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Tuesday/ reviving my iPhone

My iPhone (not even a year old, Xs) died all of a sudden today, even though it was about 75% charged.
I finally revived it by trying the Device Firmware Update button sequence several times:
Press & release Volume Up button;
Press & release Volume Down button;
Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button ..
.. and then the Apple logo came on and it came back to life.

Who knows what constellation of firmware, software and hardware settings was to blame for the system ‘s black-out .. but from now on, I’m going to close all open screens and turn the phone completely off & on again, at least once a week.

Maybe I take too many pictures with my phone, more than it can handle. This picture is the downtown Barnes & Noble Bookstore dinosaur figurine display. They were all jumbled up, and I straightened out the two Carnotauruses (orange, foreground) and Velociraptors at the back. These both roamed around on Earth some 72 million years ago.
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Monday/ how will the Hong Kong protests end?

Wow .. it is Tuesday in Hong Kong and protesters are again flooding into Hong Kong airport. (The airport was brought to a standstill on Monday).

Who will ultimately win the public’s support, and will it matter once the Chinese army moves in? Hong Kong law states that the People’s Liberation Army (the Chinese armed forces) stationed in the Hong Kong region cannot interfere in local affairs, but the law does allow for their deployment at the request of the Hong Kong government to ‘maintain public order’.

What started as protests against changes to Hong Kong’s extradition laws to China, have now morphed into protests against police brutality (against the protestors), and against the Hong Kong government and Chief Executive Carrie Lam in general.

Protestors doing a peaceful sit-in at the airport on Monday, although the latest reports say that they have gone to the departures halls as well, preventing passengers from checking in.
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Sunday/ Amazon’s Block 20 & Block 21 buildings

My Sunday afternoon walk in the Denny Triangle was thwarted a little by a rain shower.  I did get a few pictures of the newest Amazon buildings that are almost completed, though.

The brown building with 8 storeys is Amazon Block 20, seen from the corner of 8th Ave and Blanchard.
This water feature is on the other side of the Block 20 building, on 7th Avenue.  It was designed by local sculptor Gerry Tsutakawa and is part of the public plaza there.
Here is Amazon Block 21 (2200 7th Ave), seen from the corner of 7th Ave and Blanchard St. It is part of Amazon’s expanding headquarters. The office tower on the left is 24 stories tall, and the building in the foreground 8 stories.  The oval building in the back is the McKenzie Apartments building, 40 stories tall. It was completed last year, and has 450 apartments.
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Saturday/ two have gotten the axe

We are getting new disabled accessible ramps on the pavements here at Republican Street and 16th Avenue .. but at the price of two big trees that have been taken out.

Two big trees have been taken out on the corner area of Republican Street and 16th Avenue: one right on the corner and one further back.
This picture is from Monday Aug 12. The tree’s roots were just too big and too close to the surface for the city workers to save it, so it had to be taken out.
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Friday/ bushtits

There was a bunch of little bushtits in the camelia in front of my house this morning, and I took a few pictures.

Bushtits (Psaltriparus minimus) are tiny little drab-gray birds that are very active and social. They do not migrate, and are found year-round on the west coast of Mexico and North America, all the way to the Pacific Northwest.
Their diet consists mostly of larvae and insects, as well as spiders. They do eat seeds, berries, and fruit — in seasons when insects are not as abundant.
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Thursday/ red & blue

Here’s one more spiro-graphy twirl, for now.
The design took several attempts to get a clean drawing without any slip-ups. It was done with repeated wheel-in-a-wheel-in-a-ring runs.

Blue: Align Hole 1A in Wheel 42 inside Ring 63 in Wheel 135, all inside Ring 180. Draw 1A-2A-3A-4A. Align Hole 1B at the top and draw 1B-2B-3B-4B. Red: Turn 90º and repeat.
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Wednesday/ on a (gelly) roll

I bought another fistful of Sakura Gelly Roll® pens at the Blick Art store as I walked by it on Broadway, today .. and came home to realize that I had bought some duplicates (of course).

So! Time for a phone picture that I can have handy next time, to make sure I know which colors I already have.

My first attempt at a picture of my pen collection. Not good enough, though – the same color can come in medium point or fine point ..
.. so I rolled them out on the sheet of paper to show both the color and the size of the pen point.
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Tuesday/ my first new spirals

Here are my first colored spirals with the Wild Gears. I’m still getting used to the gears. They are a little harder to use than Spirograph, but they can produce very different results.

Smooth-finished, heavy paper (card stock) works best, and I have discovered Sakura Gelly Roll® pens which even come in metallic colors.

Wheel 35 in Ring 96. Hole No 1 Pink for 2 cycles & No 1 Black fine point for 7 cycles. (These are the technical details of how the pattern was produced, more for my own reference than anything else).
Wheel 45 in Ring 64. Hole No 1 Black fine point with final cycle in Silver gel.
Wheel 45 in Ring 64. Hole No 1 Orange fiber tip with final cycle in Black needlepoint.
Triangle 69 in Ring 96. Hole No 1-2-3-4-5-6, Black fine point No 12-13-14-15.
Alright. Let’s do something complicated, that could never be done with Spirograph gears. What’s going on here? I started out at bottom left with Hole 1 in Wheel 32, as close as I could get it to the Ring 140. As I rolled Wheel 32 counter-clockwise with the pen in Hole 1, (all the while inside Ring 56), the big Wheel 126 starts to roll counter-clockwise as well. So this is a trace of a fixed point (Hole No 1) on a small disk (Wheel 32) that rolls in a circle (Ring 56), all of which is part of a larger disk (Wheel 126) that rolls inside another larger circle (Ring 140). Whoah!
Here is the end result, drawn in 0.7 mm black liner. The Wheel 32 made 18 rotations in the Ring 56 while the Wheel 126 turned in the Ring 140, and then ended up in the same place.
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Monday/ fake speech! fake speech!

Trump read something from the teleprompter today as a response to the mass shootings. I turned the TV off as soon as he came on.

Afterwards, I saw on Twitter that he couldn’t even read his fake speech right – a speech in which he blamed video games & mental illness for the shootings, and said nothing about any new legislation that could make a difference.

The teleprompter said “May God bless the memory of those who perished in Texas and Ohio….”. Trump read it as “May God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo….” and didn’t even bother to correct himself. Picture from Reuters, tweet by Andrew Feinberg. 
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Sunday/ warm and sunny

We got up to 89°F/ 32°C today.
So: toasty, and about as warm as we get here in the city.
(Ten years ago on July 29, 2009, though, Seattle saw a high of 103°F/ 39.5°C, but so far, we have been spared from a repeat of that).

Here’s the corner of Pine and 12th Ave, under blue sunny skies. The crow artwork has been there for some 4 years, but the blueberry snack bar ad is new.
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Saturday/ Sandy Hook 2012, now already long gone

The massacres continue unabated here in the United States.
Saturday at an El Paso Walmart: 20 dead, dozens wounded. 
Early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio: 9 dead, 27 wounded.
Both are acts of domestic terrorism, committed by home-grown white nationalist Americans.

The Republicans and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell have repeatedly blocked laws passed by the House in the Senate.

The New York Times notes: “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate,” Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, referring to the 2012 attack that killed 20 young students at an elementary school in Connecticut. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

It should be noted, though, that in 2013, Connecticut State lawmakers did make sweeping changes to the state’s gun laws. It did not impact gun sales very much, but today Connecticut has one of the lowest gun death rates in the nation. (‘Lowest gun death rates’ is still a problem).

The United States of America with its lax gun laws: Awash in guns, awash in mass murderers. P.S. 2019 figures: 393 million guns in America, population 327 million.
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Friday/ the Blue Angels are here

It is the peak of summer festivities here in the Pacific Northwest, and the start of Seafair Weekend. Highlights are the Blue Angels airshow, and the hydroplane race on Lake Washington.

Here is my quickie iPhone picture of the Blue Angels as they tore through the sky above Seattle today. They are very, very— ear-splittingly— LOUD! 

The six Blue Angels flying in a delta formation today. The Angels are McDonnell Douglas-made F/A-18 Hornets: twin-engine, supersonic, all-weather, carrier-capable, multirole combat jets. They were first used in combat (bombing raids) in Libya, in 1986.
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Thursday/ more tennis

I have run out to the tennis at Seattle Tennis Club every day this week to watch the tennis there.
It’s a great way to enjoy the sunny weather.

Here is the little jetty on the shore of Lake Washington by the Seattle Tennis Club. Hobie Cats (like the one with the yellow, white and orange sail) were wildly popular in Plettenberg Bay in South Africa back in the day when my family went there in summer, and they probably still are. 
These are yellow and pink coneflowers (Rudbeckia), also called black-eyed Susans, basking in the sun by the tennis courts.
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Wednesday/ the first Fed funds rate cut in 10 years

Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell fielded a lot of questions today after the announcement that the Federal funds rate will be cut by 25 basis points to a target rate of 2.00 – 2.25%. He characterized the cut as a mid-cycle ‘adjustment of policy’ — and that it is a way to brace against downside risks. (Um, another way to ‘brace against downside risks’ would be for the Trump Administration to stop the never-ending tariff wars with China and others).

That means savers will earn even less money on their savings. Borrowers for say home loans, may get a little relief from lower borrowing rates .. but 0.25% will barely make a difference on an 18% annual rate on a credit card!

Steve Liesman from CNBC talking about the rate cut. The US dollar is the strongest it has been in two years. The immediate reaction from the US stock market was negative, probably because the comments from Federal Reserve Board chairman Jay Powell were less dovish than expected.
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Tuesday/ the Democratic debates, Round 2

CNN is hosting the second round of Democratic candidate debates this week. I played tennis and could not watch last night, but I saw the highlights.  The lowlights would be Trump’s Twitter responses that continued into Wednesday.

Here’s the dumbest man on television, commenting on the debates via his classic Twitter style: go for 4th grader insults that use ‘the worst’, ‘the dumbest’ .. and throw in distortions and lies. Side Note: New polls show that 51% of all Americans say that Trump is a racist. A shockingly high 46% say he is not.
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Monday/ action at the Seattle Tennis Club

The Washington State Open tennis tournament started at the Seattle Tennis Club today⁠— for the week, and I went out today to go and take a look. The facility is not even 2 miles from my house, but I have never been there. All other times of the year it is members only and very exclusive.

It was $30,000 to join the Club in 2015 (a figure almost certainly higher by now), plus annual dues. The wait list time is said to be 8 years or so. Rumor has it that Bill Gates wanted to become a member, but now has to wait his turn, as well.

The Seattle Tennis Club on the shore of Lake Washington. That’s the city of Bellevue in the distance. There are 19 tennis courts on the roughly 8 acres of real estate. As it turned out, the guy in red is the No 5 seed in the Men’s Open section, and I watched him play a match just a little later.
A little bit of history, from a banner put up on one of the fences. The first tournament here, was held in 1890, only 13 years after London hosted its first Wimbledon tennis tournament in 1877.
The Washington State Open logo, done in flowers and greenery.
Here’s No 5 seed Riley Smith (22 yrs old, from Long Beach, California). He’s 6’7″ tall, and makes full use of it to smack his serves down into the opposite court. Bam!
His opponent was Jesse Schouten from Mill Creek WA (north of Seattle). Shouten is a good player, but lost in straight sets against Smith.
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Sunday/ a few ‘very fine’ people, marching

I encountered a small group of ‘very fine’* Trump supporters on Broadway today, flanked by a large contingent of police officers (to protect them from a much larger group of protesters, I suppose).

From where I was standing, a much larger group of people followed along on the opposite sidewalk, all the time yelling loudly ‘FASCISTS, GO HOME! FASCISTS, GO HOME!

*Trump’s characterization of the Charlottesville white nationalist protesters, made when he talked to the press on Aug. 15, 2017.

The little group of ‘very fine’ Trump supporters were all of 7 or 8 people. That’s the yellow Gadsden flag with the rattlesnake on, and the words ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ (so are you all snakes?). Two Trumpsters carried Stars & Stripes flags, and two had Trump flags.
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Saturday/ the new apartments at Cap.Hill train station

The construction crews are making good progress on the three new apartment buildings by the Capitol Hill train station.

The three new buildings called A, B and C, from a draft proposal that I found online. The buildings are 7 stories tall and will offer a total of some new 350 apartments. I believe the assumption is that these apartment dwellers will NOT own cars. They have trains and buses (and Uber drivers) on their doorstep to take them anywhere in the city, after all.
The view from Denny Way, looking northeast. This is as tall as the new apartment buildings will go. The open space between the A building (left edge of the picture) and the B buildings (right) will be a public plaza.
This is a late afternoon picture, looking north on 10th Avenue with the B buildings on the left.  The homeowners on the right are getting some shade from the warm sun in summer, but they have lost a lot of sunlight that they used to have in winter!
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Friday/ here come the Wild Gears

I discovered a manufacturer of Spirograph-like gears online, and ordered a few sets of gears. It started out as a Kickstarter (publicly funded) project in 2013, based in Vancouver.  The gears are laser-cut from acrylic.

So! I’m just getting started, and I will have to pick a few of my favorite patterns and add colors in and embellish them.

Here is the ‘unboxing’ moment. The gears are still clad in brown paper sheets stuck onto them (to protect them from scratches and to make for easy shipping). I bought two large sets and two small sets.
Here is the set called Hoops. So this provides a large number of different sizes of rings for all kinds of patterns on their inside, or outside, or both.
This is called the Encyclopedic Set, because it has gears with 12, 13, 14 .. all the way up to 30 teeth. The smallest Spirograph wheel has 24 teeth. Just for fun, I ran the 12 gear in all the holes in the main sheet after I took the geared wheels out.
This is a special 120 tooth gear with odd geometric shapes to experiment with.
The tiny 12 tooth gear. I will have to find a needle point pen to use in the tiny holes.
A few doodles with the odd shapes gear.

 

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Thursday/ Washington, we have a problem

The buzz on the cable news programs about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s un-spectacular testimony on Capitol Hill (about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016  Presidential  Election, continued on Thursday.

No question: Trump is 100% guilty of welcoming the help of the Russians, of then obstructing the investigation into it, and of repeatedly lying about it. But his Attorney-General and the Republicans under Senate Leader McConnell do not care, and are completely supporting Trump.

What will the Democrats do next? I say start impeachment hearings. I’m with Charles Blow that writes in the New York Times:

People were told that opening an impeachment inquiry would be a mistake because that’s what Trump wants to energize his base — particularly a failure to convict in the Senate — and that it would virtually guarantee his re-election.

None of this washes with me. While Democrats worry about tearing the country apart, Trump is doing just that in real time. His base doesn’t need further energizing; they’re juiced up on sexism, xenophobia, racism and nationalism.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow to Adam Schiff, chairman of House Committee on Intelligence : ‘He (Mueller) persistently seemed – um – old’. Aw. (He’s 74). I have to agree, though. He looked worn out, and looked like a reluctant witness. Many of his answers were just ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘that is correct’. But he did say working with the Russians was ‘a crime’ .