Coyote Blog

Well, blogging has been light again as I a) watched the incredibly unlikely prospect of the Arizona Cardinals hosting a NFC Championship game become a reality and b) built yet another new web site, this one for my wife.  My wife has for several years had a business selling designer handbags and other fashion accessories, for which she has won a number of awards.  This week she is kicking off a new business selling knitted handbag patterns.  You can guess who was named, in absentia I might add, the new business's CTO and webmaster.

Anyway, not wishing to add another platform to my stable of web site solutions, I built it using wordpress using a template that may be suspiciously familiar to Coyote Blog readers.  No appologies here, because I spent way too much time making the transaction engine work (it turns out that digital fulfillment is actually harder, rather than easier, to implement than regular mail and ship).   Since this is basically a hobby of mine rather than a real job, getting one template to work flawlessly using css is my limit.

Anyway, check her out if you are interested (or even if you are not, she will be thrilled to see some traffic).

PS-  before I get comments, I know there is something wrong with the image manipulation system I used as the site is hanging up serving up resized images.  Working on it.

Click the ball to change the color

Via.

And yes, it does change color.  It is not a practical joke.

Update: I mean what I say in the title. I posted this because it was irritating, not because it was fun.

There are no more dreaded words to the middle school parent than "I have a science project due."  Every year through four years of middle school we have had to come up with two (one for each kid).  The first couple are easy.  But trying to come up with a unique project #8 that engages the kids is hard.

The Internet is a great resource.  Search for "science project ideas" and there are loads of folks who have shared their project ideas, making it easier for kids to select from a menu of potential projects.  So, as a way of giving back, I want to, over time, publish some of the projects we have done so that others might benefit.  The first such project I published was my son's science project to measure the Phoenix urban heat island.

This project involves electro-magnetic propulsion.  My kids really like the Rockin' Roller Coaster at DisneyWorld.  Like many new coasters, this one uses a form of electro-magnetic propulsion to rocket the cars to 60+ miles per hour in just a few seconds.  We decided to try to simulate this effect (note:  there are several different approaches to electro-magnetic propulsion.  The simplistic model we used is NOT the one used by coasters, but it is close enough for a 7th-grade science project).

We first looked at building a simple rail gun, but some of the aspects of the construction were either dangerous or difficult (see here for an example of a simple one).  In particular, the energy that needs to be stored in the capacitor is really too dangerous for 12-year-old kids.   We decided instead simply try to roll a metal ball down a track, turning magnets off and on to move the ball along.  We ended up being successful, though don't expect really high speeds  (if you want cheap and easy high speeds with magnets and marbles, try this.  We used the gauss gun for a different science project for a different kid in another year).

The key is trying to turn the magnets on and off at the right time to propel the marble.  We imagined a number of approaches using electric eyes and such, but that seemed really hard.  Fortunately, as a model railroader, I had an answer.  The marbles we were using rolled perfectly on N-scale track.  Since the marbles were also conductive, they could complete a circuit between the two rails  (which is in fact how a model engine works).  By putting electrical gaps spaced in the rails, as the ball rolled, it would progressively activate different rail sections.  If each progressive section was wired to the next magnet, the marble effectively turns the magnets on and off as it rolls.

Here is the final model, with five electro-magnets (click any picture for more detail)

The only thing that is missing is the power supply.  The two red wires are connected to the positive and negative leads of a DC power supply.

Here is a view from above.  The magnets are also a model railroad part -- HO-scale uncoupling ramps made by a company named Kadee -- but other strong electro-magnets would probably work.  Note that the magnet needs to create a wide field, which was why we used these.

We ended up with the circuit breaks centered on each magnet.  So, when the ball gets to a magnet it crosses to the next track section, turning off the magnet under it and turning on the magnet in front of it.  If we did it again, we probably would have experimented with the position of this break.  Here are some detailed views  (sorry, the depth of field in the photos is awful):

Hopefully you can see the principle here.  As the ball approaches the magnet, it is completing the circuit to energize the magnet in front of it (ball is moving from right to left in this picture).  Right over the magnet is a break in the track that isolates the track electrically from the next section.  As the ball crosses this break, the magnet under it is turned off (preventing it from pulling backwards on the ball as it passes) and the next magnet in line is turned on.

Here are a couple of other views:

Potential Improvements: As mentioned above, I am not sure the correct position to switch power to the magnets is right when the ball is over a magnet -- some experimentation would probably yield a more optimal location.  Also, I continually feared that performance was being degraded because the previous magnet was not turning off fast enough (due to inductance effects in the coil).  If this is the case, then performance is hurt because the last magnet is still pulling backwards on the ball as it passes.  Smart circuit makers could probably fix this with some electronics, or moving the changeover point earlier, before the ball is over the magnet, might help.

This has become one of my absolute favorite photographs.  If I had to come up with an advertising campaign defending modern society against those who are anti-growth, anti-wealth and anti-technology (like, say, our new National Science Adviser John Holdren) I would use this picture on the posters.  (via Shorpy, which has a huge version here)

There is some discussion over at Climate Audit about Ojmjakon, Russia in the context of trying to debug some recent NASA temperature measurement glitches.  But I could not get past this data, which really seems a bit nippy for late Autumn:

Well, as long as its sunny.

My kids' middle school has a tradition among 5th and 6th graders that once a year each student creates a science model out of food.  The kids love it, because they get to eat them after each presentation.  But all we parents know how stressful science fair projects can be.  Trying to create a meaningful science display from only edible materials is really a pain.  We pretty much nuked the kitchen this Sunday and spent all day with this.  But it's the last one!  And it came out pretty well -- this is my daughter's "physics of the circus."

PS - TGFF - Thank God For Fondant, a material used in making fancy cakes that you can think of as edible clay.  The materials here are graham cracker, Hershey bar, and sugar wafer stands, gum drop and lemon ball audience, frosted vanilla cake for the platforms, pretzels for the posts, licorice for the ropes, donuts for the cannon and the hoop, and fondant for the animals and people.  And two full pounds of royal icing to glue everything together.

PSS - One of the things you discover about food is that despite the incredible amount of quality control on its composition and taste, there is not much quality control on its construction properties.  Pretzel rods that always seemed straight enough turn out to be, when you come to actually build something from them, more warped than picked-over Home Depot lumber.  Ditto graham crackers.  Mini donut sizes vary tremendously.  Licorice tensile strength that always seemed fine turns out to be woefully inadequate.  And don't even get me started on gumdrop repeatability.

My COO reports that his dog Ranger was slashed pretty badly in brawl with a javelina near the family home.  The dog is doing fine, and should be proud he defended his territory against the evil interloper.

So why is the poor dog being humiliated?  OK, he has to wear one of those funnel things that keep the dog from picking at his stitches.  These are kind of embarrassing, but after being nearly emasculated in the field of battle, does he really need this indignity, courtesy of my friend's daughter?

Boston City Hall as the world's ugliest building.  I would add an honorable mention to Boston's Peabody Terrace, the ugliest building I have ever lived in.

There is a quote from Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor** that honestly reflects my opinion on the topic of leaving the US  (Redford is Joe Turner, running away from the CIA, while Joubert is an assassin-for-hire):

Turner: I'd like to go back to New York.

Joubert: You have not much future there. It will happen this
way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a
car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know,
maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a
becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to
give you a lift.

Turner: You seem to understand it all so well. What would you suggest?

Joubert: Personally, I prefer Europe.

Turner: Europe?

Joubert: Yes. Well, the fact is, what I do is not a bad occupation. Someone is always willing to pay.

Turner: I would find it"¦ tiring.

Joubert: Oh, no "” it's quite restful. It's"¦ almost peaceful.
No need to believe in either side, or any side. There is no cause.
There's only yourself. The belief is in your own precision.

Turner: I was born in the United States, Joubert. I miss it when I'm away too long.

Joubert: A pity.

Turner: I don't think so.

A great line, particularly in a movie steeped in cold war weariness.  Anyway, I was listening to some rant on NPR about leaving the US if McCain won the election, and I asked myself if I had to leave the US, what would be my rank order of countries to which I might move.  My list is highly influenced by language (at 46 I hardly feel like learning a new language) and by countries of which I am knowledgeable.  Here is what I came up with:

1. Australia
2. Bermuda
3. UK
4. Canada
5. Singapore
6. the Netherlands
7. Switzerland
8. Spain
9. Germany / Austria
10. Costa Rica

Here are some notes on the list, as well as some explanations of countries left off:

• I have yet to meet an American who did not enjoy living in Australia (and many long to go back).  I came within about 5 minutes of living in Bermuda about seven years ago.  I have always liked the UK and have spent many summers there.
• Ireland might belong high on the list, but I have never been there and am not that familiar with it.  But my sense is that if I really were to research it, Ireland would make the top 5.  I could also probably have rattled off a number of other British island colonies, but kept it to Bermuda.
• Canada ... its like a whole other state   (this is a line I uttered at business school once, echoing the then-current "Texas ... its like a whole other country" advertising campaign.  It was not well-recieved by our northern neighbors.  I still think a few Canadians are trying to hunt me down up there
• Been to Singapore a few times.  An odd place, but certainly a liveable one.  Last gasp of the English speaking choices on the list.
• Netherlands and Switzerland are both fairly capitalist-friendly nations with good support for a displaced English speaker.  I have spent more time with the Dutch, so it is a bit higher, but Switzerland is freaking gorgeous.
• Spain is on the list mostly as a language play.  Not a huge fan of the Spanish government, but I speak the language well enough to pick it up quickly.  Good beaches, and the south coast has many of the appeals of Provence without the prices (and the French).  A couple of years ago this probably would have been Argentina.  I really loved Argentina when I was there, but I am scared a bit by the current political and economic climate.
• I like Austria, and Germany is OK.  Not America but perfectly reasonable places to live.
• If I am really running not just form the US but the first world in general, I might pick Costa Rica.  A pretty good government, particularly for Latin America, beautiful, and plenty of places to be secluded (and/or hide, if the need were to arise).
• I considered the Czech Republic.  Prague seems to be the white-hot destination for American tourists, and they certainly know their beer.  But I suspect that Eastern Europe has several more decades of work before the every day conveniences and creature comforts to which I have become accustomed in the US are prolific there.
• Scandinavia is too freaking cold.  Maybe if I were single I might find some appealing reasons to reconsider...
• There may be some country like Monaco that would suit me perfectly but of which I am wholly unfamiliar.

Readers are welcome to propose their own priorities in the comments.

** Postscript: Three Days of the Condor is one of my favorites, for a couple of reasons.  First, I always loved Faye Dunaway.  Second, and more important, I like thrillers that have a more languid pace.  I know that sounds weird to say, and if I were a film critic I might have the right words, but there is something about the music and the editing and the pacing that almost stands in contrast to the urgencies of the plot itself.  Despite being on the run through the movie, Redford never actually runs.  No car chases either.  Sort of the antonym to the shaky rapid-cut camera action of, say, the Bourne movies.  Other movies I would put in this same category are LA Confidential (maybe my favorite movie) and perhaps the newer version of the Thomas Crowne Affair. I might put Chinatown on this list too, but then since 3 of the 4 would include Dunaway, one might think my first rather than my second criteria was driving the list.

By the way, even action movies could learn something from this.  The first Indiana Jones movie was great in part because the action scenes were interspersed with quiet scenes.  The audience gets to rest from time to time, and the action is highlighted by the contrast.  You can even have some token character development.  Later Indiana Jones movies fell into the trap of going for non-stop adrenalin.

Don LaFontaine died the other day (ht Whatever).  You definitely know who this guy was, even if you don't.

Today I found myself out-of-town with my Kindle almost out of battery life, no Kindle charger, and a long plane flight tomorrow.  Passing a Radio Shack, I went in, with the intention of buying yet another charger for it  (I knew from a similar experience that I needed 5 volts with an "A" plug).  But I knew my charger was at home, and was hesitant to pay $20-30 for what would after today be an extra.

So I bought the following:

• The cheapest USB cable I could find
• An "A" plug
• A short wire Radio Shack sells with a socket for the plug on one end and bare wires on the other (both the last two of these are located in the store near the replacement transformers)
• A small roll of black electrical tape

I realized something key:  I already had a 5v power supply, in my computer, with a handy outlet, called "USB."  All I had to do was get all the plugs to match.

I borrowed some scissors and cut the USB  cable about 8 inches from the flat end, throwing the rest away.  I stripped off the insulation, and found the red and black wires - these are the 5V and ground wires (just search the Internet for USB pinouts if you want to be sure).  I then twisted one wire from the plug wire to the red and the other to the black, and taped the whole thing up (a bit of soldering would have been better, but I forgot my handy MacGyver construction kit). 

And what do you know, I now have a USB charger for my Kindle  (When I first plugged it in, the charge light did not go on, but I reversed the plug in its socket and that did the trick).  This will now charge my Kindle on the road from my laptop or when I am driving from my 12V car charger that has a USB connection.

I think this is a pretty handy accessory, and a quick Internet search did not show anyone currently selling one.

Update:  OK, someone else already thought of this, and has pictures of the procedure.  He notes that the supplied Kindle usb cable will not charge the device as well  (the Kindle cable goes from USB to a special miniature USB port, like the ones on a camera -- my cable goes from USB to the power inlet).  My homegrown version charged it very quickly.

I had the same reaction as Dale Franks when I drove through Houston a while back and found that Astroworld was gone.  When I grew up in Houston, there was absolutely nothing that would get me as excited as the prospect of a trip there.  Another piece of trivia, for years the nearby Astroworld hotel had a penthouse suite that was listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive hotel room in the world.  Hard to believe when you see what a pit it is now.

It is unbelievable that this was an actual advertisement in my lifetime.  And don't get me started on my kids reaction.  Via Hit and Run.

Via Disloyal Opposition

"Helicopter parents"
-- overinvolved, overbearing, moms and dads who just won't let their
offspring venture into the world without a protective, hovering
presence -- have made the news repeatedly over the past few years. This
being summer, a new crop of articles detailing the woes sleep-away camp
administrators are facing with clingy parents is making the rounds.

I am proud to say that we put our kids on an airplane and sent them off to camp for six weeks.  Other than a few brief letters back and forth (the only way we got our son to send a letter was to make up a fill-in-the-blank madlibs-type form for him to fill in) we had no contact with them.  And while we missed them, the kids had a blast and mom and dad had a trip without the kids for the first time in years.  The camp we send the kids to does not allow any contact whatsoever with parents in the first week, and only brief 3-minute phone calls in a 1-hour window each evening.

There is a study out of the most and lest politically correct professions, as measured by the survey responses of faculty of those departments in universities.  Mechanical Engineering:  Zero politically correct responses.  Woohoo.

This is pretty dang fun, I have been playing with it for a while.  The link includes a demo video so you can see what it is about.  It is a sort of mechanics simulation, but that makes it sound really boring.  Check it out.

Unfortunately, despite several appeals, I have not taken any photos around the hotel.  One reader asked if I have seen anyone famous.  The answer is, I don't know.  Let me explain.

Some years ago (maybe 8-10) my wife and I were driving through Malibu on vacation, when we stopped at a little coffee shop for breakfast.  After we were done eating, my wife went to the bathroom while I sat outside on a bench to wait for her.  Sitting there was another husband who was clearly also waiting for his wife to come out.  We chatted for about 5 minutes, with this British gent telling me he had just gotten back from London on business.

Well, my wife came out and I met her at the car.  The first thing she said to me was "Oh my god, you were talking to Pierce Brosnan."  I said "??"  Sure enough, on reflection, it did seem to be he, particularly since my wife also recognized his wife from People magazine.  In my defense, one does not expect to encounter James Bond in a psuedo-Denny's wearing sweats and a week-old beard.  But since then, I have not really trusted by celebrity-identification skills.

I have lived a lot of places that featured beautiful women who liked to display themselves in public to good effect.  But I have been sitting in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel for about 15 minutes and in that time I have seen the most magnificent display of beautiful women in small dresses I ever expect to see.  Wow.

I have lived a lot of places that featured beautiful women who liked to display themselves in public to good effect.  But I have been sitting in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel for about 15 minutes and in that time I have seen the most magnificent display of beautiful women in small dresses I ever expect to see.  Wow.

I try very hard not to fall into the trap of making generalizations related to ethnic or racial groups.  However, I must make a gender-related exception.  There seems to be something about how the average woman's brain is wired that the concept of source switching on a TV set is virtually impossible to comprehend.  I have just had yet another hopeless tech support conversation with a female friend/family member that got "stuck" with cable or DVD material on the TV screen when they wanted to view the other.  Adding to the fun, the female in question was attempting to use a universal remote control which also required mode-shifting to make sure one had the remote set to control the correct component  (another concept apparently particularly difficult for the fairer sex).  Making the tech support challenge harder in this case, the manufacturer of this TV apparently chose not to use the fairly ubiquitous "TV/Video" label for the source-switching functionality, obviating my usual strategy of yelling "TV/video button" over and over into the phone until I get a response.  Fortunately, my second guess of "input" seemed to match a label on the remote.

Yes, I know, all you women will now be rushing from Lawrence Summers' house to mine to set up protests.  I still think that with women dominating on things like relationship management and hygiene standards, and men leading mainly on understanding television source switching and programming remote controls, that women are probably still ahead on points.

I say a sign the other day at the airport that full-body millimeter-wave imaging was coming soon to the Phoenix airport.  I guess this was pretty inevitable, and has certainly been predicted in many movies, including Total Recall:

I can't really decide if this is any more invasive and humiliating than what we already do, ie get undressed, put our medications and creams in clear plastic bags for all to inspect, and subject ourselves to full-body pat downs.  For my part, based on this and numerous other humiliations, I am working as hard as I can to minimize how often I fly.  JD Tuccille has more, and observes that body cavity searches aren't just for airplanes any more:

If you think that air travel is starting to resemble a very-expensive
East Germany-nostalgia tour and you'd prefer a less-intrusive
alternative, you might consider traveling by train. Well, except, not
on Amtrak, which implemented random bag searches, armed guards and bomb-sniffing dogs earlier this year.

Even local travel is iffy, since New York City has been subjecting subway passengers to annoying searches for the past three years. Los Angeles's MetroLink implemented a similar policy this week, apparently just so officials there wouldn't feel left out. Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell told the Los Angeles Times

As a postscript, I had a meeting the other day with the National Park Service in Denver.  To get inside - remember this is the park service, no other agency shares this building - I had to give up my driver's license, have all my bags searched, and go through an X-ray machine.  Does anyone think that maybe we have lost some perspective when I have to go through full-on invasive security to discuss merchandising at a gift shop?

Gay marriage has been legal in California for over 12 hours now, and, despite fears from opponents that it would weaken the institution of marriage, every indication is that my own marriage is as strong as ever.   I don't see any reason to make life difficult for those whose preferences are not my own.  All the best, newlyweds.

Postscript: I thought John Scalzi had a funny line.  A commenter on the Daily Kos had asked if Scalzi was on their side, politically, presumably because they could not allow themselves to enjoy his writing if he had not met their political litmus tests.  Anyway, he offered a line a libertarian would love:

Well, I don't want my political proclivities to be in doubt, so let me be absolutely crystal clear where I stand:

I support the right of same-sex married couples to carry concealed weapons.

I hope this explains everything.

 

Lots of new blog posts today.  The reasons is that I am in introvert's bliss, dodging the requirement to stand by my wife at reunions and be introduced to a lot of people I don't know and don't really know how to begin talking to.  So I have retreated to the Vassar library, a beautiful example of college Gothic, with my kids.   The only small problem I have is that I think some parents need to teach their kids better library manners.  Lots of kids dumped here in the library today, and teenagers are all around my watching YouTube with the sound turned way up and talking loudly about what they are seeing.  However, having avoided all social interaction, I am resisting the downward spiral into grumpy-old-man land by not snapping at the kids around me.

A friend of Megan McArdle calls the Boston city hall "a poured concrete Vogon love poem.  What a great line, and entirely appropriate of a hideous example of public architecture.  But I would have singled out a different Boston structure, the Peabody Terrace Apartments at Harvard.

Since this is the last time I may be hitting the theme of Vogon poetry for a while, I laughed the other day on a course on the Roman emperers when the professor said that Nero would force the upper class to attend his musical and poetry performances, and that some invitees where known to fake death to try to escape.

I am at my wife's college reunion, basically 2 days of continuous cocktail party conversation with people I do not know and who are here mainly to see long-lost friends rather than meet anyone new.  Not my best milieu.