Beige Alert!

Great Circus Bastille Days

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:59:23 GMT

Weekend report: Saturday seemed like a nice day to go to the beach, so I rode the bicycle up to Harrington Beach, north of Port Washington, WI, which is probably my favorite overall spot on Lake Michigan, and it's a very pleasant 60km or so trip. I make the trip often enough that it's nice familiar route with no map-reading-head-scratching moments. Not too many people at the beach for such a nice day, though Harrington isn't usually crowded any time. The wind was fairly light and blowing out toward the lake, so the lake was very calm, possibly about the calmest I've ever seen it. The big lake is big, and quite often builds up some significant waves, but it was looking more like one of the little lakes, just slight waves.

Sunday I headed into the city in my car, for Bastille Days, and found to my surprise that there were people everywhere, cars parked everywhere, streets closed all around downtown. I was headed to a special event, but clearly there was some other, even more special event on, because Bastille Days is not nearly that big. It turns out the Great Circus Parade was Sunday. I had no idea....

The Circus Parade, which apparently was run annually for decades back in the day, last ran six years ago. It's not the sort of thing I thought I had any particular interest in, but since I was around, I did wander down a few times during the parade to have a look. Now, lots of things billed as "Great" would be more honestly characterized at "pathetic" but this is a big event. I didn't even see most of it and I saw a heck of a lot (and took a few hundred photos that will get sorted through and posted in the fullness of time).

Bastille Days was nice, too. Four stages of mostly music most of the time, the crazy guys juggling torches while riding unicycles, the belly dancers were back, and of course, food onna stick. Some of the better restaurants participate, so you can actually get some pretty darn good meat onna stick. Plus we have a miniature Eiffel Tower. They do actually have some people singing in French, but lots of other music. I did enjoy the over-caffeinated Irish band. You know the type, the 'you think you're fiddler can play fast, wait until you hear ours' sort, and these guys played that concept for all it's worth. I bought a few CDs from Fox and Branch, a very enjoyable local folk duo.

And Joyce arrived safely back Sunday night, so I had my chance to look around the used bookstore in the airport while waiting for her arrival.

V is for something or other

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:19:07 GMT

I've been seeing the letter V within a circle spray-painted all over the place. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Now, back when I was younger, the thing kids marked all over was the letter A within a circle, which was supposed to mean Anarchy. Just the concept that appeals to 14 year old boys. The V, I don't know. V is for Vitamins? Evidently not Verbosity. Possibly Valence shell electron pair repulsion? That must be it. The circle around the V would be a subtle reference to a spherically symmetrical s orbital. Something like that.

Spring

Mon, 11 May 2009 01:10:12 GMT

It is spring here. Plants are turning green and flowering and having sex with each other.

Snow

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:37:29 GMT

The winter storm wasn't nearly as impressive as the forecasts, with only a few centimeters of snow on the ground instead of 20 or 30, though it's very wet snow. The same amount of water in fluffier form would be a lot deeper. There were some intervals of very heavy snowfall rates last night, though, which was pretty impressive to see. I took a few photos this morning. Spring snow is always interesting to walk in. The ground is all snow-covered, the tree branches covered with snow, but the birds are loudly singing like spring. Mid winter isn't silent, but there is much less birdsong than there is now.

Photos of the ice

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:56:59 GMT

I knew everyone would want photos when I wrote about the ice in the woods by the river. When I went out walking yesterday it was near sunset, and I did not have camera and tripod with me to take photos in the growing darkness. The ice is still there, though, and this morning I got some photos before work, then more after work with the full tripod-and-multiple-lenses array of gear. Set here on Flickr.

like a weird accident at a glass factory

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:06:37 GMT

Over the weekend we had warm weather and a lot of rain, and the area by my local river flooded. Just a few weeks earlier I was out snow shoeing by the river, now the area is accessible only to ducks. We've had a bit of cold weather, and the surface of the water froze to a thickness of a few millimeters. Now the water has partly drained away, leaving the layer of cracked ice suspended in the air by the tree trunks it froze around, some centimeters above the ground in many places. Much of it is thin and smooth enough to be semi transparent, and in a few places very thin clear ice sheets can be found. It's like a weird accident at a glass factory that somehow left the adjacent forest floor glazed.

Giant glowing pole

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 02:05:03 GMT

One of the local car dealers has a giant flagpole from which they used to fly a giant flag. They've given up on the flag, possibly due to the cost of replacing one of those huge flags, but the lights that formerly lit the flag all night are still on, lighting the pole up uselessly. So there it stands, the biggest, longest, tallest white pole around, glowing all night long. And wasting electric power. And contributing to the blotting out of the night sky. But at least we know who has the biggest pole.

Winter fun

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:52:43 GMT

Well, we did get some more snow over the weekend, and I've had the chance to go out on the snowshoes again. It really is more fun that it sounded like it would be. I live right by the Little Menomonee River, and with a good snowcover and snowshoes the area along the river becomes easily accessible and fun to explore. In the summer it's all muddy, covered in tall grass, and partly blocked by the growing trees and bushes. In winter the leaves are gone, opening up the area a bit, and walking in deep snow is what snowshoes are for.

Three laps (4 km each) skiing around the lighted loop at Lapham Peak on Monday night was much fun. Clear sky, no moon, and a typical cold clear night with temperatures down to around a comfortable -13°C. Good fast conditions on the "Hoot Owl Hill" descent, which is a fairly gentle descent, especially toward the end, and which can be pretty dull if the snow is slow. My last skiing before this was on February 4th, just before the warm weather melted much of the snow. That was another beautiful night, and much colder at around -18°C. That was fun, and I'm glad I had the chance to spend an hour and a half out skiing in some cold weather.

I get passed a lot when skiing, and it's always especially fun when by someone who is clearly decades older than me. Up near the top of the "Two Tier" climb an older gentleman passed me going at least double my speed. If I keep at it, maybe someday I can be fast, too. (Also, I need to buy some new skis.)

HBD!

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:37:01 GMT

Happy birthday to jrittenhouse!

Color names

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:16:12 GMT

I was looking through the "Mountain Gear" catalog, at the coats, boots, backpacks, etc., and realized that I was actually missing the best part: The names of the colors. Oh, sure, some items are "black" or "white" or a normal color name prefixed with some semi-silly addition such as "English Green" or "Rubix Red." But the best are just plain weird. "Typhoon" (kind of blue) "Shark" (sort of gray) "Bran," "Nightfall," "Chili" (a red and green and misc. checkered pattern) "Otter" (kind a green) "Kelp," "Grill," and my personal favorite, "Panda," which is blue and brown, unlike any panda I've seen.

Snowshoes

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 22:13:13 GMT

Around here most of the pretty state park trails are groomed for skiing in the winter, so with lots of places to ski and not a whole lot of trails open to snowshoeing, I never did get myself some snowshoes until now. Taking advantage of a 30% off sale running at the moment, I got a pair of Atlas 925 snowshoes.

Today is sunny and very warm at over +10°C, so this will probably be the last chance for walking in the snow until we get the next snowstorm. I live on the Little Menomonee River Parkway in Milwaukee, and it's really quite a nice area to walk around in, right in the city. The snow is still deep enough that the snowshoes are actually useful if you're not on the packed-down bit on the trail. It's more fun than I was expecting. All along the river are lots of pretty places that are otherwise hard to get to. Definitely recommended.

News roundup

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:12:06 GMT

Thing going on in the world:

Griddle riddle solved: NYC investigators say mysterious maple-syrup odor came from New Jersey. "City investigators have tracked down the source of a maple syrup smell that has puzzled New Yorkers several times in recent years. No offense, New Jersey, but it was you."
The Transit TV company has filed for bankruptcy, which is good news for bus riders. These are the people who installed the (often broken) TV monitors which sometimes (if working) display the next stop, and which run endless ads for lawyers, ads for companies that will take the settlement the lawyer in the other ad got you and give you a tiny fraction of it up front if you "NEED CASH NOW," ads from people who will sell you a low-end computer at and inflated price on credit even if your credit history is so bad that credit card companies (who will issue cards without regard to income or even species) won't touch you, and so on. Due to some contractual obligation to run something other than 100% ads, they also ran incomprehensibly shortened news stories, with just the introductory first sentence or two but without the actual news. Good to see them go. (In the USA, of course, we can't spend the kind of money it would take to install a next-stop-display without the ads.)
Some of you live in or near places with amazing local landmarks. In the suburbs of Milwaukee, things are different. The Golden Arches might have to relocate because of planned reconstruction to State Highway 100. "Village President Robert Ruesch wants McDonald’s to stay where it has been for nearly 50 years. Ruesch was in high school when the fast-food eatery opened in Hales Corners. 'I don’t want to say it’s an icon, but it is sort of a landmark,' Ruesch said. 'It’s a destination spot that provides good food and entertainment for the kids.'"
Mequon company helps smash subatomic particles "John DeFord has a red-blooded American boy's dream job: He helps people get things going really fast so they can smash them and watch what happens. In a bland suburban office building shared with an accountant, a lawyer and a psychic adviser, DeFord maintains a remote outpost in the quest to understand the most fundamental forces and structure of nature." They write software used in particle accelerator design. Fascinating that they share a building with a psychic.
Mice on Mount Everest. Science! "Dr Khurana and his team carried mice contained in heating chambers up Mt Everest to about 28,000 feet in their backpacks." "The mice were carried past the “dead zone” of Mt Everest (altitudes higher than 26,246 ft), where no mice have ever gone before."

Why I should stick to the mass spectrometry

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:14:06 GMT

In The Onion: Guidance Counselor Reminds Self-Mutilating Drug User About SAT Deadlines. If I was a guidance counselor, I would be that person! "Have you filled out the forms for your college entrance exams?" That's why it's probably better that I stick with the mass spectrometery job.

Garden of Venus

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:29:18 GMT

PZ Myers comments on his commenters:

Another of those interminable back-and-forth threads where people insult others with slang terms for female genitalia, and others point out that that is demeaning to women, has begun again. I hate those. I am not about to start policing language here (I hate that, too), but I will point out that if you think it's disparagement to compare someone to any of the delightful features found in the sublime wonderland of a lady's garden of Venus, you are a sloppy anus with a faulty sphincter and a putrefying colon. So there. You can go ahead and use any slang terms for genitals that you desire, but henceforth they will all be regarded as expressions of endearment, love, and lust.

Fire

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:23:54 GMT

I don't necessarily need any special excuse to light up a bunch of candles, because fire=nifty, but, hey, Imbolc, right?

Fog of War

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:16:25 GMT

The Discovery Channel show "Wreckreation Nation with Dave Mordal" went to something called Dagorhir, a live-action battle game of such variety that involves Romans fighting Orcs, with the occasional ninja. Dave got to experience the fog of mock-war. "At the end of the day, there are no winners or losers. And that's probably because no one has a clue what happened." And that's with everyone speaking his native language! If he really wants to experience the confusion of battle, he should try it with everyone shouting in a language he can just barely understand under the best of circumstances!

Flickr and CC

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 03:58:54 GMT

I have a lot of photos up on flickr, nearly all of them under Creative Commons license, and it's often interesting to see what uses people make of some of them. I noticed recently in the stats that this photo of an old hard disk drive and a CF flash memory card was used on Wikipedia, for this article about MiniScribe, the company that made that disk way back when. It had never even occurred to me to wonder what became of MiniScribe, but it turns out to be a bizarre story, including an accounting scandal involving shipping masonry in the boxed that would normally contain disk drives, and then laying off the people involved, who immediately (surprise!) went public.

Awesome

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:06:29 GMT

What a difference one letter makes: Orestes Pursued by the Furries.

Skiing

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 02:48:02 GMT

Saturday seemed like a good day for skiing. It had warmed up to a cozy temperature of roughly -6°C, and snow was falling. I hadn't skied at Pike Lake in a long time, and it's actually quite a nice place. It's also relatively close, which is especially good on a day with snowfall making travel a bit more difficult.

The beach is a bit snow-covered

The ice fishing people were out on the lake. A few days with lows below -18°C presumably thickened the ice, but now the weather was more comfortable.

No one picnicing, for some reason

Here's the GPS track:

Google Earth has a summer photo, the park is more white than green this time of year. You can see that little out-and-back spur where I took off the skis and walked up the steep hill, and climbed the observation tower. It's not so easy climbing that hill in the snow.

winter

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:54:15 GMT

It's just under -20°C out now, with clear skies. The sky isn't exactly dark in the city, especially not with the snow reflecting the city light up, but the stars are pretty nonetheless. Also, while it's basically waste and pollution, the smoke rising from every single chimney is sort of pretty. It's a bit of an adventure walking a few kilometers on the snow-covered path through the woods. There is a path fairly well packed down by people walking through, but at night it's very hard to see, so it mostly has to be found by feel. The extra work of walking on the snow keeps you warm, anyway. With all the wind chill warnings you'd think we were all going to be killed instantly, but I was a bit too warm at times. Fortunately that's easy to fix.

More snow expected Saturday, and somewhat warmer. More skiing weather.

Like an exurb of Milwaukee

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:37:53 GMT

"Potsdamer Platz looks like a hastily-clapped-together exurb of Milwaukee." From "Michael Kimmelmann on the Berlin Stadtschloss" in Andrew Hammel's German Joys blog. I haven't visited Berlin, so I can't really comment.

Ice skating

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:27:46 GMT

I've finally done some ice skating. It was interesting going to the little rink at Red Arrow a few day after skating on the 400 meter oval. They are very different. Constant turning on the little rink. The 400 meter not only has the long straights but the turns have such large radius that while the pros are leaned way over, the rest of us find them to be very gradual. The big oval provides lots of space to go fast without constantly maneuvering around people. The outdoors is pretty, though, with city hall on one side, the Marcus Center with the fancy color-changing LED lights on another. If the wind is strong enough you get a slow one way / fast the other way effect, too.

Retroactive Resolutions

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:31:07 GMT

Following hsifyppah, here are my retroactive 2008 resolutions. Stuff that—really!—I meant to do all along, and, sure enough, did.

Attend radiation safety training. Something of a radioactive resolution.
Go to Germany again. Because Germany is awesome. Have adventures there ("No problem!")
Attend a live-action role-playing game for the first time. Heck, do it in a foreign country, in a foreign language I can just barely understand under the best of circumstances. That way the role-playing fights with rubber swords, which would be very confusing if they were real fights with real swords, will indeed be very confusing!
Don't get run over by a motor vehicle
And don't start smoking, either
Sing a song, from memory, in German, in a room full of people, every one of whom other than me is a native speaker of German.
- Oh, and don't feel too nervous about that, either
  - But drinking beer beforehand is allowed. A good German beer I hadn't tried before would be good.
Smooch cute filker women. In various countries.
Ride the bicycle lots
Swim in the big lake. Without freezing to death. (Important not to freeze to death!)

Rec/wreck Area

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 02:03:12 GMT

This is my favorite sign:

As anomalous4 commented, "Otherwise........ wreck area." (Best comment ever.)

It's a great country, but it's a strange culture

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:03:37 GMT

Right here in Wisconsin, two people were injured in a gun-should-have-been-loaded-with-blanks-but-wasn't incident at a staged train robbery of the "Santa Train." One of the actors got hit with 46 shotgun pellets, and a 14 year old spectator ended up with a pellet in his finger. According to the Sheboygan Press "The re-enactment unfolded with the actors engaging in a simulated shootout with police on Second Street near Harris Bank, after pretending to steal dynamite from a local hardware store for use in robbing the train, which was carrying Santa Claus."

I'm trying to imagine explaining the whole concept of a staged train robbery involving Santa, guns, and explosives as wholesome entertainment for the children. Never mind the accident, isn't this, you know, weird? I guess every culture has its traditions that seem bizarre to foreigners. This is the Random Lake, Wisconsin example.