A tesseract or hypercube is a well-known polychoron. It has 8 cells : count them and see if you agree !No, it’s not a play park climbing structure, it’s .. geometry? art? both? This one has a very large number of cells.
There is an intriguing structure on display in downtown Seattle’s Westlake Center. I walk by there on the way to my firm’s downtown office sometimes, and I finally took a picture. So what is it? Well, it’s a polychoron, but a very complicated one with 1-4-8-4-1 outside vertices (with the bottom vertex cut off to make it stand on its own!). Polychora are closed four-dimensional figures, with cells inside. A tesseract has 8 cells, but the one at Westlake Center has too mind-bogglingly many too count.
My nephew is checking out the sockeye salmon that have started their upstream migration through the fish ladder at the Ballard Locks. (Check out the Halo action figure between him and his mom, also checking out the salmon).A panorama view of Puget Sound as seen from Seattle’s Discovery Park. The park is close by the Ballard Locks, with walking trails and access to the Puget Sound water side.
Saturday and Sunday were beautiful summer days here in the Pacific Northwest, but I have a nasty cold and could not go out with my brother and his family that were visiting from California. My brother and I checked out the Ballard Locks last when he visited in April, here Ballard Locks. At that time there was nary a fish in sight in the water, but by now the full-grown salmon have started to migrate into the rivers, and are swimming upstream to spawn. (The Ballard Locks are in the canal that links Lake Union to Puget Sound, and so the canal is effectively an artificial river to the salmon).
It’s nice to be back home and to be able to use my internet connection without watching the minutes and agonize over the time it takes to upload a single picture. I can read all kinds of things such as ‘Boeing stock tumbles after another fire on a 787’, ‘Microsoft announces massive company-wide reorganization’ and ‘Seattle among the snobbiest cities in the USA’ (this one according to a survey done by Travel & Leisure magazine) .. aw, are we that bad? I once worked with a young Texan from Dallas here in the Seattle area, and he was very adamant that Texas has many more beautiful women than Seattle does.
I discovered that one of the Windows 8 wallpapers features a ‘Rock of Cashel’ castle picture. We were right there some 10 days ago. I just did not take such a spectacular picture. I love the ‘dark’ atmosphere that the grey clouds add. The sheep in the foreground are oblivious and are just grazing away.
Fremont is a neighborhood here in Seattle that was originally a separate city, but annexed to Seattle in 1891. Fremont bills itself as the ‘Center of the Universe’, and on the Saturday closest to the summer solstice each year, it hosts a ‘solstice parade’ that celebrates the sun. The parade is ‘notorious’ – said King5 TV news tonight – for its naked bicyclists (but it did not show any of them even on the late night news). Here are some of the pictures that I took today.
Fremont Bridge is a double-leaf bascule bridge over the Lake Washington ship canal. In summer it opens an average of 35 times a day (it is only 9 m above the water), which makes it the most frequently opened drawbridge in the United States, says Wikipedia. We just made it across the bridge before the alarm sounded and the booms came down so that it could be drawn up.
Here ‘s the start of the parade, the group promoting renewable energy.This white eagle (?) on stilts flaps her wings at the parade on-lookers.This is at the fair next to the parade : a clock made from dinnerware. That’s me in the striped shirt.Bryan and I walked back some way along Lake Union’s west side, and found this super-yacht called ‘Vibrant Curiosity’ moored right there. We looked it up on-line, and it belongs to German billionaire and screw manufacturer Reinhold Wuerth. It was built in 2009 for a reported US$100 million.Here’s a side view of the yacht. It’s 280 feet (85 m) long.Just a quickie snap shot that I took of the Buca di Beppo Italian restaurant’s neon sign on the way back.Look Ma, no clothes! Just body paint, he heh. There was a very large contingent of bicyclists this year.
Today was the longest day of the year here in the north with the sun setting at 9.10pm. The Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper reports that the beautiful sunsets this year are due to forest fires in Siberia. Check out this accelerated video clip of a sunset from the Seattle PI blog, and watch for the lights on the Space Needle to start flashing as the sun sets. Here is the link : http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2012/07/11/thank-russia-for-seattles-gorgeous-sunsets/
From the Seattle Post Intelligencer (newspaper) website : A beautiful Seattle sunset with the Space Needle in the center.
This chatty polka-dot piggy and his (her?) sleepy rodent friend were on a porch right next to the sidewalk on 13th Ave.
It’s summertime, and today was very pleasant and mild outside. There were rain showers in the forecast, but there were certainly none here where I live in the city. The sun sets after 9pm, which means I can have my dinner and still go out for a walk. (I am supposed to make it out to the gym, but what a production it is to get one’s kit together, get down there, work out, and all that. I will go tomorrow!).
One more picture from tonight’s walk. This building houses the Canterbury Ale & Eats (see the Tudor style trim above the doors and windows?), and is located on 15th Ave here on Capitol Hill.
It was a gorgeous day here in Seattle, with the sun out and the temperatures mild and perfect for a walk outside.
These flowers are on 23rd Avenue here in Capitol Hill. I should know what they are but the name escapes me now, and I have to go to sleep since I am getting up very early !And here are some diners on the sidewalk basking in the late afternoon sun on 19th Avenue at the Kingfish Cafe. They serve Southern food such as crab cakes and hush puppies (fried cornbread balls). The construction of the apartment building in the background in coming along nicely.
I went up to Seattle’s University District on Saturday afternoon in pursuit of my out-of-print and not-on-Amazon book from 1966 that the Central Library said they would have here – but it turned out they did not, either. But it was all worth the trip because I bought two nice books at the Half Price Bookstore close by. I will write about them in a later post.
The entrance to the Seattle Public Library’s University Branch. The library is modest in size, but has a nice atmosphere and a reading room. Here’s Fires Station No 17; it’s located at 1050 NE 50th Street.
It’s been a week since the collapse of the Skagit River Bridge on Interstate 5 north of Seattle. Washington State Department of Transport (we just call them ‘wash-dot’ here on the news) has dredged up the bridge section and vehicles from the river, and is getting ready to put a temporary section in place. I see Wash-DOT splashed out on Yahoo’s photo site (called Flickr) with detailed pictures. Here is the link http://www.flickr.com/photos/wsdot/sets/72157633665218854/
Here’s a nice view from behind the overhand of a maple tree onto the pavement on 15th Ave, seen as I went for a little walk late Tue afternoon. The leaves make a nice camouflage pattern (the French word derived from camoufler, to disguise). After Memorial Day it’s ‘unofficially summer’ but the warm and dry weather still has to arrive here in Rain City.
On Sunday Bryan, Gary and I made a mini-road trip out to Bryan’s family in Westport. Westport is a seaside town on the west side of the Olympic Peninsula. It’s about 2 hours one way.
It’s not a straight shot out to Westport since the Puget Sound is ‘in the way’. We went south on I-5, and then used an assortment of State Routes to get to Aberdeen and then to Westport.Here’s the Nisqually River bridge on our way south on I-5, a ‘polygonal Warren through truss’ bridge that was constructed in 1967.This is a draw bridge over the Wishkah river in the city (town) of Aberdeen. This bridge was constructed in 1924. The town of Forks is further north on the Olympic Peninsula, now a tourist destination for ‘Twilight’ fans (a TV and movie series about teenage vampires, with the town of Forks as its setting).
And is this a light house? Nooo .. it is the Westport Winery, in fact. We made a stop here to pick up a carrot cake for a dessert to the lunch we were planning, at the bakery inside.We’re done with lunch, and here is what the Westport beach looks like. It was great to walk on the sand and smell the sea .... and check out the sand dollars that are plentiful! I picked up these five on the beach in no time. They don’t have the ‘key hole’ slots of the ones we have in South Africa, but the five leaved ‘flower’ pattern is the same. They are called ‘pansy shells’ there, after the flower with the same name. (It’s not really a shell, since its the skeleton of a flat urchin. In the live urchin there is a velvet-like covering of fine bristles on the skeleton).And here is a real lighthouse : the Grays Harbor Lighthouse close to the beach that we walked on. It was built in 1898 and is adjacent to the Westport Light State Park on Coast Guard property.
It’s been many years since I had been inside the Seattle Central Library on 4th Avenue, and today I went there, also in search of a 1967 Time-Life Sciences book. (The book is long out of print and has pictures of an Einsteinian ‘relativistic’ train robbery in that I am very fond of.) Alas, I did not find the book, but I took some pictures. The library opened in 2004 to mixed reviews, some criticizing it for being relatively isolated from 4th Ave and 5th Ave and not easy to get into and out of .. but its current usage is actually double of what was estimated when it opened.
The side view of the library (the back) on 5th Ave in Seattle’s downtown.This is the 7th floor where I was hoping to find my book. This book of city scapes was on display and had a nice picture in of Cape Town, South Africa. Here I am making my way up with the neon yellow-green escalator up to the 10th floor.Some library souvenirs for you? The studious rubber duckies are cute.This video art work is on the escalator between the 3rd and 5th floors. It’s a little creepy – but then I suppose that’s what the artist wanted it to be?Here is the view from the 5th floor down to the ‘commons area’ on the 3rd floor.
Three people and their cars ended up in the river, but was pulled out and seem to be doing fine. At this point there are no known fatalities. The bridge was built in 1955*, and is some 65 miles north of Seattle, and the four-lane structure sees an average daily traffic of about 71,000. So this spells trouble for the immediate area. There is an alternate route and a newer bridge, but it was not designed for nearly as much traffic.
*Designated ‘functionally obsolete’ on its most recent inspection reports but apparently that does not mean the bridge is unsafe. (Sounds as it was overdue for an upgrade or replacement, though).
Here is an aerial view of the Skagit River bridge on I-5 some 65 miles north of Seattle that collapsed Thu night after a too-tall truck struck the overhead trusses.Here is my first official Tesla sighting in Seattle, today Thursday. I was across the street and the white Tesla (brake lights on, middle of the picture) came right by -stealthily as these electric cars do – and turned into the Starbucks on Olive Way to pick up a woman with a latte (I’m guessing) in hand. I want one! (A Tesla).My friends and I like to go to alehouses, and here is Wednesday night’s pick : the Tippe and Drague Alehouse in Beacon Hill. I had a Gigantic Vienna Lager. (Regular size, the gigantic is part of the name of the beer).
What is the longest floating bridge in the world? asks the metal tile.The State Route 520 floating bridge is more than 7,580 feet long and has been in operation around since 1963. Currently a newer, bigger bridge is under construction for a whopping $4.65 billion, scheduled to open in 2015.
This metal tile that I found under my feet while I was at the Westlake Center plaza in downtown Seattle, poses a question. It is one that a Seattle resident should be able to answer (or at least guess) easily : What is the longest floating bridge in the world? (Side comment .. shouldn’t the question have said ‘WHERE is the longest floating bridge in the world?). Answer : In Seattle, of course. Well, between Seattle and Redmond. So that the Microsofties can get across Lake Washington. Here is a post I made long ago SR 520 showing what a cross-section of the bridge will look like once the renovations and expansion to it is complete, scheduled for 2015.
I learned a new word while listening to a discussion of the Denny Substation’s progress on the city council’s web site : there will be a utilidor for the station. Utilidor is short for utility corridor (really just a utility tunnel, to carry cabling and to house equipment underground). There’s not much to see behind the Denny Substation Project site yet .. right now they are scooping up the top two to four feet of soil to clean up oil and grime from the old Greyhound bus station maintenance facility. It’s still a ways to 2016 when the substation will be complete.
The sign on the fence at the Denny Substation Project site. I like the symbols for the substation and transmission (at the bottom). Transmission lines are the high-voltage lines from the power plant to the substation. But the lightning bolt for ‘Distribution’ from substation to homes is a little off .. it should have been one of those wooden poles with a cluster of drum-shaped transformers, not?
The picture is from Thursday. I am standing on the corner of 7th Ave and Olive Way. I had just left the Vessel bar/ watering hole where I had a beer with a few colleagues after work. The ‘Olive 8’ condo tower still has 5 units left, but it seems like the opportunity to snap up a condo on the cheap from the distressed developer has now come and gone. The building was completed in 2009, and one bedroom condos typically listed for $500,000. One condo for sale on the property website Zillow had been sold in Nov 2010 for $328,000, probably by the developer to a speculator. The listing price (it’s a one bed, one bath condo) is now back up to $495,000.
On the left is the still-new Olive 8 condo building on Olive Way and 8th Ave in downtown Seattle, outlined against the afternoon’s clear sky.
It looks as if two weeks of dry weather is coming to an end today, and we had beers on Bryan and Gary’s deck tonight to enjoy the last of it. Check out Bryan’s ‘Elysian Superfuzz Pale Ale’ beer, brewed with blood orange to give it a citrussy taste. I buy the little blood oranges here at the grocery store when I see them. They are small and sweet and make you feel like a vampire when you bite into the juicy dark red fruit. Njarr !
The Elysian microbrewery’s Superfuzz Pale Ale is brewed with blood oranges .... like these. It really does look as if there is blood in the orange!
Temperatures reported by Kin5 TV on Monday. Monday’s high was 87 ºF (30.6 ºC) and the previous record high from 1957 is 79 ºF (26.1 ºC).
I thought it was warm on Monday – but didn’t realize until the evening news that the 87 ºF (30.6 ºC) we had in the city was quite an aberration. It was the highest May 6 temperature on record, and by a wide margin.
So .. does a beach have to have sand? Madison Beach here alongside Lake Washington does not really have sand, and the water is not salty. We have to make do with what we have since it’s a heck of a drive out to the open ocean’s beaches here from the city !
The scene at Madison Beach park at 5 pm on Sunday afternoon. The water is still cold, so only the bravest souls venture in this early in the season. It is 2.2 miles from where I live (A) to Madison ‘beach’ on Lake Washington (B). I walked out there; it’s downhill most of the way. And then I cheated and caught the No 11 bus to bring me back three-quarters of the way.
We have a high-pressure cell hovering over us this weekend – keeping the clouds of the jet-stream away, and giving us a beautiful clear blue sky* and warmer temperatures (70’s º F/ 20’s ºC).
*And just why is the sky blue? Because of Rayleigh scattering. In plain English, the molecules of the earth’s atmosphere scatter the shorter wavelengths of light from the sun more than the longer ones, and the human eye sees the blue. If our eyes were more sensitive to violet light, the sky would have been violet. When the sun sets, the scattering of the red color wavelengths become more predominant, and we see red and pink).
The Seaboard building with Friday’s blue sky behind it. Constructed in 1910 as offices, the upper floors have now been turned into condominiums for people that like to live right in the city.Here’s a Google street view photo (same building on the left). After work I walked up Pike St (center of the picture) to catch one of the buses on the right that stopped by the white arches of the Convention Center in the distance, to take me to my home on Capitol Hill.
