Yes, ladies and gents, you are looking at the proud owner of a new domain weighing approximately…well, howevermuch a bunch of electrons weigh these days. Actually, you’re looking at your computer screen, as am I gazing upon mine as I thwack upon my keys, composing this blog post, but let’s look past that little detail in the interests of moving things along, shall we?

Good.

In true wömblian fashion (and yes, you naysayers, that umlauted beauty tucked neatly into the beginning of this sentence is indeed a word, at least in the environs of this website) I have procured a domain entirely appropriate for me. Without meaning to hurt any feelings, whether it is appropriate for you or not is not really any of my concern at the moment. It’s my domain, I’m hanging on to it, and you can’t have it. So there!

…still there? Good, I didn’t really mean to ruffle your feathers. Just…you know….got a new toy and all, still feeling a bit possessive and all that.

Rest assured, good people, that I have chosen a delightful name. A name that pays tribute to the wonderful and marvelous Edward Lear, a name with a unique panache, and a name with only a few hundred Google hits. To put it another way, of course it had to be unique: all of the shorter, more obvious domain names have long ago been snatched up!

I had hoped to come up with some rather clever or witty reason to explain why I can’t tell you the domain name yet. I was thinking that it might have something to do with ruining the stock market (already happened), secret Cold War espionage (the Cold War’s been over for 20 years), or the electricity going out in my house, resulting in me having to eat all of the ice cream in my freezer, thus giving me an incredible headache, leading to a flash of brilliance in which I invent a time machine, go back a dozen years, and prevent Barney the Dinosaur from ever being created (or something like that). Well, I think you can see quite plainly how well that brainstorming session turned out.

The long and the short of it is that I registered my domain, but I haven’t had time to put put any content yet. I know, I know, it’s an extremely lame excuse. But it’s also totally true: If you go to my domain today, all you’ll see is a lonely directory listing showing only the two files favicon.ico and favicon.gif. But it’s also true that I’ve been trying to get holiday cards done, sort out random boxes of papers that I may or may not have written a decade ago, and catch up with family and friends.

And I’ve been making sauerkraut. Delicious, delicious sauerkraut. And I’m going to claim that the sauerkraut has been the cabbage that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. With so much to do, I just haven’t had time to website-it-up.

But soon, it will be complete. A fully-functional battle station shiny website. I may transition my blog over there, but moving the blog and other hosted resources certainly won’t happen right away.

Keep watching this space for updates! Just don’t hold your breath — I always seem to be busy with more and more things!

–Q

It’s great to be back in Portland (Oregon), if only for a short time. Each year around Christmas I come back and spend the holidays here, soaking up all of the lovely rain and cloudy skies as I expect a native Californian might soak up the sun and warm beaches when returning home on Holiday.

There’s always so much to do and so much to see in Portland. Living in a relatively small community in New England means that coming back to Portland is almost like venturning to a large city. Portland will never be a large city like New York or Boston to me, but there do seem to be new buildings popping up like weeds, and the traffic always seems a bit heavier each year. I say seems as it does seem that way, although I am wary that I might just be wistfully imagining a more perfect past Portland, the way that everything was larger when you were younger and the way that men’s suits, a salesman told me today, always seem to shrink in the closet.

Each year I trek down to Free Geek, get over to the various yummy stores like New Seasons and Sheridan’s Fruit Company, and spend time seeing what’s changed downtown.

I always joke that had Free Geek started a few years earlier, I might have frittered away spent all of my time there instead of graduating from high school. I’ve been working on getting something like Free Geek started in my neck of the woods, but wrestling with several issues including location and population density. Speaking of small populations, would you believe that we don’t even have any Trader Joe’s in the Upper Valley? Oh Portland, you have such a well-stocked array of merchants, and there are so many wonderfully happy and friendly people here.

But perhaps I cut Hanover and Norwich and Lebanon and all of the other towns and regions short. Just down the road lies the headquarters for the King Arthur Flour Company, whose quality flours are available all over the nation (and beyond), and while Portland may have wonderful duck ponds, I never got a chance to skate on them the way I can skate on various ponds in New Hampshire or Vermont the whole winter long (and for free!).

Both the Northeast and the Northwest have so much to offer, and while I will likely spend several more years zig-zagging back and forth from one coast to the next, keeping my skates sharpened and my puddle-stomping boots shined, I do stop from time to time and wonder: Should I ever fly South for the winter?

Happy and warm,
– Q

P.S. If I were to venture down South for a visit, where should I go? Leave a comment below telling me where to travel!

Wow. It’s been a really long week, but the weekend is just about here.

I saw the notice on the WordPress blog about the “Giving Thanks” contest earlier this week and knew that it was just the right kick-in-the-pants to get me to try out the MiniDV camera that I recently purchased on eBay. So I grabbed a few of my friends, asked them what they’re thankful for, and cut it all together into a short video. Thirty seconds isn’t that much time, especially when your friends are so voluble!

I wasn’t really sure how this film would turn out. I shot a lot of footage, but as I only had 30 seconds for the final cut I had to really pare things down to make sure that I could include a clip of each person.

Filming each person was fun. Pure and simple. Each person had their own unique quirks and mannerisms that really came out when they were put in front of a camera lens. Percy with the sheep, Alex with a ping pong ball, and a highly-caffeinated Nida all presented unique challenges when filming (such as keeping the subject in frame!) and offered not only different answers to “For what are you thankful?”, but even took different approaches to answering the questions.

Okay, enough chatter from me. Here’s the meat of this post, the video:

I actually have about 20 minutes of source footage, so I might make a couple more videos of more reasonable length later this week. I still have a lot to learn about video editing, but I’ve got some good teachers!

Truth be told, I actually bought the camera for conversion of VHS home video to digital format. Because the Canon zr100 has an analog-to-digital-via-firewire passthrough capability, I can play VHS tapes in a VCR, then hook up video/audio out to the camera, then pipe that into to my Ubuntu laptop. Many modern camcorders connect to computers via USB and do not support this kind of digital pass-through capability, at least not reliably on the Linux kernel.

The camera was about $80; 5 tapes were $12. Under $100 and I’m shooting video and converting all of my VHS tapes that are gathering dust. Pretty big bang for the buck.

Although I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, shooting this turned out to be rather fun. For my first movie, I think this turned out pretty darn well!

A big thanks to all of the friends that participated. To all those friends who I didn’t nab for this project, rest assured that I’ll show up, camera in hand, to draft you for one of my next videos. I’m thinking of either some kind of surrealist montage or a lighthearted horror flick.

–Q

I was recently discussing Revelations and the Rapture with some of my friends. Apparently there’s an outfit called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA that has assembled a group of Atheists willing to take care of pets if/when the Rapture occurs (for a nominal fee).

At first thought, the whole thing does sounds a bit contrived, but the execution is rather extensive and well thought out. The group’s website even includes a useful FAQ page that includes such Q&A’s as

• How do you ensure that your representatives won’t be Raptured?
• How can we trust that you’ll honor your service agreement, afterall you ARE atheists. [sic]
• What if one of my family members is left behind? Will you still take possession of my pet?

I mean, it would be rather…unfortunate, shall we say, if 3 out of 4 family members were Raptured and the 4th one somehow didn’t make the cut. Three people would be up in Heaven, while the odd man out would be on Earth, in what are estimated to be pretty harrowing conditions.

So you might be wondering: What happens post-Rapture to all the people and stuff left on the planet? Does God just CTRL-A, CTRL-X everything left on Earth?

Well, not exactly. If you’re not familiar with the general conditions, they include asteroids hitting the Earth, the crust of the Earth breaking open, locusts and other animals scurrying about stinging people, and the oceans turning to blood. Yes, blood.

If you’re anything like me, one of the first questions you might ask is: I wonder if there’s enough Iron on Earth to turn the oceans to blood?

So let’s see. The Internets say that you need “about 200 milligrams (mg.) per pint of Blood” to make hemoglobin,” and that the oceans are about 1.3 billion km^3 in volume.

Google tells us that 1 kilometer^3 = 2.11337642 × 10^12 US pints.

That means that 200mg Iron/pint x (2.11337642 × 10^12 pints/km^3) = 4.22675284 x 10^8 kg of Iron/km^3 of blood.

For the entire oceans,
4.22675284 x 10^8 kg of Iron/km^3 of blood x 1.3 x 10^9 km^3 liquid/oceans = 5.49477869 × 10^17 kg Iron/oceans. Correcting for our Sig Figs, that’s 5.5 × 10^17 kg Iron/oceans of blood.

Wikipedia tells us that the Earth weighs about 5.9736 × 10^24 kg. Divide the weight of the Earth by the total amount of Iron we need and we get 1.1 * 10^7, so you’d need about one 10-millionth of the weight of the Earth, in Iron, to make nice Iron-red oceans.

But how much Iron is there really on Earth? Wikipedia says that the Earth is about 32% Iron, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to shift a three-hundred-thousandth of that total into the oceans.

So there you have it. All the Iron you’d need to turn the oceans to blood is available right here on this planet. If God is a conservationist, he could just reuse the Iron here instead of needing to expend extra energy making Iron out of nothing or bringing an Iron-rich asteroid to Earth and disintegrating it.

There’s another good reason to use the Iron already on Earth: By conserving mass, that should hopefully be enough to keep the Earth in a stable orbit.

And now you know!

Updates:
2009-11-30 – Earth weight/Iron needed ratio is 1.1 * 10^7 (not 10^6, as I initially wrote).

Being stuck at home for the past couple of days has afforded me extra time to get things done. One thing I’ve wanted during the past week is a side-by-side comparison of the technical specs of Verizon’s new Android Phones.

I’m interested in getting either the Motorola Droid or the HTC Droid Eris as I’m eligible for the New-every-two upgrade plan and could save $100 if I upgrade when the phones come out on November 6th.

Being a strong supporter of Free Software, I’d like to be able to replace the stock Android build with an entirely Free Software build such as Replicant. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Verizon has locked down the handsets to such an extent that it is impossible for us to replace the OS running on the device. That’s why I’m going to wait a couple of weeks and see how far people have gotten in rooting the device before I make any decision.

If both look like strong prospects for OS replacement, then it’ll come down to the specs. So without further ado, here’s a side-by-side comparison. (specs that are clear winners are bolded)

These are all the specs I’ve been able to dig up so far. Once the phones are released today there will probably be a flurry of information and I’ll be able to fill in some of the missing pieces.

Ogg support, camera flash, higher-res display, higher-depth video recording, and double the max storage of the Eris (32GB vs. 16GB) make the Moto Droid very appealing, but I’m still waiting to see which piece of hardware is easier to hack. Once flashed with a new OS, I’m sure that the Eris would be able to playback Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora, and the 16GB storage ceiling might just be a limit of Cupcake (Android 1.5). In the end, the lighter and cheaper Eris might turn out to be the sweeter deal.

Information gathered from:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Droid
• http://www.htc.com/us/product/droideris/specification.html
• http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/ci.Motorola-DROID-US-EN.alt
• http://areacellphone.com/2009/10/htc-droid-eris-vs-motorola-droid-iphone/
• http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/331988/review/droid_eris.html
• http://www.pcworld.com/article/181520/htc_droid_eris_a_solid_alternative_to_the_motorola_droid.html
• http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pictures-and-specs-verizons-droid-eris-samsung-convoy-blackberry-curve-8530-and-lg-chocola?img=3
• http://www.billshrink.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-motorola-droid-versus-iphone-3gs-versus-palm-pre/#more-6015
• http://phandroid.com/2009/11/05/droid-eris-lands-on-bestbuy-com-499-99/

Update:

Nov 10, 2009 – I’m going to remove that note about the Droid having 2 sim slots. I haven’t heard any follow-up on it or confirmation from the manufacturer, so I think it’s probably a load of bunk.

Nov 23, 2009 – More info: Droid and Eris both have multitouch; Eris has it enabled in stock OS that shipped w/it. (from @deejoe)

Oink, oink. Yes, one of those ILIs has caught up with me and I’m currently stuck in bed sipping water and battling a fever that makes me wonder if I could fry eggs on my forehead.

The CDC has some nifty graphs and tables on their website. You can learn about everything from the number of illnesses reported by US region to Antiviral resistance. In case you thought that H1N1 was some kind of trumped-up wimp on the block, note that

all 2009 H1N1 viruses tested since April 2009 have been resistant to the adamantanes (amantadine and rimantadine).

Oh great, just what we need: more superbugs!

I got my seasonal flu short earlier in the season, but due to massive shortages in supply I didn’t get an H1N1 vaccine. I work at DHMC, but I don’t work directly with patients so I’m probably at lower risk. It’s entirely possible that I don’t actually have H1N1, but given the fact that I and a few of my friends are currently self-quarantined at home while the one person I know that got the vaccine is cheerily going about business as normal…well, it just makes me suspicious.

Ordinarily when I get suspicious I like do something about it. I’ll investigate, do some research — you know, basically not sit on my ass in bed for 3 days straight. But that seems to be precisely what the Powers That Be™ suggest that I do. So how am I supposed to figure out if I actually have H1N1? How does the CDC expect to generate reliable data on how many people are infected with this porker of a problem if most sick people are asked to stay home in bed?

Doing some searching took me to the CDC page for H1N1 Clinicians. Unlike some of the other materials on the CDC’s website, this page stops talking at a 5th grade level and starts to give us science geeks some answers. First, according to the CDC,

the rRT-PCR test… is the only test that can confirm infection specifically with the 2009 H1N1 virus. Tests such as rapid antigen detection assays and diagnoses based on symptoms alone without rRT-PCR testing, cannot specifically determine if a person has 2009 H1N1 influenza.

So you have to have this rRT-PCR test, otherwise known as Real-time reverse-transcription PCR. It sounds a bit complicated and is probably not something I can cook up in my basement. Aw, shucks.

Doing a bit more digging brings up some PDFs on the CDC’s website about their testkit. If you delve into the Fact sheet for healthcare providers you’ll find that

At this time, no FDA-approved/cleared tests that identify the existence of 2009 H1N1 influenza virus in clinical specimens are available in the United States. Therefore, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed this test to detect novel influenza A (H1N1) infections.

Just to make sure you caught that, there are no FDA-cleared tests for H1N1. The CDC had to just make one up super fast. Why?

A public health emergency has been declared by the Secretary of Health and Human Services because of the outbreak of the 2009 novel influenza A (H1N1) virus…The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized the emergency use of the Swine Influenza rRT-PCR Detection Panel (rRT-PCR Swine Flu Panel) to test for the presumptive presence of novel influenza A (H1N1) virus in clinical specimens under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).

So basically they’re saying that because of the risk to the population the CDC and FDA have got to go whole hog on this one and bust out an EUA, skipping the normal process by which the FDA clears test procedures. Okay, my respect for the virility of H1N1 has just gone up a couple of notches.

Created in 2004, the first use of the EUA was in 2005 to authorize the use of Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed for military personnel. Although in that case the authorization took 5 weeks, the CDC notes that depending upon circumstances, the EUA could be granted within days or even hours.

Side Note: I’ve been unable to track down how many EUAs have been issued in total. If you know where I can find that information, please leave a comment on this article!

Getting back to our test, there’s a copy of the Swine-Flu EUA [PDF] up on the CDC website. Unfortunately this is a scanned PDF so I can’t copy text out of it. Here’s the a short blurb on the test specifics:

The Swine Influenza Virus Real-time RT-PCR Detection Panel is a panel of oligonucleotide primers and dual-labeled hydrolysis (Taqman®) probes for use in the real-time RT-PCR assay on the ABI 7500 Fast Dx Real-Time PCR instrument for the in vitro qualitative detection of 2009 H1N1 influenza viral RNA in nasopharyngeal swabs etc…

But that’s not quite the test itself. We’re so close, but we’ll need to go to another website to find that information. The CDC links to the World Health Organization, who has an actual CDC step-by-step protocol up on their website. Interestingly, unlike the CDC document above, this CDC document mentions several suitable PCR instruments from different vendors and includes an explicit disclaimer that

Names of vendors or manufacturers are provided as examples of suitable product sources. Inclusion does not imply endorsement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although the protocol expects the user to have a working knowledge of rRT-PCR assays, it is quite detailed, including what type of swabs to use (synthetic tip, aluminum or plastic shaft), how cold and how long a sample may be kept (2-4°C for 4 days or less, or frozen at -70°C or below), equipment sanitization, when to change gloves, etc…etc. The instructions are detailed enough that I think that someone with a college degree could limp through them in a pinch. You might need to spend some time reading the manual for the PCR machine, but I think that non-laboratorians could follow the instructions in an emergency.

Before we all start doing our own tests at home, I should note that we still have a large number of healthy lab techs and the simplest Thermal Cyclers that you’ll need to carry out PCR cost about $2000 – $7000, quite a bit for an inquisitive person to drop on a personal medical toy.

Of course, this article is all about the do-it-yourself spirit, so I will note that Wikipedia points to a NewScientist article that says that thermocyclers can be had for as little as $59 on eBay. Indeed, at a quick glance I saw machines on eBay for $100 – $200, certainly within the budget of any eccentric person who wishes to test for H1N1 at home.

So hop on over to eBay, get that thermocycler, and then find a source to ship you the necessary H1N1 assay chemicals (that might take some doing). With a small sample of sputum (on a synthetic-tipped swab, natch!) you can, in the comfort of your own home, see if you have been touched by the Oink or if you have some other, less interesting, ILI.

Warning: If you have an immediate need for medical care, head on over to your Emergency Room.
If you’re crazy enough to try this at home then please remember that I am not a Laboratorian and you probably aren’t one either. We just like to geek out on medicine from time to time.

A few weekends ago I brought a few friends over to my place and we tested out the Pig.

The Pig is my homemade maple syrup evaporator. It’s got a body made out of a 55 gallon metal drum, legs from Cyrus’s futon frame, a front damper/door made out of a discarded STOP sign, and a chimney made out of old heating duct.

I had some friends over for a “no electronics” day. We had good food, tested out the Pig, read some stories, and generally enjoyed ourselves.

Aubrey wore her big floppy hat.

The chimney pipe is a double-wall construction, and unfortunately the inner wall is made out of a much softer metal that melted in the heat. The chimney has been temporarily welded to the frame — it might take a torch or another fire to fix this problem.

I was in line at the cafeteria last week when someone from one of the other offices in my building said “Oh, when did they start using china in this cafeteria?” I had to politely tell the woman that DHMC was not deploying reusable dishes at all of its cafeterias and that I bring my own plate and just wash it afterwards. “Oh, what a good idea!” she said, “I should bring my own plate sometimes. Washing it off afterwards isn’t too hard.”

Handwashing isn’t that difficult, but washing off all of the dishes in a central location, using an auto dishwasher, would probably save money and water, and would certainly save a time for all of the people working in the building. There would be an initial outlay and ongoing expense to stock the china and deal with breakages and so forth, but it would be a great step for sustainability.

I spoke to the sustainability coordinator at DHMC and one of the dining administrators several months ago about reusable dishes at the satellite cafeterias, but as far as I can tell there hasn’t been any progress on this front. We’re still using foam plates at my cafeteria. I’d like them to at least switch to compostable plates, but I understand their reticence when DHMC isn’t even composting at its main location yet.

I believe that all of the food waste from DHMC is still going into the landfill instead of going to the compost facility because the Dartmouth composting facility is operating at a fraction of its total throughput. Based on what I’ve learned, the composting facility just can’t handle such a large volume without a larger staff, which is unlikely due to budget cuts.

Everything goes back to money, doesn’t it? Maybe there could be some kind of volunteer program out there. You know, sign up and work a few hours, and help Dartmouth/DHMC compost all of its waste. C’mon, it would be fun. They even have large earth-moving machines out there!

Speaking of money and of reuse, I should get back to the title of this post, Reuse those foam plates!. I don’t think that the cafeteria will let you tare your ceramic plate and get salad on that, so just reuse a foam plate each day for your salad. It has the same tare weight if you just rinse it off, and if you have your own salad dressing, you hardly even have to do that. To make your plate last as long as possible, don’t eat on it as fork tines will poke through it.

Being sustainable should be easy, but sometimes when you’re in a situation where you don’t have official support you have to get creative in your methods. I *ahem* “borrowed” a soup bowl from the main cafeteria a couple of months ago after trying to use a ceramic mug for soup and getting reamed on price. I was ordered to pay double because I put a ladle and a half into my cup, which is rather curious because my ill-begotten “official” bowl takes…wait for it… a ladle and a half of soup, too.

The foam salad plates were the last frontier: Now that I’ve found a way to reuse them, pretty much every aspect of the salad-eating at the cafeteria should be reusable and/or sustainable. Sure, this is just one step towards a sustainable DHMC, but it’s a way for me to send a few dozen fewer foam plates to the landfill each year. That’s right, the foam plates don’t even have a plastic resin id on them, so I can’t even recycle them through Dartmouth -> CCNE.

Keep your stick on the ice,
– Q

When was the last time you went to a drive-in?

For me it must have been at least 3 years ago. There’s a drive-in over in Fairlee, VT, and during the summer season they show double features for $8 per person. It’s a lot of fun to pile in a car and head over there, hoping for clear skies.

The Fairlee Drive-in also has a motel, and the rooms are situated such that you can open the curtains on one of the walls and watch the movie. It’s kind of a fun gimmick.

Last night I kicked off my career as a projectionist with the spectacular film Duel of the Tough, originally titled Shen tui mi zong shou. We’d had a BBQ over at my place and Cyrus stayed around to poke at the fire when I had the epiphany that I had finally acquired all of the pieces necessary to project movies outside.

The screen was a white shower curtain purchased from Wal-mart for about $3, suspended from a 6′ piece of PVC pipe left over from Gene-o and my attempts to make replacement tent poles for a dome tent. Cyrus and I lashed two pieces of 1×2 vertically to railing posts on the new front deck, and then strung the pipe on a piece of cord between them.

I ran a long extension cord out of the house (unfortunately there aren’t any external power outlets on the deck yet) to a power strip. We put up a folding table with the projector on the front, a pair of so-so computer speakers in the middle, and a laptop at the back. Unfortunately, the first laptop I grabbed was an old ThinkPad that didn’t have a wireless card and didn’t have VLC or any other way to playback DVDs. So I had to run upstairs and go pull out my old silver Averatec, which did the job admirably well. The Averatec has a history of running hot enough to burn exposed flesh, however the cool fall air kept it running at only a light sauté temperature.

The movie was absolutely…well, it was something to behold, featuring ridiculous special effects, horrible cropping of the film leaving people off the edge of the screen, a plot that made vague sense, and bizarre sets and costumes. What can I say — it was a great kung-fu movie!

I’ll want to make some improvements for the next time I run outdoor movies. I have two shower curtains (each roughly square), so if I show a widescreen movie, it should fit about perfectly if I put both side by side. I also want to get a different, cooler-running laptop for DVD playback. I think that the speakers are loud enough, but I could consider investing in a bit better setup if showing movies becomes a regular activity.

I’ve had some suggestions for using the surroundings as a part of the movie experience — like setting up a couple of small fires in pits, moving the screen against the trees, and then showing something like Willow or one of the Lord of the Rings movies. I think that could really work well. It’s getting a bit late in the season at this point, so if I want to run any movie showings this year I’ll need to set them up as soon as possible.

- Q

Last night was Oktoberfest 2009. We had a lot of tasty food including hendl (chicken, in Bavarian), almonds mit hoenig (I can’t remember the german term for almonds), sausage, mashed potatoes, beer, and just a drop of Jaeger.

Oktoberfest, as I’m sure you all know, is that other fall holiday when guys and girls get to dress up in sexy costumes. Unlike Halloween, Oktoberfest encourages the guys to wear leather shorts, and encourages everyone to dance, drink, and sprechen deutsch. All in all it’s quite a good holiday.

This morning I wrote hijacked a song. Would you like to hear it? Oh, I bet meine lederhosen schwartz you would:

Jaeger-weiss, Jaeger-weiss,
Every morning you talk to me,
Dark and sweet, tastes of deer meat,
Jaegermeister I love thee.

To quote the Black Eyed Peas, “Tonight’s going to be a good, good night.”