Author: Don

Tonight and tomorrow

In case there is anyone reading who has just logged online after spending the past ten years in suspended animation: Venus will be passing in front of the sun, starting any minute now. There’s plenty of information about the transit here, including links to numerous live streams. You can also follow the event on the Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the Katmai/Novarupta eruption, probably the most violent event on earth in the 20th century. I don’t have time to write about it, but I expect there will be commemorative posts at volcano blogs such as Eruptions. Update: ~5,300 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers per hour.

Update: Open the APOD image in another window to see it at full size, 4096 pixels square.

Memo to …

… the lady in the seat in front of mine at Mass last Sunday: Please choose shirts that extend below the top of your jeans when you go to church, and find pants that rise all the way up to your waist. You have no idea how distracting it was to see that you were wearing thong underwear.

… the bicyclist trying to light a cigarette while riding no-hands in the middle of the street: Idiot.

… the Department of Health and Human Services: I have never had the slightest interest in tobacco. However, whenever you subject me to one of your recent gross-out anti-smoking ads, as happens every single time I watch an episode of Soul Eater on Funimation, I get a powerful urge to buy a carton of cigarettes so I can blow smoke in your faces, you damned hectoring nitwit nannies.

Ping pong balls from heaven

It’s been a noisy evening, and there’s probably more to come. This is a snapshot from my front porch a few minutes ago.

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I loaned my good camera to a colleague whose Nikon is out for repair. Yesterday evening I went to the botanical garden to see if I could get some good close-ups with my cheap go-everywhere toy. Most of the pictures were blurry, but a couple were tolerably sharp, such as the one above.

Sailor Pirates

This was sent to me by a malefactor whom I won’t identify (his name sounds something like “sick puppet”).

Who would the outer senshi be? Haruka and Michiru are a little too obvious, but whom would you pick for Hotaru and Setsuna? Also, is there any guy as dorky as Mamoru, or any girl as annoying as ChibiUsa?

Update for those who have not endured watched Sailor Moon: the pirates and their sailor senshi counterparts have very little in common. Gruier’s hair deliberately imitates Usagi’s, but she is nothing like the stereotypical blonde that Sailor Moon is. Chiaki and Rei are probably the best match: both are black-haired and short-tempered and sometimes wear miko outfits. In each pair, the pirate is the more interesting character.

Still, Sailor Moon is the gold standard for mahou shoujo costumes. I’m always pleased to see pretty girls so attired, even though this is otherwise a crossover that shouldn’t happen.

Just incredible math

Miscellaneous musical notes:

My financial situation has improved from desperate to merely uncomfortable, and I’ve been able to finally make a few purchases that I’ve had in mind for years. For instance, I now have a grand piano. More precisely, I have a mathematical model of a grand piano in my laptop, Modartt’s Pianoteq. It’s no substitute for the real thing, of course, but I don’t have the space for a full-size grand, let alone the cash. Pianoteq sounds pretty good, and it’s much more “alive” than any sample-based instrument I’ve played. Add a pinch of reverb, and it would take a very sensitive ear to tell that it’s not an actual physical piano in a recording. If you have a velocity-sensitive MIDI keyboard handy, download the demo and try it yourself.

Because it’s not based on samples, the software requires surprisingly little disc space. Pianoteq is only 20 megabytes large. In comparison, Synthology’s Ivory II Italian Grand takes 28 gigabytes, and EastWest’s Bösendorfer gobbles 87. (They also need 7200 RPM disc drives, which means they won’t run on my humble laptop, where I need them. ((On top of that, they both require you to by an “iLok” key, a goddam miserable expletive-deleted dongle, and that is a deal-killer. (Q. What is the purpose of digital rights management? A. To punish the legitimate user.) I daresay that these are wonderful instruments, but I ain’t touching them.))) Physical-modeling synths such as Pianoteq do make heavy demands on the processor, but my laptop handles the load easily.

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I’ve been considering finally buying one of the major notation packages, either Finale or Sibelius. I don’t need the full, all-the-bells-and-whistles versions, which is fortunate, because I don’t have the funds. However, the affordable intermediate version of each can be installed on only one computer, which is inconvenient. I think I’ll see how well MuseScore works.

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I see that Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto (did I spell that correctly? Yes) has been licensed. I’m a little surprised. Although I enjoyed the first several episodes, I never did finish watching it, and I don’t recall that it was exceptionally good or particularly popular.

However, it does feature a good Yuki Kajiura opening song.

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Josh, who prefers J.K. Rowling to Margaret Atwood, finds echoes of Kierkegaard in Talking Heads.

Historical notes

32 years ago today, Mt. St. Helens exploded. Stupendous though it was, it was scarecely more than a hiccup compared to the Katmai/Novarupta eruption of 1912 in Alaska, which has fascinated me ever since I came across an article on the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in a 1918 National Geographic. In anticipation of its centennial next month, the U.S. Geological Survey has published a paper about the eruption and the history of research on it, which can be downloaded here.

Update
Also free to download: Alaska Park Science Journal, Volume 11 Issue 1: Katmai Scientific Studies

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A friend forwarded this picture to me. This is the note that accompanied it:

The 120° panoramic image (and its crop) you see above is titled “Daguerreotype View of Cincinnati” and was captured in 1848 by Porter and Fontayne from Newport, Kentucky. It was created with eight full-plate daguerreotypes and shows a two mile stretch of the Cincinatti waterfront. Codex 99 writes,

The panorama is not only the first photograph of the Cincinnati waterfront but the earliest surviving photo of any American city. It is also the earliest image of inland steamboats, of a railroad terminal and of freed slaves. It may very well be one of the most important American photographs ever taken.

Politics, grammar and velcro

A few recently-spotted items worth quoting:

Being politically correct does not trump being grammatically correct…please fix.

— Dr. J’s Gothic Literature teacher

But these days the wages of sin is boredom.

— Res Studiorum et Ludorum

Well, I could argue that a proper understanding of punk and its inherent rebellion would have everyone becoming a libertarian or principled conservative …

— Mollie Hemingway (in the comments)

The last is from a thread about the “Weirdest Band You Love.” It’s hard to pick the strangest of my many musical enthusiasms, but the Sons of Rayon might be the most obscure. The inventors of velco tap dancing (fiddler/guitarist Kelly Werts glued velcro hooks on the soles and heels of his shoes and danced on a patch of tightly-woven carpet, which was miced, creating sound when his feet left the platform), the Bill Monroe-meets-Robert Fripp trio was active in Wichita for several years around 1980. They released one cassette, No Velcro, which was one of the first items I digitized when I hooked up my computer to the stereo. Here is perhaps their loveliest song, written and sung by banjoist Paul Elwood and featuring Intergalactic Yodeling Champion Randy Erwin, “UFOs Over New Zealand.”

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/UFOs Over New Zealand.mp3]

Continue reading “Politics, grammar and velcro”

Dear Howie

Odds and ends:

I didn’t get very far into Haiyore! Nyaruko-san the first time I sampled it. Sticking a fork into a little girl is not amusing, even if the girl is actually Nyarlathotep. However, both Steven and Ken the Brickmuppet found the first two episodes not entirely worthless. So I gritted my teeth, put my feet firmly on the floor, gripped the armrests of my chair, and grimly stuck it out through the rest of the first episode. Well, it is an improvement over the wretched flash shorts of two years ago, and the forking is not quite as offensive. ((Kirika Yumera remains the only person in anime licensed to use the fork as an offensive weapon.)) Still, I found it more irritating than funny, and I doubt that I’ll watch more.

By the way, Howard Phillips Lovecraft for a brief period was a Miss Lonelyhearts, answering questions such as this:

I am Xah’gnui, who has long delved into the annals of subterranean lore, conducting forbidden researches into the unknown, with a view to resurrecting aeon-silent interplanetary necromancer-lizards. Why is it so hard for me to get a date?

(Via Lynn.)

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I see there is an “aniblog” tournament underway. The candidates were drawn primarily from AnimeNano, if I’m interpreting the rules correctly. Unfortunately, this leaves out some of the most interesting weblogs that deal with anime. For instance:

Aliens in This World

Brickmuppet Blog

Chizumatic

Fun Blog

Mahou Meido Meganekko

Wonderduck’s Pond

All of these are worth a visit.

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Allegedly, the more subtle your mind, the more difficult you’ll find this puzzle. I got it in about 30 seconds.

(Via AoSHQ.)

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Mahou shoujo anime is pornographic. So is anime set in high schools. In fact, probably every anime produced this century is pure pornography.

(Via Dustbury.)

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Quote of the week, sobering thought division:

The greatest legacy of the internet may wind up being Cute Overload.

(God and the Machine.)

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Quote of the week, anime division:

If I had a daughter, I’d want her to watch this.

(The Brickmuppet on Mouretsu Pirates.)

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Memo to Trek Bicycle Corporation: I see that your factory is in Waterloo, Wisconsin. There is a good chance that you can find literate native speakers of English there. Please hire one, and have him write directions for mounting your luggage rack on a bicycle, so customers don’t have to puzzle over the cryptic diagrams that come with the rack. By the way, it would be thoughful to note on the outside of the packaging that installing the rack requires a hacksaw and file, where customers can see it before buying the rack.

While at the bike shop earlier this week, I discovered that Trek bicycles include a line called “Neko.” Surprisingly, there is no suggestion of anything feline on the bike or on the Trek website. The Neko does feature “Women’s disc brakes.”

The doctor is in

The most common rose in cultivation, currently furnishing a purplish-red accent in many Wichita gardens, is not a hybrid tea, floribunda or shrub rose, but a hybrid of Rosa wichuriana called “Dr. Huey.” It’s widely used as a rootstock for bud grafting. If suckers aren’t regularly removed, or if the grafted portion weakens or dies, Dr. Huey will take over. The flower in the above picture is about two inches in diameter.

Continue reading “The doctor is in”

The flavors of evil

Dolores Umbridge
Dolores Umbridge
Kyubey
Kyubey

Dr. J. recently commented that “… there was no more deliciously evil character than Dolores Umbridge.” In the Potterverse, that’s unquestionably true. Umbridge is one of the best villains of recent years. But so is Kyubey. (And yes, Kyubey meets the Weatherwax criterion: he is indeed quite evil.)

So, how do you like your villains, delicious or cute? ((I’m aware that Kyubey is delicious, or at least edible. No wisecracks, please.))

Remembering the memories

These are the nominations so far for the most memorable anime episode:

Angel Beats #1
Aria the Origination #9
Azumanga Daioh #10
Banner of the Stars #1
Dennou Coil #16
Divergence Eve: Misaki Chronicles #13
Haibane Renmei #1
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni #4
Kamichu #3
Katanagatari #4
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica #10
Mushi-shi #1
Mushi-shi #5
Mushi-shi #15
Mushi-shi #16
Mushi-shi #17
Mushi-shi #22
Naruto #22
Paranoia Agent #8
RahXephon #18
Serial Experiments Lain #13
Sugar, a Little Snow Fairy #24
Super Dimension Fortress Macross/Robotech #18
Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann #27

Some other episodes were mentioned, though not actually nominated:

Angel Beats #5
Azumanga Daioh #18
Kamichu #5, #9 (“Yamato”), #12
Kino’s Journey #2, #3, #13

Surely there’s more. Where are Cowboy Bebop, Cardcaptor Sakura, Angelic Layer, Princess Tutu, Nadesico, Suzumiya Haruhi, Noir, Petite Princess Yucie, … ? Please make suggestions in the comments. Feel free to explain your choices in general terms, but be careful of spoilers.

When I post the poll, I’ll probably limit the number of candidate episodes from a particular series to two. For Mushishi, those will mostly likely be #5 and #16.

Research aids: Wham Episode; Moment of Awesome.

The morning after

It’s a pleasant day today. The sun even came out for a while. It will probably require a few days for the damages from yesterday to be fully assessed, but my neighborhood looks fine.

Although we get some of the most violent weather in the world here in the plains thanks to North America’s topography, I don’t really worry all that much about tornadoes. During stormy weather, there are constant updates on the radio and radar on my computer monitor, and most homes have basements. Dangerous though they are, tornadoes are much less a threat in Kansas than they are in Bangladesh, where the deadliest twister on record struck not all that long ago.

What I do worry about are gangs with guns. I live in an older neighborhood that borders some very different worlds. Go a few blocks south, and you are surrounded by expensive river-front homes. Go a few blocks east, and you’ll hear norteño. A few weeks ago, the place nearby where a scholarly friend of mine used to live was the scene of a gang shooting.

Impending fun

I might be celebrating the ninth annniversary of my first weblog with the spiders in the basement this evening.

Update:

Here’s how things looked around here at about 9 p.m. Note the violet triangle near the Kansas/Oklahoma border. It signifies a tornado vortex; this is the first time I’ve ever seen one so indicated on the radar. It’s southwest of Wichita and heading northeast. It’s about an hour away, and with luck it should dissipate before it gets close. Here’s an excerpt from the official warning:

Statement as of 9:14 PM CDT on April 14, 2012
… A Tornado Warning remains in effect for southeastern Harper and
southwestern Sumner counties until 930 PM CDT…
At 910 PM CDT… a confirmed large and extremely dangerous tornado was
located 6 miles south of Argonia… and moving northeast at 35 mph.

There are at least two other tornadic storms on the radar image.

Update 2: And now (9:33 p.m.) the sirens sound.

Update 3: On the radio, I’m hearing phrases such as “stovepipe” and “half-mile wide.” I really may be communing with the spiders in my basement shortly.

Update 4:

Update 5: More sirens, lots of rain, lightning and wind. According the the guys on the radio, the the tornado might have lifted. However, the warning has just been extended.

Last update, I hope: The path of this tornado has been eerily similar to that of the 1991 Andover tornado. There will probably be lots of damage to see in the morning, but it did miss downtown Wichita. So far, there has been no mention of fatalities.

Continue reading “Impending fun”