Apperceptions

Museum Math and Mapping Fun

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 13:39:00 -0700

We recently received the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary traveling exhibit.

It should be fun to have this in the museum and it get's me to thinking about things like "Where is the marine sanctuary, relative to my current location?"

That is, what direction and how far from where I am standing or, say, from a specific location such as the City by the Sea Museum.

If we knew the "coordinates" of the two places, we could use a calculator to find the direction and distance.

We can answer that using some simple online tools to find the information we need and to help perform (and explain) the calculations needed. We can use our smartphone (or just a plain compass) to find the direction and we can use the calculator to express the distance in our preferred units (e.g., miles).

So first off, where is the FGBNMS? In other words, what are it's coordinates?

That's easy to find on the Internet. (Hint: search for "flower garden banks location"). The answer is 27.8841° N, 93.8147° W.

OK. Now what's the coordinates for the CBTSM? We can use a tool like Google Maps to find that or, in this special case, look up the coordinates for the R.J. Hill building in Wikipedia! :)

To do this in Google Maps, find your location by typing in your address or by moving the map and clicking to create a pin. Then click on the pin to see your coordinates as in the picture above and to the left.

In our case, Google Maps says that the CBTSM is located near 28.700416, -96.215314. Wikipedia claims that the location is 28°42′01″N 96°12′54″W. Both are close in value, relative to the building and the street block

Note that Wikipedia uses the Degrees-Minutes-Seconds notation for coordinates, while Google Maps uses Degrees in decimals format. Google also assumes that directions are always North and East and uses a minus sign instead of South or West.

So now all we need is to find a calculator that will tell us the distance and directions. How can we find that? Hint: search for "direction from two coordinates".

Here's the first one I found. It's cool because it provides an easy to use calculator and also gives an explanation of how the calculations are made so we can dive down into the mathematics behind the scenes.

The answer to our question is about 252 km, at a bearing of 110 degrees. I used my smartphone's compass utility app to point myself in the right direction. A regular compass would do, or just estimate if you know which way is North.

Kilometers are about 3/5 ths of a mile and so this is about 156 miles.

For pirates hanging out around the museum, that makes it about 300,000 paces to the southeast, matey!

Palacios Pirate Festival

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Mon, 8 May 2017 14:03:00 -0700

The Palacios Pirate Festival is coming June 23rd and 24th, 2017 to Palacios, Texas.

For more information, check out the Palacios Pirate Festival Summer 2017 website.

"The PALACIOS PIRATE FESTIVAL is a unique annual celebration for all in the region to enjoy. We raise funds to support children and families in our community."

I've volunteered to be on First Mate Lynda's Museum Crew and to help with the email and website.

Let's see how the SEO on this little blog post compares with the others.

Just for fun, I'll add a few more nostalgic archive.org links related to pirates.

* Remember those Ourmedia promos? "Pity about the sound".
* Item #179 - How To Talk Like A Pirate

Palacios Historic Home Tour - Part 1

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 17:52:00 -0700

I volunteer as a docent at the local historical museum. It's a great way to learn about Palacios, Texas and meet interesting people from the area, as well as visitors from other lands.

A few years ago, the museum produced an Historic Homes Tour audio CD and I have been looking at how that might be used on the web and (safely) with mobile devices.

Currently, people come by the museum and "rent" the CD for a small donation ($5), take the tour and then drop the CD back off in the museum's door slot.

The CD consists of 51 audio tracks containing driving directions, home descriptions and a few bonus music tracks.

Ideally, we would like to make it available to more people, raise awareness about the museum and solicit support in the way of donations. Having the content on the web reduces production costs and makes it easier to make additions (for example, a building was recently restored and could be added to the tour).

I plan to write a series of posts of how we go about breathing new life into this fun museum digital asset.

So how do we best accomplish our goals?

One approach might be to use a service like CD Baby or TuneCore, but I'd prefer to do this using open source tools and with minimal costs.

So our first approach will be to use the Internet Archive and build a playlist or feed that can be easily used by most people. For now, donations will be accomplished by simply linking to the museum's donation page where appropriate.

The next step is to rip the CD into mp3 files. Use your favorite tool for this. You can even use Windows Media Maker or iTunes if you have those. I converted the files using the a 192Kbs VBR bit rate setting.

The original CD tracks have very little metadata (just track numbers, no titles, subtitles, album, etc) and so we will want to add that.

As we will see, a whole lot of issues can be addressed using simple shell tools and scripts. Having a comma separate file of the metadata can help automate repetitive tasks for each track and so I created one.

You can use a tool like mid3v2 to set mp3 metadata. The track names on the CD were of the form "01 Track 1" and so I wrote a simple shell script to read the csv, find the mp2 track based on the track number and rewrite the metadata using the track title.

You can see the benefit of having the added metadata in the snapshot of the folder with the audio tracks. Note the titles, album, etc.

Now we can upload everything to the Internet Archive. We'll do that in the next post using the "ia" command line tool.

In later posts, we will create some slide images from the metadata and use that with historic photos and the audio tracks to generate some MPEG 4 videos suitable for uploading to the Internet Archive or YouTube.

Then we will look at how to turn these into mobile (responsive) players and we'll even generate some of those cool audio signal graphs like this:

Lots of fun stuff and all can be done with a few simple command line tools such as mid3v2, ia, ffmpeg, sox, convert and gnuplot.

More soon ...

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Fri, 4 Dec 2015 17:47:00 -0800

I got a message from my old friend Laurie Kurilla via LinkedIn.

All LinkedIn goes to spam, but I happened to notice this one before it got deleted. I never login to LinkedIn anymore. I don't care about that site or that kind of networking. It has never been useful to me.

I tried to send an email to Laurie, but all the email addresses in my contacts are out of date, from old jobs.

I know she's on Facebook, but I gave that up over a year ago now.

I don't think she's on Twitter or, more importantly, Github.

So I guess I'll just post here and let her find my reply in it's own good time. What's the hurry anyway?

We're doing fine. In Texas at the moment. What's 'retired' mean? I work until I drop. Hope you are doing well too. Best to all.

Boring Data Can Be Fun

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 16:00:00 -0700

I was helping out with a site redesign and found a document in the assets that was a poorly formatted table of times to help a bicyclist calculate their speed on a known course. It looked like it had been hit with the 'ugly stick'.

I thought, "this could be used to make something interactive and fun" and so I put together a little demonstration of what I mean: an interactive calculator with a sense of humor.

In a nutshell, it is simply an HTML 'range' element or slider that triggers the display of the corresponding speed. The widget displays the same information as the table, but some styling makes it look nice.

Normally, the slider is restricted to a reasonable range of values (who can typically bicycle comfortably at speeds greater than 30 mph?). But allowing people to make silly choices gives an opportunity for education and fun and so we display various 'speed' facts from Wikipedia as the speed gets higher.

The widget also offers links to rides of the indicated speed if you have a back-end that supports it (e.g., Drupal).

You can find the code on GitHub and test drive it/play with it on JSFiddle as well. Now I have to figure out how to tie those two together :)

Hacking the Internet Archive - Managing Contributions

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 11:45:00 -0700

When it comes to online content management, we've come a long way since the early days of videoblogging. In particular, there are now quite a few tools to manage your Internet Archive contributions and many old ones have changed.

Here's a list of ways I am aware of to create, upload, edit, update and remove archive.org items and their metadata:

FTP - use tools like filezilla or cyberduck to manage your content. No longer used for downloading and it appears that uploading may no longer be supported. I have yet to find an official announcement of that yet.
www.archive.org - web forms to manage your content and your metadata. These forms have gotten easier to use over time and allow you to do lots of cool things. On the other hand, I hate forms.
s3.archive.org - a powerful interface similar to the Amazon web service. For the truly geeky at heart. Mainly useful to programmers. Not so much code as a standard to make calls against using tools and libraries like 'curl'.
Python interface - built on s3.archive.org, used with curl and programming languages, powerful but very geeky. Mainly for programmers, but can be used at a higher level to make cool scripts or use within other applications. Also a great way to learn about the internal working of the Internet Archive and the Python programming language.
ia command line interface - based on the python interface, great for managing lots of items and their metadata, powerful, easy to install and use, geeky, but not too geeky. Works on mac, pc and gnu/linux. I really like this tool. Open source.
other libraries and interfaces, such as @diffalot's gem at https://github.com/diffalot/archive
various desktop clients - can be easy to use, there have been many, they come, they go, commercial and open source projects

Recently, I've been using and studying the ia command line interface and it is a great tool.

We'll take a look at using the Python-based command line interface in the next several posts to learn more about Internet Archive features and capabilities that we can use to do cool things with our content.

Hacking the Internet Archive - Python

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 08:44:00 -0700

Python is a popular programming language, used in many situations these days.

Some wonderful folks have created a powerful command line interface to the Internet Archive that is built using Python.

We will talk about installing the 'ia' tool in the next post.

But first, we need to have a compatible version of Python on our computer in order to install and use the 'ia' command line interface. So that't the purpose of this post: just make sure python is installed.

This was easy on my Ubuntu servers. I already had Python 2.7.6 installed and that works fine for now. I may upgrade this, but I was able then to proceed with the 'ia' installation after that and, as they say, "if it's not broke ...".

My older MacBook with OSX 10.6 already had python 2.5 installed and in use. This would not install ia when I tried it and so I thought it would be best to upgrade python. The current version of Python is 3.5. You can install 3.5 alongside 2.5 (do not remove the older one! your mac needs it). Just visit python.org and download their Mac installer version. Once it is installed, you must type 'python3' in all instructions where you see 'python'. I was able then to proceed with the 'ia' installation after that.

On my Windows 7 box, I installed python via the python.org windows installer, which I downloaded and ran. On windows, you need to add the python install folder to your Path environmental variable (right click on your 'Computer' icon, select 'Properties', then click 'Advanced System Settings', then 'Environmental Variables', scroll to and select 'Path' in lower 'System Variables', double click to edit. Add a semi-colon (;) and then the new path to your python install directory binaries.

On windows, type 'py' to run python. On 'mac', type python3. Just type 'python' on Ubuntu. In all cases, you should see something like this:

Once you verify that python is running, you can either play around and type things like 'print(1+1)' if that gets you exicted. Type a 'Ctrl-D' ('Ctrl-Z' on windows) to exit or type 'exit()'. I guess everything is a function in python. :)

Learning the 'ia' tool will give us an opportunity to learn more about python as we continue out explorations.

If you want to learn more about python, check out this cool learning guide that is also on GitHub.

Hacking the Internet Archive - Icons

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 14:15:00 -0700

The Internet Archive has some cool new glyphs like this:

iconochive-logo

iconochive-audio

iconochive-movies

iconochive-software

iconochive-texts

iconochive-etree

See their post Customized font with Glyphs!.

You can use them too! Like I did here. I just inserted a link to the Internet Archive's style sheet into my blogger template. :)

Hacking the Internet Archive - URL's

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 15:52:00 -0700

I've been playing around with the Internet Archive again lately. I though it would be fun to share some of the things I have discovered along the way and so I intend to write up a series of posts on "Hacking the Internet Archive".

By hacking, I mean using various archive.org tools, api's, tips and techniques to do some cool things with your media. While many of these are documented, many are not and so I'll use these blog posts to share what I find.

To start out, I decided to poke around inside the HTML source code for a details page, In this case a simple image upload.

Using the browser's 'Inspect element' or 'View source' commands, we see something like this (image is example from Chrome desktop browser):

One thing to notice, is that archive.org is now using jQuery, Bootstrap and other interesting frameworks. Fun stuff! We'll come back to that in a later post.

When the detail page is for a book (mediatype: texts), there are lots of interesting things to say. I'll devote an entire post or two to this topic.

An easy thing to do in most browsers is search for the detail's identifier, preceded by a slash to find interesting url's related to the archive.org item. Here are some that I found so far:

Some of these url's, such as '/edit' and '/manage' assume that you are already signed in. They are used to edit the metadata or manage the files using the IA admin pages. More on these features later (boy! are we gunna have a lot of follow-up posts).

The item home page is located at '/details', followed by the unique id for your archive.org upload item. By default, archive.org shows single images in the 'theater' area of the page if it can find one.

If there are multiple images, archive.org inserts a bootstrap slide carousel. If the item is a 'book' (texts), archive.org inserts a book reader. Video and audio also have players associated with their details page.

BTW, here is the full list of archive.org media types as show in the media type select pull down on the archive.org advanced search page (/advancedsearch.php):

Notice that you can get a thumbnail, if it exists, using '/services/img'. Here's an example: I simply asked blogger to insert an image from a url, then typed in 'http://archive.org/services/AliciasShoes' and presto!

I wonder what other services there are?

You can access a specific file by using '/download'. This is useful for image or video 'src' attributes, 'json' data and more. Here's an example:

I have not made use of the '/compress' feature yet, but it looks handy. More to come on that one for sure.

I'm not sure what '/embed' does at this time. I think it is for embedding an iframe into another webpage, but it seems to be broken as of this writing. :(

That's the iframe above, that big white space. The main div inside the embed appears to be empty on this and other detail pages I have tried today.

Ok, that's it for the first post. Just a simple introduction to some important features. In future posts, we'll look at some cool tools for working with the Internet Archive and some ways to use them to create some interesting web pages.

So long and thanks for all the fish!

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Mon, 7 Jul 2014 15:40:00 -0700

I've closed my Facebook ~~and Twitter~~ accounts. There are lots of reasons. Mostly, it's a time sink and I'd rather spend my time coding, blogging, reading, exploring the coast, cooking and woodworking.

Those who know me, know how to get in touch with me using Skype, google chat, phone or email. I'm still on tumblr, YouTube and (for the moment) Flickr. I will probably can Flickr and, eventually, YouTube by moving everything to the Internet Archive and this blog.

Just finished a few books this week: First was Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson and the other was Darker Than Amber by John D. MacDonald. I enjoyed both. Nothing special, just good, fun reads.

Took a short drive into Palacios today with Alicia and stopped at a little burger dive. Nice spot, but nothing special. Alicia had the chicken-fried steak, which was good, but had a rather smokey gravy that we don't really care for. I had a decent burger and fries, but nothing to write home about. Mainly it was just a beautiful day and nice to get out and explore.

Hopefully, I'll be blogging more here from time to time.

Reading Books Again

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Sun, 12 May 2013 11:58:00 -0700

I've been an avid reader all my life, but almost completely stopped reading novels, sci-fi, literature and philosophy books a long time ago. In the 70's and 80's, almost all my reading was either mathematics, computer science or tech manuals (plus a healthy does of reading and grading student papers). Since the 90's, it has been mainly tech, history, economics, politics and more tech. To a great degree, this has been a "book vs. web" thing, but also somewhat related to diminishing eyesight.

I have spent a lot of time at the computer over the last 30 years and grown accustomed to reading screens where I can adjust the text size as I like. To some degree, this has also been an attention related issue as I like to constantly switch between many different topics when on the computer (or computers; I'm one of those people that tend to have dozens of browser tabs open at once). It's also a hypertext and yak combing issue.

The notion of curling up ...with a good book was something I used to enjoy very much, but had lost it's appeal over time. I thought I no longer had the patience for spending the better part of a day with just one book, especially without my youthful eyes that could handle the fine print and various lighting conditions.

But things may be changing, in part due to our travels. First, I started to read a few books on my iPhone and that got me back into the habit of reading novels (and still quite a bit of history).

More recently, I discovered a small library of books here in our quaint little hotel on the beach and am enjoying them as much as ever. In fact, I think I like them far more than using any kind of device. There are lots of reasons for this, but mainly a book (especially an old paperback) is, still, just so much simpler to use than any device. Plus I don't worry about losing it, running out of power or being diverted by something else.

I just read my first Earl Stanly Gardner (not a Perry Mason, but one of the Cool and Lam series he wrote under the name A. A. Fair). Fun LA detective stuff for Noir fans. Pure escapism. Can't wait to find some more of these; there are over two dozen in the series.

My good friend Jay Dedman planted some seeds a few years back and I think they have sprouted. I've starting to think about finding some library book sales and flea markets where I can browse for some cheap reads. Thanks Jay.

Acapulco - Fate

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 13:12:00 -0700

Death grabbed at me twice in one day when I was an eleven year old boy.

It was in Acapulco in the summer 1965. My mother and father and I were traveling in Mexico for the summer. My father's brother had hired a driver to take us from Mexico City to Acapulco through the mountains and jungles. It was one of the most fantastic sites I had ever seen with huge waterfalls plunging hundreds of feet down to the canyon floor far below us.

It was also filled with terror and sadness as the driver sped along the winding mountain road. I remember the terrible thud of an unfortunate dog that we hit, my parents angry with the driver as he tried to explain that any swerve to avoid the animal would have resulted in the car going over the cliff. I wept in the back seat the remainder of the drive.

But Acapulco was a magical place and my tears dried in the magnificent sun and surf vacation Mecca. It was everything one would expect from the Hollywood movies. The candy stripped electric carts, the cliff divers at La Quebrada and hotels surrounded entirely by swimming pools. It was the first time I had ever swam in a heated pool in the rain and the pool was cooler than the rain water.

My parents made friends with another vacationer named Roy whom I became very fond of. Roy was a cool single guy in his 30's, funny and took me on glass-bottomed paddle board rides in the beautiful, fish filled crystal waters.

Months later, Roy came over for dinner to our home in Woodland Hills, California where we introduced him to my mom's good looking friend Barbara. Roy accidentally took Barbara's cigarette lighter so that he had an excuse to call on her again. My parents said that Roy was quite the operator.

One day in Acapulco, we went swimming at the beach. I had one of those little Styrofoam paddle boards that were popular back then and headed in to the surf. Paddling out a ways, I suddenly found myself caught in a whirlpool and could not paddle out. I remember waving to the adults on shore for help, the sound of the crashing surf swallowing my cries. My mother smiled and waved back as I began to spin in circles around the funnel of water.

My father had never learned to swim and was always a bit uncomfortable in pools and on the beach. In fact, he generally preferred a three-piece suit to swim shorts and confided to me once that Mexicans in his day looked down on men in shorts.

But he could tell that I was in trouble and quickly started wading into the surf. A few moments later a young life guard jumped in to the water, swam over and pulled me free from the whirlpool's grasp.

On the shore, everyone came running and I finally let go of the little paddle board, my chest burned red by the Styrofoam I had clutched so tightly.

Everyone finally relaxed and after a short while I noticed a horse and her colt down the beach.

I went over to have a look, my parents saying "stay out of the water for a while son."

I reached out to pet the colt. I remember hearing my mother scream at the exact same moment I saw the shadow move. I felt the wind from the Mare's hoof as it missed my head by a fraction of an inch. I dove and rolled in the sand, the mare still kicking in anger. I made a mental note not to play with other animals children without permission.

Again, everyone came running and I was escorted back to safety once again.

Perhaps Fate was playing with me that day. Perhaps it laughed in amusement and said "Let's let this one live a little longer and see what happens." Perhaps I was just lucky.

I ponder and write about this on another, more distant Mexican beach on the Caribbean, not far from Belize. Either way, it was a day I will never forget.

Chihuahua - The Curse

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:30:00 -0700

My mother was cursed. It happened in the town of Chihuahua, Mexico when I was a boy. My parents and I were driving from Los Angeles to Mexico City to visit my uncle Carl and my aunt Pepita who lived there with their children Carl Jr. and Monica.

We drove across the American southwest in our new Dodge Dart station wagon. It was in the summer of 1965. I recall that the days were long and hot during the trip and I used to look forward to swimming in the pools of the motels recommended in the AAA guides that were popular at the time. This was my first trip to Mexico. We drove south into Mexico from El Paso, the blue tourista decal affixed to our windshield. You didn't need passports back then.

We arrived in Chihuahua early in the afternoon and checked into a beautiful hotel on the hills overlooking the city. The front of the hotel consisted of large balconies instead of hallways and with the doors to the rooms opening to the stunning vista.

After checking in, we toured some of the classic streets and buildings of this beautiful colonial city, one of Mexico's greatest treasures. My mother, a first generation German-American, was excited to explore the city's many historic colonia, aqueduct, government buildings, the old, wide cobble stone avenues and photograph the classic architecture with her Kodak Instamatic camera.

She insisted on going inside the great cathedral in spite of having nothing to cover her head. It was hard to pass up such an historic building and she was a Protestant, unfamiliar with the Catholic traditions practiced there and by most of the members of the paternal side of my family, except for my father. Even I was schooled through Catechism and wondered at this, but no one warned her as we entered.

The interior of the cathedral was dimly lit from the stained glass and many prayer candles. A few locals sat in the pews, deep in their own thoughts and conversations with God. One old women dressed in black looked up from her rosary and muttered something in Spanish, first to my mother and then to the crucified figure of Christ at the head of the church.

My mother asked my father, who was fluent in Spanish, what the old women had said. He simply said "Nothing."

We were about a block away when my mother started to vomit. We got her back to hotel room quickly, where she endured a long and uncomfortable evening while my father and I went off to dinner. She had no interest in eating and wanted only to lie down.

Upon returning, she told us that someone had repeatedly knocked on the door, but that no one was there whenever she could bring herself to open the door.

The next day, my mother was weak, but recovering and my father finally told her that the old woman had cursed her vehemently for her transgression.

Later, we learned from the hotel staff that it was common for bats to bang into the walls at twilight, in search of prey.

Afterwards, whenever we visited other churches, and later, at weddings and funerals, my mother always covered her head.

My Father's Side of the Family

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:52:00 -0700

I can't tell you much about my father's father, as I never met my paternal grandfather Steven Sandy. As far as I know, my father Warren only met him once. It's harder to describe my father's family as things were a bit more crazy on that side.

My father was raised by his mother Francis, who gave birth to him when she was 14. She was Mexican and lived in New York City with my father as a boy, moving back to Mexico City in her 20's to remarry and have another child, my uncle Carl, an architect who still lives there today.

After her second divorce, Francis and my father moved to the heart of Los Angeles in one of those big old wooden two story houses that used to be common in the area and like you see in film noir movies. It even had a basement, which was not something I ever saw in people's homes, growing up in the San Fernando Valley or in Santa Monica and West LA, where my mother's parents lived.

Francis was a very free spirit and loved to party. She had lots of friends and always brought strangers to family gatherings, who then became part of our extended family. She loved her friends and she loved her dogs. She was engaged to my "Uncle Bill" for all my childhood and into my teens, until she died when I was 18.

Ignacio William Walsh was one of the finest men I have ever known and he loved my grandma Francis, my father and me dearly. He was an Irishman and a "corn husker" from Nebraska and I have no idea how he ever hooked up with my grandmother, but he was always around and, as far as I can tell, totally supported her financially as she never worked a day in my life. Francis lived alone with her little white cock-a-poos in her big house and Bill had his own place nearby that everyone jokingly referred to as "sputnik" because it was up on a hill and it was the 50's and 60's.

Bill's house was a literal maze of magazines, newspapers and books and he always encouraged me to educate myself more than anyone else. He was also a very funny and gentle man, always smiling or laughing and telling jokes. I could see that he wanted to marry my grandmother Francis, but they obviously had some kind of arrangement and it seemed to work for them.

My great aunt Flo, Francis' older sister, was a devote catholic who went to mass daily (or so it seemed to me) and was always disapproving of Francis and everyone else, except for my Father, who they both adored. Flo and her husband Bob had no children and so I was treated rather special too.

I am 11 years older than my sister Susan, while my older half-sister Carol, from my dad's first marriage, lived with her mother and adopted father, so I was essentially an only child for most of my youth. My uncle Carl had two children, but they rarely came to the US to visit. When I was 9, my parents and I drove to Chihuahua, Mexico City and Acapulco, a trip that I will never forget and an inspiration for my travels here in Mexico today and for many years after college.

Flo and Bob lived with Frances and Flo's brother Fedencio (uncle Fed), who seemed to spend most of his time writing and publishing a newspaper about revolution in Mexico and was the first person to ever speak to me intelligently about higher mathematics and politics. Everyone told me he was a bit crazy, but I always loved seeing him and he would hug me and call me "chiquito", which means "little one". Uncle Fed was very short and I was already 6'3" by the age of 14 but he always called me that anyway.

Everyone on my father's side of the family was fluent in Spanish, even Bill. My mother and her side of our family (Gertrude, Otto, Lotte, Ellie and Paul) were all fluent in German. I studied more German than Spanish in school, which was handy in my mathematics studies in college. I am finally catching up on my Spanish now and I know that my dad's side of the family would all appreciate this if they were still around.

The food was always awesome when the two families came together at the holidays. Ham, roast beast, turkey and mashed potatoes next to mole, rice and frijoles. German chocolate cake and flan. Rolls and tortillas. There are few things in life that I miss, but I would give just about anything to relive one of those meals.

Francis used to drive my mother crazy at parties, always showing up quite late, which is normal Mexican protocol unless one specifies "English time". Once my mother tried to fool her and invited Francis two hours early and of course Francis showed up on time to my mother's shock and dismay. My mother tried to BS her way out of it and kept asking "where is everyone?" and pretending to not understand why everyone else was so late.

Francis died in a house fire. I'm not sure how it started and neighbors said that she had gotten out, but went back in for her dogs. They escaped and survived unharmed, but she died of smoke inhalation. I think she was still in her mid 50's.

Years later, Bill married one of Francis' best friends and we kept in touch while I was in college. He seemed very happy and would write jokes in all our letters. I think he had always longed to settle down and finally did.

I was very fortunate to have such loving grand parents, aunts and uncles.

My Grandfather Paul

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:23:00 -0700

My grandfather, on my mother's side, fell eight stories from a scaffold while working on a New York hi-rise. He survived, but his partner, who he landed on, did not. There was no workmen's comp back then and he was laid up for two years. He lost his job too.

As a result, he was an epileptic for the rest of his life, having a seizer every afternoon like clockwork. He was never allowed to drive again.

A WWI vet, he had migrated from Hamburg, Germany to Hamburg, New Jersey in the 20's. His wife and my aunt followed some years later. My mother and my uncle were born and spent their early childhood in NJ. They were kids when grandpa fell and his wife worked as a housekeeper and took in laundry to make ends meet. My mother hated the depression and always talked about it in terms of food availability, especially the lack of pork chops, which she loved.

After recovering from the accident, Paul (pronounced 'Powell', by his wife Ellie, my grandmother) migrated to Trona, California, near Death Valley, where he worked as a machinist. The family eventually followed some years later, coming by way of the Panama Canal, to West LA, where my grandmother became a housekeeper for Charlie Chaplin and my mom attended University High School during WWII. My uncle was a submariner in the Pacific. I remember looking at my mom's HS yearbook as a kid; almost all the boys were in uniform.

After graduating, she worked at the Broadway, Downtown for a while and eventually met and married my dad when they were in their early twenties. They said they met in the unemployment line. I showed up about 9 months later.

As a boy in the 50's and 60's, I would often stay with my grandparents. Paul would get up very early every morning, make coffee and have a smoke, while making me a light breakfast of smoked fish on toast. I used to love that and still do. He would always bring my grandmother a cup of coffee and kiss her good morning, but otherwise they spent their lives watching TV in their separate rooms. They both liked to watch wrestling (my grandmother hated "that Freddy Blase") and she would cook dinner for the two them, which they ate in their rooms on TV trays. Whenever I came to visit, Paul would hide Ellie's teeth as a joke, which I thought was hysterical. They loved each other in their own funny way.

In his 70's, grandpa would hold out his arm and I would swing from it. I was a skinny kid back then. In his 80's, he was hit by a car and tossed several feet, breaking his arm and collar bone, but otherwise recovered ok. He finally died at the age of 84, within a year of my grandmother's passing. He was still taking his morning walks down Wilshire Blvd, from Bundy to the Santa Monica Pier and back, running errands and always dressed in his olive drab or dark blue Sears work shirt and pants.

He gave me the best advice anyone ever has. He told me: "Marky, I go to bed every night with no worries, let a good one out the backside and turn over and go to sleep."

He liked one good belt of scotch at night (Black Label) and smoked two packs of Pall Mall everyday until he died. He never showed any adverse effects not attributable to his accidents. Not everyone gets cancer from smoking.

Sounds of the city - Veracruz - Elotes

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:27:00 -0700

I love the city sounds that I can hear from our apartment, here in Veracruz. I often hear this one going by at night and have wondered what it was. I knew it was a street vendor, but could never quite make out his call.

Tonight on the way... to dinner with Alicia, he passed by and I could hear him clearly sign out "elotes!", which is cooked corn, either on the cob or by the cup full. A very popular snack in mexico, it is usually cooked in butter and served with salt and lime, or other toppings that I have not tried yet.

Shannon Hacks My Photo

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:55:00 -0700

Shannon Noble, a vlogger friend whom I have long admired recently applied his techniques to one of my photos. I really dig it and am seriously thinking about dying my beard blue. Thanks Shannon.

Lazy Sunday in Veracruz

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:32:00 -0700

Lazy sunday, warm, sunny day outside. Laying naked on the bed after a shower with the AC on. Her body still excites me after all these years. Making love slowly. The kids, now in their late 20's, would probably think we are nuts. They'd be right. We are. About each other.

Life does not end at 50 (almost, 60 now).

Tip: sell everything and run away with your beloved.

Learning to Code

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 15:33:00 -0700

I've only ever taken one course on computer programming. That is, if you don't count the more than 100 that I have taught (tip: teaching is the best way to learn something).

It was a course in HP BASIC taught by a Mr. William Gibson at Santa Ana Junior College (Community College today as JC seems to have fallen out of favor over the years).

We used an HP computer that was about size of a small... fridge (tall, but narrow). We used a single teletype terminal like a DEC-writer to enter code and stored our programs on paper punch tape (looks like a thich ticker tape with brail).

We had a quiz every week, in which we would be asked to write out the solution in HP BASIC to a specific problem like reversing a string or something simple. There were generally 10 blank lines on the quiz sheet and the scoring was simple: if the program was correct and under 10 lines, you got an A. If you got it correct and needed more lines, you got a C. Otherwise, F.

It was a fun class and I learned a lot about problem solving.

How it all started - Programming

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 14:35:00 -0700

How it all started:

When I was 17, I used to hang out with my next door neighbor Jim, who went to UC Irvine. We used to get high and play cards or pinball at the student union. Then we'd go over to the computer lab for some all nighters, playing a text version of Star Trek on professor's accounts that Lurch had hacked into.

I didn't find computer games very interesting. I was a pinball wizard. ...Fireball was my favorite. But I loved getting high and hanging out with the older kids, especially my friend Jim, whom we called "Lurch" because he was 6'7" and skinny. I was 6'4" and skinny and hi called me "Clyde".

I would play the Star Trek game a little, but it would usually crash at some point and I'd have to ask Lurch how to restart it. It was written in some variant of BASIC and he would say "just type run" to restart it.

One night, I asked him what else I could type and he said "type list".

That simple command, together with "edit", opened up a whole new world to me. It is still one of the best games I've ever played.

Thanks Lurch.

La Crepe et la Lune Restaurante

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Sat, 9 Mar 2013 16:37:00 -0800

OMG! two super FTW's today. First, Alicia needed a crown repair and found a totally excellent dentist who did the complete job today for under $70. The woman was very friendly, spoke English and had the latest equipment. Most US dentists would have made this a two appointment job, but she got it done quick and neat.

Second, Alicia has been wanting to try out a little restaurant down the street for some time and we finally made it over to La Crepe et la Lune.

OMG! Did I already say that? The service and food was to die for. Everyone is so accommodating there. Near the end of the meal, Alicia wanted to step outside for a smoke and so they just picked up our coffee's and drinks and moved them outside to one of the outdoor tables. We had drinks, Carpaccio (again, i know, that's twice this week), a Roquefort salad, french onion soup, Dijon chicken with asparagus, tomatoes and mozzarella, an imported rib eye in a wine reduced sauce with a side of some pleasantly spicy spaghetti, an apple strudel crepe with vanilla ice creme and some of the best French roast coffee I've had in a long time. Cost was about 687 pesos (~$54), plus tip.

— with Alicia Shay at La Crepe et la Lune Restaurante.

Mr. Pampas

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Wed, 6 Mar 2013 16:59:00 -0800

A short video of our trip to Mr. Pampas Brazilian style restaurant last week. A great little place near our apartment in Boca Del Rio, Veracruz, Mexico. Warning: this is for meat lovers only.

Chicken Consume

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:06:00 -0800

One of the great joys that I have discovered in our travels in Mexico has been chicken consume. It's on most menus and sounds simple, but is consistently the best "chicken soup" I have ever had. While it is consistently good, each restaura...nt has its own variant.

Some use rice, some use pasta and the vegetables can vary a bit, depending on season and locale. It is almost always served with a side of lime (as is everything), chopped jalapeno's and onion and tortilla chips are common. There has often been one ingredient that I had not previously tasted and that was a greenish, potato-like vegetable.

While shopping the other day, I noticed a bin of "chayote" which is a local vegetable that looked like it was a good candidate for the missing ingredient and so I picked it up with the intent of trying my own had at this dish. Alicia and I just had a short bout with our first cold in years and it seemed like the perfect thing to cook up.

I mainly used ingredients on hand in our small little kitchen, including some onion, lime, garlic, avocado, celery, Serrano and red bell pepper and some cilantro. Plus the Chayote and chicken of course. Salt and pepper to taste. Cumin, if you got em.

Normally, I would make my own consume (made from bones, as opposed to a stock, which tends to have meet parts and vegies), but we do not have a large stock pot and no need to make a ton of food to last the week like I often did, back in Ojai, when I was cooking for a whole week at a time or for guests. Most of the markets here have a large Knorr soup and consume section (no, not the cubes; these are big packets) and so I settled for a simple chicken and pasta base.

I think it turned out great and was just the sort of thing we needed to relax at home on this Mexican holiday. It's Constitution Day and this certainly improved mine, if you'll pardon the pun.

The chayote* is now one of my favorite vegies.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chayote

Chichen Itza International

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Sat, 2 Feb 2013 17:14:00 -0800

That was one of my better flight stories. Don't even ask me about that time over STL where we made almost a dozen approaches or the hop from Santa Barbara to San Francisco where we dropped a few thousand feet mid-flight. You know things are out of the ordinary when the attendants start to panic.

I did enjoy the flight from Cancun to Chichen Itza International once. I had no idea that the Maya had built the airport runway, however. I think they have modernized it since I was there back in the 80's.

Fun Flight Stories

markus@apperceptions.org (Markus Sandy) — Sat, 2 Feb 2013 17:09:00 -0800

Fun flight story/nightmare: the last time I was in Cancun, I spent a week on Cozumel Island and the night before I was supposed to have left, a huge storm blew in. I could see the ferry bobbing like a cork in the harbor from my hotel room a...nd decide to scratch the hour boat trip in favor of a 15 minute flight.

The aircraft was an old, high-wing prop job that seated about 8-10 people, plus the pilot. There were about 5 passengers and they took right off, spiraling up, looking for daylight. The rain was coming through the doors on either side of me and I ended up holding on to the two door handles, hoping to keep them from blowing open.

Up and up we went, for over a half hour, still looking for daylight. The pilot had a manual open on his leg; not a reassuring sight. Finally after 45 minutes of spiraling, we hit sunshine and the pilot dove for the coast and the Cancun airport.

We literally kissed the ground when we landed. I used to marvel at how my parents came back from vacations having made close friends; now I knew, all of the passengers felt very close to each other after our little "fifteen minute" flight.

Still not sure to this day if this was a better choice than the ferry boat.