More strange birds

The eastern rivers of Virginia are apparently a gathering place for funny-headed birds. After yesterday's kingfishers, today I saw two types of mergansers. The flock of 14 red-breasted mergansers dove for long times and distances. I only saw one pair of hooded mergansers, but they are even stranger looking to me. The bright white on the side of the male's head is quite striking, and the halo of brown on the female's is also intriguing.

The red-breasted merganser:

by Hilary Chambers via Flickr

The hooded merganser:

by Mr. T in DC via Flickr

Female belted kingfisher

I saw a belted kingfisher in the late afternoon today on the Chesapeake Bay. I didn't get a photo, but she was kind enough to stay in place for a while. Apparently only the females have the brown on the chest. The mohawk on the one I saw was pretty dramatic, and her head was black all over. Very cool. Photo by Len Blumin

this is a "run"

who does this crazy kind of thing?

Short pallets on moving walkway

The pallets on this moving walkway at JFK are about half the length of my shoe.

Pop quiz: Name three Harlequin romance book categories

Harlequin Medical Romance
Harlequin NASCAR
Harlequin Superromance

(see here for more answers)

Luckily Harlequin has guidelines for each of its lines, so the writer can tune her/his prose. For example:

In Harlequin Historical UNDONE we are looking for a high level of sensuality that flows naturally out of the plotline. There should be a strong emotional basis to the heightened attraction—it's vital the reader can believe in the intense emotion driving the characters as their relationship develops. These stories should be hot, sexy and subtly explicit without the lovemaking being vulgar or gratuitous.

Whether you choose a dark and devilishly sexy Regency rake caught in a compromising situation with a headstrong miss, or a courageous Saxon lady held captive by a powerful Norman warrior, your characters should be fully fleshed out and should be the main focus of the story.

The wikipedia entry on "Romance novel" is also quite interesting.

Carhenge

Carhenge
Originally uploaded by yarnzombie

This is on my "places to go" list.

TDC Stereo Project-or-view

TDC Stereo Project-or-view
Originally uploaded by _buttercup

I fell for the design the minute I saw it, and couldn't stop myself from salvaging it from recycling center. I'm still thinking about its future. Meta frame/controller for digital photo frame? If I could make one front dial scan through the photos like Cover Flow and another zoom in and out, I'd die happy. Or maybe it should hold the monitor for my home server. And/or run it off my old iPod Nano, maybe with iPodLinux. Or my NSLU2.

The screen is 7 7/8" x 8 7/8". Here are the internal schematics.

My goals for it are low power consumption and the ability to turn on the whole unit with a single switch, to reduce fuss, and so i can run it off a timer.

Franken-timer

I am on a perpetual quest for a better lab timer. Unfortunately the features I want don't seem to live in a single timer. I've thought about buying parts and programming/soldering something with the features I want, but it's not worth the time it would take. Here's my list of needed features:

1) Enter countdown time using number buttons, none of that up/down crap. In other words, it should have a keyboard like this:



1a) The interface for setting the countdown time shouldn't be stupid. For example, I shouldn't have to hold down a "set" button. If I'm pressing a number button, what else might I want to be doing? Obviously, I want to be setting the time.

2) When the elapsed time is finished, if I don't silence the alarm within a minute, it should stop beeping and start counting up so when I come back I know how long it's been.

3) It should show three different countdowns at once, like this:



4) It should have a "lock" slider button that prevents the buttons from responding when I put it in my pocket.

5) It should have a clip so I can attach it the outside of my pocket when I need to take it with me and use it frequently.

6) It should have a magnet on the back so I can attach it to the eye-level metal rail at my bench.

7) It should not be ginormous.

It's this kind of thing that I find to be a ridiculous need given the technology we have today. I can program. I can get a circuit board printed. I can print to a 3D printer. Why can't I make the timer of my dreams easily?



(Image and inspiration from http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sdm/examples.htm)

ski trip list on the internets

I figure, why not use the hive mind to make sure I don't forget anything when i go to Mammoth this weekend?

First item on ski trip packing list here: Bible. OK, that's not on my list. I was amused. Almost as amused when AR said she was taking banana bread skiing and it sounded like they were going to schuss down the sloops alongside her. The last person who went skiing with her ruptured his spleen trying to keep up. Lesson: I better not let my ego get caught up in my skiing.

Ancient Latrine Expert

I came across this on boing boing of course. Why do jobs like ancient latrine expert (ok, palaeopathologist) and official bird flu spokesman of the International Badminton Federation fascinate me so much? Perhaps because my own job has a fairly straightforward career path and is defined enough that children can grow up thinking about it. Deciding you want to be an ancient latrine expert probably does not happen by browsing through a list of possible careers.

More love for wikipedia: my recent wikipedia history

From my November google search history. I have a firefox qucksearch that takes me directly to wikipedia, so this is only a fraction of my wikipedia usage.

Grgich Hills Cellar
Fort Mason
Chemical synapse
Hollaback Girl
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style archive
Patch clamp
99 Luftballons
California gubernatorial election, 2006
Harvard Board of Overseers
Aleister Crowley
Chocolate
Exponential decay
Itsy Bitsy Spider
Category:Nosology

More wikipedia history, this from my browser history on my home computer:

Percept
Chicken
Mike the headless chicken
Frank Sinatra
Why did the chicken cross the road
Mallorca
Gray (unit)
Piroxicam
Photon
Wizards of the Coast
Surbiton

I heart Wikipedia: The United States order of precedence

I love this stuff:

The United States order of precedence is a nominal and symbolic hierarchy of important positions within the government of the United States. The order is established by the office of the President of the United States and can be changed by the President, though in practice it is fairly established and rarely modified. It has no legal standing (for example, it does not reflect the United States presidential line of succession), and is instead used to dictate ceremonial protocol. The United States Department of State is responsible for enforcing matters of protocol in U.S. diplomacy.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_order_of_precedence