose every remaining game. Can we?

"Rube Bait"

The money quote from an interview with Mike Lofgren, author of "The Party Is Over"

The primary purpose of the GOP these days is to provide tax breaks and other financial advantages (such as not regulating pollution and other socially costly externalities) to their wealthy donor base. All the rest of their platform, all the culture wars stuff, is simply rube bait.

Read the whole thing.

Family Style Bohemian Rapsody

Originally shared by Fabrizio Cosi on the facebook.

10 EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Technology Review website's "10 EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES"

http://www.technologyreview.com/tr10/

Angry Seas

All I can say is: "Wow!"

Think Different Commercial

Narrated by Steve Jobs. May never have been aired.

Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

Steve Jobs

Plot Device video

"That's not better"

Plot Device from Red Giant on Vimeo.

Ray Kurzweil on Colbert Report

I tend to agree with Kurzweil, and have similar goals, but I love this line from Colbert:

"Millions of tiny nanobots floating through our bloodsystem. Is there any way that coudn't turn into a horror movie?"

The Colbert Report
Tags: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Surprisingly Interesting Interview with Russell Brand

I bought a tool today -- 3/8 inch ratchet

Craftsman part number 944808
Quick Release Ratchet (Long Handle)

An addition to my motorcycle tool box.

Very realistic dinosaur puppet.

This is VERY COOL. But I gotta figure some of these kids are now scarred for life.

Kinect as Skynet

So THAT'S how that works.

That video made me think of this one.

Bill Shatner's Wake Up Call to the Space Shuttle Discovery

Junkyard Jumbotron

Junkyard Jumbotron from chris csik on Vimeo.

I can't say exactly what, but it feels to me like there's something more to this concept than simply slicing up an image. The way they id the different screens, and "input" their arrangement, will have other applications I think.

Apache Strike

One of my all-time favorite Computer Games (of course this is really showing how OLD I am). But I lust for an updated version of this game.

Sulic Hauser- Smooth Criminal

City of Toronto E Waste - Chuck & Vince

via BB

Snake Robot Climbs a Tree

This is a little creepy, but then I'm not wild about regular snakes, so...



via boingboing

Kids' Rube Goldberg machine

via boing boing

How To Make Organically-Shaped Gears

via Boingboing

Burning Man From Afar

Earlier this year I got excited about the possibility of finally attending my first Burning Man Celebration in Nevada.

Alas it was not meant to be, maybe next year.

But I've been following this year's activities by way of this low volume (1-2 posts per day) blog that seems to be giving a great bit of the flavor of this unique event.

Burning Blog

In some ways it reminds me of AirVenture Oshkosh.

Super Awesome Sylvia shows super simple Arduino

Pretty cute.



via MakeBlog

Merlin Mann's Fuzzy Little Boy

I was led to this Merlin Mann post by Daring Fireball.

John Gruber, of DF, highlighted Merlin's description of the effect of seeing color photos from times that we mostly know from B&W.

But, sometimes, an old color photo brings a distant image to life and produces something kind of special. The best ones make their subjects and their surroundings seem far more real and intimate.

When done well, these images help repudiate the implicit modern reading that pre-color photography realistically captured the simple but alien lives of people who were neither as complex, interesting, nor sophisticated as we CMYK people are.

But I think that Merlin's ruminations on the life of a little boy captured in one picture is truly touching.

But, the real star of the show has to be that little boy standing on the left. He looks like he’s about my daughter’s age—maybe 3 or so.

...

I wonder if his family was ever able to buy this or any other field. I wonder if they maybe found better work at the B-29 plant in Marietta or the shipyards of Savannah. I wonder if the boy ended up serving in Vietnam. And, if he did, I wonder if he ever made it home.

I wonder if he ever got to see his own fuzzy little kids spend their days standing someplace better than another man’s cotton field.

Earl is Coming.

It's looking like we're gonna get a close pass from Hurricane Earl later this week.

Friday, throughout the day and into the evening, could get pretty wet & windy.

In the meantime, it's looking like today is gonna be another unseasonably hot one. Forecast to be in the 90s again.

Nina's Message

My friend Sherman sent this story around as an email. He gave me permission to republish it here.

Hi Social Welfare undergrads -- especially the women.  I got a message to give to you.

When I got to my bus stop yesterday morning, Nina was already sitting there.   As I sat down, she introduced herself and let me know she wasn’t waiting for a bus, but just taking a rest on that hot morning before finishing her walk to the Dollar Store a few blocks to the west.  She heard that they had some good blueberries at a dollar a box, and she told me how her family used to raise blueberries and grapes on a farm back in New Jersey.  I countered with my own tale of picking blueberries in Maine as a child, and we both agreed that east coast blueberries are better than California ones.

 She asked what I do and I told her I was a college advisor.  “I hope you’re better than the one I had” she said, and told me her story of how she went to Bucknell (which is in Pennsylvania and not Ohio, as I guessed -- Nina sternly corrected me on that).  “I was a double outcast.  I wasn’t wealthy and I was a girl.   There weren’t too many of either at Bucknell, especially studying biology.  They called me a chicken farmer’s daughter, even though my father never raised a chicken in his life.  We raised grapes that were so good that we were the only farm in the county that the Welch’s people would buy from to make their juice and their jelly.”   She told when she was near to graduation; her advisor told her she should get married and stop her foolishness about trying to work.  “He told me no one would hire me as a biologist, and even though he was right, I think he should have supported me instead of trying to kill my dream.”   She said she ended up becoming an occupational therapist because they let woman work in that field -- “since they didn’t pay enough for men to take the work”.  I told her I had a lot of women in my major and that things were different these days.  “Oh yes, I know they are.  Girls don’t have to leave their homes now like I had to.”  She said that after graduation, she and a few girlfriends decided to leave New Jersey and they came to California.  “Back then, they didn’t have the same stupid rules in California that they did elsewhere.  I could work anywhere once I got here to California, and I got as much money as a man for my work.”

 Back then was in 1943.   Nina is 89 years old now. 

 “I better get going” she said, “before the sun gets too high in the sky and it’s too hot for me to walk.”  I asked her if she needed help getting up and she said “Oh no. I have my system.”  Then she rocked back and forth in a forward direction and each time she did, her butt lifted higher up off the bench until she finally got high enough to lay all her weight on the cane in her right hand and lifted herself up off the bench.  “You tell those girls of yours to keep studying and make sure they know how lucky they are.  No one is going to call them a chicken farmer’s daughter or tell them they can’t work in certain jobs. You know, I like that Obama fellow, but it’s time for us to have someone wearing a dress in the White House.  Tell your girls to work for that, and maybe it will even be one of them who become a lady President.”

 As Nina walked away to get her blueberries, I promised I would pass the message on.   

 And so now I have.

Thank you Sherm.

Samuel Johnson Quote

"Remarriage: A triumph of hope over experience."

— Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

Waiting for the Rain

Oddly, I'm looking forward to it raining.

I've been doing a bit of landscaping here at the lakehouse, and one of the projects is to put in some drainage gullies to control the erosion during rain events.

But it's hard to know these things are gonna be effective when it's dry. So I've been waiting for a rainy day so I can go out and play in the mud to fine-tune my handiwork.

We've had an uncharacteristically long dry-spell here in southern NH. But today could be the day.

Cute Video: "Robot Parade"

Robot Parade from Jared Foster on Vimeo.


via make magazine blog

Bubble on the Beach

UPDATE: Apparently this video has been pulled from YouTube. Too bad. I'll leave the posting here just in case it reappears in the future.

The preview image makes this look like an approaching storm. It's not. It's really very cool and tranquil.



via boingboing

Self-balancing, one wheel, electric scooter

via make magazine blog

Not Fall Yet.

I had been thinking that Fall had arrived here in Southern NH, but Summer's not ready to let go yet.

Though yesterday was overcast and threatening rain for most of the day, it was nevertheless warm and muggy. I was out in the yard doing some cleanup and just a little exertion left me dripping.

A cold drink that I left sitting on the counter quickly made a big puddle of condensation.

And today's looking to be even more, but with clear sunny skies.

9:45 AM and it's already well into the 80s.

Hang on.

Just wondering...

... If I can make a blogger post from my iPad.

UPDATE: I can!

Open Engine Model A Ford

thanks Dave Higdon

Bad Romance - Korg Monotron and Kaossilator

"I'm a freak bitch, baby."



thanks makeblog

Augmented City [in 3D]

Even without 3D glasses this is pretty cool. I've been saying for years that Augmented Reality is the future.



So where can I get a pair of red-blue 3D glasses?

thanks makeblog

Detroit's "Mower Gang" reclaims a velodrome

thanks Makeblog

Mini Cannon

Hope my nephew North doesn't see this. He'll want one. Hell, *I* want one.



thanks boingboing

A Sunny Beach Day Gets Ruined by a Major Storm in Finland

This could be right out of the opening sequence of a genre horror movie. Look close and there's even an evil face in the clouds at one point.

I only wish the clip didn't end when it did. It musta got pretty intense there.



from boingboing

The iPhone Antenna Song

Reportedly this video was played by Apple at the start of their AntennaGate press conference a few weeks back.



"If you don't want an iPhone 4, don't buy one. If you bought one and you don't like it, bring it back... but you know you won't."

I'm Baa-aack.

OK, so I've been away from this blog for awhile. Let me see if I can do something to change that.

Great Star Wars Parody: "The Blackstar Warrior"

Coming up for air.

Little did I realize when I wrote that last post the extent to which I would be swallowed up by the work of my trip to Las Vegas.

I (along with a small army of other people) was doing event tech support for the HP Tech Forum at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

It all went well, but the hours were long.

I did get a couple of chances to escape and visit some of my favorite spots in Vegas.

The real treat of my stay was the evening I spent with twitter/Mike_Flys and twitter/LVMoxieGirl, two new friends who I made through the aviation podcasting world. Mike gave me a nice tour of his home airport: North Las Vegas, and with Elizabeth we had a great dinner at "Three Tomatoes and a Mozzarella".

The evening started to get late so we agreed to postpone until my next visit a trip to "The Hog and Heifer" bar. Looking forward to that next time.

I'm now in Chicago, supporting the Pearson Powerschool University event. Hours not so long, but not short either.

I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying Chicago. More on that later.

Ready -- Set -- TRAVEL

It's been a quiet couple of month, travel-wise, in my work life. But that's about to change.

Next week I head to Las Vegas for 11 days. From Vegas I go straight to Chicago for a week. After that I'm home for a week, and then go to Orlando for eight days, home for five days, then off to Oshkosh for 12 days.

I think I counted it out as being on the road 32 out of the upcoming 47 nights. Fun.

Twitter in-common followers

Yesterday afternoon I was on the Twitter website checking out a person who had followed me, and I was considering following them back.

I was pleasantly surprised to see, in the right hand column, above the list of people this person was following, was a list of the people that this person and I were following in common. In other words, mutual friends.

This morning I go to a couple of Twitter pages, and I'm no longer seeing this very useful, and welcome, feature.

I'm hoping that its appearance yesterday was a momentary test on the way to rolling this out permanently. This would/will be a very helpful tool for deciding whether to "follow back" strangers who have I've been notified have followed me. Follow?

Chill Out, Google Users

It seems like a lot of the web world is in an uproar today about Google's experiment in putting a background image on their legendarily sparse search page.

I guess this is to demonstrate what it would look like if we all took advantage of their optional system for us each to put a personalized image in the background. And this demo was only going to be in place for one day. But the uproar moved Google to end the demo after only a few hours.

I'm not sure what all the uproar was about.

I agree that the page looked bad with the background image. I would not add a picture to my page. But we certainly all could have put up with this for one day.

But it really seems to me that Google should have stuck with their plan to have it there for a full day. Let people complain, and collect their feedback. Stick with your plan for a day, and learn what you're gonna learn.

Investment Advice from Gene Siskel via Roger Ebert

In a very good piece by Roger Ebert, on the financial collapse of the past few years, he relates this investment advice he got from his dear friend:

Gene Siskel, who was a wise man, once gave me the best investment advice I've ever received. "You can never outsmart the market, if that's what you're trying to do," he said. "Find something you love, for reasons you understand, that not everyone agrees with you about, and put your money in it."

"Wall Street's dirty, rotten scoundrels" by Roger Ebert.

Apple and Steve Jobs Announce New iPhone

Being the good Apple fanboy that I am, I spent two hours today hunched over my laptop following the announcements from the Keynote talk at the Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC).

Not a lot here that we didn't expect. In fact, as usual, there were a few things we kinda expected that didn't materialize.

But here's the announced stuff that caught my attention:

Updates to iBook. At least some of this seems to be mimicing the things that the Kindle iPad reader already do. One fear I have here is that Apple will wander away from the ePub open standard, and make it harder for outsiders to create ebooks for the Pad.

The iPhone OS is now renamed to be "iOS 4". Which I think is an unexciting name, but these things tend to grow on you, so I'll give it time.

BTW, Apple apparently had to license this name from Cisco, so I guess they like it a lot.

Big news is the new iPhone 4. New hardware design, slick, thinner, seems to be designed for better radio reception.

Much better screen resolution, which Apple's calling "Retina Display", seems cool. I'll have to see it in person, but it makes sense that this will provide a dramatically improved image quality.

Front facing camera. Along with the announcement of a video-phone app called FaceTime. I know a lot of people are excited about this. Maybe I'll "get it" when I have it in my hands, but it doesn't seem like something that will be all that useful to me.

It now uses the A4 chip -- the same one that's in the blazingly fast iPad -- so that's good.

It now comes with a gyroscope, to complement the accelerometers. This could be pretty cool. Game makers are obviously the target here, but my pilot friends are also liking the idea of better motion sensing for EFB apps. (Electronic Flight Bag)

iMovie video editing on the iPhone. This just leaves me cold. I can't imagine how this is gonna be really useful.

$199 and $299 with AT&T two year commitments. Still no word about Verizon. (I hope that whoever negotiated this AT&T contract three years ago is long buried in a shallow grave out in the central valley.) (Well, I don't really hope that, but you get my point.)

I plan to buy one of these phones pretty soon after they launch. I'm still using my 2.5 year old, first gen iPhone. I've been dragging my feet on upgrading, waiting for Verizon, but it's looking like we could be waiting a while longer. (Or it could be announced the day after I sign up for 2 more years with AT&T, which is probably what will happen.)

Perhaps of note is that I think that I will get the lower-capacity, cheaper version of this new phone. My sense is that with my iPad and my laptop, I really won't need to be loading all sorts of stuff -- and especially not the most memory intensive: video -- on my phone. So 16G should be enough.

16G is the capacity of my existing iPhone, and I've never max-ed it out.

...

One other thing of note today is the presentation-hell that Jobs and co. suffered during the keynote. Apparently the wifi in the room was so overloaded that it affected the onstage connection. This was a pretty big deal, given the attention to detail and advance planning that goes into a SteveNote. Jobs handled it pretty graciously onstage, but one has to wonder what sort of hell broke loose backstage afterwards.

( I occasionally work with the people who have done the WWDC network in the past. I wonder if they were the ones on it this time? If so, I may get the story-behind-the-story in a couple weeks. )

One person twittered that Apple could easily solve this network overloading problem if they'd just provide a live video/audio feed of the keynote, thus make all the liveblogging, etc, unnecessary.

...

So all-in-all a decent Steve Keynote, but not one, I think, that will go down as legendary. (Except maybe for the network failure part.)

The future...

Interesting quote from the novel I'm reading, Infoquake:

"Your future is what you decide to do tomorrow."

Kelly's in Medford

Beth Israel West Clinical Center

iPhone/iPad development book

At Andy's dinner last week I was turned on to a beginners iPhone programming book that I was told was just right for me. It's called "Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK" and yes, it's excellent.

I'm only up to chapter 4, but already it's clarified iPhone development concepts that I've been struggling with using other resources.

It's written very clearly. It's organized to present ideas in a gradual fashion, and at a pace that is fast enough to still be a challenge, but not so fast as to be indigestible.

Highly recommended.

PS. I'll post here when I publish my first iPhone and/or iPad apps.

Quiet Again

Traditionally, well in my world anyway, Memorial Day is the start of summer. Perhaps strangely, "summer" was defined by when you could comfortably go swimming in the lake here at lookoutPoint. And that has always been from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

So it was with odd pride that I was able to swim almost a week earlier.

Over the years the activity level here at Pawuckaway has grown in a very particular way. Weekdays are relatively quiet, but weekends get very busy, crowded and noisy. And starting the day after school ends both those categories will increase by quite a bit.

When I was a kid the weekends were the time to be at the lake. It's when we'd come here in the spring and fall, and it was typically when I'd find my summer friends also here. But since returning the the east coast almost ten years ago I developed this feeling that the weekends are when you want to hide-out.

During the week the lake and its surroundings are quite pleasant, but on the weekends it too crowded and noisy. It's tempting to make plans to go elsewhere for the weekends, and return on Monday for the quiet.