Good food is really hard to beet! Our neighbor Tim D. came over a couple days ago with a bag full of fresh vegetables from his garden. Among those vegetables were a nice bunch of beets. Debbie doesn't really like beets, but I love them, so these were all mine. This afternoon I cleaned them up, plopped them in a saucepan, and boiled them until they were nicely done. For the last 10 minutes or so, I threw in a couple nice sausages. After draining them, I roughly cut up the beets, threw some lovely butter at them, and chowed down. What a great lunch!
Next up: a zip-lock bag full of fresh corn, cut off the ear. This was delivered to us yesterday by a gaggle of four little girls (ages about 6 through 10), the daughters of our neighbor Nikki L. and her sister, who brought the corn over and then demanded to see all our animals :) Debbie was happy to accommodate them, and while I was busy digging holes they were down in our cattery playing with the seven cats down there...
Friday, September 25, 2015
The smell of new-mown hay in Paradise...
Hill of Crosses...
WWII colorized photo collection...
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Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... Yesterday I dug five more big holes (4' square, 30" deep) where our paper birches will be planted next Tuesday. I did most of the digging with my little Kubota B26 backhoe, then cleaned up each hole with a shovel. As I was doing this work, my thoughts wandered to memories of my dad. He dug a lot of holes in his lifetime, to plant shrubs and trees. So far as I know, he always dug them entirely by hand, with nothing more than a simple shovel. I suspect he'd have scoffed at my backhoe. He loved the physical exertion of digging holes; it was therapeutic for him. When he was worried or tense, his habit was to go out and do something relatively mindless and physically difficult – and more often than not, that meant digging holes. You might not think there was much skill to digging a hole, but if you'd ever watched him, you'd know that wasn't true. If he was digging in good, loamy, rock-free soil, his actions looked like they were choreographed. His shovel took precisely sized, perfectly placed bites out of the soil. With a single economical motion, the shovel would be emptied into exactly the right place – without the tiniest bit of an extra joule being expended. My efforts as a child, and perhaps even more so as an adult, were lame and pathetic by comparison. He'd have enjoyed digging holes in Paradise, and I'll bet that only a shovel would be involved...
When I finished digging holes, we hopped into our truck and headed up Blacksmith Fork Canyon to gawk at the fall color, and hopefully to see some wildlife. On the way out, as I was hungry, we stopped at McDonald's so I could try the “McRib” sandwich. The only reason I wanted to try it was that several people I know rave about it – and I don't know anyone who raves about a McDonald's hamburger. So I got my McRib, and I ate it, but ... I'm never going to get another one. The meat was bland, so bland I couldn't even tell it was pork. Mystery meat. The barbecue sauce was more sugar than anything else – disgustingly sweet, slightly chemically tasting, without the slightest bit of interesting quality at all. Blegh!
Fortunately the fall color in the canyon more than made up for the bad taste in my mouth. Some photos below, all iPhone and none of them do it justice:
We're going back again on Saturday evening, even though it's the weekend (lots more of those pesky people!) when more color should have migrated to lower altitudes.
We did see some wildlife as well, particularly three does with single fawns. Two of those fawns were still very young, obviously late births. They were weaned, but still had spots and alarmingly little fat for the season. They need to fatten up fast, or move down to where there's food all winter, or they'll be at risk.
This morning we made our first visit to the “new” Crumb Brothers, which opened this past Saturday. We got there at 7 am, when they open their doors. We both had croque madame (with Emmental cheese), with a biscotti for “dessert”. We found out that our favorite bread (sunflower seed) will be baked fresh every Wednesday and Friday, available at 11 am. We'll be back for that!
After we returned, with me in a croque madame coma, the boys (Miki and Race) and I headed out for our morning walk. I managed to find yet another route variation, which pleased the dogs. They get visibly more excited whenever we turn in a new direction. Somehow they know all the places we've ever been before, and when we're going somewhere new. The Clawson dairy folks mowed two big alfalfa fields a few days ago, and the windrows are still down drying. This morning there were hawks perched all around those fields, with more hawks hunting for voles in low swoops, often no more than a couple feet from the ground. We saw several of them make catches, and several others eating catches they'd already made. Happy hawks, not-so-happy voles. I'm ok with that :)
Some photos of our walk:
When I finished digging holes, we hopped into our truck and headed up Blacksmith Fork Canyon to gawk at the fall color, and hopefully to see some wildlife. On the way out, as I was hungry, we stopped at McDonald's so I could try the “McRib” sandwich. The only reason I wanted to try it was that several people I know rave about it – and I don't know anyone who raves about a McDonald's hamburger. So I got my McRib, and I ate it, but ... I'm never going to get another one. The meat was bland, so bland I couldn't even tell it was pork. Mystery meat. The barbecue sauce was more sugar than anything else – disgustingly sweet, slightly chemically tasting, without the slightest bit of interesting quality at all. Blegh!
Fortunately the fall color in the canyon more than made up for the bad taste in my mouth. Some photos below, all iPhone and none of them do it justice:
We're going back again on Saturday evening, even though it's the weekend (lots more of those pesky people!) when more color should have migrated to lower altitudes.
We did see some wildlife as well, particularly three does with single fawns. Two of those fawns were still very young, obviously late births. They were weaned, but still had spots and alarmingly little fat for the season. They need to fatten up fast, or move down to where there's food all winter, or they'll be at risk.
This morning we made our first visit to the “new” Crumb Brothers, which opened this past Saturday. We got there at 7 am, when they open their doors. We both had croque madame (with Emmental cheese), with a biscotti for “dessert”. We found out that our favorite bread (sunflower seed) will be baked fresh every Wednesday and Friday, available at 11 am. We'll be back for that!
After we returned, with me in a croque madame coma, the boys (Miki and Race) and I headed out for our morning walk. I managed to find yet another route variation, which pleased the dogs. They get visibly more excited whenever we turn in a new direction. Somehow they know all the places we've ever been before, and when we're going somewhere new. The Clawson dairy folks mowed two big alfalfa fields a few days ago, and the windrows are still down drying. This morning there were hawks perched all around those fields, with more hawks hunting for voles in low swoops, often no more than a couple feet from the ground. We saw several of them make catches, and several others eating catches they'd already made. Happy hawks, not-so-happy voles. I'm ok with that :)
Some photos of our walk:
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Farm machinery...
This chart nicely summarizes...
This chart nicely summarizes ... one of the best arguments against anthropogenic global warming: that temperatures are not, in fact, at alarming levels (or headed there). Click the chart to embiggen; go here for the supporting article. The chart covers the entire span of human civilization, and it's obvious at a glance that we're not in a particularly warm period right now (at right on the graph) – in fact, quite the reverse.
If you're wondering why the temperatures are reading negative °C, it's because (a) that's the temperature of the ice core drilled from Greenland ice sheets, and (b) scientists use Celsius temperature scales. Just for your reference, in °F that right-hand scale would read from -19°F to -27°F.
There's debate about how good a proxy Greenland ice sheets are for global temperatures (in other words, how well they correlate). There's no debate, though, on whether the ice cores from those sheets are a better proxy than tree rings: they are, most certainly.
If you're wondering why the temperatures are reading negative °C, it's because (a) that's the temperature of the ice core drilled from Greenland ice sheets, and (b) scientists use Celsius temperature scales. Just for your reference, in °F that right-hand scale would read from -19°F to -27°F.
There's debate about how good a proxy Greenland ice sheets are for global temperatures (in other words, how well they correlate). There's no debate, though, on whether the ice cores from those sheets are a better proxy than tree rings: they are, most certainly.
Quote of the day...
Quote of the day... Professor Eben Moglen, of Columbia University's law school:
I'm also a proponent of open source software, but I don't think that Mr. Moglen's argument is entirely supportable, nor is it as simple as he makes it out to be.
Consider, for example, his assertion that “you can’t inspect” proprietary software. That's clearly not true – a government inspection agency (merely writing that sends shivers down my spine!) could be given access to proprietary code by appropriate legislation. I think that would be a disastrous addition of friction to the software development process, and I am not proposing that. I'm merely pointing out a flaw in Mr. Moglen's argument. Slightly more subtly, it's already true today that if someone files suit against a company alleging that their software caused injury or damage, the plaintiffs will be able to get at the source code through the legal discovery process (that happened in the infamous Toyota acceleration case, for example). I'm not sure that's any better than the government agency approach, but it again belies Mr. Moglen's assertion (even if it is an after-the-fact inspection). But if his argument is really that it would be better, from some cosmic perspective, to have the source code available to one and all for safety and reliability inspections, well then I completely agree. In fact, that's one of the big reasons why I'm a proponent of open source software in the first place.
But there's another element that Mr. Moglen basically ignores, and that is the protection of the proprietary software developer's economic interest in that software that was developed. Modern software is often so complex that reverse-engineering it is prohibitively expensive. The firmware in an automobile is a great example of this – the object code (the stuff the computer itself understands, the result of compiling the source code) may be dozens or even hundreds of megabytes in size. Reverse-engineering a chunk of code that big would cost millions of dollars and take years. The source code is therefore a valuable economic asset to the manufacturer. It is not shipped with every car, and competitors have no legal way to steal it. Open source software, however, is by its very nature “open” – anyone at all, including one's competitors, and freely look at it. If a car manufacturer were to develop key algorithms that made its cars run better, then making those algorithms available to its competitors – for free – is not a particularly smart business move. It would be like a restaurant famous for its unique dishes giving away the recipes for them to all the other restaurants. Not going to happen.
I don't have any magical answers here. It's a genuinely tough problem, balancing the considerations of safety, reliability, and the very real economic interest of the manufacturers. If we were to simply legislate that all manufacturers using software or firmware had to make that open source, it's hard to imagine the manufacturers would continue investing the millions of dollars they currently spend every year to develop the wonderful new features we all love. Would Apple have developed iTunes if they then had to give the code to their competitors? I think not! Would a car manufacturer invest in firmware that gave its engines better fuel efficiency if they then had to give it to their competitors? Why on earth would they? There's no gain to them.
Hard questions, and nobody has perfect answers for them. Those perfect answers probably don't exist...
Proprietary software is an unsafe building material. You can’t inspect it.Mr. Moglen is a proponent of open source software, and the argument he so eloquently makes is that the secret nature of proprietary software makes it impossible for either individuals or government agencies to inspect it.
I'm also a proponent of open source software, but I don't think that Mr. Moglen's argument is entirely supportable, nor is it as simple as he makes it out to be.
Consider, for example, his assertion that “you can’t inspect” proprietary software. That's clearly not true – a government inspection agency (merely writing that sends shivers down my spine!) could be given access to proprietary code by appropriate legislation. I think that would be a disastrous addition of friction to the software development process, and I am not proposing that. I'm merely pointing out a flaw in Mr. Moglen's argument. Slightly more subtly, it's already true today that if someone files suit against a company alleging that their software caused injury or damage, the plaintiffs will be able to get at the source code through the legal discovery process (that happened in the infamous Toyota acceleration case, for example). I'm not sure that's any better than the government agency approach, but it again belies Mr. Moglen's assertion (even if it is an after-the-fact inspection). But if his argument is really that it would be better, from some cosmic perspective, to have the source code available to one and all for safety and reliability inspections, well then I completely agree. In fact, that's one of the big reasons why I'm a proponent of open source software in the first place.
But there's another element that Mr. Moglen basically ignores, and that is the protection of the proprietary software developer's economic interest in that software that was developed. Modern software is often so complex that reverse-engineering it is prohibitively expensive. The firmware in an automobile is a great example of this – the object code (the stuff the computer itself understands, the result of compiling the source code) may be dozens or even hundreds of megabytes in size. Reverse-engineering a chunk of code that big would cost millions of dollars and take years. The source code is therefore a valuable economic asset to the manufacturer. It is not shipped with every car, and competitors have no legal way to steal it. Open source software, however, is by its very nature “open” – anyone at all, including one's competitors, and freely look at it. If a car manufacturer were to develop key algorithms that made its cars run better, then making those algorithms available to its competitors – for free – is not a particularly smart business move. It would be like a restaurant famous for its unique dishes giving away the recipes for them to all the other restaurants. Not going to happen.
I don't have any magical answers here. It's a genuinely tough problem, balancing the considerations of safety, reliability, and the very real economic interest of the manufacturers. If we were to simply legislate that all manufacturers using software or firmware had to make that open source, it's hard to imagine the manufacturers would continue investing the millions of dollars they currently spend every year to develop the wonderful new features we all love. Would Apple have developed iTunes if they then had to give the code to their competitors? I think not! Would a car manufacturer invest in firmware that gave its engines better fuel efficiency if they then had to give it to their competitors? Why on earth would they? There's no gain to them.
Hard questions, and nobody has perfect answers for them. Those perfect answers probably don't exist...
Got $46M burning a hole in your pocket?
It's one of the last big pieces of wild America left on the market...
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
2016 presidential election resource...
2016 presidential election resource... I hope this page keeps working through the election! It's a breakdown of the current odds from Betfair, a large British betting company. Since the government shut down the U.S.-based sites, the polls have been our best source of information – and they, of course, are notoriously biased and inaccurate. The betting markets are far better, and even though these markets are British, historically they've been more accurate than U.S. polls...
Afternoon in Paradise...
Afternoon in Paradise... This morning I found out that the trees we've ordered will be here next Tuesday. Those trees include three fairly large weeping willows, five quite large paper birches, six lilacs, and 25 sumacs in five gallon pots. That means we need some holes dug :) This afternoon I dug the holes for the three willows, four feet across and two feet deep. Tomorrow I'll tackle the birches.
The big, beautiful field of alfalfa east of us is being mowed today (first three photos below). Two machines – the same two I posted photos of a few days ago – were making quick work of it. When I took the two photos of the mower in action, I was surprised to see that the driver was a young woman, perhaps 19 or 20 years old. When she saw me taking photos, I got a big smile and a friendly wave. I really shouldn't be surprised to see that, as it's quite normal here for the girls and women on farms to do the much of the same work as the men. The only areas that seem to be “male only” are those that genuinely need the muscles, such as moving hand line around. Anyway, she was whipping that monster machine around like an expert!
The last photo is something you should all be jealous of. It's two tomatoes from my neighbor's (Tim D.) garden, cleaned and chopped, and a nice dollop of Duke's mayonnaise. That's some mighty fine eating, let me tell you!
The big, beautiful field of alfalfa east of us is being mowed today (first three photos below). Two machines – the same two I posted photos of a few days ago – were making quick work of it. When I took the two photos of the mower in action, I was surprised to see that the driver was a young woman, perhaps 19 or 20 years old. When she saw me taking photos, I got a big smile and a friendly wave. I really shouldn't be surprised to see that, as it's quite normal here for the girls and women on farms to do the much of the same work as the men. The only areas that seem to be “male only” are those that genuinely need the muscles, such as moving hand line around. Anyway, she was whipping that monster machine around like an expert!
The last photo is something you should all be jealous of. It's two tomatoes from my neighbor's (Tim D.) garden, cleaned and chopped, and a nice dollop of Duke's mayonnaise. That's some mighty fine eating, let me tell you!
Morning in Paradise...
Morning in Paradise... Well, I had a nice photo from our morning walk to share, but my iPhone's battery chose this moment to croak. I can't even connect to my computer! There's a chore for me today: take my phone into the service outfit in Logan. Oh, well...
Yesterday afternoon, as planned, we headed out for dinner at Maddox. Debbie tried the turkey steak, and I had chopped lamb. Both of those were prepared basically like a hamburger patty, and both were very good. We'd have them again. But the star of the dinner was our dessert. Even though we were fairly full, we decided to try their pie. We've never had it, and several people have told us that it was good. They lied. It was way beyond good! We had a peach pie that was 95% peaches – fresh, with very little sugar added – and 5% pastry. It was topped with their homemade vanilla ice cream, but the truth is I barely noticed the ice cream. Those peaches were fantastic! That was one of the best pieces of peach pie I've ever had.
Then we went for a drive up toward Hardware Ranch. We were a bit early in the day for wildlife (we thought), but the sun was still well up so we'd thought we'd see the fall color nicely. Well, we certainly did see lots of beautiful fall color, especially in the upper half of the canyon. But we also saw quite a bit of wildlife. Lots of deer, a coyote (not far east of the dam), two beavers working away on their dams (right near hardware ranch itself), two kingfishers (gorgeous birds!), an osprey eating a small fish on top of a utility pole, and a close-up view of a dusky grouse (at right, not my photo). The latter we finally identified last night. The first time we saw some of these birds, we thought they were ptarmigan in summer plumage – but that made no sense, as they're way out of ptarmigan territory. Reading about them we discovered they have a very odd diet: the “needles” of fir trees and pine trees. Yuck!
When we got home, there was a buck in our front yard. We've seen this one before, nearly every day for the past few days. It's instantly identifiable, as one of his front legs is badly injured (looks like something wrong with his knee, from the way he limps). We think he's hiding out in the trees near our irrigation canal, then hobbling the short distance to our alfalfa field to chow down. He's going to have a tough time this winter, though there's a good chance that someone here will shoot him for the meat before then...
Yesterday afternoon, as planned, we headed out for dinner at Maddox. Debbie tried the turkey steak, and I had chopped lamb. Both of those were prepared basically like a hamburger patty, and both were very good. We'd have them again. But the star of the dinner was our dessert. Even though we were fairly full, we decided to try their pie. We've never had it, and several people have told us that it was good. They lied. It was way beyond good! We had a peach pie that was 95% peaches – fresh, with very little sugar added – and 5% pastry. It was topped with their homemade vanilla ice cream, but the truth is I barely noticed the ice cream. Those peaches were fantastic! That was one of the best pieces of peach pie I've ever had.
When we got home, there was a buck in our front yard. We've seen this one before, nearly every day for the past few days. It's instantly identifiable, as one of his front legs is badly injured (looks like something wrong with his knee, from the way he limps). We think he's hiding out in the trees near our irrigation canal, then hobbling the short distance to our alfalfa field to chow down. He's going to have a tough time this winter, though there's a good chance that someone here will shoot him for the meat before then...
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Morning walk in Paradise...
Morning walk in Paradise... We (Miki, Race, and I) left a bit later than we generally do, and went a bit further along a new route. This took us over a “dry hay” field, which you can see in the last two photos below (with two cute dogs!). The locals call any unirrigated field planted with alfalfa or grass a “dry hay” field. Usually these are fields that are impractical to irrigate, either because of their steepness or because they're too far from any source of water. In this case, neither applies; the slope is gentle and an irrigation canal runs along the field's eastern border. The density of the alfalfa plants suggests that at some point in the past this field was irrigated, but either the owner lost water rights or his interest, or it wasn't economically viable. It hasn't been cut this year at all, and the only grazing on it has been from deer and elk.
The first two photos show a beautiful irrigated alfalfa field that's quite close to the dry hay field. This field has been cut, raked, and baled twice this year already – and will most likely be cut this week for the last time this season. This hay goes to a dairy a few miles north of us, and they've collected a lot of hay this year.
We saw several hawks this morning, but nothing like the hawk density of the past few weeks. We also see no voles any more, and I suspect the former is caused by the latter. Something we did see in abundance: a small, yellow-green butterfly. They are everywhere in the fields. My beloved sunflowers are done for the year, I'm sure to the relief of my readers who have put up with 10,000 photos of them :)
The first two photos show a beautiful irrigated alfalfa field that's quite close to the dry hay field. This field has been cut, raked, and baled twice this year already – and will most likely be cut this week for the last time this season. This hay goes to a dairy a few miles north of us, and they've collected a lot of hay this year.
We saw several hawks this morning, but nothing like the hawk density of the past few weeks. We also see no voles any more, and I suspect the former is caused by the latter. Something we did see in abundance: a small, yellow-green butterfly. They are everywhere in the fields. My beloved sunflowers are done for the year, I'm sure to the relief of my readers who have put up with 10,000 photos of them :)
Brotli: a new compression algorithm...
Brotli: a new compression algorithm... It's just announced from Google, it's open-sourced (in C; look in the “dec” and “enc” directories), and there's a draft IETF standard. I haven't looked closely at it, but from their announcement it certainly sounds interesting...
Networks of trains and other things...
Networks of trains and other things... This article is talking about (and bemoaning) the chaos on the Internet of Things (IoT) right now. It's certainly true that at the moment there is a mish-mash of incompatible devices, APIs, and data formats. I'm not worried about that, though – from that chaos, I'm confident that useful standards will emerge. The crowd of early adopters will make that happen as they figure out what things really work, which don't, and which are most useful (or make the most money).
This has happened before, and even with networking. Back in the '70s and '80s, when the Internet as we know it was just emerging, there was chaos in the world of networks. Conflicting network protocols, data formats, and even hardware abounded. The advent of Ethernet 10baseT and the IP protocol changed all of that. Virtually everything else is gone from local area networks (LANs) today, and that pair of standards rules the world of LANs.
Something similar happened in the 1800s with trains. When trains were first developed, every manufacturer and even buyer would make up their own gauge (the distance between the rails), weight standards, etc. This created all sorts of chaos, and spawned new businesses that transferred cargo from train cars of one gauge onto train cars of another. A lot of ingenuity and capital were invested in these systems, until it finally dawned on the railroads that things would be much better for all concerned if they standardized on a single gauge so that railroad cars could go anywhere in the U.S. Once accomplished, this completely eliminated that crazy set of businesses that were moving cargoes between incompatible railroad cars. Today we'd say that was obvious, but it wasn't so obvious at the time – plus it looked prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to accomplish.
A little earlier there was yet another example, this time with nuts and bolts. Every manufacturer used to have their own set of diameters and thread pitches for nuts and bolts. If parts from two manufacturers could work together, that was a miraculous accident. The manufacturers had all sorts of fanciful justifications for why their diameters or thread pitches were better, but that was mostly nonsense. In this case, it was the users of nuts and bolts who drove the adoption of a standard. The users worked together to define a standard, then told the manufacturers that they'd only buy nuts and bolts that met the new standard. Almost overnight, the world of nuts and bolts converged on that new standard.
The same sort of thing is bound to happen with the IoT. Well, there's one other possibility: we'll collectively decide that the IoT is a useless waste of time. I don't think that's very likely, though...
This has happened before, and even with networking. Back in the '70s and '80s, when the Internet as we know it was just emerging, there was chaos in the world of networks. Conflicting network protocols, data formats, and even hardware abounded. The advent of Ethernet 10baseT and the IP protocol changed all of that. Virtually everything else is gone from local area networks (LANs) today, and that pair of standards rules the world of LANs.
Something similar happened in the 1800s with trains. When trains were first developed, every manufacturer and even buyer would make up their own gauge (the distance between the rails), weight standards, etc. This created all sorts of chaos, and spawned new businesses that transferred cargo from train cars of one gauge onto train cars of another. A lot of ingenuity and capital were invested in these systems, until it finally dawned on the railroads that things would be much better for all concerned if they standardized on a single gauge so that railroad cars could go anywhere in the U.S. Once accomplished, this completely eliminated that crazy set of businesses that were moving cargoes between incompatible railroad cars. Today we'd say that was obvious, but it wasn't so obvious at the time – plus it looked prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to accomplish.
A little earlier there was yet another example, this time with nuts and bolts. Every manufacturer used to have their own set of diameters and thread pitches for nuts and bolts. If parts from two manufacturers could work together, that was a miraculous accident. The manufacturers had all sorts of fanciful justifications for why their diameters or thread pitches were better, but that was mostly nonsense. In this case, it was the users of nuts and bolts who drove the adoption of a standard. The users worked together to define a standard, then told the manufacturers that they'd only buy nuts and bolts that met the new standard. Almost overnight, the world of nuts and bolts converged on that new standard.
The same sort of thing is bound to happen with the IoT. Well, there's one other possibility: we'll collectively decide that the IoT is a useless waste of time. I don't think that's very likely, though...
Shadows on Mars...
It's because Mars is further from the sun than Earth is, and therefore appears to be smaller. Penumbra happen because the source of light isn't a perfect point, but instead is a circle of perceptible size (you see the sun as a bright circle in the sky, not a single point). The sun's angular size from Earth is about 0.5° – and from Mars it's about 0.35°. That means that the sun, as seen from Mars, is just over half the size in the sky of the sun as seen from Earth. That means the penumbra of shadows on Mars are just over half the size of the penumbra of shadows on Earth. Much sharper!
Monday, September 21, 2015
How computers are made...
Younger electronics types may not recognize the components in the photo. The package at the upper left is an eight pin DIP package. Before surface mount took over the world, they were the standard package for most integrated circuits (with various numbers of pins). The other five components are resistors, with one of their leads cut off and the other twisted up. They were the standard package for most resistors before surface mount's rise...
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