Spasms of Accommodation

Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake

2013-06-16T20:50:00.000-04:00

My aunt was driving in the truck down the hill from my house and spied this beautiful snake crossing the road. She stopped to watch it and called me to come see it. If she had taken her eyes off it we'd never have found it again. I couldn't see it when she pointed to it. It had to start moving before I could pick it out.

There's a snake in the weeds. Can you see it? Camouflage works, doesn't it?

It's easier to see him when he moves, but the low light of dusk made
him blurry to my camera.
This is on 20x zoom, by the way. I was far back from this snake.

There's the rattle. That represents 9 times shedding his skin.
They shed several times a year, so that snake is just a youngster.

Here's an x-ray view of a rattle. Image from Dr. Bruce Means.
I'm working on his book on the Natural History of the Eastern
Diamondback Rattlesnake. http://brucemeans.com/

This is how the rattle develops. The first one is how they're born.
They are born BIG, almost a meter long.
The eggs hatch inside the female and she delivers live young.
The second image is after the first shed,
the next is second shedding.
They shed very several times in the first year of life.
http://brucemeans.com/

This is a comparison of a complete intact rattle with the natal button, top,
and one that's been broken, bottom.
When they get real long they catch on things and get snatched apart.
The snake I saw today has his natal button.
That's how I feel confident counting 9 sheds. http://brucemeans.com/

I haven't seen one of these in a really long time. We used to see them a lot when I was a little girl, but we had big rambunctious dogs that found them for us. No other kind of snake in the USA gets as big as an Eastern Diamondback, by weight I mean. This one is not big by rattlesnake standards. I was glad to see it. This one was particularly bright and pretty. I think he must have just shed his skin.

Carolina Saddlebags Dragonfly

2013-06-16T12:49:00.001-04:00

Found a big dragonfly on my windowsill this morning. It just sat there while I went to the office to get my Casio EX-FH20 camera with super macro. It let me take all these photos from about 1 cm away. I think it's a vulnerable juvenile just a few hours out of the water. I like to think it grew up in my birdbathtub seen in the background. I had never observed one with the solid part of the wings like this. It took me a while to find an identification online. Thanks, Bug Guide! Species: Tramea carolina. Ref: Citizen Scientists League Dragonfly life cycle, Bug Guide Carolina Saddlebags

Magnet Ball

2013-05-17T09:27:00.001-04:00

Anole Portrait

2013-04-28T18:52:00.005-04:00

I am sort of a portrait photographer, just a very unprofitable one. I couldn't sell this anole a single print.

How to install and finish a longleaf pine plank floor in a small space

2013-04-22T11:56:00.001-04:00

I have been working on this Spartan Aircraft Company trailer conversion for 16 months. I tend to do a lot of research on each step along the way. I like to follow manufacturer's instructions on their products. But sometimes all the instructions I find online just sound wrong. They don't apply to me. So here's how I did my plank floor. It's a very small space, about 20'x7', or 140 square feet. I'm not saying it's right, it's just right for me. I've included things that may seem dumb, like choosing which board goes where. But it was something I actually looked up and found nothing about it. So maybe other people are as weird as me and would like to hear how I decided.

Preparation

The first step was to get the planks from the lumber mill. I had to let them keep the wood for a while between ordering it and picking it up, meaning I had to brush the accumulated dust off all of it after I unloaded it from my car. While I was doing that I inspected each board, chose the top, and chose the end I wanted to cut off. (They were all about 9 inches too long) Then I cut the other end square and stacked the wood inside the space with sticks between the layers. (I used some square PVC trim I found in the shed.)

Next I got a mini-split air conditioner installed. I saved the styrofoam packaging because I thought I could use it later. I ran the air conditioner for several weeks in the Artificial Intelligence mode where it cools, dehumidifies, or heats depending on conditions. Ten days is probably enough to dry out the wood, but I had some issues come up with leaks in the front windows. I had to fix that before I could move on. I had a curve at one end of the space so I worked on those complicated pieces ahead of time.

Vapor barrier: Yes or No?

Most of my research said to use tar paper, rosin paper, or clear plastic sheeting (Visqueen) between the sub floor and the planks as a vapor barrier. I spent all this effort getting rid of the asphalt smell in this project from the sealant sprayed on the inside. I have no intention of adding anything back with a smell. Also I'm not certain a vapor barrier is a good idea here. Most of that advice I read is for people up North. It just doesn't apply to me in the Gulf Coastal Plain. Before I put down the plywood subfloor I painted both sides. Paint can count as a vapor barrier. (I'm sensitive to the smell of plywood and I thought it would help.) I also have open cell foam sprayed on the underside, which is an air barrier but is vapor permeable. I am in a hot, humid climate and the building envelope will dry to the inside in the summer with the air conditioner on. If the inside is the cold, dry side and the outside is the hot, damp side, wouldn't I get condensation on the Visqueen that would wet the top of my subfloor? And then rot it out and rust my steel frame? That sounds like a bad thing. Besides, any roll of something I bought would come in a quantity so large I would have way too much left over. I decided to just not add anything. I'm going with nothing but paint on my 3/4" BC plywood.

Cutting and layout

I borrowed a floor stapler from my cousin and got started. I carried the lumber outside and set up to cut the other end. I am putting my boards across the short way because the primary steel frame underneath is two beams running front to back. I want the 3/4" planks to add structural stiffness to the floor. I selected boards to go in certain places in the space, cut them to the right length, and spread them out in place. There was a small variation in length in the area of the door. I accidentally moved that wall a little when I rebuilt the doorway. Except for where I messed it up, this aircraft manufactured frame is the most square and plumb thing I have ever worked on.

I had mostly very straight grained clear lumber with a variety of face grain and vertical grain. There were a few planks with a lot of heart wood at one end and about five pieces I'll call fancy grain. I deliberated if I should group those together or space them out. I decided to space out the fancy grain and try to get them in the light from the windows because they are really pretty.

The pieces with a lot of heart I grouped together in the back behind the door where they'll probably end up covered up with work stuff like the sewing machine, soldering iron, mat cutter, etc. I know the heartwood is usually the most desirable but the clear yellow stuff looked nice uninterrupted.

I had another piece that had heart on the other end and I almost put it right where I plan for the old refrigerator to go (converted into a cabinet.) Since the heart is darker I thought it would look like something gross leaking out from under the ice box, so I moved it.

Fastening

I am bad at nailing with a hammer, so instead of face nailing the first piece I drilled holes and used finish head sheetrock screws. Then I tested the air assisted stapler. It had a bad air leak. My air compressor couldn't keep up. I did more research and got up the nerve to take it apart. Once I figured out the rubber cap on top just had to be pried off I easily got to the three socket head screws underneath the top cap. They were loose. I took it apart some more and cleaned the o-ring and seal underneath and then screwed those three internal screws down tight. It worked great after that.

Fix the tools

Turn on the air conditioner and air compressor get to work

Fastening the flooring was extremely hard on my back. I think I have a herniated disc. Just the same I was anxious to get done when it wasn't raining so I could avoid getting the saw out and putting it away multiple times. I'd already set up the air compressor in the laundry room. I did it all in two days. I tried to find recommendations for what air pressure to use for this Bostitch MIIIFS but found nothing except a range, 70 to 100 psi. I tried 70 psi and it didn't drive the staple in all the way. I cut it off with my Dremel tool and a cutting wheel. I turned my pressure regulator up to 80 psi and that seemed fine for this soft wood. I ran the pressure up to about 120 psi in my tank then I could do about 21 staples before I had to run the air compressor again. I have an auxiliary bottle on my air compressor rig, so your performance may vary.

I used about six staples per plank. I moved the planks ahead of me enough to see the screws in the plywood going into the steel frame. That allowed me to avoid trying to drive any of these 15 gauge wire staples into steel. I did stupidly drive two of ten screws right into steel though. I just backed them out, decided I didn't need that one, and filled the holes with putty.

When I got to the end I had to cut one board with the jigsaw to fit. I left 1/2" gap between the floor and walls at both ends and 1/8" to 1/2" along the sides. (I was going for 1/4" but I changed my mind and moved some pieces that were cut the right length for a different spot.) I will cover the expansion gap with leftover flooring ripped in half on my dad's table saw with a radius routered into the top outside corner. It will be shorter and fatter than store-bought molding. But I won't need base shoe. Simple is better here. We did the door trim that way so it will all match. The trim on the front curved wall, which also leans out if you can't tell, is a subject for another blog.

Working into a doorway was a huge help.
I was able to use the staple gun right up until the last
1 1/2" piece in the door threshold,
which I caulked and screwed.

Sanding

My flooring was milled very well. It wasn't terrible uneven. And pine is soft wood. I really only needed to sand off any residual dirt from handling and to get rid of splinters between planks. I researched all the floor sanding stuff and decided none of it applied to me. All the stuff I read about the big orbital floor sanders is horror stories about swirl marks. And a belt sander is just total overkill. Why would I want to use a heavy grit on something that's already far smoother than that?

Since no putty will match, I used the good stuff

The day after stapling I moved on to the sanding. First I filled my screw holes with the very stinky Bondo type two part putty. Pine will change color so dramatically no putty I put in there will match continuously over time. So I decided to just go for high performance instead of good looking.

I looked in my sandpaper box and found I had a lot of 150 and 220 grit sandpaper sheets. I recently modified my old 4 1/2" sander to take 5" sheets. It made it shake more than it did orginally, but it still works. I'm going for it. (I bought a 5" sander pad on Amazon for $1.99 and put it on top of the 4 1/2" one with screws twice as long as the original ones.)

I didn't want to ruin my brand new air conditioner so I got out that styrofoam I saved.

Cut the back off this.

I cut it so it would fit over the air conditioner (When it is off it retracts those bits that are sticking out now.)

I covered it with part of a plastic drop cloth and used the styrofoam
and something like a yardstick underneath to hold it in place.

Then I assembled my safety gear.

Ear plugs, safety glasses, particle mask

I got down on the floor and started sanding. I had enough sand paper to use one sheet per five planks. It took about 20 minutes before the sander was too hot to hold onto it anymore.

Cooling the sander

About four planks into the job I vibrated loose an
old dirt dauber nest in one of the screw holes of the sander.

I took a break to clean all residual spider parts
out of the screw holes with a bent staple.
I was wearing gloves, so I didn't freak out.

While the sander cooled off I vacuumed the floor and sat there reading Twitter on my phone. It was too much trouble to take off the ear plugs and dust mask and I was too filthy to go in my house.

Finishing

When I finished sanding I vacuumed everything thoroughly. I showered and put on clean jeans. I took the cover off the air conditioner and turned it on. Then I ran a duster over the floor.

Dusting. I bang this thing on a tree outside to clean it and keep using it.

Not recommended for floors

With a 3" Purdy nylon brush I put down a coat of Minwax Polycrylic. It is very thin. I just go real fast, one plank at a time back and forth with the container in the middle. It is so clear it's hard to see where it's going. I just go by feel. When the brush glides easily over the wood it's coated. If it grips, it's dry underneath. It dries so fast you can't go back over it without messing it up. You have to trust it to self-level. It's like nail polish that way. But contrary to what one guy I read on a forum thinks, it is NOT the same acrylic as nail enamel. That stuff is dissolved in toluene, not water. And because this is a water solvent it will raise the grain of the wood. Knowing this ahead of time let me not obsess too much about the sanding. I knew I was going to sand more. (Also knowing rugs and furniture would cover most of this up helped me move right along.) The first coat took about 40 ounces of finish. It really soaks in. Each subsequent coat takes less. The final coat only took about 20 ounces.

The next day I sanded down the first coat of poly.

One coat

Sand between coats with this

I sanded the first coat sort of a lot because of the raised grain. I had to stop three times for the sander to cool off. That's still a small fraction of how much I sanded the bare wood with the heavier paper though. I used up my three quarters of a quart of polycrylic nine planks short of the doorway and had to go to town for more. I finished the last nine planks when I got home then had to wait for the next day to sand and do more. (While I was in town I got a stainless steel threshold bent for the front door.) After the second coat I went so fast with the sander I never had to stop to cool down. I did the third coat and waited two hours. Then I went over it very lightly with 220 grit paper in a hand sanding block.

It doesn't make as much dust when it's fresh, but it can gum up the paper and make little balls of polysnot. I dusted it off with the Swiffer duster, banged it out outside, dusted again. Then I did a fourth coat. Minwax says three is recommended, but I sanded a lot between them. I felt better with four. Besides, I still had more than half a can of stuff left. Now I have about a quarter of a can. I should probably seal the door trim with it after I nail it up. I'm leaving the walls and ceiling unfinished. The humidity regulation is better that way.

Minwax does not recommend this product for floors because it isn't as durable as what people expect and they don't want them bitching about it in a two years. But because my whole ROOM is pine it would look weird to have the floor a different tone. Oil finishes change the wood. This water based poly is the only stuff that basically just seals the wood without changing the contrast in the grain or imparting a yellower color. Because I'm just an individual, not a consortium of destructive hellions with clawed companions, I will use this on floors if I want to. I used it on the maple floor in my house and it's fine. It looks pretty bad under my stool on rollerblade casters, so I just won't use any rolling chairs on this floor.

Also my chemical sensitivities are too bad for oil based finishes. This stuff smells pretty bad and kind of gives me a headache, but the smell goes away in a day. I have been leaving the space closed up with the air conditioner running to dry it. If I open the doors I'd have insects and pollen embedded in it and little lizard footprints across it. Also be warned that having it good and cold is important while brushing it on. It helps it keep a wet edge. If it is hot it dries way too fast. DO NOT STOP while you're brushing this stuff on. Don't take a phone call, don't read a text.

Time breakdown

It took 3 days to get 4 coats of finish on the floor. So the final time breakdown for my floor is 8 days for 140 square feet (days are calendar days, not 8 manhours):

2 days -- get wood from lumberyard and get it stacked inside to dry. Mark and cut curved pieces at the end
** Wait 2 weeks **
1 day -- move lumber out of the way, cut it and place it
2 days -- nail floor and custom cut door pieces and last pieces
1 day -- sand floor and get one coat of finish on
2 days -- 3 more coats of finish

Conclusion

Giant pine esophagus

The floor is doing it's job now. It stiffened the floor so it doesn't feel like a trampoline. When I screwed down the last board and stood back to admire my work it was like being in a giant pine esophagus. I kept telling myself it wouldn't be like that once I filled it with stuff.

Useful space

I waited another day and then put furniture in my new space. I put felt feet on everything. I'll have to move it out of the way to put the base molding in but it's going to be a week before I get to make that. I wanted to finally use this space! I already decided my comfy chair is too big. I want that glass table to go there for photographing small items to sell on eBay. The Fireslate workbench goes where the table is. I'm going to have to sell the comfy chair. I want one of those fancy French zero gravity folding chairs now. Anybody want to trade?

The project never ends around here. I can always think of something to design, to fix, to improve.

Are Birdhouses Hot This Spring -- Mobile Version

2013-04-02T19:49:00.000-04:00

*** This version doesn't have interactive online charts. Go to the next post for gigantic everything. ***

It's nesting season in Beachton. Carolina wrens are building nests anywhere and everywhere. Now, I'm a big fan of a bird that eats spiders, but sometimes they build their nest where I think it's a downright bad idea.

What if I want one of the 11 jars that are still in this box?

When it rains the eggs wash out the scupper.

I have a video of a snake crawling under here.

In light of the wren's rather poor choice of nest locations I try to encourage them to nest where I want them to, hopefully as near as possible to their indicated preference.

They really like nesting in these hiking boots.

I deliberately built this little shed to exclude bird nests. But they still try to get roots and leaves and pine straw to balance on that 3/4" wide ridge board. They are entirely unsuccessful. The material just rains down onto the ground. After a while their stoic efforts started to make me feel mean so I hung up these too-heavy hiking boots for them. They built nests in both of them immediately.

This year I have a lot of longleaf pine wood scraps under a foot long. I hate to waste them, but they aren't good for much. I decided to make a lot of birdhouses. There is a standard proven wren box that works with wood this size, but I need something bigger for the roof. I started experimenting with all the things I had around. After I got 6 prototypes I decided to do an experiment to see which roof strategy deserved further work.

I put all the birdhouses on my clothesline which runs East-West. The line-up is random. In order they are v4, v3, v5, v1.1, v2, v6. The control temperature is the bark on the shady side of the tree holding up the clothesline. I faced the holes South so I could measure the temperature inside the box by aiming an infrared thermometer at the inside of the North wall of the box, like this.

I planned to go through 24 hours taking a few measurements an hour during the interesting daytime hours and a few at night to keep the chart realistic. The mosquitoes are very bad right now.

I started measurements about 5:00 Monday afternoon. I got 12 sets of measurements. When all the boxes were about the same temperature I stopped going out. I have a mosquito net that goes over a hat but they got inside it when I went out at 11:15. That was it for me. Tuesday morning I got up at sunrise excited to see how fast the boxes would warm up as the sun hit them. They are all free to blow around and bounce and turn. The shadows move across them through the day. That's why I wanted to do so many measurements, so it all evens out.

When I went out to do my 6th set of measurements at 9:30 there was a root hanging out of the hole of the easternmost box. The one next to it had a grass seed head poking up out of it. When I went out at 9:58 the third one from the East had a nest started in it too. I watched from the bathroom windows and saw two wrens at the same time. I think one was building one nest and the other was building two.

Wait! You can't have your babies there! This is just temporary!

I took the nest out of the jelly jar box in the shed and put it near my window
so I could see if the wren would reuse the material. He did.

Where do they get those skeleton leaves?

Which birdhouse will he go to? He's over the middle of the three in use.

The first one! See him perched on the little Quickgrip clamp?
That one is rigged to hang on a wall. I used that clamp,
an S-hook and chain just to rig it for the experiment.

Catalog of Birdhouses

(I entered my data and prepared my charts in Google Drive. I published it if you're interested. I found out if you enlarge the charts to work on them on your giant screen then publish them, they will be stuck that size forever. There is also no way to get rid of the ridiculously oversized white borders on Google charts. Well, aside from cropping them out in a screen grab. I even cropped off the axis labels, which is a big rule breaker for me. But dammit they were three inches too far out! They wasted too much space. The y axis is degrees Fahrenheit, the x axis is Time.)

Version 1.1 Aluminum over corrugated plastic with no vent or drain holes

Version 2.0 Hardishingle with oval side vents and no drain holes

Version 3.0 Plain wood 1x8 roof with green steel ridge cap

Version 4.0 Stained/sealed t&g pine over corrugated plastic and vinyl flashing with drilled vents and drainage channel

Version 5.0 Galvanized rolled ridge over stained wood box with front to back slot, drilled vent holes and no bottom drainage

View without the roof.
This the only box with boards inside the front and back at the top.
This reduces the inside volume. No proof yet that a wren will pass on it.

Version 6.0 Stained 6 sides 1x4 over vinyl flashing with drilled side vents but no ridge vent, bottom drain slot. Off-center hole, wall mount.

Hole is off-center for structural reasons.

V 6.0 is the box the wren filled with the most material today. He loves this box!

Conclusion:

So that's it for the individual boxes. The aluminum roof heats up faster and cools off faster, which I expected. I thought the thermal mass of the Hardishingle would cause it to lag more than it did. It isn't enough of a thermal improvement to be worth the extra weight and effort to screw it down.

It looks like the stain increases the external temperature a lot, as does insulation underneath which stops it cooling to the inside. The insulation seems to make a big difference in the wood roofed boxes. I want to experiment with styrofoam insulation now (because I have some).

I think the galvanized roof box is probably safe for birds. Any of the wood roof versions is fine. I like the one with the off-center hole that the wren liked the best. I'm going to try making more of that kind with the addition of corrugated plastic, this time between the vinyl flashing and the wood, like a warm roof.

Here's another chart.

Here's a scatter chart. I wanted to see the data points in the straight part of the line.

Are Birdhouses Hot This Spring?

2013-04-02T19:48:00.001-04:00

**** Browser Note: This version is for large screen reading. I'm going to have to make a different version for mobile******

It's nesting season in Beachton. Carolina wrens are building nests anywhere and everywhere. Now, I'm a big fan of a bird that eats spiders, but sometimes they build their nest where I think it's a downright bad idea.

What if I want one of the 11 jars that are still in this box?

When it rains the eggs wash out the scupper.

I have a video of a snake crawling under here.

In light of the wren's rather poor choice of nest locations I try to encourage them to nest where I want them to, hopefully as near as possible to their indicated preference.

They really like nesting in these hiking boots.

I planned to go through 24 hours taking a few measurements an hour during the interesting daytime hours and a few at night to keep the chart realistic. The mosquitoes are very bad right now.

Wait! You can't have your babies there! This is just temporary!

I took the nest out of the jelly jar box in the shed and put it near my window
so I could see if the wren would reuse the material. He did.

Where do they get those skeleton leaves?

Which birdhouse will he go to? He's over the middle of the three in use.

The first one! See him perched on the little Quickgrip clamp?
That one is rigged to hang on a wall. I used that clamp,
an S-hook and chain just to rig it for the experiment.

Catalog of Birdhouses

(I entered my data and prepared my charts in Google Drive. Here's a link to it. I'm going to attempt to publish interactive charts below. If are really interested let me know in the comments. I could give edit privileges to somebody who is into statistics and wants to analyze the data more.)

Version 1.1 Aluminum over corrugated plastic with no vent or drain holes

Version 2.0 Hardishingle with oval side vents and no drain holes

Version 3.0 Plain wood 1x8 roof with green steel ridge cap

Version 4.0 Stained/sealed t&g pine over corrugated plastic and vinyl flashing with drilled vents and drainage channel

Version 5.0 Galvanized rolled ridge over stained wood box with front to back slot, drilled vent holes and no bottom drainage

View without the roof.
This the only box with boards inside the front and back at the top.
This reduces the inside volume. No proof yet that a wren will pass on it.

Version 6.0 Stained 6 sides 1x4 over vinyl flashing with drilled side vents but no ridge vent, bottom drain slot. Off-center hole, wall mount.

Hole is off-center for structural reasons.

V 6.0 is the box the wren filled with the most material today. He loves this box!

Conclusion:

Here's a scatter chart. I wanted to see the data points in the straight part of the line.

How to Reduce Building Waste with Birdhouses

2013-04-02T13:07:00.000-04:00

I've been staying busy this year working with tongue and groove longleaf pine boards on the inside of the new Beachton Blank Works headquarters. I had some 1x6 V groove tongue and groove longleaf pine boards out in the shed leftover from my house. I used those on the South wall, then bought exactly enough to do the North wall. I got 1x4 tongue and groove boards with no V groove to do the ceiling. I gave most of the little scraps to my mother and aunt for the wood stove that is the only heat in their living space. Then I bought the 1x6 tongue and groove flooring and smooth boards to do the West wall. It's almost too hot to use the stove anymore, so I decided to do something else with the cut offs. I got 8' floor planks, but my Spartan is only 7'2" wide on the inside. That leaves enough leftover to make the front and back of a birdhouse, or two sides. I have 52 pieces of flooring, which is enough scraps to make 26 birdhouses. That's enough to start a business! Beachton Bird Works, welcome to the machine.

The new headquarters of Beachton Blank Works, nearing completion.

I started reading up on birdhouses on the internet. I read the birdhouse page on the Department of Natural Resources website for several different states. They all pretty much say the same thing -- birds prefer a natural wood birdhouse and don't like paint, they recommend Hardiplank because it's cool but don't use metal, it's too hot. Well in my experience wrens don't give a shit. They build a nest in the scupper of my white steel rain gutter every year.

Wren's nest in my rain gutter, pulled out from where it was lodged under the cap of the scupper.

And who puts a birdhouse in the sun anyway? You should put it on the Northeast side of the house. I kind of want to try a metal roof, as sort of an homage to my HQ. I want to try to sell these, so I need a shipping box. I found one in my shed that looked like a good size. That's going to be the outside limits.

I want to use my chop saw for all the cutting operations.

The 16 gauge finish nailer is the easiest way to assemble a birdhouse.
It's basically to clamp it while the glue dries.

Basic Wren Box from scrap flooring.

My first prototype had a 7/8" hole because that's the sharpest spade bit I could find. Northern states recommend a 1 1/8" hole for House Wrens. I found out later than our wrens are Carolina Wrens and they need a 1 1/2" hole. My aunt says they eat mostly spiders, so I'm pleased to have the variety with the largest appetite possible.

Beachton Wren Box v 1.0

The earliest version had an all-aluminum roof (leftover from patching the Spartan) and it fits in the 6x6x7 Priority Mail box. When I went online to order mailing boxes I found they have a 12x12x8 box too, just as free. I got some of those too so I can make my birdhouses as big as I want.

I found a wren's nest in my shed in an empty space in a jelly jar box. I decided to verify that it will fit in this birdhouse design.

1 1/2" hole looks good.

This will fit in the diamond shaped box I'm making.

Hole is pretty much a circle.

I went back to v 1.0 and did an upgrade. V 1.1 has a 1 1/2" hole and corrugated plastic under the aluminum for ventilation and insulation.

I went to town to use the sheet metal brake so I could try some other techniques. I stopped by Lowes to get a 1 1/2" drill bit and examined the bird houses they have for sale. They don't have much, but all the ones they had, the holes were too small. This one violated all the rules laid out by the bird websites. It's got a metal roof, is not natural wood, is painted white, the hole is too small, and there's a perch. They aren't supposed to have a perch. It just lets predators reach in and eat the babies.

This hole is too small for our wrens.

It has a little door in the back.
I guess so you can clean out the old nest using chopsticks?

This box is made of thin pressed wood and has overspray from the paint process.
This is to birdhouses what Kraft Singles are to cheese.

I wanted to try to make one with a Hardiplank roof. I have quite a large stack of Hardishingles left in my shed. I have a shear for cutting it and some backerboard screws that hold it down pretty good. It is very hard to get it attached to the box though. And the ridge cap is an extra complication. And it makes it very heavy to ship.

Hardishingle roof with aluminum ridge cap

I made four more birdhouse prototypes after this, trying to find a roof technique that is easy to install. I tried tongue and groove, and a solid 1x8 that I found in the shed. Neither of these really worked for me. The solid wood was already cupped from being in the shed for six years. If it had been out in the weather it would be even worse. I tried another technique using the cutoffs from the west wall of the Spartan.

This requires an extra piece to be nailed at the top, which pushes the hole off-center.

I put vinyl flashing under the two roof boards and
screwed them down with 1" Deckmate screws.
Stain/sealer is on all six sides of the boards.
I got a can of it from the damaged bin for $0.25.

I made this one to hang on a wall.
I think it's cute but the off-center hole offends some people.

I had another idea to use some leftover galvanized steel ridge roll from the 2010 mini-shed project. I used all 3/4" x 3 1/4" boards cut to 4" long for the sides.

I had to chop the top boards at a 45° bevel so the entrance would be 1 1/2" wide.

I sliced off the corner of the front and back and glued in one of the triangle
scraps from beveling the top pieces.

I think it's cute. But it was pretty hard to cut
the metal and get the holes to line up with the sides.

My aunt has been offering up opinions on these designs when I email pictures to her. So far she really doesn't like any of them. This is her idea of a proper birdhouse. The wood looked just like mine when it was new. But she didn't use any stain or sealant. Also her roof is going end grain out. I could try that.

She likes it weathered.

The lichen on the box is kind of charming.
The cotton clothesline cord didn't hold up though.

I could do more rustic birdhouses after I use up the scraps from my project. I have some old wormy wood in the shed. Or I could keep making them of pine and hang them out in the woods for a few years before I sell them. Is there a market for pre-weathered birdhouses?

After making 6 prototypes without any one of them jumping out at me as superior in aesthetics or manufacturability I decided it was time to do some science. I like the metal roof as a novelty, but is it going to be dangerous to the birds? Will it get too hot? I can't stop somebody putting it in full sun and I'd feel bad if they had dead baby birds. So I'm going to do thermal tests on these prototypes before I go on to the next versions. I should have gotten the weathered one from my aunt but I didn't think of it until too late.

Next blog: Thermal tests on all 6 birdhouse prototypes.

Spadefoot toads

2013-02-26T14:26:00.000-05:00

It has rained about 11 inches since last Friday. We have been in a drought so bad my 90 acre pond was completely dry. This much rain created some decent sized puddles, but I could still walk across it in my BP Oil Spill boots.

What a dried up pond looks like when you go past the 10 foot dog fennel around the edge,
well drained organic matter held up by lily pad roots.

I went down there Sunday after only 8 inches of rain and made a video to capture the frogs. This is shot from the right side of the photo above.

I didn't see any individual frogs that day. I have tried so hard my whole life to see a frog blow up his throat like they do on the Nature TV shows but I have yet to see one. The thing is they shut up and hide when you try to get close to them. But today I guess they were just so enthralled in their courtship they ignored me. I had never even heard of this kind of toad before until today, the Eastern Spadefoot Toad, Scaphiopus holbrookii. Apparently when there's a drought they dig a hole and wait it out. Then when there's a lot of rain they have a giant freakin' orgy.

Here's the first one I saw, looking very toad-like and frankly kind of scary. What's the deal with the eyes?
Apparently elliptical pupils is a good identifier for Spadefoot toads.

Another angle. Warty.

These look surprised. The lines down the back are more brilliant yellow in the male. Confirmed.

This one hopped right up to me.

Sure does look different from the dry one, but I think it's the same kind of creature.
Is that long back toe the spadefoot?

This is the best view of his back foot.

There's a nice identification page courtesy of the Savanannah River Ecology Lab Herpetology Program. They have recording of the calls of the different frogs. I can hear these four frogs calling at the pond. I would expect bullfrogs and leopard frogs too, but I don't hear any.

Eastern Spadefoot Toad

Southern Chorus Frog

Southern Cricket Frog

Spring Peepers

From SREL:

Description: The Eastern Spadefoot Toad is a large toad, ranging from 1.6 - 3.1 in (4 - 8 cm) long. Their skin is smoother and moister than other toads and is speckled with tiny warts. This species varies in coloration tan or yellowish to dark brown, without bold spots (as in other Southeastern Toads). They usually have two vertical light lines running from the back of their eyes down their dorsum, forming an hourglass shape. The lines are generally more brilliant yellow in males. The characteristics used to immediately distinguish this species from other species of toads are their bright yellow eyes with elliptical pupils (like cat eyes) and the dark spade, which is used for digging, on each hind foot.

Range and Habitat: Spadefoot Toads are found throughout the eastern United States. In our region they are most abundant in the Coastal Plain and are found in scattered populations in the Piedmont but are absent from high elevations of the Appalachian Mountains. This species prefers dry habitats with sandy soils but can be found in almost any habitat. Their ability to remain buried for long periods allows them to persist even in suburban and agricultural areas. Spadefoot toads breed in fishless water bodies and can even successfully breed in large puddles and roadside ditches.

Habits: Spadefoot toads are extremely fossorial, spending most their life buried underground and are explosive breeders. Heavy rains, occurring at nearly any time of year, cause them to emerge in large numbers and congregate at breeding in wetlands or ephemeral pools created by the rain. Males call while floating on the surface of the water. Females can lay up to 2,500 eggs at once. Tadpoles grow very quickly and can undergo metamorphosis in as few as 28 days. Data from the Savannah River Ecology Lab have shown that this species is very long lived and populations often go for many years without successful reproductive events.

Call: The call of the Spadefoot Toad is a low-pitched "waaah," repeated on short intervals.

I made another video today. It's not my best work.

Why Force Science on Children?

2013-02-06T11:14:00.001-05:00

This article in the Guardian has some women scientists in my Twitter feed pretty flustered. Girls and science: why the gender gap exists and what to do about it (See @scicurious)

(There's a spoof of it already about boys. Boys and science: The gender gap and how to maintain it)

I see why the women scientists find this topic upsetting, but at the same time, some of it rings true to me. What if it's not just more sexism? What if this stuff would really help?

So, girls deconstruct math concepts verbally. Looking at something on a board or screen is not enough. They need to unpack the problem using language.

This statement rings true to me. I'm working on this multi-year Spartan caravan renovation. Sometimes I need some pieces of wood fabricated that are beyond my hand tools. I measure everything and put the dimensions in Notes in my phone, described in words. I take pictures with the tape measure next to the thing. Then I go see my father at his amazing woodworking shop. He cannot work from my paragraph description. I can read it to him and he makes a diagram. He can only work from the drawing. Once he draws it I can read what I wrote and tell him what dimensions go on what part. I can do diagrams too. I took drafting in high school and college. But it's not what I'm best at so I don't do them nearly as much as my father. I don't know if this is a gender difference or not, but it is clearly a difference.

Buy this poster at Despair.com

There are lots of other differences too. My father is a brilliant genius and can figure out where to put a piece of metal in an old-timey door lock in 3 seconds after I've worked on it for days without realizing that the two pieces I have used to be one piece that broke in two. I am pretty sure it's not simply a matter of me approaching it differently because of my female brain, but what if that's part of it? What if my family had used color coding more when I was a kid? In fact we used it not at all because my brother is color blind.

I'm not prepared to throw away all the helpful hints just because the tone of the article reads like one big insult to women.

I have a weird brain, even compared to women. When there is any lull in the stimulation my brain goes skittering off, invariably making me screw something up, like putting the glue on the wrong side of the thing I'm working on. This in contrast to my major professor in college, the one who falls asleep by working on solving integrals in his head until after a year he has a solution to send in to the integral table people. I said to him, "You know how you go into a room and forget what you went in there to get?" And he replied, "No, that's never happened to me." ?!?!?! I had no idea people like this existed. NEVER IN HIS LIFE! That is how focused this man's brain is. This floors me.

Point is brains are complex and variable. I don't know how much can be generalized about male brains and female brains. I imagine more of it is valid than we want it to be.

Anyway, the whole point of both of these stories is that parents might want to encourage their children to become scientists. Implying that they'll go study that and make it their career. My parents managed this with one simple trick. My father would only pay for us to go to college at Georgia Tech. We knew this from grammar school. They don't teach anything at Georgia Tech but science. You can't get a degree with "Arts" in it. So even though I had dyscalculia and was terrible at arithmetic I pushed on. I liked my science classes, but I was really good at English. But never for a second did I consider a career as a writer. It just wasn't something I thought of. When I got to Georgia Tech I immediately reported for work at the newspaper and was made Editor of the Features Section as a sophomore. I was good at it. I was the best in the state. But after that I had to quit to study because I was flunking out of Industrial Engineering. I had to change my major to Physics to graduate in four years. All this because that's what my dad would pay for. Four years at Georgia Tech, period, done. (Physics only took 190 quarter hours, IE was 210) Of course Physics was some seriously hard stuff for me. I had to make lifelong friends with my professors and get a lot of personal help to do my homework. And they did exactly what that article explains.

Never tell her the answer. Ever

The point of math is not so much to get the answer but to figure out how to get it. The more you do for your daughter the more you short circuit her self esteem. If she is stuck on something, keep asking questions. Ask her questions all the time in every context, especially domestic ones. "How do you think we should do this?" "Could there be another way?"

My professor knew how to ask questions that would give me the hint to get through the piece of algebra where I was stuck. I would go off and do another page of algebra and get stuck again, and he'd give me a hint that would help me do another page worth. Until finally I got an answer that to me was pretty much indistinguishable from the question. And he would show me that I was done by plugging in real-world values for the variables that would give me units I could understand.

So why did they have to throw in the phrase "especially domestic ones"? That is purely there to infuriate us women scientists. It is extraneous and ruins the message. There was nothing domestic about antenna theory in graduate level electromagnetism. Dr. Patronis did not have to explain wave guides in terms of splashing around in the bathtub. It is insulting the way they wrote this article and it disguises the true parts.

But here's my final point. Yes, you can encourage your children to become scientists. But what if they do suck at it? I suck at it. Compared to my father and Dr. Patronis I am a crap scientist. But I am better at than both of them at Interior Design. But I didn't even know that was a job you had to get a degree for until I applied for a job as one and managed to get hired. I thought about going to school again at 32, one that has an Interior Design degree so I could be a Registered Interior Designer, but Dr. Patronis told me that if I went to the University of Georgia they would revoke my degree from Georgia Tech. So I gave up on Interior Design when I got laid off from that good job I liked.

So why is it ok to encourage your children to be scientists but discourage them from something where they might actually have a better chance at success in a career? When my high school senior female cousin says she is bad at math and she's going to the University of Georgia to major in Undecided, I just bite my tongue and think of how much I liked picking carpet and tile and paint for somebody else to buy. I think how lucky my cousin is to think it's great fun to be in a beauty pageant. I would rather be covered in bees. She probably has people skills I lack and will go far. The only people skills I learned in college was how to get a Physics professor to help me with my homework. (There was a lot of banana bread involved.) But none of it prepared me for the world that expects women to be something I'm not -- a people person. If the world was populated entirely with Physics professors I'd be all set. Unfortunately the opposite is true.

** Update: Here's a contrasting article in the Telegraph from somebody who isn't a scientist. She was told engineering was a vocational trade for "thick" people, not people with good grades like her -- she could work in a professional office. She's "not a thinker" so she was put off any of the sciences.

I am still thinking about this subject and I'm not sure if I made my point very well before. What I'm wondering is what's the use in raising children the way I was raised, to think scientists and engineers are the pinnacle of human existence and everybody else is inferior? I am grateful for my education and wouldn't change it for the world. I am a thinker and a problem solver. I enjoy working on things I don't know how to do. Thanks to making it through classes like Acoustics, Electromagnetism, Thermal and Quantum Physics I am not intimidated by complexity. I look at a 60 year old aircraft manufactured caravan full of mice and rot and think, "I can make this into something amazing." But is that really an advantage over being able to admit you're "not a thinker"? I'd rather claim I was a shoplifter. What kind of prejudice is this for a person? It's sure not going to help you if you want to be anything else but a hermit. Basically I grew up to be somebody who is only comfortable working with other scientists and engineers. Or not working with other people at all. I'm perfectly capable of managing a project from scratch and doing all the work myself. But is that really what parents want for their little girl? To be a hermit?

I may be missing something fundamental here though. I think all these other articles are for people that don't know any scientists or engineers. People have to push science because it's otherwise left out of a life filled with... what? I have no idea. Keep in mind that's my perspective. I have female relatives who weren't educated in the sciences. It's thanks to their example I was able to secure a job as an Interior Designer without any credentials. I hate to agree with that first article again, but I do like colors, and in my experience men engineers don't want anything to do with them. But I failed to learn how my aunts attracted a rich man to marry them and pay for their lovely homes. It may have been part of being in a sorority, which nobody told me about until it was too late. Anyway, in my world careers were to be a teacher or an engineer. I hate children. So I went with engineering. I loved designing products. But I never had any job security or anything like a career. My parents were never happy that I was just a consultant with no tax witholding and gaps of 6 months or more when I had zero income and I couldn't explain what I did for a living to somebody like an NPR radio editor. And now, well now I'm just a bum. My mother still thinks one day I'll just magically get a job and go off to do it. This may be what you're in for if you push your daughters into science.

Up-Goer Five Text Editor

2013-01-19T11:38:00.003-05:00

Inspired by the xkcd comic, Theo Sanderson made a text editor that alerts you if you use an obscure word choice, defined by the 1000 most common words in contemporary fiction.

I tried describing the riveting technique I learned to fix that old caravan last year. Here it is the way I would normally describe it.

Buck Riveting: Solid metal rivet is inserted in a hole drilled through two or more pieces of sheet metal. Heavy bucking bar held on one side, air hammer applied to the head of the rivet. Hammer blows deform the rivet to clinch the material together and expand inside the hole to seal against air and water intrusion. Used in airplane manufacture.

Here it is in the Up-Goer Five Text Editor:

Not empty join: Stick two things together with a not-wood stick pushed through an opening in them and hit against one side while holding the other side with a heavy bar. Things stay together now. Fly away in it!

Once you get going you degrade into silliness. It's kind of amazing. Mike Brown (@plutokiller) used it to describe his life as an astronomer and explain why he can't look at the sky as much as he wants.

"Sometimes there is a really big brown animal outside the door who wants inside to eat our food." (He has a bear problem, witnessed in many pictures on his twitter feed.) And while his wife can look after the daughter and three cats by herself, sometimes she's not there or, "Sometimes the mom really really really needs a drink."

Being reduced to these 1000 words leaves sentiment and simple humor. It's adorable.

The dad (that's me) is good at helping out in all of these ways (very very good when it comes to getting the mom drinks, actually) and so everyone is happy when he is home and not flying around the world looking up into space....

Apparently when you take away all the words of science you're left with machines that are surely death traps, parenting, and alcoholism.

Well that clears up a lot. I'm foreign!

2013-01-15T13:26:00.002-05:00

I found something intriguing just now as I was looking on Google to see who first said, "Facebook is where you learn to hate people you've known your whole life while Twitter is where you learn to love people you'll never meet." (I never found that. Anybody know?)

The link I clicked was a blog by a man from Ireland about why he will never live in the US. 17 cultural reasons why this European never wants to live in America. I completely agree with him. But since that's where my land is I'm kind of stuck here. But at least I have figured out how to avoid the culture. Apparently if I want to fit in culturally I have to go to Europe.

From Reason 1: Americans are way too sensitive. I have no filter between what I think and what I say. This is why I can't get along in America.

It seems that speaking your mind to individuals is a major taboo. You can’t tell a friend straight when he has fucked up, nobody will ever tell you that you look fat (oversensitivity with not telling obese people to get their act together is a major contributor in my opinion to why there are so many of them in the states), and there’s way too much euphemism to avoid the hard truth.

From Reason 3: Smiles mean NOTHING.

When I meet Americans abroad, one of their biggest complaints are along the lines of “nobody smiles on Prague’s trams!” “That waitress was so rude to me! She didn’t even smile!”

Goddamnit America – I have the opposite complaint for you. You guys smile way too much. It’s fucking annoying! How can you tell when someone means it? And why the hell would a stranger doing a crossword puzzle on public transport want to look giddy?

This section ends with this; yes this, I do this.

Despite how surly I sound in this post, because complaining is the theme of the article, the fact that I vent when I mean it, means that when you see me happy you know I’m truly happy. And that is indeed a lot of the time. But not all of it!

This is why I gave up online dating. "I want to meet a positive person!" Fuck you. Balance in all things. How can I be truly happy if I'm not sometimes irritated? Shit is irritating as hell in America! You can call me Negative Nelly if you want. My mama didn't name me Barbara Cornell for nothing.

Reason 11: Religious Americans. This would be a lot higher on my list. I have had coworkers try to save me during lunch break. Because I'm so negative. So now I don't have a job. Problem solved.

...I can’t stand certain Christian affiliations of religious Americans. It’s Jesus this and Jesus that all the bloody time. You really can’t have a normal conversation with them. It’s in your face religion, and they replace hard science with scripture in the classroom. They really need to tone it down.

Reason 14: Always in a hurry

People don’t seem to have the patience to invest time to slowly improve things, unless it involves some kind of monetary investment.

Despite all the false positivity, I find Americans to be generally the most stressed out and unhappiest people on the planet. Despite all the resources, and all the money they have, they are sadder than people I know who can barely make ends meet in other countries, but still know how to live in the moment.

This rush to the finish line, to have your book published, or to have a million dollars in your bank account or to get that promotion, and to have that consume your life is something I find really sad.

Me too, dude, me too. So I'm not doing it. This makes me a bad American? Fine. I need to just speak with an accent, get a better haircut and start saying I'm French.

Candlelight Vigils Horrify Me

2013-01-08T12:28:00.002-05:00

I am having a WTF? reaction to this news story I picked up on Twitter from the Sacramento Bee. It's about something that happened in Boulder, CO. I embedded the video below. It has a lot of ads but it's kind of worth it to get to the very strange people with their odd reaction to a local event -- a police officer shot a trophy elk in the city limits. And 75 people came out and held candles and sang protest songs.

I want to be clear that I do not understand a single person in this story. The police officer that shot the elk makes no sense to me. The comments of the people they interview who loved the elk make even less sense to me. They thought the elk loved them?! You guys, it's an ELK! It's... I just don't... what... Such a different reaction from where I live where the assumption is that the animal is diseased and dying when it comes to my house day after day, not that it's protecting me. In fact the advice I got was not to go outside without a live oak bat in my hand until this rabies/brain worm/fever question is answered.

**Update: I had to delete the embedded video because it won't stop playing ads. Here's the link to it.

I have not seen Thirsty since Saturday. I did find a bobcat track in my yard yesterday, right on top of a deer track. I am now considering every possible rare and unlikely disease and injury scenario for my local wildlife. I have not seen any crows or vultures gathering. No indication that Thirsty has died anywhere nearby. If I do find him dead you can be assured I will not burn candles or sing Martin Luther King songs over him (I don't even know the words past "we shall overcome.") I will be sad that such a nice mature deer met a bad end, but that's not the worst I've seen. I once found two deer carcasses joined at the antlers. If I found an unfortunate pair like that I would almost certainly do what that officer did and shoot them to give them a more humane death. (If they had JUST gotten stuck I bet you could tranquilize them and cut off one antler each to separate them.) If I found Thirsty growling and gnashing his teeth with rabies I'd shoot him too, even if it meant spending the rest of the day figuring out how to drag his body away from my house. It's a tough life being a big buck. But they have to die for the next one to have the chance to grow up. Their body goes back into the web of life and it's all natural and understandable.

These things that happen in human communities confuse me. I have a better chance of figuring out if Thirsty has a brain abscess than figuring out that man who thought that elk loved him.

Is Something Wrong with Thirsty?

2013-01-05T14:04:00.000-05:00

Last night I checked the tracking number on some coveralls I ordered last week and realized they've been sitting up by my gate in the rain since Wednesday. This morning I got in my car and drove up there to get them. (That's how sick I am. I would normally walk.) When I got back I saw Thirsty the Deer bounding down my trail behind the house. Whoops, didn't mean to scare him away from his drinks. I turned off the car, and sat still. He stood at the bend in the trail and watched me. I got my package, opened the door, got out, closed the door gently, opened it because it didn't close all the way, slammed it, and Thirsty stood there. I came in the house and got the camera and looked out the west facing window and he was still there. I made toast and tea and he made his way on over to the birdbath. I ate my toast and took his picture and drank my tea.

Then I shot 20 solid minutes of video of him browsing and drinking and staggering around below my window. He acts totally stoned. My aunt watched yesterday's video and DAMMIT! He just whacked my house with his antlers. He's still out there as I'm typing this. It's 12:48. I took that first picture of him at 10:44. He's back at the birdbath right now.

Anyway, my aunt thinks he moves like she does when she has the flu. She thinks he's not well from all his fighting injuries. That's a good theory.

My other theory is that he's been eating poisonous mushrooms. I have video of him eating two big boletes from my lawn today. I know I have some of the poisonous ones out there, the ones that turn blue when you cut them. I also have some that are good to eat cause I've eaten them, so maybe he knows what he's doing. I can't really say.

I raked up this little blue gilled mushroom last week
right where Thirsty has been eating mushrooms today.
I took a picture of it because it was pretty. I cut it
in half with a prong on the rake to see if it was blue
inside too. It didn't turn blue when exposed to air.
Might be ok for a deer to eat.

I've given up being stealthy when he's out there. I'm just going about my business and he can go about his. He clearly doesn't give a damn. It's possible that he acts so different from all the does that come through my yard because he's the big damn boss out there. Or maybe because he used to be the big damn boss and that other buck that chased him into the bathtub on Wednesday morning took over his territory and confined him to my yard. I don't care so much right now when I'm staying in. But when I go back to my routine of messing around in the yard all day going back and forth to work on the Spartan what happens? Is he going to try to chase me out of his territory?

It can't be normal for him to be so thirsty. I can visibly see how much water he's drunk out of that birdbathtub. Now he's sniffing my lawn again. He likes the part where I raked up the pine straw. Is he like a truffle-sniffing pig? Is he looking for more fruit de fungi? And he's drinking some more. Now he's standing there chewing his cud like a bachelor eating a bowl of cereal over the sink. It really is extraordinary. I saw his sides heave when he erped it up. Why doesn't he go lie down behind the shed and do that? He has to stand over the bathtub? More and more like a child. Where are his manners?

He wandered off to browse the lawn some more and now he's drinking again. I've been looking for pictures of mushrooms. It's 1:18pm. He's been in my yard for 2 1/2 hours and this is the time he's supposed to be sleeping, isn't it. Has he got some kind of deer insomnia?

Here are some other mushrooms that grow in my yard. These pictures aren't recent, but the are from right here around my house. Mushrooms being what they are, they come back in the same place. It's been warm and rainy this week which makes mushrooms pop up.

This is not one I'd eat.

When you cut it open the flesh turns blue. That's bad.

This kind of bulbous yellow one is more like what I saw out there
when I was raking last time. I think this is what he just ate.
It's a bolete with the tube things instead of gills.

This is another kind of bolete that grew under my house in the summer.

Here it is on my cutting board. It doesn't turn blue when you cut it.
I threw away the spongey tube part and sauteed the white cap
in butter and ate it on toast. Thirsty just eats them whole.

Right now he's eating cat briars, the only green leaves since so much turned brown in that hard freeze last weekend. This makes me very happy. I hate cat briars. He seems to get them caught in his antlers and snatches them down out of the bushes too, which I appreciate. I hate those things.

Oh, but now he's at the birdbath again. It's kind of startling to turn my head from the computer screen and there's this giant creature at my elbow. 1:31, still drinking.

He got real close to the house again and I could zoom in on that wound in his side from above. It has a distinct round hole to it, just looking at the display on the camera. I wonder if it might be a graze from an arrow or a gun and not where he broke off that piece of light'rd jumping in the bathtub? I'll need to get up my nerve to zoom in on it on the computer after I upload this memory card in a minute. I may need to consult some experts -- people who have cleaned a lot of dead deer and seen injuries like this, and my emergency vet friend out west. He's just standing there. I guess I'll upload it now. And now he's drinking. I'm not kidding that bathtub was full before he jumped in it. It is down an inch and a half now.

OK, warning that there is a gross picture coming up.

See how close he gets to my house? You can see how it's startling when he raps
the siding with those antlers.

Here's the picture of that wound on his side from this high angle. I decided it's not a bullet hole.
Could be a graze from an arrow shot from a deer stand, or seriously that piece of broken light'rd
by the bathtub. It's the right direction and stuff for it to be that.

Maybe that's why he keeps standing by that piece of wood that gashed his side. He's standing there right now rubbing his cheek on it. Maybe he wants it to give him back that piece of fur and skin.

Here are his other injuries. They look kind of normal for a deer this well antlered. Surely he has to fight a lot.

His nose is scratched up. More than yesterday.

Some bad scratches on the inside of his right hid leg.

Another view of the leg scratch.

Generally he looks a bit more beat up than he did yesterday. I think he may have gotten in a tussle with something with claws and some fight in it, like a wildcat or a coyote. Or else he stepped in a hole like he keeps doing and just scratched it on a root.

It's 1:51 and he's still there by the birdbath eating briars out of dead bracken fern. 3 hours. I need another cup of tea. Wonder if the microwave beeping will bother him?

It didn't bother him at all. He's wandering off into the woods now. 2:00 and he finally quenched his thirst.

** Update: I consulted my cousin who knows the deer in our woods well. He said he thought Thirsty looked a little gaunt in the hindquarters, but sometimes they get like that if they're "working the rut real hard." He said to maybe carry my little bat with me when I start going out in the yard when Thirsty is around because he does seem unnervingly tame. Also pointy. (my words)

I looked up diseases that make deer real thirsty. They mostly happen in the summer because the virus is vectored by small biting flies. Freeze stops them. This brochure about hemorrhagic disease by the University of Georgia has some kind of hopeful verbage:

Deer herds in the southeastern coastal plains, south Florida, and Texas consistently have antibodies to multiple EHDV and BTV serotypes, indicating a high rate of previous viral infection; however, clinical disease in these regions is rare.

But this article from September 16 from the local TV station said they had an outbreak of epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) in Florida.

“This is a disease that you typically see in late summer or the fall, and it often occurs after periods of drought,” said Dr. Mark Cunningham, wildlife veterinarian for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). “The good news is we don’t expect long-term impacts to our state’s deer herd.”

Deer infected with EHD may have pronounced swelling of the head, neck, and tongue, and often have large ulcers in the mouth. Infected deer are often found near water and may be lethargic, lame and emaciated. The FWC is monitoring the health of the state’s deer herd and is examining deer for EHD and other diseases. Sightings of sick or dead deer can be reported to the FWC by calling 866-CWD-WATCH (866-293-9282), which is the state’s chronic wasting disease hotline number.

I wonder if I should call them up? Wrong state, not sure they care. Does his head look swollen? I thought his eyes look sunken, but lots of older deer start to get a big brow. His tongue looks normal. He showed it to me a lot.

The prion disease called Chronic Wasting Disease is not present in Georgia, according to the DNR website which honestly looks pretty dated. They did a study in 2002. I don't think Thirsty is chronically wasting. The Georgia DNR website also says deer in Georgia only have 2 factors influencing antler size -- age and nutrition. So if Thirsty has such fine antlers he has to be fairly old and very well fed, which kind of leaves out chronic wasting.

If he has a fever he would be extra thirsty. He could have a fever fighting off infections from all those fighting injuries.

Or it could just be that he gets around a lot at night and there's no water anywhere because of this obscene drought. We've had enough sprinkly rain lately to grow mushrooms but all our creeks are dry as a bone and the 90 acre lake is down to about a 2 acre puddle. Maybe Thirsty is just ordinary dehydrated and that's what makes him stagger. He did walk a lot straighter at the end of his 3 hour recess in my yard.

Thirsty

2013-01-04T20:46:00.001-05:00

The thirsty buck came back today. It was about 1:00 in the afternoon, which is weird. They're supposed to be napping then. I think this fella has found a salt lick and licks too much and gets freakishly thirsty. Then he comes to my place and drinks all the water in my birdbathtub. He drank for 30 solid minutes, I kid you not.

I was resting in my loft with a cold when I heard steps on the front porch and climbed down the ladder to see who it was. It was just that deer. He went to the birdbathtub and started drinking. I got the camera and sat down on the floor and watched him. I was uncomfortable, cold, and bored before his thirst was quenched. (I got distracted by an Eastern Blue Bird and an Eastern Phoebe.) Then I had to keep watching him for another 20 minutes while he browsed in my woods. Then he walked off to the well and drank all the rainwater that had collected on the top of the plastic bin that contains my electrolytic derusting apparatus.

Since it was the middle of the day and far less overcast than the last time he was here I got better pictures and even video with a zoom. I made a video as long as an entire Talking Heads song since my knowledge of hunters tells me that a lot of people have a great deal of patience for watching things with antlers. I didn't have a tripod where I could get it without scaring the deer though so these are all handheld. Pardon the shakes.

I think I miscounted the points on his antlers last time. I thought it was 8, then 9, but now I think it's 10. Are you supposed to count those nubby bits?

Over by the well. See the gash on his side? I took some close ups of it but they are hard for me to look at.
Here we can see he is capable of licking it, but doesn't seem to be obsessed with it like a pet dog would be.
It is so neatly missing that chunk of fur it makes me wonder if it is made to come off easily, like those mice
I read about with the skin that just comes off like plastic wrap off a pudding.

This is just a cute picture of a pine warbler that reminds me of
me not looking at the wound photos.

Public Right-of-Way Is Not For Your Damn Signs

2013-01-02T17:25:00.001-05:00

I have mentioned before that my little part of the world consists of my woods as far as I can see, but at the end of my driveway I come to a divided highway dotted with two gas stations, three car title pawn places, two furniture stores, a woodworking shop, a tractor repair place, a bridal boutique, and six churches. Recently one of the title pawn places got the idea that it was ok to order up a hundred lawn signs and place them at increasingly short intervals along the public right-of-way from Tallahassee all the way to their location in Georgia (Loan sharking is illegal in Florida). This infuriated me when they appeared. Signs on the side of the road?! That's illegal! Do they not know this? Why haven't the other two title pawn places sent employees out to pull up the competition's illegal signs? Do NONE of them know it's illegal? Are they right now on the Vistaprint website ordering up some for themselves?

I complained about these signs when I was riding with my laundry-room-completion helper from Jacksonville when we were coming back from Tallahassee in his pickup truck after we dropped off my car to get a new starter. The next one he saw he pulled over and I got out and picked it up. We collected all the illegal signs in Florida. But I decided to leave the ones in Georgia to see if they would get fined. My little county could use the revenue.

Well today to my delight I saw a service vehicle picking up signs from the right-of-way.

Get those illegal ugly signs!

I was curious if they were going to stop at the place of business and bless them out for putting all those signs in the right-of-way. So I turned around and came back and waited.

Here they come! Are they going to do a U-turn and go give those jerks a piece of their minds?

They totally went there! I totally shot a video of them turning around, too, but Google keeps changing it from a video into a photo if I try to post a link. Anyway, it's not important. What's important is that I was very excited by the truck turning around to go back to the business in question.

The driver went inside and the passenger got all the signs out. I hope they fined them and made them dispose of the signs themselves.

I couldn't believe those things were there for three weeks or more before they got in trouble though. This is the kind of philosophically unjustifiable crime I just can't abide. How do they think the right-of-way is theirs for free advertising? Did they not wonder why all the other two title pawn places or the furniture store or the bridal shop didn't buy 100 signs and do the same thing? Did they think they were alone at the pinnacle of marketing acumen?

What's that philosophy test that says something is unethical if it becomes impossible if everybody does it? This is clearly a case where that is easily applied. If it was ok to put your sign in the public right-of-way there would be no room left for anybody to stick a sign in the public right-of-way. I have just a whisper of a memory of this concept from philosophy class in college.

That morality test memory has the faint whiff of Kant, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. I skimmed it quickly and see I'm thinking of the First Formulation of Universal Law, but it is long and complicated. I like this term "categorical imperative" better.

I think I'm safe to go ahead and say that it is an utter and complete waste of my emotional energy to get upset because of the immoral advertising strategy of people that loan money at over 300% annual interest. I don't think categorical imperative or universal laws of nature enters into their fraudulent business plan, anywhere. I bet they even type that thing with two spaces after a period.

Still there it is. My moral outrage. Vented. And justice rendered, maybe, I hope, by the men in the nice yellow truck and reflective vests. It's up to men in different outfits to make pawning your car illegal. I wish they would get on that.

The Buck in the Bathtub

2013-01-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

This particular buck

had some bad luck.

He went under my house

and his antlers got stuck

He snatched himself free,

which woke up me.

I started down the ladder

and out the window I could see

This long-legged figure

crossing my porch.

I got down to the floor

and then could see more

No really, in the category of "things that go bump in the night" this is a true story. It was still quite dark when my ladder shook and creaked on the beam from some impact to the house. Even in a sleepy daze I could intuit it might be a deer so I got up to look. He passed between my porch posts as I came down the ladder.

He crossed to the North side of the house where I have those big windows that go all the way to the floor and look out on the birdbathtub, seen in countless bird photos. It's a clawfoot tub on concrete blocks buried in the ground and it has a curvy longleaf pine branch across the top for the birds to perch on while they drink and bathe.

The deer poked around in the pine straw I'd recently raked up and messed around in the grass of my rain garden and I thought I could see antlers. It was really dark. He moved on to the birdbath and started to drink.

And he drank and drank and drank. For so long I got bored and sat down on the floor and had time to compose rhymes to describe what was going on. I tried to get my camera to take a picture but it was too dark.

Gradually it got lighter and I could see the outline of his antlers better and start to count the points, which I've heard is what you do. I thought there were 8. He seemed to be licking the bird perch in the bathtub now. I could see it moving. Deer eat algae? Maybe it is a bit salty from the water evaporating on it over and over.

So he's standing there facing east on the back side of my bathtub licking this piece of light'rd about 12 feet from me when this OTHER buck enters the scene. I'm looking out the window, mind, so it really looks like he just comes on stage from the wings. It's just like a play. They're all facing me properly and everything. And he is a BIG 12 point kind of buck. He just walks up fast right alongside the light'rd licker, neatly twists his neck and jabs him in the rump with his antlers! And Light'rd Licker JUMPS INTO MY BATHTUB! He kicks the light'rd out behind him and bounds out over the sloped back of the tub and they both disappear in opposite directions. What the what?!

I was NOT expecting that!

I went to look out all my other windows to see if they were still hanging around. One of them had circled around off to the West and was messing around. I tried the camera again since there was more light. He was gone by the time I got back with it.

I went out on the front porch to see what I could see. I noticed the aluminum and porcelain tile table I use for my outdoor kitchen was knocked off it's leveling feet. That must be what shook the house. I realized it was drizzling rain a bit and was never going to get a lot lighter. I came back inside to write this down. Then the under-the-house deer came back. It was still too dark to take good pictures so I took bad ones.

This is what my camera could capture when the deer first turned up.
You can see the ring of the top of the bathtub in the dark.
Time 7:19 am

After The Incident: Light'rd Licker came back for another drink of water.
I can see the piece of light'rd there to the left of the bathtub but
it's pretty dark still. This is a high speed night mode shot.

Do you think he can see me?

Thirsty. He was on the other side of the bathtub when he jumped in.

Auto camera settings not so great. ISO 800, 1/2 sec, f 3.3.
This is about 26mm 35mm equivalent lens. No zoom for full aperture.
Which should be 2.8. Not sure why it's defaulting to 3.3.

I changed the camera settings to ISO 1600 and manual focus. (Auto f/3.3 1/6 )

He came right up to my window but the batteries went flat on the Casio camera. I could see how wet he was. I wondered if he had any injuries. He seemed so listless and tired. Is he hurt? Or just worn out from a long night of trying to avoid getting in fights with that other buck? As he walked away to the south I could see a pink spot on his side where some fur had been gouged out. It didn't look like a bullet wound though. It was on the other side from where that asshole poked him.

After I wrote this down and it was about as light as it's going to get in this drizzle I went out with my fully charged iPhone to take the crime scene photos. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't seen this happen I could have pieced it together from evidence.

The table knocked askew.

The light'rd out of place.

Hoof mark from jumping into the bathtub.

Tuft of deer fur gouged out of his side floating in the water.

Light'rd post at the end of the tub broken off with deer fur all over it.
This lines up with the pink spot on the side of the deer. I think he gouged
himself pretty bad breaking this off when he jumped into the bathtub.
I buried this pretty deep. It's to hold a mister. The birds love some mist.

Light'rd knot restored to the bathtub so birds can get on with their business.
This was full last night. You can see how much water that deer knocked out
and/or drank this morning.

I sometimes scrub down the sides of this tub but I don't often drain it because there's fish in there. The bottom has a gravel layer like an aquarium and there are two plastic planters of pond soil that lily pads grow in. I wonder if he punched big hole in the mud in those planters. I bet it would be disconcerting thinking you're stepping into a perfectly ordinary bathtub and instead of cast iron your hoof hits gravel and pots of mud.

Anyway, we can conclude from this story that deer will break your shit just like children. No respect for personal space. Also I am not a morning poet.

Aerodynamically Unstable Blade of Grass

2013-01-01T21:19:00.001-05:00

Achievement Unlocked: Laundry

2012-12-29T15:36:00.000-05:00

The Small Year only has a few days left and I'm behind in reporting my accomplishments. I've been busy trying to reach a milestone, full laundry capabilities at home. This required me to finish the back 10 feet of the Spartan. I had to lay tile, buy and install all the 1x4 tongue and groove walls and ceiling, learn how to do two part plaster, find some, and do it, wait for it to dry, wax it, install trim work, and retrieve from storage and hook up my washer and dryer. I went ahead and put in my sink while I had my helper here from Jacksonville.

Clean towels uncontaminated with artificial scents!

My machines were ready on Thursday the 20th of December but I didn't get to wash these towels until Saturday Dec 22. There was a lot of other chores I had to do for other people first. I got my mother and aunt all fixed up for a cold winter with chemotherapy, with a new toilet, metal framed bed (indoors!) and revamped plumbing under their house for a shower (indoors!).

A lesson in cast iron quality. This $25 on Craigslist new cast iron sink
is crooked in every conceivable way a thing can be crooked.
Name brand cast iron costs more for a reason. See how the drain pipe isn't plumb?
That's because the drain hole in the sink isn't straight.
Still have to put the trim around the bottom of the wall.

Here's the outside of my new laundry room.

The front 20 feet of the Spartan remains to be done, as well as finishing up the trim in the laundry room and setting the toilet.

Trick is I really hurt my back with the tile and the plaster and the moving those heavy things. I think I herniated a disc back in September and there's not many things I do that don't aggravate it. I'm considering how to occupy myself for a while without bending over or picking up heavy things. It's sort of a lost cause. All my favorite activities require bending and picking up heavy things. I can't even sit down to work on the computer it hurts so bad. Fortunately my computer works standing up, so that's how I'm writing this. Having an iPad so I can read lying down is really helpful, but the Blogger app is lacking. Lesson: Aging sucks. Plan ahead to have all your heavy stuff where you want it before you hurt yourself.

On the topic of achievements and the end of the year, I sort of despise year end wrap ups and lists and stuff. In case I don't make it back to the blogging before next year I will say that doing a Small Year suited me. Not as small as I would like, but the basic ideas of reduce, reuse, and recluse were a driving force. I'm going to do another one.

Guns

2012-12-23T09:57:00.000-05:00

So, guns. What're we going to do about them? Here's the typical reaction of people who don't understand guns in the New Yorker.

THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT GUN CONTROL
Posted by Adam Gopnik

I happen to think that article is simple-minded and basically wrong. This very long and cogent article seems more salient to me.

AN OPINION ON GUN CONTROL
by Larry Correia

First the author establishes that he has first hand knowledge of the topic. I think the first article is exactly the sort of argument Larry Correia is tired of. Frankly I find all the arguments back and forth of what country tried what gun control and how it worked kind of tedious and irrelevant. At the end of the Larry Correia's article he gets down to it.

We’ve already seen that your partial bans are stupid and don’t do anything, so unless you are merely a hypocrite more interested in style rather than results, the only way to achieve your goal is to come and take the guns away. So let’s talk about confiscation.

They say that there are 80 million gun owners in America. I personally think that number is low for a few reasons. The majority of gun owners I know, when contacted for a phone survey and asked if they own guns, will become suspicious and simply lie. Those of us who don’t want to end like England or Australia will say that we lost all of our guns in a freak canoe accident.

Guns do not really wear out. I have perfectly functioning guns from WWI, and I’ve got friends who have still useable firearms from the 1800s. Plus we’ve been building more of them this entire time. There are more guns than there are people in America, and some of us have enough to arm our entire neighborhood.

But for the sake of math, let’s say that there are only 80 million gun owners, and let’s say that the government decides to round up all those pesky guns once and for all. Let’s be generous and say that 90% of the gun owners don’t really believe in the 2nd Amendment, and their guns are just for duck hunting....

So ten percent refuse to turn their guns in. That is 8 million instantaneous felons. Let’s say that 90% of them are not wanting to comply out of sheer stubbornness. Let’s be super generous and say that 90% of them would still just roll over and turn their guns when pressed or legally threatened. That leaves 800,000 Americans who are not turning their guns in, no matter what. To put that in perspective there are only about 700,000 police officers in the whole country.

Let’s say that these hypothetical 10% of 10% are willing to actually fight to keep their guns. Even if my hypothetical estimate of 800,000 gun nuts willing to fight for their guns is correct, it is still 97% higher than the number of insurgents we faced at any one time in Iraq, a country about the size of Texas.

As part of the ineffable gun culture I know in my gut that all of this is true. Most people I know have at least one gun. Some people I know have large safes with a whole lot of them. And they do not want to hand them over. I don't think my dad would set up on the roof of his shop to shoot people who came to take his guns, but he would definitely donate a hell of a lot of money to the political campaign of the person who would stop that ever becoming a law.

I have never bought a gun. My mother and aunts probably haven't either. But we have them. Like Larry Correia said, they don't really wear out. They're passed down from generation to generation. I have a handgun because my uncle gave it to me for a graduation gift when I got out of college. My mother told everybody I was going to be a high school science teacher in Miami. First thing my uncle thought, "She's going to need a .38." This is normal where I live.

(Of course I wasn't really going to teach high school. I'd be terrible at that. I went to work designing antenna controllers and never needed to get a concealed carry permit to take a gun with me to an electronics factory.)

So as a thought experiment I imagined getting rid of my hand gun, like people in the UK think I should. It's my mission these days to sell anything I don't need that's worth money. Maybe people are hoarding hand guns all of a sudden because they're afraid of backlash from this event. Maybe my .38 is worth a couple hundred dollars. Maybe I should sell it. Let me mull that over in my mind. No more revolver in the house....

Fire extinguisher, vacuum cleaner, pellet gun, .22.
I have a tiny house with a tiny closet but I make room
for these things.

I don't like this thought. I'm just telling you, people who didn't grow up like this, it feels weird. The idea of being left with just a .22 rifle is disconcerting. I have no specific scenario in mind where I need the capability of a higher caliber weapon. It just FEELS weird. My uncle gave it to me. He's dead now and he was one of my favorite people. I want to keep the gun he gave me. He wanted me to have it. He wanted me to be able to sit up in bed and scare away an intruder by shooting right through the front door. He wanted me to be able to put down a wounded dog to stop his suffering after the evil dog-fight people put him out in my woods to bleed to death. I'm sure my wanting a gun, more than one gun actually, is just as weird to people that don't understand gun culture as wanting a tattoos is to me. But we have to just accept that we don't get it and not judge people for that little part of them we don't understand and try to find our common ground to be friends.

Of course I would turn in my guns if there was a national confiscation. But because I don't actively WANT to do it, and I'm liberal, I feel fairly confident it is never going to happen. So all these other arguments are moot.

The discussions of how to do media coverage without making the shooter famous are the important ones. Not encouraging other losers to become powerful in an act of horror is valid. Let's talk about that and leave off the guns.

Leopards Got Pets?

2012-12-11T21:15:00.002-05:00

Check out this video where a young leopard kills a baboon then finds a baby baboon and makes a pet out of it. I don't care for the narration. I'd rather watch it plain, without somebody telling me what human feelings to assign to the leopard at any given time.

Actually, even if that was a human and not a wild animal I still disagree with their assessment. I have no idea why I had to get that baby deer out of the hole. I'm pretty sure it wasn't because I was torn between being a mother and a playful child. Maybe there is just some universal instinct to give a baby a bit of help when it has a mishap.

What's that all about then?

Deer in a Hole from barbara tomlinson on Vimeo.

I notice that leopard video just kind of ends before the leopard eats the dead baboon, let alone before the baby dies. Because ratings?

That's funny, I don't feel tardy

2012-11-27T16:01:00.000-05:00

Nerds are getting a lot of mixed messages these days about showing our age. We're encouraged to use cultural references from the '70s and '80s, but we're expected to cover gray hair and hide wrinkles to get jobs.

I have this shirt.

I have this movie.

"Silicon Valley's dirty secret: Age bias" in the San Jose Mercury News gives examples of people not getting jobs because they looked out of touch with fashion. I'm not sure it even matters. People just don't want me in high tech even though most of my friends are in their 20s, my wardrobe comes from ThinkGeek, I sold my watches years ago, and I am like a factory outlet of Apple products. It doesn't even matter that my latest college degree is only 4 years old. Managers want what they want and are not willing to look at a resumé any longer than what they expect.

Today I'm just getting back to my usual freedom after a couple of tough weeks outside my comfort zone. I took advantage of being unemployed to take my mother to the good hospital 160 miles away to have a radical hysterectomy on my 45th birthday. In the 6 days at the hospital interacting with the various nurses I was called her sister 4 times, her twin once, and her actual self twice when she left the room and I was in there by myself. Nobody ever guessed I was her daughter. That 25 year age difference has been erased from her face with prescription RetinA, $150/50ml serums applied 5 times daily, and packing tape on her forehead. She spends more time on personal maintenance than I do on home maintenance, which is a lot. If that's what it takes to look like 45 at 69 I can forget it.

My multiple chemical sensitivities made me puffy and wrinkled and overall very bad looking. My borderline autistic reaction to alarm sounds made me very jumpy and crabby the whole time. My acoustics professor called me on my birthday and reassured me that I'm just a trained critical listener, not autistic, but it was overwhelming and irritating to be in a hospital where everything beeps and nobody listens. I found the "silence" button on every piece of equipment in the room very quickly.

Also my mother's extreme stamina despite Stage III cancer has thrown me into a bout of un-funded hypochondria. I can't keep up with her. I must be at death's door, or next door to it.

I definitely do not have the energy to pretend to be young enough to get a job in high tech or the money to achieve the necessary face for it. There has to be an internet solution for us old people. Do I have to start a company called Telecommuting Dinosaurs? The logo designs itself.

Insult Handling Skills

2012-11-10T11:50:00.003-05:00

I get most of my news links from Twitter. I can go there any time and pick up an interesting story to read about a new scientific story or interesting natural occurrence. This is thanks to the many scientists and science writers I follow who share these things online. I encourage people to participate in this forum because I enjoy it and I see the benefits.

But I also totally understand the reticence to put yourself out there. I do not have a thick skin. I will dwell on the negative remarks and dismiss the positive if I don't make a conscious effort not to. I am terrified by stories of female bloggers threatened with rape and violence. I have been grateful lo these many years that almost all my blog comments are positive and contribute to the discussion.

At the same time I think the bad comments are good for me. It helps me understand that people aren't that good at reading. I got a comment today on an old movie review. "Barbara Fuck You! Dont Make Bad Review On Rajini Movie " What is he talking about? I'm not going to bother to go check, but I'm pretty sure that was a favorable review of Endhiran: The Robot. But the point is I have learned not to even go back and look at what they're commenting on and it didn't even occur to me to respond to it.

Wednesday I got this one I'm quite proud of. "Haters goona hate and you know nothing about tattoos you ugly dyke" I think I got sentence whiplash. That was a self-fulfilling prophecy right there, what? Again I didn't bother to go back to the original post or even consider a reply.

So these are good reasons for a woman to not want to be online. But this is the world. I have to get used to this stuff and learn the proper reaction if I have to write for a living. I'm still trying hard to find something anonymous to work on instead, some dull reports to proofread or anything without my name on it. But if I can't work that out I might have to put myself out there and try to sell something I write. I need insult handling skills.

This story today asking scientists to join the social media trend seems to be skirting the issue of personal insults. I am not sure I see how the internet is "reducing the opportunities for prejudice." I see that the internet increases my ability to find more people that share my interests, and that's great. But at the same time it makes it easy for people prejudiced against my interests to find me and insult me.

SpotOn London 2012: A call for women to get online or lose out

Tweet or Perish

Some scientists may find it cringe-worthy to advertise their research on twitter and Facebook, while others might shy away from it out of concerns over the time commitment it requires, but no Scientist can afford not to be online. Tweeting and blogging about your work will improve the visibility of your research and deliver your findings to a far broader audience than a conference or a peer-reviewed article could ever hope to achieve13. It isn’t a time-consuming activity and learning to communicate concisely to a general audience is a skill no scientist should undervalue. Not to mention that, as the participation of scientists increases online, its value as a resource increases, with more links to more research being shared between scientists and with the public, a more rapid dissemination of information and fairer access to science. The Internet may not be completely anonymous, but it is certainly reducing the opportunities for prejudice and increasing flexibility for male and female scientists alike. Whether this can provide the push to achieve greater equality in science remains to be seen.

I don't delete bad blog comments. Only ones that are blatant plugs for something. I sort of think the nasty ones boost my blogger cred. I liked it when only people that agreed with me read my posts and made positive comments. But a sign of reaching a broader audience is getting in front of people that don't agree and also don't even bother to read, just skip to the end and call you names. Maybe I don't want to reach a broader audience, I'm not sure. But thanks to a few blog posts ranking high in Google I know how to do it if I want to. And I know that decision comes with a lot of trolls and hateful comments. It's a weighty decision.

*update 11/14/2012
The Oatmeal pointed out something I forgot. You don't have to enable comments on everything you create on the Internet.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/making_things

3829 Write-in Votes for Charles Darwin

2012-11-09T12:05:00.001-05:00

Charles Darwin got almost 4000 write in votes on Georgia ballots Tuesday, estimated to be almost 16%. This was thanks to UGA plant biologist Jim Leebens-Mack who wanted to send a message to Paul Broun, the guy who stood in front of a herd of taxidermied deer heads and said evolution is lies straight from the pit of hell.) (story from Inside Higher Ed.)

I kid UGA a lot, but I'm prepared to totally give them expertise on plants. (Just last night I was looking at one of their publications about figs. Georgia figs don't require cross pollination so we don't have fig wasps, which is disappointing.) The professor's success in getting the public to pay attention using social media is also excellent. This facebook page helped get these nearly 4000 people to go to the trouble to write in a vote, and this is on a touch screen mind you, so you can't just scribble it in, you have to pull up a touch keyboard or something I think. I've never tried it. I didn't even vote in uncontested races, I left them blank. Apparently 23,592 people did the same thing to this jerk. But 6,773 people stod at the voting machine looking at Paul Broun uncontested on their screens and took the time to read the instructions to write in a candidate and go through all the steps. That's wonderful.

From flagpole.com:

Overall, 6,773 people cast write-in votes in the 10th Congressional District race, including about 3,829 votes for Darwin. Another 23,592 people skipped over the race entirely. Only 42 percent of Athenians who voted pressed the button for Broun.

This website has the entire write in list for their district as a PDF, 371 pages. Mars Curiosity got votes. So dead scientists and robots on other planets are more desirable than the actual candidates running for office. Welcome to the future.

I can't hear words, only sounds

2012-11-09T11:04:00.000-05:00

It seems AT&T has announced they want to stop supporting their analog switched network and go with a full internet protocol communications system. I'm looking at a story on GigaOm that starts with a photo of copper refrigeration tubing. This does not give me a lot of confidence in the story. When they call the old landline systems "copper pipes" it's just a euphemism. It's really small gauge wire arranged in twisted pairs for reasons explained in core curriculum physics classes in any engineering school.

But skipping right ahead past my criticism of journalistic misses, what about the audio?

The old analog system was designed to limit the transmission of audio to a range of 300 Hz to 3400 Hz and it was full duplex. You could both talk simultaneously and hear each other. It made conversations natural, even if you couldn't tell an S from an F because sibilance is above 3400 Hz. We had a phonetic alphabet and we worked around it.

Back in the '90s when I worked on equipment for the coaxial cable network we had high hopes we would be able to use the higher bandwidth capacity to IMPROVE voice quality on phone calls. AT&T built fiber networks that actually included some circuits that eliminated that 300 Hz to 3400 Hz notch filter effect. When you got put on hold on one of those circuits the recorded message and on-hold music sounded pretty good and I would beam with pride that we were making strides forward in audio quality. Ahh the '90s.

Then cell phones came. We had an expression in my ham radio club, "A cell phone is just a radio!" Well on the radio you usually have a Push to Talk button and you say "Over!" when it's the other person's turn to talk. When somebody was bad at this we'd tease them that the button is called "Release to Listen." So one main cell phone problem is that it is not full duplex. You can't both start talking at the same time and then one of you stop naturally like a real conversation. You have fits and starts where you realize you're doubling with the other person and you have to say "No, you first." It infuriates my aunt who still uses a land line 98% of the time. She asked me why that happens. People don't understand what they're giving up with cell phones and I'm afraid it's going to happen again if they are forced all to use internet protocol for a phone. My aunt can't remember what the home button is for on her iPad, which is fine because it stopped working after this humid summer with no air conditioning. She can't be made to use voice over internet. Any equipment made for that isn't robust enough to survive her house, let alone her luddite mindset.

In the late '90s the digital cell phones arrived. And they sounded terrible. I rationalized that they use codecs that were developed for ham radio and are notoriously tuned for the deep male voice. Codecs are the chips that convert analog to digital and compress the data to the smallest number of bits that can be converted back and remotely resemble the original. Coder/decoders = codec like modulator/demodulator = modem. Back then nobody could understand a woman on a digital ham radio. (I stopped messing with that stuff so I don't know about now.) Anyway, I figured the coding for female voices would quickly improve because the market would demand it. The digital signal processing people were smart. They could figure it out. There were all kinds of ways to fix this, even if they had to sell different phone models for people with high voices. The pen thing is sexist, but a phone, that's just physics. Make me one, now. Surely the money for research would be quick to appear.

Well they never did figure it out. The CODECs got worse and worse. When the iPhone first came out people complained that the voice quality on phone calls was terrible. But the computer part was so good people bought it anyway. I think that's why texting took off the way it did. You can't understand a word anybody says on those things. If you are hard of hearing but are too vain to get a hearing aid like my mother you wind up with conversations where she says things like, "I can't hear words, only sounds. I can't understand anything you are saying." "Can you speak in a lower pitch? I can't understand?" Well dammit! What the hell?! I went to school in the '80s with a passion for making clear, understandable audio. I studied acoustics in the Physics department and Psychoacoustics in the Psychology department to understand all the nuances of communication with sound. And then in 1990 they stopped teaching Psychoacoustics because the professor retired. Then my Physics professor retired. And I feel like the whole field has died. It's like the whole marketplace has turned it's back on sound quality. (Even though Dr. Patronis still updates his textbook.) I sure was never able to get a job working on it.

I want the FCC to demand that whatever changes happen going forward we get an improvement in audio quality. Technology has advanced and processors are so fast, bandwidth is so large, we should be able to cancel out audio feedback from microphones and speakers with small physical separation and get back to full duplex. I don't care if you have to put two separate radios in the phone that drain the battery twice as fast, somebody try it. Maybe it only works with other people with the same kind of phone. Call it the Can and String phone and you buy them in pairs and share them with your loved ones. Just try SOMETHING. If my phone is not a form of communication I have to go all the way to my mother's house to fix her heat pump controller instead of suggesting she just turn it off and turn it back on.

I want a phone that trains itself up on my actual voice and tunes the codec to make me sound awesome. When I have to speak on a video I use Garage Band to slow my voice down so it doesn't sound so high. Why can't my phone do that? Put my voice in the range the person I'm talking to can hear after the ravages of old age have taken away their high frequency range? Phone designers are going to all this trouble to make it so I can watch streaming TV shows on the damn thing, and that's great, but why not invest in the research to make it actually work as a PHONE?! I never talk to anybody anymore if I can help it. It's just too upsetting.