Willem's Planet – Page 204 – a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010

March 16, 2013March 16, 2013

Friday/ grumpy cat is a rock star

Grumpyaww — One of my favorite memes of grumpy cat.

I mentioned the internet meme ‘longcat’ in a previous post. Now there’s grumpy cat. Grumpy Cat lives in Arizona and she has her own Facebook page (of course). The kittty was even flown to the South by Southwest® (SXSW®) conference/ festival in Austin Texas* this week to make an appearance there.

*Running this year from Mar 8-17 it is an annual festival of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies. Twitter took the show by storm as a start-up in 2007, and Foursquare did the same in 2009. (Foursquare lets social media users ‘check in’ at places such as restaurants and recommend then to friends. But lately there has been no big buzz start-ups emerging from SXSW.

March 15, 2013

Thursday/ the 25th Annual Pi Day

Thursday 3.14 has now come and gone (it’s Friday morning here in the USA), but I was reminded yesterday that it was ‘Pi(e) Day’ : the 25th Annual Pi Day, actually. Pi Day celebrates the curious mathematical constant that says no matter how small or how large a circle is, its circumference is 3.14* times its diameter. There is even a geeky website for Pi day, at http://www.piday.org. They have a cute t-shirt picture on there that shows 3.14 can be made to read ‘pie’ when looked at in the mirror. There is also a page that shows pi to a million decimal places.

*3.14 is just the approximate value. The constant is an irrational number which means it has an infinite amount of decimal places with no pattern.

314-pie-via-zazzle — T-shirt picture from http://www.piday.org that shows ‘3.14’ can be made to read ‘pie’ when looked at in the mirror. I want one!

March 14, 2013March 14, 2013

Wednesday/ useless machines

OB-WR115_USELESS — A classic useless machine featured in Wednesday’s edition of Wall Street Journal. You turn it ‘on’, and the ‘machine’ opens up and turns itself off.

No, it’s not that printer on your desk that has stopped working. This type of machine is specifically designed to have ‘no use’. It seems to me that a classic version of a useless machine is the one featured in Wednesday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal. The original one was invented in the 1950s by artificial-intelligence expert Marvin Minsky at Bell Laboratories, no less. Check out a video of the machine in action at the website Frivolous Engineering at http://frivolousengineering.com/ .

P.S. If the machine provides its owner with titillation, I would argue it is not a useless machine!

March 13, 2013March 13, 2013

Tuesday/ chocolate rabbit

IMG_5946 sm — My chocolate bunny was made in Germany. This is the little one (3.5 oz/ 100g); there is also a BIG bunny (7.0 oz/ 200g).

2008-0168 — It seems quite incredible that there was such a massive oversupply of cocoa in 2011.

2008-0196 — Africa’s chocolate is exported to Europe and to a lesser extent, to North America.

It’s chocolate and it’s a rabbit, so I could not resist. I will let the bunny sit on the counter for a few days and then bite its ears! I couldn’t find Lindt’s dark chocolate ones this year. At first I thought it is because cocoa and prices have gone through the roof, making the dark chocolate ones too expensive. But I see that after climbing to a 32-year high in 2011, commodity market prices for cocoa has fallen 74 percent since then.

March 13, 2013

Monday/ the art of the impossible

(This is a late post). I found and snapped these pictures from a documentary on NHK World’s website www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/. It started out with the incredible colored ivory carvings of artist Ando Rokuzan (1885-1955). I couldn’t find any of his artwork on-line .. probably because the texts for it are in Japanese. No detail was too tiny. They don’t know how he colored the ivory, and the tools that he used must have been ones he made himself. But then the curator of the art museum told the journalist of an artist called Fuyiki Maehara that lives nearby that makes wood carvings of real-life items : a tin can with an open lid and a branch with berries in it; a barbed wire; the shell of a dead cicada bug. He carved out the inside to make it hollow, carved out the detail on the wings, carved the legs of the insect — out of a single chunk of wood. He makes his tools with the same techniques that were used centuries ago to make samurai swords. Is it art, to make something that looks exactly like the thing for real? Why does the artist do it? asked the journalist. ‘I love doing it .. and to see if I could’, was the reply.

March 11, 2013March 12, 2013

Sunday/ the new Husky stadium

IMG_5928 sm — The Seattle University’s mascot is a husky. (This little fella looks a little forlorn .. aww).

2008-0132 — The new stadium will have cost $250 mil. when construction is complete. I suppose those $500 season tickets and donations will help pay down the tab. That’s Lake Washington behind the stadium. (Picture from the website http://www.huskystadium.com/vv)

[Correction made to original post .. the husky mascot is from the University of Washington of course – not from Seattle University! thanks Dale!]

The husky dog mascot is from the University Bookstore on University Way in Seattle’s University District (of course). (The University of Washington is one of the top public universities in he country, with a student population of 35,000). The university’s new football stadium is still under construction, its opening some 6 months away. The bookstore is probably mundane for students coming here for textbooks, but for the occasional visitor (me), it is quite a treat to look at the large and varied selection of books (it has much, much more on display than just textbooks).

March 10, 2013March 10, 2013

Saturday/ spring forward

2008-0206 — The website standardtime.com is making the case for eliminating Daylight Savings Time altogether. From the website : ‘Stop “Spring Forward, Fall Back. Pick a Time, and Stick with It!’

We have sprung forward in time here in the USA last night at 2 am. My iPhone, iPad and computers are up to the task to recognize that, but I have a lot of clocks in the house that are still disconnected and oblivious to such arbitrary disconnections in time-keeping. So I have to jump in and set their little hands (or digits) forward to reflect the correct time. Daylight Savings Time is now active for such a long time (eight months, until Nov 3) that we might as well pick one time and stick with it. That is the case that the web site standardtime.com is making.

Clocks sm — A round-up of the clocks I found in my house (more are hiding in drawers and dressers but I let them be). Clock-wise (pun intended) from top-left : wrist watch and iPhone, home phone, thermostat, oven, guest room alarm clock, desktop computer, Toyota Camry clock, alarm clock, microwave oven clock, TV, bathroom clock, kitchen clock.

iPad Clock sm — As the world turns .. the ‘World Clock’ on my iPad gives the times and weather at a glance.

March 9, 2013

Friday/ show that smart phone who is boss

I read the front page article of Thursday’s USA Today with interest – the one that describes how mobile technology is liberating us from the office but killing our personal lives. I can check my e-mail and messages anywhere and anytime .. and the minute I open my notebook computer in my study (or in the kitchen), my virtual ‘office’ is right there. I suppose that is why I see some people in the airport carry two phones : one for work, that you can just turn off at times, and another for personal use.

Always Working sm — [Front page of USA Today 3/7/13] Good advice in the side panel from Martha Beck: turn that smart phone with messages and e-mails from work off, you have the power!

March 8, 2013

Thursday/ how now, brown cow?

This street art cow is new (I think). I found it by the corner of Madison and 18th Ave here on Capitol Hill when I took a walk just before sunset on Thursday. The rain we had on and off all week had stopped, but it was still a brisk 45 °F (8°C) outside.

March 7, 2013

Wednesday/ the World Puzzle Championships

2008-0200 — The puzzle solvers hard at work. The event is not really suited for television, but this year’s event will take place in Beijing, and maybe China’s CCTV can find a way to make it interesting for viewers.

2008-0205 sm — Here is the Loop Splitter puzzle ..

I knew there was a World Scrabble Championship, but not a World Puzzle Championship. TIME magazine recently wrote about the 21st WPC (here is the URL http://wscwpc2012.org) .. the latest one was held October of last year in Croatia. (The East Europeans like their puzzles, but the American team did very well, with Thomas Snyder and Palmer Mebane placing second and third after the winner Ulrich Voigt, a German). The instructions for the puzzles are very simple .. but the method to the madness needed to solve them, another matter. One cannot solve the puzzles by brute force, since humans are not computers (and the puzzle solvers have none at hand). So they have to come up with the heuristics – the process or method – out to solve the problem.

2008-0201 sm — .. or some math for you? The colons should be division symbols, I believe.

2008-0204 sm — And a true puzzle to solve. I don’t think the solvers have scissors to cut out pieces of paper! They have to rotate the pieces at they draw them (or before? twist it in their minds?).

March 6, 2013March 6, 2013

Tuesday/ broken side mirror

So .. how did this happen? (Broken rear view mirror on the driver side of my venerable 1996 Toyota Camry Driving Machine). Well, it really wasn’t my fault .. I had the car parked flush to the curb while I was at dinner on Friday night. When we arrived back at the car, I noticed the damage. The perpetrator left a note and a phone number on the windshield, though, explaining that she clipped the mirror while driving, and damaging it. (Which I really appreciated. It makes a big difference knowing it was an accident and the person is owning up to it, as opposed to me thinking it was a random act of vandalism). She will send me a check for the damage. The Toyota garage is ordering a new mirror and housing. There are only two such mirrors with metallic blue housings left in the country, said the spare parts guy. Which makes me wonder what I would have done if there had been none. The options would have been 1. Pick another color. (Maybe); 2. Go hunt in scrap yards for blue 1996 Toyota Camrys. (No); 3. Do nothing. (No); 4. Use it as an excuse to get a new car? The straw that broke the camel’s back. (Maybe!).

March 5, 2013March 5, 2013

Monday/ US Federal Income Taxes at 100 years

Since I work for an auditing firm, the are graciously helping out with the preparation of my federal tax return. (They did send me to China in 2012 which very much complicates the federal tax return, but the help is still appreciated). I still have to fill out an intimidating questionnaire, since the 2013 federal tax code is very different, very much more complicated than the very first one issued in the USA 100 years ago in 1913, which was all of four pages. Check it out below .. pictures and commentary I got from a recent Sunday edition of the New York Times.

Page 1 sm — The Gilded Age of the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts – as well as World War I – resulted in lawmakers instituting a permanent federal income tax in 1913. (A temporary income tax was instituted in 1861 to defray the costs of the Civil War).

Page 2 sm — In the early years it was up to individuals to report an estimate of their earnings and write a check.

Page 3 sm — All forms of interest were deductable e in those days.

Page 4 sm — The United States taxes the world-wide income of its citizens, one of only a few countries to do so.

March 5, 2013March 6, 2013

Sunday/ Dim Sum at the House of Hong

IMG_5835 sm — The tab for Sunday’s dim sum at House of Hong was a very reasonable $37 for the four of us.

Four of us had a brunch at the House of Hong in Seattle’s International District on Sunday. We had dim sum : serving carts that are brought by the table with all kinds of plates with bite-sized food items, and the diners select what they want. We had turnip cake (mashed daikon radish mixed with bits of dried shrimp and pork sausage that are steamed and then cut into slices and pan-fried), shao mai (steamed pork dumplings), shrimp dumplings, buns with a Cantonese barbecued pork filling and gai lan. Gai lan is a leafy green vegetable that also goes by the name Chinese broccoli. The tea served is an important part of the meal as well. We couldn’t nearly figure out what kind of tea we had, then the waitress came by and explained it was actually a blend of three teas : Chrysanthemum, oolong and Puer (blank) tea.

IMG_5825 sm — This picture is from Saturday .. the inside of Cal’s American Kitchen in the South Lake Union neighborhood between all the Amazon buildings. The food was good ! we had scrambled egg and toast with Caffé Vita coffee (just the brand of the roaster).

March 3, 2013March 3, 2013

Saturday/ the Museum of History and Industry

armory-map — Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry has moved into a new location at the south end of Lake Union into an old shipyard building.

IMG_8189 sm — There are some museum vessels at the marina next to the building as well. This is the Arthur Foss tugboat under a tarp. There was a Saturday ‘work party’ working on the diesel engine and interior, but it was open to the public and we were invited inside. Built in 1889, it is one of the oldest wooden-hulled tugboats afloat in the United States. The hull is made of African mahogany : as impermeable and strong as steel (well, almost), said the tour guide.

IMG_5785 sm — Calking (yes, without a ‘u’ since it is not the caulking one does to a bathtub) was done with hemlock. It involved sealing up the wooden deck slats by driving hemlock with its natural water-repellent oils into the crevices to make for a watertight seal. (The initial work is done with a much larger hammer and chisel tool set. This tool set is for finishing.)

IMG_5792 sm — The original brass engine power control shows the settings available to the skipper.

IMG_8191 sm — The diesel engine still works. It produces 700 hp at 200 rpm, and was one of the strongest tugboats back in its day.

IMG_8190 sm — The Swiftsure is right next to the Arthur Foss. [From Wikipedia] Lightship 83, now called Swiftsure, is a lightship launched in Camden, New Jersey, in 1904. She steamed around the tip of South America to her first station at Blunts Reef in California, where she saved 150 people when their ship ran aground in dense fog. The ship was decommissioned in 1960.

IMG_8181 sm — My friends Tony, Ken and Steve on the steps of the main entrance to the Museum of History and Industry building. The building used to be a Naval Reserve Armory, and it was built in 1941-42.

IMG_8221 sm — A model of the Arthur Foss is on display on the left. The light comes from an 1885 Fresnel Lens from the Smith Island Lighthouse.

IMG_8220 sm — Same picture, taken 10 seconds later, to show what the lens looks like. (The light source inside rotates).

IMG_8217 sm — A picture from Boeing’s exhibit. No mention of the recent trouble with the Lithium battery that grounded all the Dreamliner 787s .. we all hope that gets resolved soon!

IMG_8222 sm — Here is the view of the main hall from the 4th floor. The airplane is an US Mail airplane, and there’s the red R for the Rainier Brewery exhibit an even the iconic pink ‘toe’ truck (tow truck) that used to be seen around the city.

IMG_5805 sm — Seattle got its start as a city with fish and timber. This tree was 11 feet in diameter and took a week to chop and saw through, said the description. (Today there are few enough of these left, so that we do not do that anymore, right?).

IMG_5801 sm — And here is a steam train that transported the logs. The picture’s description did not mention which year this was.

IMG_8184 sm — This beautiful antique clock is outside the building; very similar to one I saw in the town of Snohomish a few weeks ago.

Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry is not new, but it has recently moved to a new location : from its University of Washington location to South Lake Union, occupying the historic Naval Reserve Armory constructed in 1941-1942. I never did visit the museum at its old location, so the exhibits were all new to me. I also learned that there was a Great Seattle Fire in June 1889 that destroyed 29 city blocks (the story is told in the museum’s exhibit for it by a very cute short film, set to music and animated old pictures).

March 3, 2013

Friday/ Chihuly Garden and Glass

The most recent exhibit or museum that has been added to Seattle Center at the Space Needle is the Chihuly Garden and Glass house. Here is the website http://www.chihulygardenandglass.com/. Dale Chihuly (71) is a native of Tacoma and has made a career and business out of glass art. I went to check out the exhibit with my friend Tony from Portland on Friday.

IMG_8059 sm — The Seattle Center area just north of Seattle’s downtown spans several city blocks. Look for the Space Needle circle; the Chihuly Garden and Glass Exhibit halls are at the foot of the Space Needle. The new Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation building is close by as well, but we ran out of time. I will have to go and look at it another day.

IMG_8069 SM — These glass ‘baskets’ were inspired by woven baskets and are on display in the Northwest room. Colorful versions of these are for sale in the museum store — but they are NOT CHEAP. One small basket I saw there went for $7,500.

IMG_8081 SM — This is the Persian Ceiling, a collection of colorful sea shell and sea anemones arranged on a glass ceiling.

IMG_8088 SM — This is the Mille Fiori* forest. *Italian for a thousand flowers.

IMG_8093 SM — More fantastical flowers and plants in the Mille Fiori forest.

IMG_8107 SM — A wooden boat colorful shapes and spheres, inspired by Ikebana said the description : the Japanese art of arranging flowers.

IMG_8111 SM — This is one of the chandeliers in the Chandelier room.

IMG_8126 sm — This is the Glass House, with glass flowers and a clear ceiling that looks up at the Space Needle.

IMG_8137 SM — The ‘garden’ outside has some out-of-this-world shapes and colors.

IMG_8150 sm — The outside view of the Glass house from the garden.

March 1, 2013March 1, 2013

Thursday/ my new T430 is tops

thinkpad-t430-300x225 — The Lenovo Thinkpad T430 notebook has been available since July 2012

I have just gotten a brand spanking new notebook computer for work : a Lenovo T430, an upgrade from my T420. It’s all black and all business with a 14″ screen – large enough for work but not so heavy that I cannot run with it to catch that connecting flight. The keyboard on the new machine has gotten an engineering make-over as well. The T430 has ‘island style’ keys which have bigger flatter top surfaces. The intention is to provide a larger ‘sweet spot’ for those with clumsy fingers (mine) that have never had formal touch-typing training.

old-vs-new-thinkpad-key-des — Since the sides of the keys are no longer sloped on the T430 (on the right), there’s a sharper delineation between keys, making it easier to feel one’s way around and avoid adjacent key errors.

February 28, 2013

Wednesday/ and now there are four

Since I no longer travel to China – and will not for the foreseeable future – I had to make special arrangements to get this year’s ‘bearista’ bear issued by Starbucks. The Chinese zodiac bears are only sold in China*. So a colleague of mine that still traveled there got one on his last trip out, and put it in the mail for me when he got back to New York City. And there they are – four now – on my dining room table.

*Yes, they could be bought on Ebay, but most sellers cautioned that there might be delays at customs, and that the shipping would be expensive

IMG_5775 sm — The Starbucks ‘bearista’ bears from 2010 {Year of the Tiger), 2011 (Year of the Rabbit), 2012 (Year of the Dragon) and 2013 (Year of the Snake)

February 27, 2013February 27, 2013

Tuesday/ The Sequester is coming

As the year 2013 careens toward March 1st, the US Congress’s latest self-induced budget/spending/deficit/call-it-what-you-will crisis (oh, it’s called ‘The Sequester’) is about to kick in. What is it? It is $85 billion of spending cuts across the board. So everything gets hit proportionally : teachers and schools, work-study jobs, kids in Head Start, the military, law enforcement, child care assistance, vaccines for children, public health programs, nutrition assistance for seniors, the STOP Violence Against Women Program, clean air and water programs. It’s a very dumb way to cut spending – but the United States of America has to find a way to start spending less money and at the same time get more money into Uncle Sam’s coffers through tax reforms.

2008-0197 — Some perspective around that $85 billion amount of money. I found this mouth-watering pie chart (or stomach-churning, looking at the numbers?) on the Investors Business Daily website. The artist is Michael Ramirez. P.S. The pies are actually not comparing the same numbers. Did the cartoonist know that in 2007 – with his comment in parentheses that the Republicans controlled Congress – President Bush’s two $1 trillion wars were still funded ‘off the books’, outside of the official budget? Pres. Obama insisted in 2009 that ALL military spending be brought into the budget. Hence the apparent percentage difference in the deficits shown in the two pies.

February 26, 2013

Monday/ rooster sauce in space

IMG_5723 sm — Here’s the sauce on the grocery shelf. It’s very affordable, about $3.50 for these bottles. And with me a little will go a very long way !

dinnerontheiss sm — I found this picture of international space station astronauts on meflyrocket.wordpress.com. Check out the sriracha hot sauce against the white wall ! Bloomberg Businessweek writes it’s been name-checked on ‘The Simpsons’, is featured prominently on the Food Network (used for sauces and soups) and has inspired a cottage industry of knock-offs.

Sriracha sauce is a hot sauce product by Huy Fong Foods, created by Chinese-Vietnamese founder David Tran. Now 68 years old, he came to the USA in 1979, started out in Boston, found little climate comfort in the snowy winters there and soon moved his family to Los Angeles. He created the sauce at first by grinding jalapeno peppers out by hand. The original sauce that he made of jalapenos, vinegar, sugar, salt and garlic, has changed very little since that time. His brand of sriracha – it is now a generic term like ketchup – has become shockingly popular in the USA.

So when I saw it on the grocery store shelf here, I bought a small bottle. I squeezed just a little dab into my rice for dinner tonight, and it’s very hot for my taste buds, but I will hang in there and try it a few more times.

February 25, 2013February 25, 2013

Sunday/ the Oscars 2013

I am no Oscars-host expert, but I am sure Seth MacFarlane made a record number of non-politically correct jokes last night. Some were downright offensive, I thought.

First Lady Michelle Obama made a surprise cameo by announcing the Best Picture award via a video link. Movie producer Harvey Weinstein is said to have arranged it. My first reaction was – oh my, is this not going overboard given that Argo* is about the US government, Hollywood, and the link between the two? And of course political commentators on the right made a lot of hay about the First Lady’s appearance at the Oscars. But as someone said today, she is everyone’s First Lady, the 2012 election is just behind us, she did not invite herself, and Ronald Reagan and other presidents have also made cameo appearances at the Oscars.

Argo2012Poster

*[From Wikipedia] Argo is a 2012 American fictionalized thriller film directed by Ben Affleck. This dramatization is adapted from the book The Master of Disguise by CIA operative Tony Mendez, and Joshuah Berman’s 2007 Wired article ‘The Great Escape’ about the ‘Canadian Caper’ in which Mendez led the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran, Iran, during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.