22 June 08
Green Almonds
For Beth, and M and J.
22 June 08
Davis Open Mapping Party
Yesterday I got an email announcement about a Davis OpenStreetMap mapping party to be held today. The OpenStreetMap project is one of these collaborative open data projects that I’ve known about for some time, but haven’t really dived into it, so I was glad to have the introduction to it today. The impetus behind this project is that there is very little street map data in this world that is free in the sense of being legally unencumbered, allowing one to make full creative use of it. The online mapping services provided by Google Maps and Mapquest are good examples of not free-as-in-speech data, but so is map data from most government mapping agencies, e.g. the Ordnance Survey. (The United States is an exception here, since federally-produced mapping data is in the public domain.)
Since everybody and their dog now has a GPS unit, some enterprising geeks came up with the idea to start mapping the world’s streets with their GPSs and make all the collected map data freely available for any use. Thus was born the OpenStreetMap project, which has really taken off in the almost four years it has been underway. As of June 2008 there are over 22 million kilometers of highways and byways mapped in the system, and over 32,000 registered users who are able to add to and update the map, which is essentially a cartographic wiki.
For some reason the project’s founder, Steve Coast, was in town today so a few of us gathered together at the café Delta of Venus at 10 AM to plan our mapping session. Thanks to the public domain TIGER data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, there is good street mapping for most places in the United States, including Davis, already uploaded into the OpenStreetMap, but there are always details to fill in — no maps are ever finished. We decided to work on bike paths and other paths. I opted to head up to the North Davis Greenbelt and collect GPS tracks for every bit of the bike paths there, including the connectors to all the side streets. There is already some mapping of these bike paths in the OpenStreetMap, but there are definitely bits to add.
It was a very hot day today (up to 102° F) and I was glad to return to Delta of Venus for lunch at 1:30 PM. There I got some exposure to the map editing tools but have yet to download the track data off my GPS, let alone start the process of editing the map online.
It’s a great project. There are lots of technical details to learn, much of which are of substantial cartographic interest (e.g. how do you classify the features you’re trying to map), and all completely fascinating from a geographer’s point of view.
21 June 08
You Say Aluminium...
One of the hardest things I find to say, even though I’ve lived here for nearly 20 years, is “alOOminum.” Skedule and prohject don’t seem to pose the same problems, but aloominum’s just something I can’t get to come out of my mouth (a bit like stOOpid unless I’m being arch or or FRITillary unless I’m trying to illustrate how it’s possible to merge four syllables into one). I got chastised again the other day for saying aluminium “wrong” and retorted that we (we in this case meaning Brits, though this like so much else in my identity shifts according to the winds, the wicket or diamond, or the company) had the word first, so how could it be wrong?
But since I’m given to sounding authoritative without the slightest reason to, and having resolved to have more reason to, I decided to look it up.
Seems like there’s no clear cut answer either way, which doesn’t resolve anything but is certainly interesting. In fact it could form the basis for a sociolinguist’s PhD (or at least a paper). Pronunciation of scientific elements: hypercorrection for the latinate, or hypercorrection against it?
16 June 08
Sierra Valley Trip
This weekend we went on the Yolo Audubon Society’s annual trip to Sierra Valley and Yuba Pass. 
This is the fourth time we’ve done this overnight outing, this time staying in a motel in Portola yesterday evening. Here are some sketches from our trip. At left is a scene from Sierra Valley, and at right are a couple of botany highlights from Yuba Pass.
13 June 08
A Sort of Typical Morning or How to Embrace Your Inner ADD
Encouraged by the positive slant given to Attention Deficit Disorder pottering by Monty Don in Giles Wilson’s recent article at BBC online, I submit my own example from this morning. Note: times are approximate. Feel free to try your own.
3:00 am. Wake up. Decide it’s way too early to get up no matter what.
3:15 am. On the other hand, it’d be great to get a sketchbook made for our upcoming short trip to the Sierra.
3:30 am. It would be a pamphlet stitch with gray Canson paper outside, slightly larger than the text pages. Stitch: royal blue waxed linen (I don’t have any linen this color, would have to get some at the bead store). Text pages could be the Sundance Felt I already have, trimmed and folded, though Arches Hot Press would be great too. Except then I’d have to buy some, trim, and fold it. What time does the Bookstore open?
3:35 am. Not for a few hours at least, you dork.
3:36 am. Charlie can tell I’m awake and jumps on my belly. I have a full bladder. Okay. I’m getting up to bind this sketchbook.
3:45 am. Now I’m really getting up.
3:46 am. I gather up pillow cases on the pillows I can reach in the dark (that aren’t under Numenius’ head, at least) to throw in the laundry. I close the door behind me and turn on the washing machine.
3:47 am. I give the cats each a scoop of food and get the kettle on; wash their water bowls and fill with water. Thank God I washed out that bottle yesterday, the water was starting to taste disgusting.
3:48 am. Open the laptop, login on my side, start the dial-up connection. (We have no broadband at home.) Check email (there isn’t much; is there a problem?). Notice a reference to an article in Guardian Women by none other than the stupendous Natalie d’Arbeloff, blogger and God-interviewer extraordinaire. Read the article, a beguiling invitation to older women to Just Say No To Bingo and start blogging. Send her a congratulatory email.
4:20 am. Brush cats, both of whom are shedding outlandishly with the heat, producing jumbo turd-like hairballs. Hear the kingbirds singing already. I should draw one today when it gets light; lots of time to draw this morning.
4:25 am. Notice a book list on the counter given to me by a friend who teaches Comp Lit here. I really should read something grownup so when the next person asks me what I’ve read lately, I can say something other than Harry Potter. (I did finish Obama’s Dreams From My Father this week, though not without incurring an overdue library fine. That does qualify, though. Recommended.)
4:30-5:00 am. Read news, check Kos, to which I’ve developed a disturbing re-addiction, given that it’s an election year, do the rounds (this and this and this and most hilariously, this ). Yes. It really is only 5:00 o’clock.
5:00 am. Sweep patio of mulberries that have blown down in the fierce winds in order to hang laundry without tracking mulberries inside. Decide to hang laundry.
5:15 am. Before I get the laundry, I’ll just check on the garden; it’s light enough to see now.
5:20 am. It’s going to be hot today. I’d better mulch. Wish I’d bought mulch the other day. Oh well. I’ll just pile manure on instead, taking care to avoid the basil and parsley.
5:20-5:40 am. Pile on said manure.
5:45 am. Go to turn on hose but instead pick up two tomato cages left outside the front door by the landlady. Let the cats out.
6:10 am. Finish staking two tomato plants to which I’ve added some of the dried vetch for mulch. Realize the 2 bush tomatoes need to be staked too. Pull out one steel frame and reposition, rearranging the triffids volunteer grapevines in the process.
6:25 am. Turn on hose. Water beans, basil shoots, all the squashes, the miraculously surviving potatoes, lettuces, radishes. Water myself copiously (there are three major, and about five minor, leaks in this hose that is “lifetime guaranteed” — if they lasted even a bloody year, I’d be ecstatic). Avoid the tomatoes, whose watering day is Sunday.
6:45 am Check the cats are still in view (they are; both on the field, on gopher patrol). On the way to turn off the water, notice my irrigation barrier needs more dirt. (They have mowed the alfalfa and will be flooding the field within a week; I want some of that water!) Get the shovel and distribute gopher-tunnellings onto my barrier. Turn off water.
6:55 am. Notice only one cat. Damn.
6:56 am. Get Charlie inside.
7:01. Still no Diego. Wake Numenius. Diego turns out to be hiding in the garden, making google eyes.
7:06 Give Numenius a bear hug for finding Diego and as a quick “I’m sorry to get you up so early,” hoping he doesn’t think it’s way TOO early. This is a forlorn hope. It is, for him, WAY too early. (If he does this exercise, and I hope he will, it will be set at night.)
7:07. Finally hang laundry, ignoring the mulberries I missed in the dark. Tracked in they will be.
7:20. Make shopping list. It includes bread, cheese, a hose (lifetime guaranteed) and some mulch. Also some canola oil which I have run out of in traps for earwigs, which do, it turns out, seem to be working, though I never find earwigs in them (the crows, magpies, or mockingbirds are helping themselves, I think).
7:25. Decide to take a shower, which I announce to Numenius.
7:25. On the other hand, I say, wasn’t I going to make a sketchbook?
7:25. Burst out laughing.
7:25. Decide to write this down before it gets swept away in the random ADD potterings of the next five minutes.
I still haven’t taken a shower, eaten breakfast, drawn a bird, or made a sketchbook, despite having been up for nearly four hours. But I do have a blog post ready for tonight, so I feel like I’m ahead.
13 June 08
I Jinxed The Sun
The sun is being awfully slow to come out of solar minimum, as reported here and here. This may be good for those who are keeping satellites alive in orbit but it is terrible for those trying to make radio contacts on shortwave. In fact, we have been at solar minimum ever since I got my license to transmit on HF, back in January 2007. This is surely not a coincidence. Maybe we’re entering another period like that of the Maunder Minimum.
The poor state of the ionosphere not withstanding, I managed two contacts this evening on HF, one into Washington state, another to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
10 June 08
Colima Warbler for Team Bird Year
The Boothroyds have come to the end of their big year by bike, topping it off with the Colima Warbler. The one that was my 700th ABA bird.
Some stats, from before they made the big hot climb to the Chisos Basin (dated June 3):
Days on the road: 348
Number of days that we have had to drink Budweiser rather than a beer with some flavour: 2 (the last 2 days in West Texas – tonight there will be NO beer!)
Number of bird species identified: 534
Distance cycled: 12,674 miles (20,405 kilometers)
Hottest day: 104 F (40 C) – heat index about 120 F (48 C)
Coldest day: 20 F (-7 C) – don’t know the wind chill, but it was wind chilly
Number of days that we have melted into blobs of fat on a desert highway: 0
Number of days in a tent: 298
Number of flat tires: about 70
Number of meals of rice & beans: too many (and we love rice and beans)
—
These guys are INCREDIBLE. Thank you, dear Boothroyds, for being such an example to the rest of us…
9 June 08
Gardens Of The Rock
Nobody expects to find gardens when making a visit to Alcatraz Island. Yet the varied inhabitants of the island, starting with the military personnel when it became a fort in 1853, and then the prison officers and their families living on the island between 1934 and 1963 brought plants over to try to civilize the island. These gardens fell into neglect, until in 2003 the Garden Conservancy started restoring them in collaboration with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Yesterday the island was quite crowded, a fine sunny day on San Francisco Bay, and well into the tourist season. (Alcatraz gets about 1.3 million visitors annually.) This is the season when the western gulls take over all bits of plant life — I think there are about 1500 nesting pairs on the island. And on the western slope of the island there is some fairly lush growth that hosts many nesting black-crowned night herons and snowy egrets.
Here are some historical photos of the gardens of Alcatraz.
7 June 08
Escape to Alcatraz
Tomorrow we’ll be going to Alcatraz Island. I think the last time I was there I was four; I got my picture in the paper. There were still inmates, then. (My mother tells me that was San Quentin. I have never been to Alcatraz before.)
We’ll be participating in PRBO’s International Migratory Bird Day Festivities. But it’s also International Drawing Day, so I’m hoping to get some sketches of gulls and other nesting seabirds while we’re on the island…
5 June 08
Vetinari Ascendant
We’ve reported on how Barack Obama bears more than a passing resemblance to Lord Vetinari. This scene in the Senate today could have easily been written by Terry Pratchett, especially the bit about smiling up at the press at the end.