Top of the Google Heap

How do you get to the top of Google search results? Invent a word like "heberness", as in becoming more like Heber Valley Camp.

Small victory, being there is only nine results total. I'll take what I can get. Thanks to Gail for being curious enough to look that up!

Five Stars

Netflix makes movie suggestions and ratings based on your past preferences. I came across one they though was "five stars" for me, the first I think I've seen with that top rating. Saint Ralph was an inspirational movie about faith and perseverance.

Other recommendable movies I've seen lately:

The Snow Walker, an interesting tale about a bush pilot who crashes in the Arctic and is saved by an Inuit girl. 

The Visitor is a movie about an aging college professor who is thrown off course by an energetic drum playing immigrant.

And finally, The Time Traveler's Wife, a rather interesting if confusing tail that makes you realize you need to enjoy what ever life brings.

Let's hear some one-sentence reviews of good movies you've watched recently.

Do try this at home

From the book "Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do)" by Gever Tulley.

First, wait till mom is out of the house. Second, don't go more than 3 or 4 seconds. Third, ventilate the house and dispose of the evidence. Or, just watch the video.

The slow motion looks like the Game of Life pattern. The end result is a work of art:

1200 YouTube views in 24 hours

It amazes me how many people have watched the videos I've put up on YouTube about my various projects. Just yesterday Sparkfun, an electronics supplier I frequent, published a blog post featuring a video I did showing how I did the electronics on the model railroad layout. Twenty-four hours later more than 1200 people have check the video out. It is not quite millions like Merton the Chat Roulette piano player, but still amazing! Here are my top videos with their "views" and how long the've been up:

7,700 - Buggy, a Crafty LED Project (1 year ago).

4,400 - Dawson Station (5 months ago).

4,100 - Arduino Rocks (2 years ago, only 11 seconds long).

3,100 - Game of Life - 10 Boards (1 year ago).

2,900 - Wii Nunchuk Controlled Model Train (2 months ago).

2,500 - Dawson Station Update (2 months ago).

1,500 - Arduino Control of a Model Train (2 weeks ago).

Kenernet Film Festival

Every time I see a video I think my kids should see, I add it too a list. Here are some recent entries. I've embedded a short one to whet your appetite.


Amazing Animals:

2nd Largest Aquarium Screen Saver in the the World
http://vimeo.com/5606758

Amazing animals:
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_gallo_shows_underwater_astonishments.html

Praying Mantis Vs. Humming Bird
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/08/praying-mantis-vs-hu.html

Environmental:

Story of bottled Water:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0

How I fell in Love with a Fish
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html

Saving the world with gaming
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/50586

Music:

Weird Al Documentary
http://www.urlesque.com/2010/03/24/weird-al-yankovic-story-the-one/

Rube Goldberg music video from OK Go
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

Music from Electronics
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/26/mid-70s-giorgio-moro.html

Space / Technology:

Robot needs a little human help
http://www.poptech.org/popcasts/kacie_kinzer_robot_love

Girl Power: Ada Lovelace
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/20/ada-lovelace-short-f.html

Powers of Ten
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpD3KhxmRXo

Networking in Space
http://www.hp.com/united-states/do-amazing/index.html?jumpid=ex_r11400_go/letsdoamazing#/Space

Solar Eclipse
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/09/solar-eclipse.html

TED top 10
http://www.ted.com/index.php/themes/top_10_tedtalks.html

Odds & Ends:

Attack of the Giant Stuffed Bears
http://www.urlesque.com/2010/03/11/cyriaks-cycles-giant-teddy-bears/

Commuter Dreams: (Portland Tour de France)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI7T2iuGjjc

Srikumar Rao on Happiness (video is in English).
http://arbejdsglaede.23video.com/video/549744/srikumar-s-rao-p-arbejdsglde

Streets don't have names. Trivia about perspective
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/48055

Terminus - Stalked by your imagination
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe1_NdPw9ms

Ada Lovelace Day

Lady Ada was a mathematician and contemporary of Charles Babbage. She is generally recognized as writing the first algorithm for Babbage's theoretical mechanical computer called the Analytical Engine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

I knew little of this except that my favorite NY microelectronics engineer, Limor Fried, goes by the moniker "Lady Ada" and runs the successful Adafruit Industries which deals in open source kits, primarily of her design. I used a number of pieces of her handy work in the electronic controls of Dawson Station. Now I know the source of her nickname!

One of Limor's more interesting early projects was a cigarette-pack sized cell phone jammer called a "Wave Bubble".

Babbage's Analytical Engine was never built due primarily to lack of funding. Portions of it have been built and tested, and it appears it could have been finished using the technology of the time. Ironically, Limor has stated she prefers hardware design instead of software, so perhaps this Lady Ada would have helped Babbage get his computer built first before writing any software for it!

You can learn more about Ada Lovelace Day at www.findingada.com/about/

Dr. Rampton's report on Haiti

Dr. Rampton spent more than a week in Haiti providing medical help following the earthquake. He gave a slide presentation about his observations that was quite heart wrenching.
The majority of the injuries were broken limbs from falling concrete of which most of the buildings were constructed of. He said they estimated 200,000 deaths and 200,000 amputations. The only sterile items they had were gloves. One wound he treated was exceptionally clean. When querying the mother of the child, he found that she had burned eggs black and applied them to the wounds. The sulfur prevented infection.

There was one girl he helped treat who had been horribly burned climbing under an automobile to avoid falling concrete. He helped get her and her mother evacuated to Miami for treatment. She was sharing a room with another girl who had been orphaned. They had cards for both of them to be signed to give them encouragement.

Dr. Rampton mentioned a number of charities he had personally worked with for those wishing to donate. The only one I remember off hand was Helping Hands for Haiti.

Tour of OSU Power Plant

OSU is bulding a 5.5 megawatt gas turbine power plant on campus. Dad arranged a tour for the cub scouts.In addition to providing power and heat to the University, they can sell excess power to the city.
The turbine is not on line yet, but can be powered from natural gas or diesel.

More than just a game.

June send me this. Based on a real game played at Western Oregon College.

Kaffine: Know thine Kenemy

• Originally discovered in 1819 by a German scientist who coined the term kaffeine.
• A natural pesticide that paralyzes and kill certain insects feeding on leaves of plants containing it.
• 90% of adults in North America consume it daily.
• Global consumption: 120K tonnes/year.
• Used by humans since the Stone Age (documented as far back as 3000 BC).
• Median lethal dose (kills half) is roughly 80 - 100 cups of coffee in short order.
• One of the 10 drugs most commonly given in neonatal intensive care (to treat apnoea).

One of my kids asked grandma the other day if it was alright to drink caffeinated sodas. Without any hesitation she asked, "are they addictive?"
"Yes," was the reply.
"There you go," was all grandma said. End of discussion.

Happy Plane

Just because.

My Favorite Photos of 2009

This photo of Kate shows why family get togethers are worth all the time and effort! (courtesy Carl)

We were glad to have Stephanie's family living close enough for regular visits this year. It is amazing to see how fast grandchildren grow. (courtesy Stephanie)

Not a particularly spectacular photo unless you know it was taken at Thanksgiving, which means that not only did the Smiths remain in Oregon well out of their migratory patterns, but that the Andersons also made their way west this year to make it a get together to remember.

Ann Marie making friends at an informal work picnic. I've thrived a whole year with the new group and am glad to be getting paid for doing something I enjoy.

Lynn Rivet demonstrating mysteries of womanhood that I will never fully understand, but get to witness on a daily basis.

Engineer Robin in charge of the Dawson Run during a video shoot. Couldn't let you go without at least one train photo. Luckily I've been able to share my interest in this hobby with a number of people this year.

Avatar Movie Review

"Stunning."

You need to see it in 3D while it is in theaters.

Snowball Fight

Not that we've had snow in Adair yet, but . . .

A Creche by Any Other Name

The Community Creche Exhibit changed their name this year to "Community Nativity Festival". It has been an event for 15 years now, and seems to get better and better.

This is one of three tables all from a lady in our Ward, Kip Worley.

What struck me this year was the diversity of materials used. This one from Jean Nelson is made of "ground cinnamon wood clay" from Singapore.

This one from Kip is painted copinal seeds from El Salvador.

There were several interesting examples made from banana fibers from Africa. This is Ileen Barlow's.

A stunning crystal example, and believe it or not . . .

Railroad ties! It would be hard to think of a material that hasn't been used.

FlockDrawing Awesomeness

I stumbled across something so cool, I'm violating my "post-a-day" rule. It may or may not working because of being overwhelmed by popularity. This is basically a "shared white board". Go ahead, draw on it (click here to pop it out and get the drawing controls on the right side):

You can draw the same time as someone else.
Get your own board at:http://flockdraw.com/
Perhaps the coolest part is that it is so simple it doesn't need instructions!

I'm GEEKED OUT! I was preview my post, when someone started writing on it. "Who is there?" I wrote on the board. "I just posted this!"
"^_^Creator" was the response.
"Is this cool or what?", I ask.
"yeah, I spent six weeks making it. better be cool :P".

So I got to chat with the creator! It's been up a week and has gotten 50,000 unique visitors. I got a few technical details out of him. Here is a screen shot of the board (i consider it a historic artifact now):


Here is what Ann Marie was doing at the time:

A Few Daily Distractions . . .

You can RSS stuff like this into your favorite reader for a daily dose of humor!

Awkward Family Photos, and occasional funny stories:http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com

Cakewrecks, shows decorating talent across the spectrum:
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com

There, I Fixed It - Terribly creative fix-it ideas:http://thereifixedit.com

And my most recent find . . .

Improbable Research: Yes, Kansas is flatter than a pancake!
http://improbable.com/

Googling (Earth) Through Time

This is the area north of Adair that got developed over the last decade:

This is a new feature in Google Earth that lets you pull up previous imagery of an area. I tried to make a fancy animated gif, but Blogger didn't seem to like it.

Geocaching, Five Years Latter

The weather was so nice after conference, we headed out to find our first geocache in over five years (not counting Camp Alpine). It was near the pond, and we met the volenteer park hosts who lives in an RV and had a nice visit with them. We took Robin and Ann Marie's friends.We also checked out the old hospital smoke stack which is nearby. It has a nice layer of railcar-style graffiti on the inside now. We were trying to estimate the height with the park host, and I went back and got my bottle rocket altitude gear. It is 100 feet high (+/- 10ft).

Some Interesting (perhaps) Facts about the Kilogram

The lowly kilogram is the only SI unit (International System of Units) that is still defined in relation to an artifact rather than to a fundamental physical property that can be reproduced in different laboratories.

For example, the meter was once defined as an artifact (a single platinum-iridium bar with two marks on it), however, it was eventually redefined in terms of invariant, fundamental constants of nature (the distance traveled by light in space in a given duration) so that it can be reproduced in different laboratories around the world.

Since 1889, the SI system defines the magnitude of the kilogram to be equal to the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK), which is a golfball size piece of platinum/iridium alloy which is kept under two bell jars in a safe in France.

The IPK replaced an all-platinum kilogram prototype made in 1799, which in turn was constructed to be the same mass as one decimeter (one liter) of pure water at 4 C (temperature of water's most stable density point).

The US "owns" two of the forty IPK replicas made from the same batch of alloy, but periodically returns them to France for verification.

Despite careful storage, cleaning, and handling, the mass of the IPK inexplicably lost 50 µg (0.00005 g) over the last century in comparison to its official copies. That is so small, I can't give you a meaningful comparison.

There are no technical means available to determine whether or not the entire worldwide ensemble of prototypes suffers from even greater long-term trends upwards or downwards because their mass relative to an invariant of nature is unknown.

And if all that isn't enough, the kilogram is the only SI base unit with an SI prefix (kilo) as part of its name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kg