Author: dave-o

An Orchestral Piece About an Illness that Preys On Ultra-Cavers

Rapture for Orchestra by Patrick Harlin from Patrick Harlin on Vimeo.

That piece–which I *love*–was inspired by this: A ‘Blind Descent’ Into The Deepest Caves On Earth : NPR

Drowning, poisonous gas inhalation and electrocution are perils of journeying through a supercave. Tabor says there are more than 50 ways for a person to die during these explorations.
There’s also a danger of developing an illness known as “the rapture” — an extreme reaction to darkness and depth. Those who have suffered from it describe it as being similar to an anxiety attack while on methamphetamines.
“At some level, everyone’s brain will start to say, ‘I don’t belong here. This is a very dangerous place.’ It’s an ancient primordial instinct and it just says, ‘You have to get me out of here, right now.'”

Here’s a great interview with the composer, Patrick Harlin, on Michigan Radio.

A Brief Primer on Buying a Whole Hog for Eating

I continue to write a regular column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle (one of the many reasons I post here so irregularly). In my latest I offer the low-down on buying a live pig and getting it converted into a bunch of shrink-wrapped dinner portions.
The Ann Arbor Chronicle | In It For The Money: Whole Hog

Three kinds of weight come into play when you are dealing with domestic animals you intend to eat: Live weight, hanging weight, and processed weight. Live weight, you’ll be shocked to learn, is the weight of the live animal. Hanging weight is the weight of the dead animal, drained of blood, and minus the parts you don’t have any use for (such as the intestines, stomach, head, feet, skin). The processed weight is the final weight of all that meat (aka, the “cuts”) neatly wrapped in butcher paper (or, more likely, vacuum sealed in plastic).
Sharp tacks have already surmised that live weight is greater than hanging weight, which in turn is greater than processed weight. Things vary by breed, individual pig, and butcher, but in general the hanging weight is about 75 percent of the live weight, and the processed weight about 66 percent of the hanging weight. So when all is said and done, if you start out with a 250-pound live pig, you’ll end up with about 125 pounds of cuts.
Most of the negotiating you’ll do revolves around hanging weight – although a pig might be priced based on its live weight, its hanging weight, or just as a pig. Per-pig pricing is the equivalent of wholesale in most cases: The farmer is just asking for you to reimburse him for the feed (which, at today’s corn prices, means around $240).
In terms of hanging weight, the price currently seems to hover in the $2 to $2.50 per pound range. So on a hypothetical 250-live-pound hog, that would amount to $375 to $470-ish. If the farmer quotes well below that, then he’s probably doing so on live weight, and you should clear that up. I’m not saying anyone is being nefarious, but the difference between hanging weight and live weight on your average hog is something like 62 pounds. A buck-fifty per pounds sounds like a tremendous deal, but actually amounts to the same thing as paying $2 per pound hanging weight.
At the end of the day, you should budget around $375 for your pig. But that only gets you half way to the dinner table.
At this stage, you’ve dropped almost four bills on a live pig that, we’ve established, is of very little use to you within Ann Arbor city limits. It lives its happy piggy life out in the mud somewhere many miles from a Starbucks. It runs around under the pine trees listening to AM radio and rooting for fat grubs. If a spider is up in the rafters writing nice things about him, he has no clue, because he’s illiterate and happily snorting up mud and knocking over his brothers and sisters. He is a pig, just as God and evolution and human meddling in natural selection made him.
. . .

Voyager 1 Has Left the Building, Entered Interstellar Space

The New York Times has a very charming, informative piece on the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which has been confirmed to have left the influence of our brave and noble Sun, and entered the depthless black between the stars.
The piece–and the ongoing work of both the Voyager spacecrafts[*] (which were only supposed to run for about 4 years, their original mission wrapping up in the early 1980s) and team (most of whom seem to be pulling AARP discounts)–is an excellent meditation on progress and age and the simple fact that, for most of us, doing something great is not about a single dazzling moment, but about continuing to plug away, day after day, decade upon decade, until the many small success add up to something bizarre and wonderful.
Exiting the Solar System and Fulfilling a Dream – NYTimes.com

Voyager 1 left the solar system the same month that Curiosity, NASA’s state-of-the-art rover, landed on Mars and started sending home gorgeous snapshots. Curiosity’s exploration team, some 400 strong, promptly dazzled the world by driving the $2.5 billion robot across a patch of Martian terrain, a feat that turned the Red Bull-chugging engineers and scientists of Building 264 of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory campus into rock stars. By comparison, the Voyager mission looked like a Betamax in the era of Bluetooth.
The 12-person Voyager staff was long ago moved from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory campus to cramped quarters down the street, next to a McDonald’s. In an interview last month at Voyager’s offices, Suzanne R. Dodd, the Voyager project manager, said that when she attended meetings in Building 264, she kept a low profile in deference to the Mars team.
“I try to stay out of the elevator and take the stairs,” Ms. Dodd said. “They’re doing important work there, and I’ll only slow them down.”

Incidentally, the Voyager spacecrafts carry the “Golden Records“–analog phonograph records featuring sounds of Earth, as well as encoded photographs, and etched with pictograph instructions on how to play the cosmic record. Of the two dozen musical pieces included, only three are from the United States: A Navajo chant[**], Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” and Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night—Cold Was the Ground.”

Blind Willie Johnson, you’ve finally made it into interstellar space–on vinyl, and a gold record, no less! If that’s not the American Dream, then we’ve got the wrong kind of Americans.
At any rate, all of this is especially resonant for me, because the Voyager crafts were put into space the year I was born. Slowly but surely, we’re each getting somewhere. Amen.

Continue reading “Voyager 1 Has Left the Building, Entered Interstellar Space”

Voyager 1 Has Left the Building, Entered Interstellar Space

The New York Times has a very charming, informative piece on the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which has been confirmed to have left the influence of our brave and noble Sun, and entered the depthless black between the stars.
The piece–and the ongoing work of both the Voyager spacecrafts[*] (which were only supposed to run for about 4 years, their original mission wrapping up in the early 1980s) and team (most of whom seem to be pulling AARP discounts)–is an excellent meditation on progress and age and the simple fact that, for most of us, doing something great is not about a single dazzling moment, but about continuing to plug away, day after day, decade upon decade, until the many small success add up to something bizarre and wonderful.
Exiting the Solar System and Fulfilling a Dream – NYTimes.com

Voyager 1 left the solar system the same month that Curiosity, NASA’s state-of-the-art rover, landed on Mars and started sending home gorgeous snapshots. Curiosity’s exploration team, some 400 strong, promptly dazzled the world by driving the $2.5 billion robot across a patch of Martian terrain, a feat that turned the Red Bull-chugging engineers and scientists of Building 264 of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory campus into rock stars. By comparison, the Voyager mission looked like a Betamax in the era of Bluetooth.
The 12-person Voyager staff was long ago moved from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory campus to cramped quarters down the street, next to a McDonald’s. In an interview last month at Voyager’s offices, Suzanne R. Dodd, the Voyager project manager, said that when she attended meetings in Building 264, she kept a low profile in deference to the Mars team.
“I try to stay out of the elevator and take the stairs,” Ms. Dodd said. “They’re doing important work there, and I’ll only slow them down.”

Incidentally, tThe Voyager spacecrafts carry the “Golden Records“–analog phonograph records featuring sounds of Earth, as well as encoded photographs, and etched with pictograph instructions on how to play the cosmic record. Of the two dozen musical pieces included, only three are from the United States: A Navajo chant[**], Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” and Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night—Cold Was the Ground.”

Blind Willie Johnson, you’ve finally made it into interstellar space–on vinyl, and a gold record, no less! If that’s not the American Dream, then we’ve got the wrong kind of Americans.
At any rate, all of this is especially resonant for me, because the Voyager crafts were put into space the year I was born. Slowly but surely, we’re each getting somewhere. Amen.

Continue reading “Voyager 1 Has Left the Building, Entered Interstellar Space”

Destroying AM Radio to Save It

A Quest to Save AM Before It’s Lost in the Static – NYTimes.com

The digital age is killing AM radio, an American institution that brought the nation fireside chats, Casey Kasem’s Top 40 and scratchy broadcasts of the World Series. Long surpassed by FM and more recently cast aside by satellite radio and Pandora, AM is now under siege from a new threat: rising interference from smartphones and consumer electronics that reduce many AM stations to little more than static. Its audience has sunk to historical lows.
But at least one man in Washington is tuning in.
Ajit Pai, the lone Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, is on a personal if quixotic quest to save AM. After a little more than a year in the job, he is urging the F.C.C. to undertake an overhaul of AM radio, which he calls “the audible core of our national culture.” He sees AM — largely the realm of local news, sports, conservative talk and religious broadcasters — as vital in emergencies and in rural areas.
“AM radio is localism, it is community,” Mr. Pai, 40, said in an interview.
AM’s longer wavelength means it can be heard at far greater distances and so in crises, he said, “AM radio is always going to be there.” As an example, he cited Fort Yukon, Alaska, where the AM station KZPA broadcasts inquiries about missing hunters and transmits flood alerts during the annual spring ice breakup.
“When the power goes out, when you can’t get a good cell signal, when the Internet goes down, people turn to battery-powered AM radios to get the information they need,” Mr. Pai said. . . .

Sadly, the changes that are being suggested to save AM–including moving it to all-digital broadcast–are so fundamental that they obliterate some of the utility of the AM system. The article implies that really the only useful aspect of all-analog AM is that it’s powerful (and thus has really long transmission distances, esp. at night). That’s true, and awesome, but what makes AM extra special is that the scheme is so bone *simple*[*]
Heck, in this two paragraph snippet from my book, I teach you to make an AM receiver in about three seconds:


Building a receiver from scratch isn’t much harder, and AM transmitters are likewise within the grasp of novice electronics hobbyists. In a deep-down insane zombiepocalypse disaster scenario, we kinda *want* to have an all analog AM system blanketing the country, giving out instructions, don’t we? The greatest asset of the network isn’t just signal strength, but the ubiquity and simplicity of the gear you need to decade that signal back to human voices giving you decent advice for what to do when the Zombie Dolly Parton and Rush Limbaugh coming banging on your door.

Continue reading “Destroying AM Radio to Save It”

PRO-TIP: RadioShack “medium replacement headphone earpads” fit Sennheiser PX-100s

Mostly just posting this because I had to hunt a fair bit to sort this out. If the foam earpads on your Sennheiser PX-100s are shot, you can replace them with these guys from RadioShack (which are half the price of the replacements from Sennheiser):
RadioShack Replacement Foam Headphone Speaker Pads (Medium) : Headphones | RadioShack.com
They won’t *look* like they’re going to fit, because the skirt on the back of the pad is tighter than what you’ll see on the blown-out foam earpads that came with your headphones. But, if you slip one edge of the RadioShack replacements on, and then work carefully around the perimeter (kind of like getting a bike tire back on the rim), the skirt will slide right into place. The RadioShack pads feel good as new, if not better.
Incidentally, the PX-100s are *excellent* headphones (I don’t know if they’re $100-excellent–that’s the current price on Amazon–but were certainly worth the $50 I paid for mine, like, a decade ago). They are light, easy on the ears, fold into their own case–and thus travel well in your computer bag–and the sound is really nicely balanced, with good bass and clarity. The surprisingly good sound is a consequence of having an open-backed design, which means they function more like stereo speakers than headphones (important, since most music is mixed with actual sound systems, not dinky headphones, in mind). Most headphones are locked into plastic housings, which constrains how much air the diaphragms of the speaker can move. This fundamentally dicks with how you are hearing the music (since that’s all about vibrations in the air); the fact that the music is mixed to be heard on actual speakers doesn’t help. The result tends to be dead bass and muddy sound. An open-air design better emulates a speaker situation, with the added benefit (in my opinion) that it *doesn’t* block as much ambient sound (being sealed inside my music tends to creep me out; I have issues). Also, in my experience, and open-air headphone speaker is easier on my inner ear and ear-drum, since it doesn’t focus a blast of pressure waves into my skull.

Careers, Co-working, Forbes, and Our Blessed Age of Telecommuting

A couple of quick items now that I’m back in town and in the computing seat:
1) I continue to write a monthly column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. The August column (which obviously snuck in kinda late; I was out of town) is about How To Launch Your Writing Career in Four easy steps:

Launching a writing career is a four-step process:
1. Get a Baby
2. Write Some Stuff
3. Go to Library Story Time
4. Check Your Email
I know, I know, you have a few questions. So, I will clarify in detail below, with footnotes.
. . .
“Hey!” you’re about to type, “This isn’t a career plan, it’s just a string of random events involving a nameless baby! None of it applies to me; I don’t even have a baby! What a rip-off!”
What’s tripping us up is this word “career.” . . .

It’s just that easy! Learn more and ACT NOW: The Ann Arbor Chronicle | In it for The Money: How to Career as a Writer
2) A few months back a nice blogger from Forbes visited my coworking community to talk about remote workers and coworking and stuff. So, if you want to read a little more about the “terrible investment decisions” portion of my “career,” check that out.

“Beach Ball Jumping” and other *terrible* Depression Era diversions

These are all courtesy of a 1937 issue of Mechanics and Handicraft magazine; click through for a deeply unsafe barrel-stave kneeboard-ish thing, a floating rifle target (!!!), and more.
That said, *damn* if the kid in the illustration don’t got some cocky *strut*! You go, beach-ball shoes kid! I’ll sign your full-body cast when you get out of the ICU!

via: More Pleasure at the Seashore | Modern Mechanix