Trump Caricature.
Digital drawing in Procreate on Apple iPad.
I've always liked this pose of Iron Man.
This is a poor drawing, but I learned some things from doing it.
As I wrote in the notes underneath, I like the proportions and a bit of feeling the expression of the character.
I'm beginning to realize that this stage of "learning to draw" is not simply about learning to "draw". It is also about learning to "see". To become sensitive to the subtleties of the angle of the head, and the shape of the torso. With experience I think that I will be able to more quickly recognize these attributes of a scene, and thus be able to try and draw them accurately.
Learning.
Today we begin phase two of these drawing exercises. Now we're reproducing a drawing that we like. Here's the Jedi Droid Huyang from the Ahsoka comics.
Javi Drawing Day Three. (2 1/4 x 5 inches. #2 pencil on printer paper.)
Tomorrow the style of daily drawings changes. Stay tuned.
Although I'm hoping for the Democratic candidate to win, it's notable that regardless of party New Hampshire is likely to have a woman governor for the upcoming term.
Polling for the upcoming state primary:
"On the Republican side, 65 percent of likely GOP voters said they would cast their ballot for Kelly Ayotte," and...
"For the Democrats, 39 percent of respondents said they'd vote for Joyce Craig, with 30 percent of those polled backing Cinde Warmington"
Source: WMUR-TV
People around the country still think of New Hampshire as a conservative state, and it can be. But in statewide elections we've repeatedly elected women to leadership roles.
I like that.
Well this is cool. Figuring out the best route, then visiting the streets named after every day of the year throughout Europe. (Fair warning, it's a 'lightning talk' so the guy talks fast.)
For the past couple days they've been stringing fiber along my street.
I'm wondering if I should look into signing up for it.
I have two missions while there.
First is I have a "day job" assignment in Orlando. I'll be doing that first after arriving in Florida.
After the work is done I'll move on to a visit with my podcast partner Jeb.
And who knows what other adventures may happen before, during, and after.
More on the progress of this adventure in this blog. Subscribe.
Over the years I've absorbed enough unix/linux ability to be able to stumble around in the accounts I use. Mostly for web development.
It appears that many MIT curricula put students into a similar situation. And this course is to fill in the gaps in their (my!) skills at using the OS from the command line.
Shell scripting. Useful commands that I'd never heard of. A great illustration of using piping and redirection to splice commands together. Also a great overview of using the version control system 'git' from the command line.
I'm only halfway through, and I've already learned a bunch of things that I'll use all the time.
January 29, 2024
Hi!
I'm pretty sure no one noticed, but I missed last week's message here. I hope to not miss it very often.
My goal is to spend 2024 focussing on building my work in creating, and my audience for, content about things other than General Aviation.
I'm sure most of you know my work on the Uncontrolled Airspace Podcast -- with Jeb Burnside and Dave Higdon. And I'll continue to be involved with that. But I want to concentrate more this year on creating other media things, about other subjects that interest me.
For the first few months I'll be experimenting. Dabbling in too many subject areas and media forms. But eventually I hope to discover the intersection of, what I'm most interested in, and what you all want to see.
My work with the UCAP podcast has been almost exclusively audio, but in this new work I'm very interested in the visual arts.
January 15, 2024
Last week I reported that we finally got some snow (8.5 inches!) up here in Seacoast New Hampshire.
Well, two days later, the temperature rose to 50 degrees F, and it rained for the better part of 24 hours. Almost all the snow was melted and washed away.
And now, this morning's low temp was 20F! And the forecast is for it to stay below freezing 24/7 for the next week.
We've moved, from the unseasonably warm of December, onto a weather roller-coaster.
Monday, January 8, 2024 -- Good morning.
The big news up here in Seacoast New Hampshire is that it's finally snowed.
This winter had shaped up so far for its historically low snowfall totals. Specifically, NO SNOW yet.
But this past Saturday night and through the day Sunday we got 8 1/2 inches of white fluffy. This is more like it.
Although the current forecast is for 2 inches of RAIN on Wednesday. So... it's the new normal.
We posted a new episode of UCAP, #1083 (lgy 722) with guest co-host Drew "172Drew" Poley. Jeb and I talked with Drew about Jeb's new avionics and Drew's new airplane, among other things.
I'd really like to start blogging regularly again.
Back in the aughts I was a very active blogger. Posting multiple entries every day. Some of those blogs are still available online. Maybe I'll pull together a list of links.
I've been thinking lately, and pretty much decided, that in response to the collapse (maybe I should write more on that claim) of social media, I want to return to blogging on a daily basis.
Then the problem becomes what platform to use.
There's this one, blogger. Not a bad choice. But being part of the google (alphabet?) ecosystem makes it concerning. Google's been known to end these things before. Frankly I'm surprised they haven't ended this one already.
Wordpress is a non starter for me. It's become too bloated and hard to maintain. Also it's database/php driven, which I think makes it too fragile for longterm existence.
I've always liked the Jekyll system. But I've never figured out how to get it running on my hosting systems. Maybe I should invest some time in figuring that out.
But somehow I want to blog. My goal is at least one decent post each day. Stay tuned.
This outfit tags sharks with radio trackers, and you can see the most recent "ping" from each shark's location. I came across this because the shark Anne Bonny" has been pretty close to shore here in seacoast New Hampshire.
In the world of World of Warcraft we are in the midst (nearing the end actually. Woo hoo!) of the "pre-expansion" period before the next Expansion of the game: "Dragonflight"
At the beginning of the pre-ex I set some goals for myself, and for my various playing characters ("toons", do they still call them that?).
I hadn't played the game at all in many months, maybe a year. I never really warmed up to the "Shadowlands" previous expansion. So, before the new expansion I wanted to get my main character up to the "level cap" so it was ready to move on into the new content.
I also chose two other of my characters that I wanted to improve, using the easier leveling capabilities that are available during the pre-ex.
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| My WOW characters. |
My "main" is a "Shaman", part of the faction "Alliance". I have another char that is part of the other, opposing faction: "Horde". It is also a Shaman. I don't play the Horde char very much, but I like to keep it reasonably up to date, so I have the ability to experience the game from that perspective when I want.
So I wanted to get my Horde char to the level cap too.
Finally, there's my Hunter. For years now I've played the character class "Shaman". But in an earlier period I spent a bunch of years as a Hunter.
In WOW all character classes play differently. They have different powers, and fight using different techniques. I've found Shaman to be a class that I'm pretty comfortable with. I'll never be a top level player, but I can succeed pretty well with the Shammy. But I recently got homesick for my Hunter.
So I decided to try to re-familiarize myself with it, and maybe get it to the cap as well.
I've achieved my main goals of getting the two mains to the cap, Level 60. And I've spent some time revisiting what it means to be a Hunter. But that last it turning out to be a challenge. Very different fighting style, that I wasn't very good at before, and I'm still not.
But anyway. I'm mostly ready for the Expansion. The mains are Level 60, and "geared up" as well as is available to we mere solo Questers. With the remaining time before the Big Day I'll chip away at leveling the Hunter, and see how far I can get it.
The World of Warcraft expansion "Dragonflight" drops on Monday November 28 at 6pm EST.
A recent Granite Geek blog post reports on the historic improvement in visibility from New Hampshire's Mt Washington.
This story put me in mind of one that I heard back when I lived in California.
It is said that from the summit of Mt Diablo, near Oakland and San Francisco, one could see the second greatest land surface area of any peak in the world. This always seemed plausible to me given Diablo's steep rise from a relatively flat area.
I was far from the only one to hear and embrace this story, but it's sadly turned out to be untrue. Nevertheless, I wonder what geographical oddity we can find (or invent) to enhance the legend of our own Mt Washington. ???
"Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis was performed on white oak from New England and the results were compared to Midwest white oak. The comparison confirmed that there were discernable differences in the chemical characteristics that could affect the taste of a beverage. Beverage producers can source New England white oak staves or casks if they prefer fewer tannins and more of a specific chemical compound called trans-whiskey-lactone, relative to other sources of American white oak. This is the first known chemical analysis comparing New England white oak to white oak from other regions."
I'm looking to upgrade the TV in my home.
All the TVs that I'm looking at are labeled "smart" TVs. But I'm pretty sure I don't want a smart TV.
And second, I really don't want to deal with the annoyance of a TV that thinks it's smart.
Any suggestions?
But it would all come to a crashing halt on Labor Day weekend. We'd celebrate the end of summer with cookouts, more boating and swimming, through to the Monday holiday.
Historic dates for lake level rise of Pawtuckaway Lake, Nottingham NH.
| Year | reached -3ft | reached full pond |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 3/20 | |
| 2015 | 4/7 | 4/23 |
| 2014 | 4/10 | 5/17 |
| 2013 | 4/5 | 5/25 |
| 2012 | 3/18 | 5/16 |
| 2011 | 4/6 | 4/23 |
| 2010 | 3/14 | 4/21 |
Source: My Lake Level History Chart
For some reason I'm craving Taco Bell lately. Discovered their "grillers", esp the chipotle chicken ones.
A novel camera system that can detect objects hidden by obstructions — without using a mirror — has been developed by scientists at the University of Bonn and the University of British Columbia.
It uses diffusely reflected, time-coded light to reconstruct the shape of objects outside of the field of view.
Next, using a chemical computational method they developed, the researchers screened nearly half a million compounds and identified thousands of predicted ligands. They then short-listed 138 compounds based on desirable characteristics such as smell, safety, cost and whether these occurred naturally. Several compounds either inhibited or activated cpA neurons of which nearly 85 percent were already approved for use as flavor, fragrance or cosmetic agents. Better still, several were pleasant-smelling, such as minty, raspberry, chocolate, etc., increasing their value for practical use in mosquito control.
Confident that they were on the right track, the researchers then zeroed in on two compounds: ethyl pyruvate, a fruity-scented cpA inhibitor approved as a flavor agent in food; and cyclopentanone, a minty-smelling cpA activator approved as a flavor and fragrance agent. By inhibiting the cpA neuron, ethyl pyruvate was found in their experiments to substantially reduce the mosquito’s attraction towards a human arm. By activating the cpA neuron, cyclopentanone served as a powerful lure, like CO2, attracting mosquitoes to a trap.
...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.
...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.
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| 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.
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.
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.)
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.
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 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.
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.
