Teddy Roosevelt was Mechachronophobic

I was awakened today by the traditional national park alarm-turkeys. It is a proud tradition dating back to the founding of the national park system when Teddy Roosevelt signed his executive order stating "Each lodging in the national park, being devoid of time pieces (Roosevelt feared mechanical watches), will be assigned a turkey (or indigenous fowl) for the purpose of alerting each visitor to the beginning of the day. This should give each visitor time to prepare for the mandatory calisthenics"

Since then, the morning exercises have been put aside but the proud tradition of the alarm-turkey (or goose in some cases) lives on.

I'm to understand this is a legacy position, with children learning and taking the role over for their parents.

This morning I was in for a treat. I was granted the soulful song of not one but TWO alarm-turkeys. They are normally shy when you try to engage them in conversation so I have dubbed my two Nathaniel and Fuzzbutt 2.

[Nathaniel]

After my morning routine, I attempted to seek out these proud traditionalists. I caught up with them at shift change. Nathaniel was departing for other duties and his replacement, Zoot, continued his route.

[Pic 2 is Zoot and Fuzzbutt 2]

I'm pretty sure I witnessed an interoffice rivalry coming to a head, the two did not seem to care for one another. Still, in the presence of visitors, they did not come to blows.

I believe an office counseling session is in order. I'll offer this advice to HR as I depart.

Driveabout - Day 1

Day 1 of the drive-about.  I left the house around 1 today.  Probably a late start but traffic-wise, it was pretty much perfect.  I stopped in Gilroy to stock Ray up with garlic and continued down my standard path towards Monterrey.

Wow, the coast is beautiful.  The rocky shoals are somewhat like Oregon.  Every mile or two there is a place where everyone is pulled off to take pictures or just see the view.

Around 5, i decided to get a room.  There is no reason to push things.  If I wanted I could make it to LA (but why would I go there, I was there Thursday).

So here I am at the Big Sur Lodge (the lodge in the park).  I have a 'cabin' (no phones, no TV, no Wifi (thought that wouldn't stop me).

In a bit, I'll walk down to the restaurant and relax in the lodge.

Applications I Use #003, #004 - Kindle and Delicious Library 2

My house is filling with books.  I am a lover of knowledge (and non sequitur trivia) and the annoying enabling job (for a time) of working in a bookstore.  My home was losing cubic feet quickly.

 

So...two applications this time.

 

Last year I got a Kindle, Amazon's ebook reader.

 

Now, the Kindle has several positive aspects.

• Free Internet!  Granted it's pretty much 8-bit, color-blind, 1982 version of the internet but it can prove to be useful.
• A fairly huge library of books to purchase.
• The screen is easy to read, even in glare-inducing light.
• The battery can pretty much last forever.

And several negative ones.

• DRM on the books.  You can't loan a book to a friend without giving up the rest of your library at the same time.
• You can only purchase from the Amazon store.  Granted, there are ways to get other books on the device but they are kind of hack-ey.

 

Still, I enjoy the Kindle but I have not touched it in a few months.

 

I got an iPad.  Now the iPad does have the Apple book reader (iBook) but I only use that to read my own documents (epub and pdf's) but it also comes with a Kindle application.  All the books I purchased on my Kindle, I now have on my iPad.

 

I like it.  The iPad also supports various multimedia in the books, something that even the Kindle itself doesn't support.

 

The book piles are growing more slowly now and I now can take most of my new books with my when I travel.

Now, as to the book piles.

 

There is a program for the Mac called Delicious Library 2.  On the surface, it looks like a combination of iTunes and a wood bookshelf.

 

It's an inventory program, designed to keep track of your books, music, tools, movies and software.

What's so special about that?  I could write a program in a few minutes that lists my belongings.  The hard part

is getting your data into the program and then displaying it coherently.

 

One word - barcode.

 

The program uses the built in camera.  You hold your item up to the camera and Delicious Library scans your item, gets a picture of it from the Internet and voila! it shows up on the shelf.  It's easy and relatively quick.

Then comes the fun.  If you decide you want to sell your item, right click on it and you can sell it as used on Amazon (you still have to set up an account).

 

You can set up friends as well.  Why?  So you know where you've loaned your belongings.  You can become an actual library, with expected due dates and excellent tracking of who has your stuff.

 

If you want to get fancy, you can publish your library as a website or send it straight to your iPad or iPhone.

These two programs are how I am dealing with my book problem.  It may not be a perfect solution but at least it's getting better.

Revener

Revener did not intend to steal the blood, if indeed you could say stolen.  To steal implies intent, and Revener was merely doing what rabbits do, eat the food available.  That the ground that bore the lovely greens had been soaked in the blood of a deity, Revener neither knew nor cared.

He had been the first to eat of the fruit of that blessed earth so Revener was labelled a thief and was alone in bearing the curse.

Two days later, Revener became immortal.  Forty days after that, he received his soul.

For a thousand years, he wandered the world.  His mind expanded, he grew wary.  As a rabbit, he was considered a meal the world over.

In the East, he learned how to be invisible - to dim his existence below normal perception.  He met a wise man who lived in a small shack at the base of a mountain.  With him, he learned how to control his body.  Painfully, over years, he grew his limbs so they could grasp.

He grew large and strong, and lonely.

After a thousand years, the handlers found him.  The task they assigned him was insane.  Once a year, he was to invade chicken farms and steal steal the unhatched young.  As you would imagine, neither the farmers nor the birds took kindly to the kidnapping.

Many birds died those first years.  Doing what birds do, they defended their eggs.  Each time Revener was attacked, the bird fell dead.

The stolen eggs, he preserved and decorated on a massive scale.  Then he would hide the unrealized carcasses of his thievery for children to find.  Children!

In recent years, he found the children possessed his likeness in effigy.  These abominations, they would ritually maim - slowly consuming him from the head down.  The children did this with relish, enjoying each disfiguring bite with maniacal giggles.

Enough was enough; this could not stand.  In an obscure Romanian castle, he found what he needed.  For some, what he was to do would grant immortality.  Revener did not care, for immortality he already had.  Sinking his teeth into the evil, non-decaying corpse, he sacrificed his soul for power.  He drank it in.

Every day for a month, the handlers sought him out.  Finally, they found him at night, for to have his revenge, he had to sacrifice the day.  Never again would he see the sun.  He would do this task - he would obey the handlers this one last time.

One last time, the bunny would steal the young of the birds and complete his dark, yearly ritual.  But never again would they giggle with glee at his dismemberment.

This year, the bunny would have teeth.

Apparently islands always start with a hill - Bike Trip

I don't remember what year it happened exactly, I think it was 1981, 82, or 83 (hey, it was a while ago).  My friends Darrell, Tia, and Judy decided to do a bit of a bike trip.  

 

The plan was for three of us (Me, Tia, Darrell) to ride and Judy would be our chase car.  We would leave our homes and proceed on a circuit of the islands around Puget Sound, staying each night either camping or at a pre-selected location.

 

 

I just mapped the route, 120 miles total.

  

We were young, right?  I was in relatively decent shape at that point and I  neglected one major point - to train.

 

 

I don't remember how we met up, but I think Darrell and Tia rode to my house in Bothell and we went from there.  Judy would follow later, after she got off work.

 

 

Now, to get to the various islands and the peninsula around Puget Sound, there are two ways to cross the water - either by bridge or Ferry.  Our first goal was the Edmonds Ferry to Kingston.  The ferry fleet in Washington is pretty weathered nowadays, it seemed that way back then too.  I took those rides for granted back then, the Sound is truly one of the most picturesque places in the world.  Our ride had just started, so we weren't feeling too bad and besides, we were on an ADVENTURE.

After arriving at Kingston, I got a glimmer of a fatal flaw in my understanding of the trip.

 

 

If you arrive at an island, everything starts out up hill.

 

 

Darrell's tire was apparently cursed as soon as we hit the peninsula.  He used up his spare tubes pretty quickly and patching didn't seem to hold for too long.  I was starting to feel like I was in pretty bad shape and we hadn't seen Judy yet (pre cell phone era).

 

 

It was getting pretty late in the day by the time we got to our first stop,  Fort Flagler.  The Fort was originally

built in the 1890's as part of 3 strategically placed battlements that could theoretically stop an invasion of the Sound by sea.  Those of you not from Washington might recognize the sister Fort, Ft. Worden as the set for 'Officer and a Gentleman'.  All the Forts were converted to state parks and one of these was our destination for camping the first night. 

 

 

Judy finally caught up (with food and the huge tent) and we crashed for the night.

 

 

Walking the next day was a challenge.

 

 

The original plan was to go to the next Fort to camp for the next evening.  Our inability to move very well altered our plans somewhat.  We made it to Port Townsend in relatively one piece the next day, purchased all the bike tubes we could find for Darrell and took the Port Townsend Ferry over to Keystone Landing on Whidbey Island.

 

So, why if we were in so much pain did we decide to add 10 miles (the ever present 'just got to the island so it is uphill' problem did not go away) to our trip?

 

Strategy, my friend.  Strategy.

 

Five miles after Keystone Harbor, we had an oasis.  My family had a cabin on Whidbey Island.  It was right on the water with a wonderful view of the Olympic Mountains and, most importantly, plumbing and beds.  Originally, we planned the cabin for our final night but the amenities called to us - demanding that we make use of them.

Our legs held out (as well as Darrell's tire) and we made it to the cabin.

 

 

We stayed two nights, played board games and had a thoroughly relaxing time.

The final day seemed more like the last leg of a quest.  I think we all just wanted to get home.  There was one more Ferry ride (Clinton to Mukilteo) and about 15 miles to get home (for me anyway).  Towards the end, we each split up to head to our respective homes.

 

Is there a lesson from this trip?  Sure there are probably a few:

• Adventures with friends are priceless
• When you get to an island, it is always up hill.
• Don't be stupid - train!

A padded club used to keep puppets in line

In the last few months, I have noticed a word showing up over and over.  I’ve seen it in both books and news stories and I cannot recall ever having seen it before. 

Wonderful, another new word to show me how completely out of touch I am.

The word is ‘Boffin’.

Just looking at the word, I am drawn to the concept of puppets hitting one another or some kind of comedic event.

It’s not hard to discern the meaning by its context.  I just ran a query on boffin on Google News and this is a sampling of what I got:

“Brain Can’t Handle More Than 150 Facebook Friends Finds Oxford Boffin”

“Aliens will have our worst traits claims Boffin”

“German Boffin wants to make dumb gadgets smart”

“Boffin calculates pi to 2.7 trillion digits”

So, in American English, the translation appears to be ‘geek’, ‘egghead’, ‘person who is too smart for their own good’.

The context seems to keep things just on the geek side of the geek/nerd line (geek is someone with particular interest or skill; nerd denotes social awkwardness).

So, I did what anyone would do, I went to Wikipedia.

“...boffins are scientists, medical doctors, engineers and other people engaged in technical or scientific research.”

It came into use during and after World War II, where it was applied to those described as a modern-day wizard who labored in secret to create incomprehensible devices of great power.  From the look of the headlines that are associated with the term now, it is currently used for scientist in general.

It seems strange that a word can get by for so long without notice.  Maybe it fell into disuse for a decade or three and is only now having a resurgence.  Perhaps I just ignored it.

At least I know it isn’t something I didn’t understand because I am getting old and senile.  At least I hope not.

Bailiwick

Nothing like a warm, beautiful animated feature to bring your child to night terrors

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

Everything I need to know, I learned from D&D

This is obviously my problem.   I haven't played D&D for many decades.

All I Need To Know About Life I learned From Dungeons and Dragons. An IgniteOKC Talk. from Chad Henderson on Vimeo.

Yes, I am one of those Firefly fans

This is an old one but still one of my favorites.

A Class with the Shaman

During my first year of college all of the first year music majors took two classes together, music theory and sight-singing. Music theory was fun, we had a group that worked well together and helped one another through the rougher stuff. We trusted one another, which made the sight-singing class slightly less terrifying.

Three times a week, we would pile into the classroom and the ever patient Professor Zoro would try to get us to sing. Most of us were instrumental musicians, solo singing in public was not something most of us did easily. Still, awkwardly, we did it.

About a month into the school year, Prof. Zoro came in and instructed all of us to the auditorium for a Master Class. I had been to Master classes before, usually some famous/semi-famous person would arrive on campus and give a lecture to everyone who had the good manners to play the same instrument as them. But this class was different, this was ALL of us. Horn players, singers, my God even the percussionists (oh, the humanity)?!? As instructed, each of us brought our instruments (horns, fiddles, sticks, fingers, voice boxes) and we sat in the audience.

A tiny, elf of a woman walked onto the stage. She must have been middle aged, but she emanated comfort, energy and joy. (Yes, this will get new-agey - more on that later). She spoke to us of facing our judges (inner and outer) of energy and visualization. She told stories about approaching music from a different direction ("Music is Movement"). How do you try things without thinking about how it is coming out? How a simple thing like "Play that sonata, without looking at the music but while balancing on one leg" can have miraculous results.

I was skeptical because I was trained to be. I was going through an evangelical phase at the time and I had been taught that all of these things we were learning were directly from SATAN. If I gave in a fraction, the best I could hope for was a demonic possession. Visualization was worse than Dungeons and Dragons. If I gave in, I was doomed.

Person after person went up and tried what this woman told us. People demonstrated their problems and then, miraculously, the problems seemed to vanish. Whatever magic this woman was using, worked.

Apparently, I was doomed.

My turn came. I was having trouble playing an awkward interval in a concerto I was working on (very low to very high). She thought for a moment and presented my issue for the room to solve. Instantly people came back with various visualizations for me to use and things to concentrate on other than my issue. I seem to remember two things - rockets attached to the legs of my chair and, during a separate time, trying to feel the wood of the floor through my shoes.

Both techniques worked. Beautifully.

Like I said - doomed.

A whole new way of thinking opened up to me. the lightbulb came on and I finally started to feel some joy in my music again. She spoke of getting to know our judges and finding our inner clowns.

I bought her book that day A Soprano on Her Head - Eloise Ristad and also picked up the other books she spoke of (The Inner Game of Tennis and The Centered Skier).

The teacher, Eloise Ristad, changed my life that day, just by showing me how to look at things differently and not to forget the joy that got us into the arts originally.

One of the results of that day was a truce between my then evangelicalness and my "new-ageyness" (those aren't words, I know). It was my first year away from home and that battle is where I think I finally started defining myself instead of letting others do it for me.

Oh, and apparently....yeah - still doomed.

iPod Commute

I don't know how other people setup their iPod playlists for their commute. This is how I do it.

1. I subscribe to many podcasts. Too many.
2. When my rss feeds are refreshed in the morning, I go to the 'Recently Added' playlist.
3. I subscribe to many feeds that are only 1-2 minutes long (The Onion, 60 second science). I give these 4 stars.
4. The casts that I want to keep as a priority, I give 3 stars. It is likely I will listen to these today.
5. The filler-casts or ones I want to save for later in the week, get 2 stars.

I have created a playlist of all podcasts that have a playcount of zero, sorted (descending) based on the number of stars. If I don't get to all of the podcasts that day, they are on the list for the next day.

It is a quick way to set things up in the morning.

Signal to Noise and Pattern-Lock

The human mind creates patterns.  It's easy enough to see that to be true.  If you are in an office with a false ceiling, or spray on texture or something random like that, I want you to (wait for it) take a look at it for 30 seconds then come back here.

 

Okay, go.

 

Did you do it?  If not, then do it already!

 

Fine, I'll assume you did it.

 

Did you see the patterns?  Did the random dots form into wavy lines or faces or humongous single-cell organisms?  That is what our brains do, they try to build sense out of the random.

 

The question I have, though, is how much random can our brains take?  At what point does the noise become too much and it forces the little pattern makers in our heads to go cry in the corner?

 

Our world is full of inputs, little things that add clutter to our thoughts.  The background conversations at the office, the hum of the heating vents, the radio that you can just barely hear, the podcasts, twitters, emails, pages, text messages all come in at such a level that it becomes almost impossible to sort them into a coherent bundle.  The noise is too great and we go into pattern-lock.

 

I'm in pattern-lock right now.  It is not a case of 'not enough' ideas, it is more of a 'too many' ideas kind of thing.  I started my latest story, with a particular tale to tell.  But to explain that, there is backstory.  To understand the backstory, the universe rules must be known.  To understand the conflict between our main characters then something has to be shown for contrast.

 

All I know to do now is to pull the stories out of the jumble that I can and try to limit the noise getting into my system.  After I've done that (distilled the elements), perhaps I can find my way again.