23 December 06
Weather Faxes
I realize I can download practically any weather chart I might dream of from the National Weather Service websites, but somehow it’s just neat to pull the weather fax transmissions for mariners over shortwave and look at those. The transmissions I was picking up originate from a station at Point Reyes and cover the North Pacific. Admittedly, I’m glad I didn’t need to actually read these faxes for nautical purposes: there was too much noise in the transmission for them to be legible. But I’m working on that.
22 December 06
On Holiday
Nine days off! I’m thrilled we’re staying put, not trying to catch planes and deal with weather.
A book arrived today from my sister and brother-in-law, Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation. I didn’t wait till Christmas to open it, nor to read it.
I haven’t read The End of Faith, but I will now. It’s good to read an atheist with a good command of Christian scripture. What to do about the lamentable state of affairs in the United States is something that was explored in this year’s San Francisco Mime Troupe play, but, as Harris points out, “the fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes [that the world is about to end and that its ending would be glorious, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.”
21 December 06
Feld Hell and Friends
Last Friday marked a momentous event in the history of ham radio — the FCC declared that knowledge of Morse Code will no longer be necessary in obtaining any level of ham license. This move has been long forthcoming, especially since many other countries in the past few years have abandoned the Morse requirement. My initial reaction to this news was a bit of guilt, followed by relief: my campaign to learn Morse Code has gotten sidetracked these past few months. The FCC decree goes into effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, and from that time on all I’ll have to do is pass a multiple-choice theory and practice of operations exam to get on the air on the high frequency bands (30 Mhz and below).
What I’m immediately interested in is some of the digital keyboarding modes. These take advantage of the digital signal processing capabilities of modern computers’ sound cards. One hooks up the computer to the audio input and output of the transceiver, and types away at the computer to send digital signals over the air. The advantage of these digital modes, and for that matter Morse Code, over voice is that they work very well with weak signals.
There are many of these digital modes in use — some new, for instance PSK31, which has gotten quite popular, dates back to 1999, and some quite old. One of these, Hellschreiber, goes back to 1929 in Germany. It is essentially a fax mode, where one transmits an image of the text one types out, the characters getting encoded into a 49-pixel matrix. It was originally used over landlines and over radio, the latter version termed Feld Hell (Field Hell).
The name Hellschreiber comes from that of the inventor, Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell, who turns out to have had a very long and interesting career. He died in 2002 at the age of 100. He eventually got interested in typesetting, and in 1964 invented the first digital typesetting system called the Digiset. His company in 1990 merged with Linotype to form Linotype-Hell AG, a corporate name which seems to have lasted until 1996 when Heidelberg took them over and spun off Linotype as a subsidiary.
20 December 06
Solstice
I’ve hurt myself. I slipped yesterday on the plank across the ditch, trying to get Charlie inside before I was late for work. (Ha.) There was frost on the plank, and I came a cropper onto my back. No harm done, thought I after a brief horizontal assessment, but this morning I woke up with a kind of reverse whiplash. Muscle strain, said the doc tonight; it’s going to take about 4 weeks to heal.
!
Anyway, what I wanted to say was this: the best writing I’ve seen for ages and ages is Kathleen Jamie’s Findings, sent to me by my dear friend Joe in Glasgow. There’s a beautiful piece about looking for the darkest dark, failing to find it on a ferry trip to Orkney but finding plenty else to write about. Damn but this gal can write, and as we hunker down before the shortest day the longest night, sucking down anti-inflammatories, it’s a good time to ponder why we’re here. And what we’ll do with the time we have left.
19 December 06
Vertical Garden
Patrick Blanc’s work literally takes landscape architecture to a new dimension. There are more than a few buildings I wouldn’t mind seeing thus adorned.
(Via Urban Cartography)
18 December 06
On Not Getting Soaked
Our Bird Count yesterday was cold, but sunny sunny sunny, and we were able to bike the ridge. It felt good to move, felt good to climb the few hills along the ridgeline, to be startled by the purple finch’s raspberry hue.
One of our area 8 crew got bitten by a gopher snake, however. She was trying to usher it off the road. (It was her second attempt: the snake just resumed its suicidal position.)
I’ll post a photo of said snake tomorrow, but Ron’s doing fine, I’m sure you’ll all be glad to hear.
Next year: shall we cycle up Mix? That’s a steep gradient and goes on for almost five miles. I’m not in any shape to do it any time soon, but would like to get that way…
List of Birds Seen in Area 8:
Great Egret 1
Canada Goose 8
Turkey Vulture 38
White-tailed Kite 1
Golden Eagle 3
Sharp-shinned Hawk 3
Red-shouldered Hawk 6
Red-tailed Hawk 18
American Kestrel 7
Prairie Falcon 1 (Count Week)
Wild Turkey 13
California Quail 47
Mountain Quail 1
Killdeer 21
Rock Pigeon 15
Mourning Dove 18
Great Horned Owl 9
Western Screech-owl 1
Northern Pygmy-owl 1 (Count Week)
Anna’s Hummingbird 7
Belted Kingfisher 1
Acorn Woodpecker 32
Northern Flicker 33
Red-breasted Sapsucker 2
Nuttall’s Woodpecker 14
Pileated Woodpecker 1
Black Phoebe 10
Say’s Phoebe 3
Loggerhead Shrike 1
Hutton’s Vireo 3
Steller’s Jay 17
Western Scrub-jay 48
Yellow-billed Magpie 22
American Crow 3
Common Raven 14
Wrentit 31
Oak Titmouse 25
Bushtit 59
Brown Creeper 2
White-breasted Nuthatch 8
Bewick’s Wren 6
Golden-crowned Kinglet 3
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 54
Western Bluebird 11
Hermit Thrush 14
Varied Thrush 21
American Robin 377
Northern Mockingbird 9
European Starling 24
Cedar Waxwing 30
Phainopepla 6
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon’s) 17
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) 1
Warbler species 1
California Towhee 9
Spotted Towhee 9
Lark Sparrow 4
Fox Sparrow 10
Savannah Sparrow 3
Lincoln’s Sparrow 3
Song Sparrow 1
White-throated Sparrow 1
White-crowned Sparrow 33
Golden-crowned Sparrow 75
Sparrow species 3
Dark-eyed Junco (Oregon) 121
Western Meadowlark 13
Red-winged Blackbird 215
Brewer’s Blackbird 8
Purple Finch 10
House Finch 63
American Goldfinch 7
Lesser Goldfinch 8
Goldfinch species 2
16 December 06
Rocks For Free
This morning we got a free rock pile. Pica has turned into an enthusiastic freecycler and is an alert member of the Davis Freecycle list, which has about 1400 people. One of whom had a pile of 1 to 3 inch landscaping cobbles which had been sitting in his driveway for months on waiting for the next project. He offered them up on Freecycle, and was delighted to help move them 3.3 miles to where they now rest on the tarmac under our almond tree.
15 December 06
Dersu Uzala
I don’t know how I’ve managed to get to be the age I am without ever having seen this film, but we saw it tonight. Numenius found it at the public library.
I’m speechless, pretty much. (And chilled to the bone, but that’s what a windswept tundra will do to a girl.) Images — the tiger, the river, the ice — will stay with me for days.
It seems like Kurosawa’s homage to Eisenstein…
13 December 06
Everydot
Everydot shows one person’s quest to photograph all the dots on the map in his neck of the woods around Minnesota and North Dakota, even sleepy crossroads like Henderson Station, Minnesota.
12 December 06
Making Sense of Gobbledegook
Finally, some long-needed new proofreaders’ marks from Eve Corbel. Via Language Hat.
In other news, speaking of gobbledegook, we may be hitting some snow this weekend as we do our Christmas Bird Count along the ridge at Mount Vaca:
MODELS SEEM MORE IN LINE WITH THE DETAILS OF A TRANSITION BACK TO A MORE AMPLIFIED PATTERN OVER THE WEEKEND. THIS MAY DRIVE A STRONG STORM INTO THE REGION THIS WEEKEND. 18Z GFS NOW BRINGS A SEPARATE WAVE ACROSS THE FAR NORTH THURSDAY NIGHT BEFORE THE JET AND ASSOCIATED PRECIPITABLE MOISTURE PLUME TAKES AIM AT OUR AREA BY FRIDAY NIGHT. THIS SYSTEM MAY HAVE A DEEP MOISTURE TAP... STRONG DYNAMICS AND CYCLOGENESIS. 18Z AND 06Z GFS DEVELOP A SURFACE LOW SOMEWHERE ACROSS THE AREA... EITHER OVER SOUTH CENTRAL CALIFORNIA OR IN THE GREAT BASIN. THIS COULD BE A MAJOR SNOW PRODUCER