Tim Bray has posted an amazing photo of Mount Hood that he took from a plane—his description is “Mount Hood paying its respects to the moon” and I think that’s entirely appropriate. Worth a look.
Blog
-
Stumps
The previous post got me thinking for some reason about the 2000 year-old tree stumps found just off the Oregon coast, in Neskowin. You haven’t heard about them? Judging by the amount of time searching to find any pointers or references to them, most of the Web hasn’t either.
This is from KXL.com’s Coastal Tour Guide page:
This downright spectacular oddity is almost a rare sight in Neskowin, but you may not know just how spectacular it is unless you know what it is you’re looking at.
They look somewhat like old, ragged pilings leftover from something manmade – but they are, in fact, stumps of a 2,000-year-old forest. As many as 100 are sometimes visible in various shapes and sizes. It’s theorized that around 2,000 years ago a massive, cataclysmic earthquake abruptly dropped this forest as much as six feet. This wound up preserving them, rather then destroying and scattering them as natural erosion might’ve done.
An article on these appeared in 1998, and I remember being awed and amazed that these artifacts from the era of Christ and the Roman Empire were being exposed right in my backyard, so to speak. Scouring around the Web, there’s only a couple of decent articles I was able to find on the subject: this Herald-Sun Newsbrief from March 18, 1998 and this archived Sunset article. Good to know I’m not completely crazy.
Anyway, if you find yourself in or around Neskowin, Oregon, find your way down to the beach and check it out.
-
Great Salt Lake life forms
Is this for real?
Scientists Finding Strange Life Forms in Great Salt Lake
With levels now at a 30-year low, the salt in portions of the shrinking lake has reached saturation levels ten times the salinity of seawater. Westminster, the University of Maryland and George Mason University are not only finding life where life shouldn’t exist, but life, perhaps like nothing of this earth.
Instead of the rods, spheres and spiral shapes microbiologists are familiar with, they’re seeing organisms shaped like pyramids, triangles, squares and crescents.
Dr. Bonnie Baxter, Westminster College Microbiologist: “Completely novel sequences that don’t match up with anything in the databases. And one of our genome guys who was taking a look at these said this looks like alien DNA. It doesn’t match anything we have on earth.”
-
Silly math tricks
For some reason, these kind of math gimmicks always remind me of upside down calculator spelling. They’re amusing, but I really have to wonder who sits around and thinks these things up? Anyway, here’s what I just received via email from a friend (slightly edited):
“Chocolate mathematics”
1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to have chocolate. (Try for more than once but less than 10.)
2. Multiply this number by 2 (Just to be bold)
3. Add 5. (for Sunday)
4. Multiply it by 50.
5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1754. If you haven’t, add 1753.
6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.
You should have a three digit number.
The first digit of this was your original number (i.e., how many times you want to have chocolate each week).
The next two numbers are:
Your age! (Oh yes, it is!!!!!)
This is the only year it will ever work, so spread it around while it lasts.
Incidentally, yes, it works.
-
Map of Springfield
Too cool: The Map of Springfield. You know, Springfield from The Simpsons. Amazing amount of effort going into this.
Via Slashdot.
-
vCard
I’ve been playing with the vCard format for a project at work and I gotta say, there’s a technology that’s begging to be re-implemented in XML. I mean, here’s the behind-the-scenes formatting of a vCard file:
BEGIN:VCARD FN:Mr. John Q. Public, Esq. N:Public;John;Quinlan;Mr.;Esq. BDAY:1995-04-15 ADR;DOM;HOME:P.O. Box 101;Suite 101;123 Main Street;Any Town;CA;91921-1234; TEL;PREF;WORK;MSG;FAX:+1-800-555-1234 END:VCARD
…with a bunch of arcane rules for delimiters and encoding. Uh, hello? EDI? 1989 called, and it wants its format back.
Wouldn’t something like this XML mockup of the same thing just make more sense?
<vCard> <name> <family>Public</family> <given>John</given> <additional>Quinlan</additional> <prefix>Mr.</prefix> <suffix>Esq.</suffix> <formatted>Mr. John Q. Public, Esq.</formatted> </name> <dob>1995-04-15</dob> <address> <type>Domestic, Home</type> <po>P.O. Box 101</po> <extended>Suite 101</extended> <street>123 Main Street</street> <locality>Any Town</locality> <region>CA</region> <postalCode>91921-1234</postalCode> </address> <telephone> <preferred /> <type>Work, Message, Fax</type> <number>+1-800-555-1234</number> </telephone> </vCard> -
Apology
I got an email from Al Fasoldt yesterday that was in response to this piece I wrote last year. He wanted to know what I was thinking when I wrote it, and basically called me on it. I remembered being harsh when I wrote it, but since it was last July I didn’t remember any real details (it was on the software Hotbar, and Web tracking in general), I went back and re-read what I wrote.
Wow.
I wasn’t just harsh and sarcastic, I was downright nasty. Looking back on it now, it was pretty uncalled for, and I honestly don’t know why I was so rude. So, I emailed an apology to Fasoldt, and I’m doing the same publicly (since I lambasted him here in public): I apologize for being so nasty and writing that entry up the way I did.
-
Back
Yes, back from Portland since yesterday, but I’m finally catching up on everything—internet connectivity has been spotty at best here for some reason, so last night after not being able to connect to anything for the umpteenth time, I said, “Screw it!” and gave up.
Portland is where it’s supposed to be. Bend is where I left it. Good enough.
-
Gone for the weekend
I’ll be offline all this weekend and most of Monday. We’re going to Portland: the kids have another eye doctor appointment with someone new on Monday, so we’re making a weekend out of it and heading up tomorrow.
I’ll check my email Saturday morning but after that it’s au revoir.
