Bad News...

Via my mom:

An elderly man from Miami, Florida had a massive heart attack and the family drove him to the emergency room at Baptist Hospital. After a while the ER doctor appeared wearing a long face. "I'm afraid Grandpa is brain-dead, but his heart is still beating."

"Oh, Dear God," cried Grandma, "We've never had a Democrat in the family before!"

Heh!

Curiosity: the Awakening...

More and more instruments and cameras are coming online.  The photo at right (click to enlarge) is from one of the navigation cameras, looking down at Curiosity itself.  You can see lots of pebbles strewn about, apparently kicked up by the sky crane's rockets as it winched Curiosity down onto the surface.

Those cable-tied, neat bundles of cables bring back strong memories for me, of my days in the U.S. Navy.  Much of the equipment that I worked on (as a repair technician) was constructed in the same labor-intensive fashion.  Constructing those bundles was a craft unto itself, and certain pieces of gear I worked on contained elaborate “harnesses” (as they're called) that were works of art.  I really hated it when I had to break one apart to repair a broken wire...

The Politics of Programming...

This is strictly for the programming geeks.  Steve Yegge, the famous ranter, has posted a rather interesting piece hypothesizing the existence of a spectrum of “politics” in programmers.  Not politics in the sense you're familiar with, but a kind of liberalism vs. conservatism in the way a progammer views his or her craft.  He cites an example familiar to any programmer as a “tell”: a preference for static typing (e.g., C or Java) vs. dynamic typing (e.g., JavaScript or Perl).  Here's that discussion:

Soooo... static typing enthusiasts are conservative, right?

Why yes. Yes, they are. Static typing is unquestionably one of the key dividing software-political issues of our time. And static typing is a hallmark of the conservative world-view.

In the conservative view, static typing (whether explicit or inferred) is taken on faith as an absolute necessity for modern software engineering. It is not something that one questions. It is a non-issue: a cornerstone of what constitutes the very definition of Acceptable Engineering Practice.

In the liberal's view, static typing is analogous to Security Theater. It exists solely to make people feel safe. People (and airports) have proven time and again that you can be just as statistically secure without it. But some people need it in order to feel "safe enough".

That's a pretty big difference of opinion -- one I'm sure you can relate to, regardless of how you feel about it.

Yup, I can relate to that. By that measure, I'm a programming liberal – I love dynamic typing, and feel constrained every time I program in a statically-typed language.  And I know lots of programmers who would instantly agree with the “conservative view” Steve outlines above.  It's an interesting thought that an entire suite of preferences goes along with your “programming liberal” or “programming conservative” world view.  On quick examination, I'd say there's definitely some truth to the notion.

Steve looks at the question of whether there's a correlation between one's politics and one's programming politics.  He guesses “no”, but on intuition rather than any actual examination.  My own politics are hard to shoehorn into any category other than “not liberal” – I wonder if the same is true of my programming politics?  To figure that out, we'd have to have a much longer list of the liberal/conservative programming politics divide...

A Man and His Dog...

The man is John Unger of Wisconsin, and the dog is 19 year old Schoep, whom John got as a puppy.  John credits Schoep with (quite literally) saving his life during some dark days.  Now Schoep is very old (in dog years), and has developed debilitating arthritis, making it nearly impossible for him to sleep.  John accidentally discovered that Schoep's pain was relieved when in the water – so now John takes Schoep out into Lake Superior every night for some much needed relaxation.  Hannah Hudson, the photographer and John's friend, caught this moment between a man and his much-beloved dog...

Curiosity: Lookin' Good...

All the news from Curiosity is good.  The mast is up, and the photo at right ( a composite of two) was taken with one of the mast's cameras.  All the checkout and shakedown work so far shows no problems at all.

Go, Curiosity, go!

Curiosity is tweeting, by the way...

Just a Little Steep, Don't You Think?

Suppose you were badly in need of some money.  Let's say you needed $10,000 to buy something you desperately wanted.  You might be willing to pay a somewhat higher-than-usual interest rate to get a loan of that much money, and you'd realize that you'd be paying back more than you borrowed.  So, for example, if you borrowed that money for 10 years at 20% interest with a balloon payment, you'd be unsurprised that you'd end up paying back about $30,000.  That's a lot, but hey – that was something you really wanted.

But now suppose you were told you'd have to pay back $100,000?  Wouldn't that make you wonder whether it was worth it?  Well, apparently such considerations – especially since the taxpayers would be footing the bill – never even occurred to school district officials at Poway (in San Diego County).  And the Poway officials were not alone.

Rope.
Tree.
Rotten, corrupt, city officials (I know this is redundant).
Some assembly required...

Japatul Lane...

An anonymous commenter yesterday asked if I would “be willing to divulge the location of Japatul Lane”.  Well, certainly!  But it's no secret – even Google Maps knows where it is. The flat-bottomed valley just to the east (right) of the two ponds is where we reliably spot the deer:


View Larger Map

I Feel Like A King...

Curiosity: More Amazing Photos...

The main Curiosity site has a bunch of new photos up, including all those below showing the various bits of hardware strewn about the Martian landscape by Curiosity's landing.  All of these bits and pieces are within a few kilometers of each other.  MRO took these photos from its orbit around Mars, proving that the scientists know exactly where Curiosity has landed.  This is in stark contrast to past lunar and planetary missions, wherein it took weeks or even years to figure out the precise landing spot.  This is a testament to the skill of the folks operating these missions and to the capabilities of the hardware we have flying around Mars.

Below we have (click any to enlarge it):

• upper left: the heat shield, which dropped away from the sky crane assembly once the parachute was deployed
• upper right: the backshell and attached parachute
• lower left: the splat made by the sky crane assembly after it dropped off Curiosity and flew out of the way
• lower right: Curiosity itself, sitting alone on the bottom of Gale Crater, with a dark area around it where the sky crane's rockets cleared off the light colored dust

Rasterizing Curves...

Pure geek stuff, on Bresenham's algorithm for rasterizing curves...

Vomit Tea...

The farm I spent my childhood on grew holly trees (mainly Americal Holly, Ilex opaca) through the 1960s.  I got very familiar with this tree, especially the horticultural varieties that my father favored.  My dad told us kids that the American Indians used a tea made from holly leaves during their feasts.  They'd eat until they could eat no more, then drink a cup of this tea.  The tea was an emetic, so they'd go off in the bushes and puke – and then come back to eat their fill again.

Years ago, I searched for information about this, trying to either verify or debunk my father's story.  I came up empty-handed.  Now there's a bit more information available, and my father's story apparently wasn't completely wrong...

The Bird in the Bluegrass...

Just watch it through, even if you don't like bluegrass music (what's wrong with you?).  Linking because the stupid thing autoplays. Via my lovely bride...

Curiosity: First Color...

I've learned that it will be at least a week (and likely more) before all of Curiosity's instruments are “unpacked”, calibrated, checked out, and declared ready for action.  Some of Curiosity's many cameras are already able to work, and photos from them are starting to come in.  At right (click to enlarge) is an interesting one, taken from a camera located on the instrument boom.  The boom is currently in its stowed position, and is rotated (hence the funny tilt to the photo).  The camera isn't even fully deployed yet – its lens is covered with a transparent dust cover, and that cover is full of ... dust.  So this, the very first color photo returned from Curiosity on the surface, is taken through a film of dust, as though it's lens were very dirty.  It's showing the rim of Gale Crater, which Curiosity is sitting inside of.  Other (black and white) photos returned show Mt. Sharp, the giant mountain inside Gale Crater whose flanks are the primary target of Curiosity's mission.  There are many more photos available in the Curiosity image gallery.

Also released is the amazing photo at left (click to enlarge), the result of an astonishing piece of wizardry on the part of the folks at JPL.  Whizzing in orbit around Mars is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has been there since 2006.  The imaging gurus there figured out exactly where and when Curiosity would be entering the Martian atmosphere, then told MRO to aim at that patch of sky at precisely that time.  It's a bit like riding in a supersonic airplane with telescopic camera while taking a photo of a satellite whizzing 300 miles over your head.  But the JPL imaging wizards pulled it off, and this photo is the result.  At the top, you can see Curiosity under canopy, descending at about 200 MPH.  At the bottom, you can see the heat shield (which had separated from Curiosity when the parachute was deployed), still in free fall.  Awesome!

The little video below was also released, a kind of teaser for the real deal that's coming in a few weeks.  While Curiosity was descending, a special camera called the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) was able to start taking photos.  It's a 1,600 x 1,200 pixel camera that took images at about 5 frames per second from the time the heat shield was released until touchdown.  This video was constructed from a small sampling of thumbnail (200 x 150 pixel) photos.  Over the next few weeks, the entire sequence of high resolution photos will be returned, and a high resolution video will be constructed from it.  One interesting note about this camera: NASA dropped it from the mission at one point, and Malin Space Science Systems (a San Diego company) finished it at their own expense – at which point NASA agreed to put it back on the mission plan.

Cute Animal Pictures...

A whole passel of 'em!

A Lovely Day in the Chaparral...

Debbie and I took a long, leisurely drive through our local mountains yesterday, stopping a few favorite places and exploring a few new ones as well.  Race and Miki came along for the ride.  Then late at night I watched the coverage of Curiosity landing on Mars – successfully!  A lovely day, indeed...

We left home around lunchtime, so our first stop was our favorite fast-food joint in all of San Diego County: Frosty Burger in Pine Valley (the linked Yelp reviews are, as usual, wildly variable).  We shared fish sandwiches, a “mountain cheeseburger”, fries, and iced tea.  But we didn't eat in Pine Valley; instead, we started down one of our favorite back-country drives: Pine Creek Road, which starts just northwest of Pine Valley and heads toward the summit of Mt. Laguna.  We found a nice parking place and wolfed our delicious lunch.

After that, our intent was to take an unnamed forest road to the northwest that heads toward the high meadows in the eastern part of Cuyamaca Rancho State Park.  We'd been on that road 10 or 12 years ago, and we were curious to see what state it was in 5 years after the big fires.  But this was not to be, as a huge locked steel gate blocking our way.  Dang.

So we continued up Pine Creek Road to Deer Park Road, a four-wheel road that heads almost directly north through some nice riparian areas.  This time of year, of course, all the grasses have long since turned golden brown.  The area burned in spots, but mostly it's undamaged from the 2007 fires.  A mile or so down Deer Park Road there's the site of an old mine, and the photo at right shows some of the remaining machinery.  I think this was the center of a machine that one would harness horses to, and they'd walk in a circle to pump water.

Further up Deer Park Road we started running into big stands of “mountain mahogany” (Cercocarpus montanus) with their beautiful hairy seeds.  These were some of the largest and most beautiful stands I've ever seen.  A typical setting is at left.  From my reading, these plants are amongst the favorite browse of goats, sheep, deer, and cattle.  I didn't see any sign of browsing on any of the thousands of plants I saw, which probably tells us something about the recovery of the large ungulates.Seen close up, the mountain mahogany seeds are especially beautiful, especially when backlit.  I've tried to capture this (at right), but not really with much success.  One interesting thing about these seeds: the hairs are slightly sticky, so they catch and hold dust.  Shrubs near the road appear to have reddish seeds – but they're really just as white as these, they've just caught a lot of road dust.

We continued up Deer Park Road to its intersection with Indian Potrero Road, which we took to the east, back toward Sunrise Highway.  At the time, actually we had no idea where we were.  This was new territory for both of us, and we thought we new this backcountry so well that a map would be silly.  I figured out afterwards where we actually went :-)  On Indian Potrero Road we came over a ridge to see a beautiful view to the north (at left).  That's a classic view of summertime San Diego mountain mixed chaparral and riparian areas, in this case 5 years after a major burnoff.  If we had taken this photo in, say, November of 2007 ... you'd be looking at a moonscape, a scene with nothing but black and shades of gray.  Some of the areas (center photo here) were amongst the hottest-burning areas of the fire.  When we drove through here right after the fire, I stopped in a few places and dug to see how far down the charring went.  It went over a foot down, which made us wonder if any roots or seeds had survived.  Well, now we know the answer: plenty of them survived.  Unless you're observant and spot the skeletons of trees left after the fire, you'd never know this had recently burned...

We also drove through vast stands of one to two foot high manzanitas, a ground cover species.  Most of the manzanitas in San Diego County are one of four shrub species, growing up to 30' or more high (I have a 35' specimen in my back yard).  But we do have a few large stands of this groundcover species, mostly on the western flanks of Mt. Laguna, which is where we were driving.  We see these much more commonly in the higher reaches of more northerly mountains.  My father and I saw enormous stands up in Mt. Lassen National Park a few years ago.  At right you see our old LandCruiser.  She's so ancient and decrepit that we're afraid to take her too many miles from home, but despite that she still serves us faithfully – with nearly 300,000 miles on the odometer.  Helluva vehicle, those old LandCruisers.  The new ones just ain't the same...

After we connected back up with Sunrise Highway, we took off to Julian for a little refreshment (iced coffee and iced tea).  Then Debbie had a brilliant idea: Dudley's!  We were only a few miles from our favorite bakery, and hadn't been in a long while.  We headed down with plans to stock up on potato bread, but this was not to be.  The bakery looked like a hoard of locusts had descended upon it.  The shelves were nearly empty.  We walked out with just three loaves of bread to freeze – but a half-dozen bags of their luscious fruit bars, so all was not lost. 

At this point our plan was to just drive around for a while, exploring new places, until it was near sunset.  Then we'd go for some wildlife viewing at Stonewall Mine Road.  But even after tooling around the Pine Hills area for a while (lots of beautiful homes up there), we ended up with too much time on our hands.  Then a pair of good ideas: (1) trek on back to Frosty Burger for a hard-pack ice cream cone, and (2) head down to Japatul Lane where just the night before we'd had great viewing of deer.  This plan we executed perfectly.  Armed with two strawberry ice cream cones, we headed down to Japatul Lane.  We pulled in there about 15 minutes before sunset, and the dogs finished off the last of Debbie's ice cream cone just as we parked. 

Within a few minutes of us parking, deer started to trickle into the meadow.  But they never stopped trickling, right up to darkness.  Debbie and I were entranced for the next hour.  We had at least 45 head of deer at the end, amongst them three magnificent stags and 15 to 18 fawns.  Some of the fawns appeared to be just days old, with the short little “baby faces”, still wobbly, and in the case of two fawns they appeared to be incompletely cleaned up after birth.  It was just spectacularly good viewing – and for once we actually remembered to bring the binoculars.  I can't imagine a better way to end a nice day in the countryside than to be able to watch fawns cavorting for an hour, just 100' or so from us...

And then after we got home, I stayed up to watch Curiosity's spectacularly successful entry and landing on Mars.  From everything I've read so far, it was an absolutely flawlessly executed sequence, a real technological tour de force.

All together a day to remember!

Curiosity is Down and Safe!

If you're interested in robotic space exploration, you probably already know: the Curiosity rover is on the surface of Mars, where it's supposed to be, safe and sound.  The science mission is about to begin!

The photo at right is the first medium resolution (512 x 512) image returned.  It's from one of the hazard avoidance cameras after its dust cover had been sprung open.  Curiosity is festooned with cameras, taking advantage of modern electronic imaging technology.

I'm not sure about the science mission timeline.  Ordinarily when a lander first touches down, there are hours to days of preparation before the lander's science mission is fully ready to go.  Much of this is because the lander is generally all “folded up” for the cruise and descent stages of the mission, and the controllers have to “unpack” it all.  I'm not sure how much of that is true for Curiosity – not only did it have a radically different descent phase, it's also got a much smarter on-board control system.  Things could be different this time around.

I stayed up late last night to watch the streaming feed from the JPL flight control center.  It was pure pandemonium there after confirmation of safe touchdown – and who can blame them?  I felt like committing a little pandemonium myself :-)

Kettle Mountain Meadow...

We want a meadow like this on our place in Idaho...and maybe someday we will!  From BPotD, of course...

Kids Say the Darndest Things, Part 6,823...

Via my mom:

A 1st grade school teacher had twenty-six students in her class. She presented each child in her classroom the first part of a well-known proverb and asked them to come up with the remainder of the proverb. It's hard to believe these were actually done by first graders. Their insight may surprise you. While reading, keep in mind that these are first-graders, 6-year-olds, because the last one is a classic!

Proverb...	Kid's Ending
Don't change horses...	until they stop running.
Strike while the...	the bug is close.
It's always darkest before...	Daylight Saving Time.
Never underestimate the power of...	termites.
You can lead a horse to water, but...	how?
Don't bite the hand...	looks dirty.
A miss is as good as a...	Mr.
No news is...	impossible.
You can't teach an old dog new...	math.
If you lie down with dogs, you'll...	stink in the morning.
Love all, trust...	me.
The pen is mightier than the...	pigs.
An idle mind is...	the best way to relax.
Where there's smoke, there's...	pollution.

Excellent!

Women Who Know Their Place...

Via my mom:

Barbara Walters, of 20/20, did a story on gender roles in Kabul, Afghanistan, several years before the Afghan conflict.

She noted that women customarily walked five paces behind their husbands.

She recently returned to Kabul and observed that women still walk behind their husbands. Despite the overthrow of the oppressive Taliban regime, the women now seem happy to maintain the old custom.

Ms. Walters approached one of the Afghani women and asked, 'Why do you now seem happy with an old custom that you once tried so desperately to change?'

The woman looked Ms Walters straight in the eyes, and without hesitation said, "Land mines."

There's A New Blog in the Valley!

I have no idea whose blog this is, but they have put up signs in Lawson Valley sending people to it.  There are only two posts up so far, first on one July 22, so it's a bit hard to tell what sorts of things are going to be posted there.  So far its theme is much more coherent than my blog's theme: it's local news.  This valley's plenty big enough for two bloggers – welcome aboard, neighbor!