Wet and Humid

I’m in Maine, where my mother is recovering from surgery. Posts will be sporadic from here so I’m going to leave you in the hands of Numenius for a while.

Singing, now, outside this window, are birds I used to know well and which I now need to really pay attention to identify. They include the Maine dialect of song sparrow, a winter wren, thrasher — I’ll try and sketch some for Bird by Bird as I get more time. A pair of ospreys was flying over the trees outside the hospital window yesterday…

Consequences 13

“This was only one solution for the present,” Ellers sniped.

McMason fidgeted. He knew all the funding for the Institute for Computational
History was at stake here.

“But, look at the correlations,” he replied. “The model correctly predicted that the Russians would move into South Ossetia during the time of the Beijing Olympics, and that Chris Hoy would be the first Brit to win three golds at the Games in a hundred years.”

“Did it predict he would be knighted for his efforts?”

“Uh, no…”

“Lookit, how many free parameters does your model have?”

“Five hundred and sixty-seven.”

“And I probably can tweak any ten of them and come up with different solutions giving Hoy and Ossetia. Mr. McMason, your model is underdetermined. To say the least.”

“Ms. Ellers, I just want to remind you of the opportunity you have here. Here is
what the model predicts. The Azerbaijanis will up the rate of water injection in the Baku fields. Overly so, it turns out. In three years, this will induce a massive earthquake just off the coast of Baku. That, the resulting tsunami, and the fires will devastate the oil and gas infrastructure, but more importantly cause a cultural phase transition.”

“Howzzat?”

McMason grew animated. “Fire! In a land with a small but vibrant Zoroastrian community. It won’t be so small after that. People convert in droves. The religious movement spreads south, into Iran…”

Ellers sighed. She now knew the butterfly effect could produce a loon in her office.

(This was the thirteenth post in an online game of Consequences. The series started at Hydragenic. The previous post was at Ivy is here, and the next post shall appear soon at Velveteen Rabbi.)

One Million Giraffes

Ola Helland had a bet with his friend Jørgen that he’d be able to receive one million giraffes by 2011. Hand-drawn giraffes. Why not send him one? Click here.

Tracker

Continuing down my list of projects following going to the Maker Faire, I just built a GPS tracker, the OpenTracker+. It’s the lowest of the three gizmos in the photo (the upper two are my handitalkie and my Garmin GPS).

We use these GPS trackers a lot while working the Double Century: they report the position of the sag vehicles so the folks back at start/finish (including me this year at net control) can keep track of where all the support vehicles are. I decided it would be fun to build one of these units, and finished the project this afternoon. Half the effort was putting the cabling together. After configuring the tracker, and checking the website where these locations end up being displayed, I can report it all works!

Arcane Knitting Gear

Saturday was Knit in Public Day, and knit in public I did, in Lafayette. There I met the extraordinary Agres who has taken it upon himself to learn as much as possible about pre-machine knitting in the British Isles (and pretty much anywhere else). The best way he can think of to learn how they did things is to try and replicate the tools and try them himself. He grinds his own steel-sprung needles, makes sheaths (the clothespin-like artefacts in the photo; they attach to a belt or apron string and a thin double-pointed needle is anchored in the tip). It was an amazing day; we were joined by Barbara and Elyse and a grand time was had. I have learned that Agres considers me to have learned “excellent pit knitting skills” growing up in Spain and for this I pause for a moment and say thank you, Francisca.

The leather pouch (knitting belt) I bought from Schoolhouse Press, imported from Scotland, used in Shetland for Fair Isle knitting, which I’ve been learning how to do as well. The vest, at right, is nearly finished (I ran out of the gray-purple yarn and don’t like the white sleeve facing I came up with as an alternative, so I am waiting for a final ball of yarn to polish it off with). This vest is for a very dear friend who lives in Sweden, and I imagine her wandering around the forest and mist in it, which is a nice thought. Because: It’s 96° here and I’m thinking and talking about knitting??

Dream Cake

A theory of mind in a raspberry torte
Top layer sensing — luscious crimson seed eyes
Underneath cream cheese filling deep cogitations
Crumbly base rich buttery motor actions
Food for thought.

Be-longing

Only the music belongs completely to itself…

Tosh, she thought.

The string-section shimmer of sapphires and turquoises on a mid-afternoon mountain lake, edging into the dark purple bassoon murk: they own the music. The gray pines that sang her their song that day in the rain. The clarion “play ball” and thwack of the bat on ball, the sub-human bellowed glottal stop of the umpire. Ours. The sweet saxophone solo: maybe it doesn’t belong to Charlie Parker, but it belongs to the night, to the smoke and the sweaty sex and the swilled liquor and the bebby Jesus.

We are along for the ride. We gulp what is here and ours and nobody’s and nothing’s.

(This is the fifth post in an ongoing online game of Consequences. Each successive entry begins with the closing lines of its predecessor. Entries are 250 words long, and are linked thematically. The series started with Hydragenic and was followed by Patteran Pages, Porous Borders, The Middlewesterner, and Feathers of Hope. The series will continue in a day or two at Blaugustine. )

Avian Sasquatch

My officemate wasn’t in this morning which means I get to field his phone calls most of which aren’t as interesting as the one today — the gentleman on the other end explained how he had found a flight feather a good bit longer than his outstretched arm (and he is 5’ 7 1/2”) but had lost it and this was up near Klamath Falls and there was an account of such a giant bird from Mexico in 1921 (killed — the 25-30 pound bird probably fed a family for a week) and another account from Switzerland of a different type of bird much bigger than a condor — these are high altitude birds, generally soar at 10-12,000 feet which is why no one ever sees them…

So do look up — you never know what you might spot up high.

In Search of the Cachapa

I went to a retirement party on Sunday, a friend who has worked in communications for sustainable agriculture and who gathered her various communities at her home. We spilled out into the Village Homes common area, laughed, talked, caught up. I’ll miss her searing intelligence, cheek (well, chutzpah), and questioning in meetings, her role as chief bullshit detector…

One of the delicious morsels served at Lyra’s party was carrot cachapas. Cachapas are Venezuelan pancakes usually made with fresh corn. Corn’s not quite available here, fresh, so the chef at Tuco’s used carrot puree instead. They were tiny carrot pancakes encasing a fresh goat cheese (which didn’t taste goaty in the slightest; I was surprised to learn it, and I have a very strong goat-sensor), like a sandwich.

They were incredible. I am going to try to replicate them, kind of smooth carrot latkes with cheese…

Christmas Lights In June

I’m well into my list of projects inspired by the Maker Faire. First up was building a TV-B-Gone. This is a device that can get you excommunicated from sports bars mighty quick: it acts as a universal remote off button to turn off TVs in public places that are harassing you. (We don’t have a TV to test it out on, so I don’t know if it works yet).

Second, I am starting to play with the Arduino physical computing platform. This evening I had fun blinking different colors of LEDs on and off, as can be seen at right.