Summer Nights

Yesterday was the Summer Solstice, which some say is the beginning of summer. According to the sun, it is mid-summer, since it is the day when the daylight is the longest. For the next six months, the day will get shorter until mid-winter on December 21. Because of lag caused by the atmosphere, summer weather will continue for the next three months. With it come hot days and mild summer nights.

Summer nights are one of my favorite times. You can go out without putting on a jacket. Nature is chiming a chorus of bugs and night birds and creatures. Summer nights are good for taking a walk in the neighborhood. Often there is a mild wind blowing. It reminds me of nights in the past of summer camps and night parties. Of course the stars are up there, and it is comfortable to look at them, although the night is short.

I went to a sky watch program last night as part of our local astronomy club activities. It was a beautifully clear night with the only clouds at sunset making that brilliant and hot-looking. The wind was blowing, which felt good but interfered with observations. I showed the public first Jupiter, which was in twilight skies - I could not make out the four big satellites, and then I showed Venus, in a gibbous phase. After Venus went into the trees, I showed the moon with its craters and seas. The biggest surprise was finding out that two people who I had known for some time separately had met and were going out with each other. The one thing I did not like was that few stars were visible, due to city light pollution and a nearly full moon.

Smattering

I just found out about Friday Five - five questions it asks you to answer, by Smattering. Here they are:

1. Do you live in a house, an apartment or a condo? We live in a house that is spacious and adequate for us but was poorly built and requires constant repair. Right now we are replacing or have replaced the kitchen floor, a side door, and some water valves, and have had repairs done to the roof.

2. Do you rent or own? We own the house.

3. Does anyone else live with you? My wife and three indoor cats.

4. How many times have you moved in your life? It depends on what you call a move. I counted my undergraduate college as 4 moves - a different dorm each year. A total of 14 times in my life.

5. What are your plans for this weekend? Show the public the stars at a skywatch, go to church, and make plans for the rest of the summer and autumn.

A name for my blog

Now that I've named computers, I need now to name my blog, with something other than JVBLog. I conceive of this series of blogs as some sort of journey; in fact a Journey through Blogspace. However, Blogspace is the name of a web logging program, so that's out. So I thought of Blogrealm instead, or even Blogual Reality. That sounds somewhat clumsy, but Blogrealm has some merit. The element of a journey, as my life journey, is not there, however. Blogjourney sounds too long. I then thought of Blogtrek. Now I have seen Star Trek occasionally, but I have not been a constant Star Trek fan; I'm not a Trekkie. But Blogtrek sounds nice, and what's more, it doesn't google. It will now. I have decided to call my blog Blogtrek. So now I shall boldly blog where no one has ever blogged before…

Supervisors

I don't think I have had much luck with supervisors. They have varied from somewhat above average to really abysmal. So I thought of what I would like in a supervisor and came up with three levels of them:

Level 1. Autocratic. This supervisor either criticizes a lot or barks out commands; a dictator. Some of these make me afraid of them. Needless to say, when I get one, I want to get out. Three of the supervisors I have had have been at the Autocratic level.

Level 2. Laissez-faire. This supervisor does not look over my shoulder all the time, but he or she either ignores me or is pleasant and easy to get along with all the time without really guiding me anywhere. This one leaves me wondering what to do next. It's as though we live in two worlds. Most of the supervisors I have had were at this level.

Level 3. Involved. This supervisor keeps track of what I am doing, but also gets substantial input from me. Relationship is friendly with a lot of discussion between us. We feel like we are a team headed towards a goal. He provides me with guidance, and I am able to provide good feedback to him. This is the type of supervisor I want. Unfortunately, I have had none. However, I have had two team leaders who were at this level - one of these on a real project and the other at a training session.

So maybe if I ever were to get another job, I would like it to involve a Level 3 relationship with my supervisor. How do I find such a relationship? It is not the most easily obtained thing from a job interview or from biographies of supervisory personnel. A similar conundrum exists in searching for a place to live. It may be that the most important criterion in buying a house is whether you can develop good relationships with the neighbors at that house. So far I see such choices as a gamble and want to turn the odds in my favor.

Naming Computers

Since I bought my first PC on 1992 January 29, I have named PCs and other computer equipment. My first computer was HAL because I got it on close to the date on which HAL 9000 was created in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". Since then I have named other computers: Gooney Bird, because its CD-ROM sounded like a taxiing C-47; Izzy, after our cat, at work because our branch's symbol was CAT; Super v because there was a directory named v that could not be deleted, no matter what; Clunky, because the hard drive made clunking sounds and every once in a while gave the horrific message, "General failure error reading drive C:"; Slamrunner, because the computer ran a program called SLAM and because when it booted it beeped twice, like a roadrunner; and Boogie, because I like to dance a lot. Today I named a printer Tiger at work, because when you send a print job to it, it makes a raaooww sound much like that made by a big cat, and I say that when that color laser printer prints, it meows.

Do these names sound unworklike? I like them because they are easier to remember than some serial number or something like Workstation-23. Further they have the advantage of being portable. If I were to name a computer after some project I am doing, what if later the computer were to be used for something else? Izzy, for example, has nothing to do with my work, so it can be used anywhere there. Further, they make using a computer more fun. What's the name of your computer? By the way, this blog was written on Boogie.

Saving Time

Well now that I know what I want to do (probably), I need time to do it. But since I am currently employed, I have little time to do it. I have little time to update my web site, study mathematics, go to all my outside activities and clubs such as Toastmasters, astronomy club, and church events, and have some time to goof off and do whatever I want. What I do have is plenty of money from my full-time job. So I try to save time where I can.

I wait until a number of errands pile up, then I do them all at once, in the same store if possible, but stores like Wal-Mart are a time-waster because you have to hunt for the item you want in an illogically arranged store. I get out my clothes for the week and organize, especially if I have to work five 9-hour days in the week, and get ready for work in a precise schedule, so that I can listen to NPR's "Earth and Sky" and "Stock Market Song" (today it was "Stormy Weather", as the market was down yesterday) both. The time between them is almost as great as my commute time.

I do all sorts of things to trade money for time; i.e, buy time. For example, I grab any brand that happens to be out on the grocery shelf, even though it is more expensive than something I would have to hunt for. We call in plumbers, painters, and other people to do work around the house rather than do them ourselves. In purchasing stuff, I look for quality, durability, reliability, and especially I try to see, if possible (usually it is not), if I will have to spend hours on the phone haggling over software glitches, if the item is a computer, cellular phone, PDA, or the like.

In traveling I listen to traffic reports and avoid routes with construction, accidents and jams on them if I can. Two of my interests lead to my traveling frequently into a metropolitan area at evening rush hour time; I go many hours too early simply to avoid these jams.

I suppose if I were retired I would have to go the other way and trade time for money, even though time is precious; we each get only a day a day and once it is gone, it is gone. Then I would shop for the cheapest brands and learn to do work around the house and on the automobiles. I then would be able to use the time to make the most of my talents and capabilities.

What my blogs say about me

What do my weblogs reveal about my interests? I did a count and found out that 10 of them relate to mathematics or computers, and that 8 of them to literary interests, and 4 in public speaking. This says that I may have an interest in literary material more than I had thought. Of course, this blog is a journalistic and literary area, so this may distort the pattern. But I note that at SUUSI, , I most frequently choose personal growth and writing workshops. So maybe there is something to this.

My calling then appears to be to combine mathematical and literary/journalistic interests together; i.e., to write articles on mathematics. I already have ten such articles at my web site, but I need to get something out to the public, preferably as something of a business venture. This could be difficult, but that is what it looks like to me.

Bees

I ran into a cute game while browsing web logs. This one was referred to by Weblog Wannabe. It is called Bubble Bees, at http://www.orisinal.com/games/bubble.htm. In the game, there is a pastel nature scene, and bees come from left to right on the screen. You have a bubble maker, consisting of a loop on a stick, and you are supposed to blow bubbles in front of the bees, trapping them in the bubbles. I got the hang of it a few times and scored 890. What I like about this game is its non-violent nature. Sure it traps bees, but in real life a bee were encased in a soap bubble, it could sting the bubble out of extinction without any harm to the bee. It sure is a refreshing change from all this violent beat and shoot 'em stuff that you see in many of these computer games. If you have a few minutes to use up, and want to test your mouse skills, try this game.

Algebra

One of the bigger advances made my humanity in the past two or three thousand years was the development of algebra by the Hindus and then by Al-Khwarizmi. This was the method by which arithmetic was turned into a detective game in which a certain unknown quantity was to be found. I feel that a large part of this advance was due to using single letters to denote unknowns. As long as words were used, the whole idea was clumsy. For example, to solve "Three times a certain number plus five equals four.", you say the same thing, only less by five, and say "three times a certain number plus five minus five equals four minus five." Then you have to write the simplification of that, and so forth. It is a slow process and one that many would not have patience with. By using a single letter such as x to stand for the unknown, one could write it simply as:

3x + 5 = 4

Subtracting 5 from both sides yields

3x + 5 - 5 = 4 - 5, or

3x = -1.

It is much easier to deal with. Note also the simplification that results from omitting the times or multiplication sign everywhere except between two numbers.

Unfortunately, we seem to be getting away from this compact notation. Computer languages commonly allow multiple-character unknowns, or variables, such as COST or ACCOUNTS_PAYABLE. If you do this, you can no longer denote multiplication by juxtaposition. You have to say COST*HOURS. Further, statements can get quite complicated such as:

Set Northwind_DatabaseSet = ThisDatabase.OpenRecordset("MYTABLE", dbopendynaset)

No wonder people can't learn Visual Basic or C++. This sort of thing is just as long-winded as "Three times a certain number plus five equals four." We are back to the days before al-Khwarizmi. That is why I break the rules and frequently use i or a to denote a variable. It's time we shortened our variable names to make computer programming less of a tedious chore.

Gadgets

One thing that makes the world of the early 2000's different from the 1950's or earlier is the large number of gadgets that are available to make life easier. From when I was a child until now, they include television, washing machines, addiators, slide rules, calculators, compact discs, back teller machines, computers, VCRs, cellular phones, GPS devices, and PDAs, plus plenty of others. But do they all help? Take cellular phones, for instance. Each cellular phone has its own buttons on it; there is no standard. On one I looked at today, you turn it on by pressing END. That's right, you begin at the END. Whoever came up with that one? Evidently someone who feels the END is near came up with that one. I asked about analog service. They started talking about roaming. Since when does analog have anything to do with roaming?

Then of course there is the strength of signals. You have to have cellular phone towers nearby or you get no service. Cellular phones are a hot item in communities; many communities don't want them. OK, then, they don't get cellular phone service. That's NIMBY in action. The place becomes a black hole. Many other communities want the service but don't want unsightly towers, so guess what? They put cellular phone tower equipment on flag poles, trees (although these trees look a little odd), water towers, and other naturally and artificially-occurring high objects. What I found strange was that an old 1997 or so vintage analog cellular phone got better reception than a modern 21st century one with digital service.

I can go on like this about cellular phones or about other devices. Did you know that you activate voice mail at work by using call forwarding? That to me is like forwarding calls to the washingmachine - it does not make sense. I can also expand upon the unintuitivies of other gadgets in our age. It is not the gadgets' fault. It's the fault of those that make them. Someone out there thinks that END means turn on, that "system" means quit (Radio Shack Basic), that a fax is a special kind of printer (I'd like to print you something) and so forth. It's time the gadget manufacturers start making sense on these machines.

Toastmasters as a Canoe Trip

The scheduling of a Toastmasters club (or any other organization that meets regularly at night) resembles a canoeing trip over rapids and obstacles. We set our canoe out in a straight line (set a time for our meetings such as 1st and 3rd Thursdays). We encounter rock outcroppings, shoals and other obstacles in this path (July 4, Thanksgiving, meetings, and so forth) and so have to steer our craft around it (reschedule meetings). Toastmasters is a canoe trip. Toastmasters is a fire. Therefore, some canoe trips are fires.

On Beyond Zebra

As promised, my impressions of this Dr. Seuss classic. I also read this as a child; in fact, I remember my teacher read it to our class. My impression of it was that it was a cute strange creature story. I now recognize it as being a fine example of my personal slogan: Just add one. That slogan means that you can always go beyond something. You can't name the largest number because I will just add one to it. In this story, one can even go beyond the alphabet and make letters beyond Z. Dr. Seuss makes these up, with a drawing of a letter, and then says what it stands for; e.g., Yuzz for Yuzz-a-Ma-Tuzz. However, he begins the name of the creature with a Y, not a yuzz. So all he is doing is continuing the game of saying "A is for ape, B is for Bear, . . ." But I think his story works out well anyway, as we try to imagine what sort of creatures could exist. It is the same theme, really as with "Bartholomew and the Oobleck". Why can't it oobleck? Why can't there be a unicorn, or a yuzz-a-ma-tuzz? I think it is a good story, since it encourages children to reach out and find what's beyond something.

Icarus on a motorcycle

Today I listened to the car radio play "Icarus" by Paul Winter, which ends with a falling string motif symbolic of legendary Icarus' fall when he flew too close to the sun. When I heard that falling part, I also heard the roar of a nearby motorcycle, leading me to think, if Icarus had tried to fly on a motorcycle, like Evil Knievel, would he have fallen to the ground? Perhaps, but maybe he would have landed on wheels and survived.

Big project at work, but what is its purpose?

I was given a big project at work today, entitled by a noun phrase. I saw no verb in it, so I am naturally wondering, what is the goal of the project? It involves formulas like the economic order quantity, and fine, I know the formula and can derive it. But what does that have to do with the real situation? I need more to go on. But if I don't get that, can I make up my own? Turn the project into something that satisfies me more? Maybe that is what an ill-defined project deserves. It winds up being something completely different.

Ohio P

I finally found an Ohio P quarter today - twice, once in a vending machine, and once at a toll booth. According to Coin World, Ohio P is the rarest of the state/mint combinations, with only 217 million such coins made. The reason for the rarity is the shutdown of the Philadelphia Mint in late March.

500 Hats

This weekend I checked out two books that I had checked out of the school library in 1953 or so. I enjoyed these stories when I was a child, and I checked them out to read them again. They are Dr. Seuss' "500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins" and "Bartholomew Cubbins and the Oobleck". 500 Hats is a story of how this young man was shopping, and had to take his hat off before the King, but couldn't because every time he would take off a hat, another one would come on his head. This reminds me of a computer program gone wrong; in particular, one that gets a hat object creation caught in an infinite loop. A review said this story represented creativity, but was Bartholomew actually creating the hats? Or maybe it reflects the non-determinacy of creative impulses - the bigger and better hats near the end represents a burst of inspiration that Bartholomew had no control over. I simply enjoyed it because of the absurdity of the idea; another example would be the Queen in Alice in Wonderland trying to chop off the head of the Cheshire Cat when only a cat head was shown suspended in air.

The Oobleck story had great visual imagery. As a child I dreamed and imagined several times the idea of a storm of green football-sized gooey hail falling. To me it is a story about boredom. Why must it rain and snow all the time? Why can't it oobleck? Why are there traffic jams all the time when I go to work? Why can't I put on a jet pack and fly? Why are the colors red, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, black, and orange? Can't it be palist once in a while? Maybe this story says that our imagination exceeds the capacity of our world to handle it. Still, we need imagination to give us what we have today. Why couldn't I have a typewriter in which I can untype letters that I typed wrong and type in the right ones, or, better still, a typewriter that will correct the spelling of a word I misspelled? Sounded pretty farfetched in 1960, when I learned how to type. Yet today I am typing on such a machine. Still, the story says that if you get things different once in a while, it may not turn out too well, as with oobleck. The King apologized for coming up with the idea. But why blame him? He just wanted something different; he certainly did not want green goo gumming up his whole Kingdom.

Next time I may comment on another Dr. Seuss creation: "On beyond Zebra".

Virtual Nations

I read an article in the 2002 July issue of Futurist magazine about a concept called a "virtual nation". This is a group of people throughout the world connected together by the Internet, occasional meetings, and maybe some pieces of land here and there to which the people belonging to the v-nation pledge their allegiance to. The impression I got from the article is that such a nation is spread more or less evenly throughout the population instead of being concentrated in a geographic area, like traditional nations such as India, the United States, and Russia are. One example I can think of is the Jewish or Israeli Diaspora, which has been a v-nation for a long time, until 1948, when it become the traditional nation of Israel.

This is an interesting idea. I can think of such groups in our country. For example, Charlottesville, Virginia is a traditional governmental group; specifically, a city. Its people are clustered within a certain area in Virginia. Toastmasters International could be said to be a v-group or v-nation then, as its members are dispersed among the population. It has a government (international directors, International President, and so forth) and traditions (the Toastmaster program, the CTM and other awards, for example). We can speak of how dense these "nations" are. It has the same population roughly as Charlottesville, but it is spread out much more evenly. My religion, the Unitarian Universalists, would be such a v-nation also; it has its set of 7 principles, for instance. For example, Boy Scouts has ten times as many members as Toastmasters, so it is ten times as dense. Further, the lines of demarcation between v-nations and traditional nations are not distinct; Americans are spread throughout the world, and Toastmasters are concentrated in southern California.

However, to treat these v-nations as nations in the traditional sense would be incorrect. The article calls al-Qaeda such a v-nation, but it does not have a geographic base where most of its members live. Further, calling al-Qaeda a v-nation may be one way of thinking of this anti-terrorist effort as a war, or rather, a v-war, since war is defined to be armed conflict between nations. I do not think it should be called a war, because that encourages others, such as Israel and India, to wage wars of terrorism on their own, heightening the level of tension in that part of the world. It's a worldwide police action instead.

Although to think of groups such as Toastmasters and Unitarian Universalists as a virtual, spread-out group is an interesting concept, they are not nations in the usual sense and should not be treated as such.

Mathematics in life

My profession is mathematics, so I see mathematical things in life. I noticed two problems today. One concerns presenting a speech involving overhead slides to an audience. You want to put the projector so the image is not blocked either by you the speaker or by the projector. This gets into some geometry; in particular, lines from a collection of points (attendees) to the projector and the presenter. Is there an optimal way to do it, a formula dependent on the geometry of the room you are giving the speech in?

The other concerns a church that wants to go from one service each week to two. How will the parking situation change? Will there be a big crowd between the two services, and what is the average distance from where you park your car to the church?

K9 stars

I purchased a Sky and Telescope magazine today and read an article about the brightest red dwarf star in our sky, a rather obscure star named Lacaille 8760. It has a spectral type of M0. What does that mean? Astronomers long ago classified stars according to the spectrum that their light produce when passed through a prism. The classifications are now mostly by temperature, and some rearranging of the types were needed as more facts were discovered about stars. Today the sequence from hottest to coolest is O, B, A, F, G, K, M, with L and T added recently for brown dwarfs. A red dwarf star is of type M; it is cool as far as stars go but still a star. The types are subdivided into tenths; e.g., an F9 is hotter than a G2 is hotter than a G8 and so forth. Our sun is a G2 star.

The faintest red dwarf is interesting as there is a natural boundary at the faint end - between star and non-star. But there is no such boundary at the bright end. So saying the brightest red dwarf tends to make it a middle of the pack type of star. In fact, the next type up from M0 is K9. Now this reminds me of the Dog Star Sirius.

Sirius is the brightest star in the sky. It is bluish white and astronomers say that its spectral type is A1. But since it is the Dog Star I think the type should be K9 instead. Indeed, some legends of the past had Sirius as being a red star. I tried looking up K9 and Sirius in Google, and got an article about a K9 police dog named Sirius who died when the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11. He was the K9 star of the day.

So what's the type of Sirius? Well, given that it's the Dog Star, I would say that its type is K9.

Contradictions

Today I went to my last class of Front Page. I told the class, populated with people I work with, about some of the problems with Front Page, namely that if you make non-Front Page edits to your web pages and then run Front Page again, it will mess up those pages. They thought that Front Page was a good package, however. My church is revising its web page, and they feel the problems of Front Page are too great and so they are going to use ASP and Dreamweaver. So I am a part of two web pages who contradict each other on the worth of Front Page. I will want to stick with them both and learn both Front Page and Dreamweaver, so I can use the best of both. But contradictions do annoy me. Logically they imply anything. That is, if Austin is in Texas, then if Austin is not in Texas, then Mickey Mouse is God. P -> (~P -> Q) is how it is written in logical notation. What they really mean is that at least one of the contradicting statements is false. I have to decide which.

I designed a wallpaper today for the month of June. What color should June be? February is red, December is red and green, March is green, January is white and so forth. That leaves cyan for June. This did not look like a likely color for the month. But I put together something based on cyan, and the result is quite attractive to me. The shades of blue-green that it has reminds me of a swimming pool, and of course in June is when the pools are first open for the entire month. I came up with this scheme:

White January snow
Red February valentine heart
Green March St Patrick's day shamrock
Purple April flowers
Yellow May sun
Cyan June swimming pool
Red White Blue July US Flag
Orange Red August heat
Blue September blue skies
Orange Black October halloween pumpkin and night
Brown November leaves and dying vegetation
Red and Green December holly and poinsettia

There are six primary and secondary colors and six tertiary colors for a total of 12, the same as the number of months. What if each month had to have a different one of these twelve colors? I came up with this:

Red February
Red-Orange August
Orange October
Amber November
Yellow May
Chartreuse September
Green March
Turquoise or Cyan June
Blue July
Indigo December
Purple April
Magenta January

where now I have indexed it by color rather than by month. So June is turquoise, just as above. So remember these when you design something for a given month.

Warning

I took a course on a data system at my workplace last Friday, and looked at some of the course materials today. The first page of it was a poem by Jenny Joseph entitled "I shall wear purple". I looked it up on the Web and found it was really titled "Warning"; one site for it is http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/716.html. The poem seems to speak of what this woman will do when she is old and what she now feels she has to do. It seems to say to live you life when you can and don't wait. It reminds me a little of the Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, by TS Eliot.

I got intrigued by misspellings on the Web. A search for netwrok in Google, for instance, produces a huge list of netwroks. I also get lots of netowrks, newtorks (what's a new tork?), and entworks. All of these asked if I meant network. I tried "new tork" and got a list of new torks, including the New Tork Times. "Newtork" got me a question of whether I meant network, even though New York is just as plausible. I tried "net york, net york", and this time it suggested New York, New York. Finding New York and network to be so close was interesting, as a lot of things are networked to New York. It all goes to show that the Spell Checker can still be effectively used more than it is.

Keep it or nuts

My attic has reams of paper. Old Toastmaster and astronomy files back to the late 1970's, hundreds of books, income tax for every year since 1969, and all my paycheck stubs for all of the places I have ever worked. I need to throw much of this stuff out. They say you can throw out tax returns after 7 years. Then today I find that I needed a piece of paper from the year 1993! It seems the social security people say my Medicare wages were zero in that year. I worked in that year just like any other. I call them and they tell me I have to send them a copy of my W2 for that year. Well fortunately I kept all my tax records from way way back. I got it out, as well as my paycheck stub since the W2 was marginally readable. But this puts a question into my cleanup desires. I want to get rid of that old stuff, but you never know when you will need something.

I gave a talk on mathematics and religion today and convinced people that study too much of either will take you away from the real world. I wanted to convey to people the "just add one" philosophy, that no matter how far you have gone, you can go farther, and that there is always something to learn. No matter how huge a number you pick, I can pick a bigger one. I'll just add one to yours. This is why I believe in the Unitarian Universalist Fourth Principle: the quest for truth and meaning is never-ending.

I eat out every night this week, because of nightly activities. At least one of these meals will be paid for.

I revised my blog

I revised the format of my blog just now - added links and widened the text field.