13 February 11
Passe-Passe Papa
Numenius and I walked the five miles into town and back yesterday to see The Ilusionist, one of the three animation films nominated for an Oscar this year. It probably won’t get one because the Academy is so very safe and the Toy Story triology is over and will be hard for them to pass up, but you should go if you get the chance.
Jacques Tati wrote the screenplay in the late 50s. His daughter gave it to Sylvain Chomet after he’d asked her for permission to show a clip of Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot in The Triplets of Belleville/Belleville Rendezvous. The resulting animated film is like having another — another! — Tati film come to life. He’s right there, exquisitely drawn, every expression and gawky crumple-from-the-middle impossibly perfect. There’s a scene in which the magician bumbles into a theatre playing Tati in Mon Oncle, leaving, not quite leaving, finally walking through a gate; it’s his cue to depart, leaving the young Shetland islander-turned Edinburgh beauty he’d been a father-figure to behind in the arms of the future — television and rock-and-roll. It’s the most loving story of loss and, well, passing.
If this film weren’t so heartwrenching I’d go back today. Actually, I’d watch all of Tati first and then go — I caught some of the references but lost many more, doubtless, and part of what makes this so painful is that my father was such a Tati fan. What I definitely want to do is listen to the final song (written, as was the entire score, by Chomet himself) — this film is almost devoid of dialogue and lots of clues are to be found in the lyrics, but I didn’t catch them all.
10 February 11
Sunspots!
When I was cycling to work through campus this morning past the grassy landscaped hillocks just east of one of the engineering buildings, I saw a small refractor telescope pointing southeast set up on a tripod on the grass with a person hovering nearby. I realized that it was being aimed at the sun, which means only one thing: there are sunspots to look at! Any radio geek knows the significance of that: lots of sunspots means higher levels of ionization in the upper atmosphere which means better conditions for shortwave communications. Indeed, when I got into the office and looked at the little Firefox add-on in the lower right corner of the browser, it said that the solar flux index was up to 91, not very high in historical terms, but definitely a sign that the laggardly Solar Cycle 24 now is getting off the ground. Look for good radio DXing possibilities in the days and months ahead.
27 January 11
Don't Stick Your Face in a Pit
… is my take-home piece of advice after three days of HAZWOPER training in Marin. Oh, and don’t forget to drink water but wait till you get out of the hot zone.
The hot zone: contaminated area. Worst stealth baddie: Hydrogen sulphide, because although the smell is unmistakeable, your olfactory nerve gets tired fast and you can’t smell it any more which is when it can kill you. Ugh.
Back to the fog, which is now so thick you can’t see more than about 20 yards in front of you….
22 January 11
SketchCrawl 30
Today was the 30th Worldwide SketchCrawl. I’m not sure how many of these I’ve participated in, somewhere between five and ten I would guess. Pete Scully organized the Davis edition of this event; a number of us meeting at E Street Plaza in downtown Davis at 11 AM. It was a beautiful day, beckoning of spring, temperature in the mid-60s, breezy in the afternoon. That helped with the turnout, which was huge: at least 25 sketchers. We stayed within a couple of blocks of the starting point, my furthest journey being out to Ace Hardware to add a sketch to my antenna book . Pica arrived in the afternoon following leading a children’s bird count event. We sauntered forth after our traditional Saturday lunch of a burrito and soft tacos and stayed to the event’s finish at 3:30.
14 January 11
Teapot Tempestuousness
This morning I made my tea in the brown pot I bought last week to replace the white one whose lid had broken.
It cracked with a neat fissure near the bottom, all across the teapot. Tea poured everywhere — onto the stove, the counter, my sock. I make loose tea. This was tea with a lot of tealeaves all over the kitchen. Scalding.
Is it really so very much to ask to have a teapot that will JUST POUR TEA without spilling? I guess so.
31 December 10
Antenna Book
I’ve started my antenna book. This was the idea I had earlier for a sketchbook devoted to that type of infrastructure. The sketches I want to do these days involve ink overlaid with a lot of watercolor wash, which makes it very difficult to find pre-made sketchbooks with suitable paper. This meant it was time to resurrect my bookbinding skills: my big project over break was to bind a 6” x 8” sketchbook with sheets of Arches Cover paper. This made for a good rainy day activity at the beginning of the week, and now I’m three sketches into this book project..
19 December 10
A Little Bit Inclement
Today was the Putah Creek Christmas Bird Count. At four I got up and it was pouring; went back to bed; got up again at 4:30, still the same. We eschewed our tentative plans to go owling and ended up getting to the base of Thompson Canyon at the very tardy hour of 9:15. It was a quagmire.
We ended up seeing really more cows than birds in oak woodland chaparral, which is not where you generally expect to see cows around here. Most of the birds on our list were heard-only. After we threw in the towel with mud up to our knees we went over to the bridge to see if we could see the dipper that’s been hanging around (no luck) but did get to see a spectacular male Barrow’s goldeneye.
Three entirely new species were added to the count list today: great-tailed grackle, evening grosbeak, warbling vireo. Tallymeister Joan Humphrey couldn’t remember a time after about the first 10 years of the count when that many new species were added. And this on a day when many people bailed early because of driving rain (it did clear up a bit in the afternoon but by then many of us had moved on to hot showers or a nap).
11 December 10
Amateur Extra
I passed the requisite exam today and upgraded my amateur radio license to the Amateur Extra class today! This is the highest of three levels in the amateur radio licensing system in the United States. I don’t know what in particular I’m going to do with my new privileges (basically a bit more spectrum to operate on HF), but I’ve had the study guide for the Extra class on my bookshelf for a year-and-a-half and when I heard six weeks ago that there was going to be a testing session in Davis in December I decided to go for it. The testing session took place in the morning; I was there for somewhat over an hour including the time spent doing paperwork, the test itself, and waiting for the grading to be done. We celebrated with our traditional Saturday lunch at El Mariachi taqueria, joined by our friends Laura and Danny. Danny was celebrating too: he was also at the session and passed the exam for the Technician level license. His call sign should be issued in several days, at which point he can go on the air as a new ham!
8 December 10
Lace and Pirates
I must be out of my mind, because I’ve taken on a lace scarf designed by a knitter in Germany. It’s knit in 24 sections, each one divulged on a new day — an advent calendar; the last section will be released on December 24. Like I had nothing else to do in December…
Nupps are not a traditional German knitting technique, having been perfected in Estonia — but with YouTube and Ravelry, everyone’s tradition is now up for grabs. So this sampler scarf has as one of its sections a version of the Estonian lily of the valley pattern. No doubt we’ll get Brazilian frog patterns at some point next week.
I was working on this (I find nupps fiddly but not impossible as many of my co-knitalongers seem to have found) on Friday when I heard giggling in the other room. Numenius had found a pirate radio station which was playing big band swing music, and whose frequency he tracked down to a pirate known as Wolverine. The music changed to songs from across the 20th century with a moon theme.
We have rain, and more rain, yet Cold Creek was still not running on Sunday when we went up there for a short hike. Hoping this changes soon. I’m thinking about newts and where they are going to be able to spawn.
23 November 10
Just Another Morning Around 60 Meters
I’ve been doing a fair bit of shortwave listening these days. I enjoy the randomness of what one finds there. For example, the following is from between 1607 and 1708 UTC on Saturday:
- miscellaneous voices in Spanish talking to each other on 4888 kHz USB, one of them using a call tone like those irritating ones on FRS radios.
- air traffic using HF, including an Alaska flight out of San Francisco on 5574 kHz.
- two RTTY-like digital signal stations (5306 and 5403 kHz). I try to decode these, and without any surprise fail; all I know is they have an 850 Hz tone shift.
- a shortwave broadcast from Sarawak (5030 kHz). No confirmatory ID on it, but it matches the published schedules.
- on 5810 kHz I heard Radio Free Asia being jammed. What I heard was voices on a news broadcast fighting it out for the frequency against orchestral music. Radio Free Asia is a US-funded set of propaganda stations broadcasting to various undemocratic regimes in East Asia.
- and best of all, a numbers station, at 4724 kHz (1607 UTC)! It was saying “Charlie Charlie Charlie Zulu Romeo…Bravo Two Three X-Ray Seven Tango….” Numbers stations are generally believed to be communications to spies over shortwave radio, and are the subject of much amateur sleuthing.
Throw in the religious broadcasters, and we have quite the microcosm here
On Sunday’s sketchcrawl, I got to see Pete Scully’s sketchbook for his project of drawing fire hydrants. This gives me an idea for an infrastructure-related drawing project: how about a sketchbook of antennas!