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Today I went to The American Museum of Radio and Electricity! They have a stunning collection of original equipment, beautiful electrostatic generators, handblown glassware in breathtakingly ornate configurations, shelves and shelves of radios from the 1920s ... the highlights were a gorgeous reproduction of the Joseph Priestly static machine, an little room of interactive things including a (chaperoned) Van de Graaff generator, and a Blickensderfer typewriter with a DHIATENSOR keyboard layout (I looked at the keys and went "huh?"). But best of the best was an original 1929 Theremin that the public could play. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2) pseudomammal wowed us with what was apparently "Mary Has a Little Lamb". Now I really want to build one of these (I'm surprised to see that the kits appear to be significantly cheaper than any pre-assembled theremins on the market ... probably they are lower quality, but it is still striking – all the other kits I've looked at are a bit more expensive than their pre-assembled counterparts. Perhaps this is different because it has such a small audience.) Also there was an adorable nerd who showed us around the museum and discharged the Van de Graaff and told stories about the rooms and the pieces in the collection. His eyes went all huge as he rhasphodized about how this stuff changed the world, that people died on the Titanic because people weren't listening to the airwaves because it was all so new and not everyone really got it yet, and that was less than a hundred years ago, and now we're so advanced that one of the museum heads was chatting live with videoconferencing with this Titanic buff while the museum dude was in the museum and the Titanic buff was at the bottom of the ocean at the Titanic. Yeah. Cool. I also got some yarn and pretty dresses today. And quality time with pseudomammal, d_mcetiquette, Dahti, Steve, and a friend of Dahti's. But the radio museum was the best part. Someday I'll go back and spend time there and also take some photos for y'all. (That glassware! It was full of curlicues!)
Thu, Jun. 22nd, 2006, 11:17 pm
I am
I am AD7UI
Over the past few days we of The Secret House packed (and packed and packed and packed) and tossed (and tossed and tossed) and cleaned (and cleaned a little extra) and moved away. Last night we all drove up to Port Townsend with our final belongings weighing down the car and the cat carrier in my lap. In my life so far, moving has usually been a traumatic process. Balancing a schedule full of "one last time" and saying goodbye with the demands of a huge project with a sharp deadline. Getting sentimental about leaving your housemates at the same time you're all doing something difficult ("I sure hope they pack all of their stuff but none of my stuff ... and how did this stuff that no one wants get here, anyway?"). The sadness of saying goodbye, the stress of getting it done, the uncertainty of what's to come, guilt over the things left undone, pride over the things done, the thrill of an adventure into the unknown ... and of course, the overwhelming expense. Transporting stuff should be expensive, but it's not like we have the money. It feels like cashing in all my karma (good and bad) at once. So what did I get? Good: Friends and family showered us with emotional, physical, and financial support. Thank you!!! We left the house clean, empty, and in great condition (something I am ashamed to say I have not always accomplished in the past). We did it about 8 hours ahead of deadline. Nothing I wanted and was able to take was left behind. There was a minimum of infighting (again, something that has not always been true). No one pulled an all-nighter (a first for me) although pseudomammal and his dad came close. Kif (the cat) never freaked out. We sold most of the furniture. We made it. Bad: pseudomammal got sick and feverish and had to keep driving and lifting things anyway. Note to self: learn to drive and get even better at lifting things. The car tire blew out when we were halfway here, which was scary and took more favors to fix and made the 4 hour trip into a 9 hour trip. There was a minimum of infighting – none would have been better, and I'm sorry. We generated an impressive heap of garbage even after donating every unwanted thing we could conceivably donate. E-mail me if you want my contact information for the next two months. vruba is heading home to the island for a spell. wheeloffish is visiting with him and then off to family and friends in Florida. pseudomammal will of course be coming with me. I am going to University of Tennessee at Knoxville for a PhD in psychology. It's songbird communication instead of dolphin communication, but the advisor and his other students are some of the friendliest people I've ever met, there's plenty of teaching experience for the taking, and they're giving me good money. I'm going to keep my job, too! I've been advised that I'll be expected to have my own car to drive between the campus and the field station. I think people who have cars overestimate how necessary cars are, but we're gonna hang onto the car anyway just in case, until we figure it out. That means we're driving from Washington to Tennessee. We have no hard schedule yet, except for some commitments in August. We're leaving Washington in late June or early July. If you live somewhere between Washington and Tennessee and would like to see us, get your bids in now. Wed, May. 17th, 2006, 03:13 am
It glows!
I went to a nuclear reactor this morning! What did you do?
Mon, May. 15th, 2006, 04:58 pm
Dude!!!
Last night I took all 4 amateur radio exams (three levels of theory test plus morse code). It took two hours but I passed them all. As soon as the FCC gets ahold of the records, I have an extra class license! The hams giving the test thought it was great. They said they'd been doing the testing for 13 years and they could only remember one other time when someone had come in wanting to do them all at once and actually passed them all, and he was an engineer from Intel. Cool! Now I am going to see Pseudomammal graduate!
Yesterday summerkid, bluesbodger, and dreefee came to The Secret House for an egg decorating party. I'd been blowing eggs for the past two weeks and had about two dozen, plus another dozen or so whole eggs for hardboiling. I got together some natural dyes to experiment with. Our guests brought extra pots. We tried red onion skins, spinach, beet powder, turmeric, grape juice, and red cabbage. Here are some results:  My very favorite was the purple grape juice, which produced a lovely shade of blue and worked just as well cold as hot. It was the last thing I tried (since juice is tasty and expensive), but I'm glad I did. Depending on the length of time it was good for colors from summer sky blue to almost black. Everything except the grape juice was heated to a simmer with a bit of vinegar. My next favorite was the turmeric, which I already love for candles, cloth, and curry. A little goes a long way, and it produces bright sunny yellows. The beet powder was my third favorite, although it was a bit trickier. We got one lovely red egg from it but then it seemed to lose its potency, adding little more than a coppery sheen. Perhaps more beet powder and longer immersion times would help. I'll definitely try it again next year. The red onion skins produced a deep orange, appropriate for making a naturally white egg look like a naturally brown egg, and darkening any of the other colors. The red cabbage didn't work so well. We used a pretty high concentration of chopped up cabbage in simmering water with vinegar, and it did make a blue color, but it was splotchy and didn't stick to the eggs very well, and never got dark. Tried that for quite a while (hours) without much luck. The spinach didn't work out either, but I suspect the pot was too big / there was too little spinach. We used wax crayons to do some masking and overdying with a few amusing results.
I like to learn and practice stuff. I am a meta-hobbyist. As per last year, here are the skills that I gained significantly in during 2005, with ratings given in this 26-point scale. Hours over number of levels changed are shown in parentheses. drawing: below average → above average (166/2)postgreSQL: unskilled → good (11/12)biology (mostly cell & physiology): below average → average (70/1)knitting: poor → average (102/2)toss juggling: beginner → poor (16/1)drop spindle spinning: beginner → not very good (55/2)ECMAScript: novice → poor (11/1)cooking: novice → poor (39/1)ham radio: novice → poor (17/1)braille: unskilled → poor (20/4)horseback riding: unskilled → novice (10/2)stunt kite flying: unskilled → novice (17/2)3d modeling (blender & poser): unskilled → novice (30/2)As always, it is easiest to progress from nothing to something (and wicked fun). “Marine mammalogy” deserves an sort of honorable mention for taking up about 70 hours of my study-time without meriting a level increase (I already know so much, it’s hard to get better). The vast majority of the 166 drawing hours were spent on the comic, which was the whole idea. Overall I did less studying this year and more producing things. Things like websites at the level of website-goodness that I already knew how to produce. But one must harvest the fruits of ones’ labors at some point.
Daywood Academy – Monday/Wednesday/Friday web comic strip, starts today. Sundry improvements to follow.
Via Wheel and Duchess: Eclipse is... Eclipse is one of nature's greatest spectacles Eclipse is still something of a well-kept secret. Eclipse is eyeing machines that will have as many as tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of nodes Eclipse is now live Eclipse is turning doubters into believers. Eclipse is the newest and most affordable model Eclipse is back with another solid and engaging album. Eclipse is destined to become the Emacs for the new millennium. Eclipse is driven to thrill Eclipse is expected to show off progress of its various projects at the EclipseCon 2005 Eclipse is evil Eclipse is an event during which one body passes in front of another Eclipse is flying Eclipse is told in first person Eclipse is visible from everywhere on the dark side of the earth Eclipse is machined with the finest grade materials for the closest tolerances, insuring that each part fits and works perfectly. Eclipse is best observed with binoculars or a telescope Eclipse is agile, quick, and goes where you point it. Eclipse is granted only after a given research code has been ported Eclipse is somewhat a victim of its own success Eclipse is really four completely separate things Eclipse is coming to your town? Eclipse is "really excited"
Sat, May. 28th, 2005, 01:57 pm
Books Meme
I've been infected by both Vruba and Count_Fenring, so I realize that resistance is futile.
Total number of books owned
A few hundred. On my bookshelf here in The Secret House, I have 300 books (no, I didn't round. yes, I counted). I have a box full of books that wouldn't fit on my bookshelf next to it, and on top of that a pile of books that wouldn't fit in the box of books that wouldn't fit on my bookshelf. My 20 books on the Hawaiian Language are in a separate shelf in my bed headboard for easy access, and my several books on sex are in the headboard shelf on the other side. There are two piles by my bed of books I'm reading or ought to be. Pseudomammal has two bookshelves in here as well. Of the books in my bookshelf, 135 are on dolphins. My piano books, knitting books, and cook books are in the public dining room bookshelf. I have several boxes of books in my parents' home waiting for liberation, many more of which are on dolphins. (I have these dolphin books in my collection.)
The last book I bought
Just Enough to Know Better: a braille primer, Eileen Curran. I'm slightly less than half-way through it. It's intended for seeing parents of blind children. It's swell because it introduces some abbreviations and then has several pages of raised braille to practice on, and then it introduces some more ... it's a good bridge between grade 1 and grade 2. I've spent about 17 hours practicing, but that includes writing and typing practice too. My fingers read at 7 wpm right now, which will improve both with practice and with more abbreviations.
The last book I read
The Year of the Graylag Goose, Konrad Lorenz. Ethology is great, geese are great, Konrad Lorenz is great. I'm a sucker for really old & respected scientists' informal writing because they can be a little sentimental and a little crazy without seeming sentimental and crazy, and everything they write about their beloved subject is embedded in this matrix of them really knowing their shit. This is a big book full of huge color photos of the geese and text that explains what's happening in the photos. It reminded me of the many hours I spent observing my chickens when I was younger.
Five books that mean a lot to me
- Ka Lei Haʻaheo, Alberta Pualani Hopkins. Best textbook evar. Best language evar.
- The Girl With Silver Eyes. This was my favorite book when I was little. It's about a girl with telekinetic powers, and how she tries to figure out why she's different and if there are any other kids like her. It's got that 80s young adult novel thing going, and she runs away from home for part of it, which is fun to think about when you're young.
- Sensory Abilities of Cetaceans. It has some hot chapters, and it was the first expensive book of scientific papers that I ever got. (Now I have eight, plus three monographs).
- The Teenage Liberation Handbook, Grace Llewellyn. It's a little embarassing, but I was sort of the opposite of one of those kids who reads this and then convinces her parents to let her leave school. My parents suggested homeschooling, which idea stunned me. I agreed readily, and then followed my mother around asking her to assign me things. She tried to shoo me away to go have an interesting life, and I moped around until I found this book nestled in the basement. I sat down and read it all, and then proceeded to have an interesting life. Thanks Grace ...
- The Lorax, Dr. Seuss. I don't need to tell you why this book is awesome. It's also special to me because one of my New College admissions essay questions was "Recommend a book to us and tell us why you're recommending it", and I picked this and wrote a cheeky essay about it. And then later Princeton Review was soliciting examples of college application essays for a book, and since I like Princeton Review (they helped me pass the SATs and GREs), I sent them my Lorax essay. And they liked it and published it in their book and gave me $30. That was neat. I guess it's my only published work.
Infect five people
- turq
- noam_rion
- whetherwoman
- thryn
- notnotrebecca
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chipper