Cop Car's Beat

LAGEOS I

By courtesy of NASA:

LAGEOS I, 1976

The LAGEOS I, Laser Geodynamics Satellite, was launched on May 4, 1976 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The two-foot diameter, 900-pound satellite orbited the Earth from pole to pole and measured the movements of the Earth's surface relative to earthquakes, continental drift, and other geophysical phenomena.

The mirrored surface of the satellite precisely reflected laser beams from ground stations for accurate ranging measurements. Scientists at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. came up with the idea for the satellite and built it at the Marshall Center.

Image Credit: NASA/MSFC

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I recall marveling at the sight of Echo 1A, one of the first people-made shiny things in the sky  orbiting through the night sky over our home in 1960. Fantastic!

Nesting report

There are several bird nests around our yard about which I know. I visited each of them early this morning.

    Mallard duck (on the ground in nook of front foundation) - Mama was not on nest, total of 5 eggs, 3 eggs broken up. Ferel cat that hangs about our yard may/may not be a factor.

Addition of 5/2/2013 - After not seeing the hen on her nest all day, yesterday, I took a closer look. It appears that there were a total of 6 eggs, 5 of which seemed to have hatched ducklings. (Thanks to HH for suggesting the possibility. I was so convinced that the nest had been there for only a couple of weeks that the possibility had not occurred to me. Duh!) A neighbor had told me of seeing a mama and several fuzz balls cross the street at her house (the most likely crossing that the mama would use to get her ducklings to the pond across the street) and I am now convinced that she saw "our" ducklings!

    House finch (in miniature swing hung near ceiling of front porch) - Nest has seemingly been abandoned for the past two weeks.

    Unknown (in bluebird box in back yard about 20 yeards from house) - A nest has been built within the past week, no eggs. It doesn't look like a bluebird nest to me, but we have seen a male bluebird sitting atop of the house on two or three days. Of course, we've also seen a red-shouldered hawk sitting there and I'm pretty sure it is not a hawk nest!

    Red-shouldered hawk (about 10 feet below tip-top of old walnut tree, near the creek, in the woods) - Mama sitting on nest. I don't have a vantage point to detect any little heads. We have suspected that the nest was there for the past couple of weeks, at least; but, I had not gone back to check it out.

First-of-Season (FOS) Sightings

FOS (for our yard) birds hanging about during my inspection tour included an orange-crowned warbler and a couple of house wrens. Over-flying were FOS for our yard: cattle egret, little blue heron.

Yesterday's FOS birds for our yard: ruby-throated hummingbird, Myrtle warbler.

For fans of touch screens, from Slashdot.org:

$5 Sensor Turns LCD Monitors Into Touchscreens53

Posted by timothyon Friday April 26, 2013 @01:33PM
from the later-comes-the-voice-control dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from ExtremeTech: "Researchers at the University of Washington's aptly named Ubiquitous Computing Lab can turn any LCD monitor in your house into a touchscreen, with nothing more than a $5 sensor that plugs into the wall and some clever software."  The system works by measuring changes that your hand creates in the electromagnetic signature of the monitor. Surprisingly, it offers some pretty fine-grained detection, too: "full-hand touch, five-finger touch, hovering above the screen, pushing, and pulling." The "$5 sensor" part is mostly theoretical for now to those of us who don't live in a lab, though; on the other hand, "co-author Sidhant Gupta tells Technology Review that the $5 sensor uses off-the-shelf parts, and the algorithms are included in the paper, so it would be fairly easy for you — or a commercial entity — to recreate the uTouch system."

There is more than one way to skin a cat! (Added 5/2/2013)

TypePad is being cruel by losing the comments that I've tried to post. Thrice!

Kay--I would come nearer to believing you had you written, "...I'm pretty unassuming about my own technical skills."

Rain--Thanks! I had forgotten about that photo (cropped from a group photo) until scrounging around in my digital files for a photo of Hunky Husband to use on a flyer concerning a disaster training institute at which HH will be teaching for two days (two courses).

I have "essential tremors" (don't know  how they compare/relate to "familial") which is one of the reasons I don't use/like the little buttons on my SmartPhone. I use the touch screen on the phone most of the time, for most input. HH just bought a new SmartPhone that, unlike his old one (like mine), has only the touchscreen for input. He misses the buttons. I doubt that I would on a phone; but, in a larger screen format, I might prefer the buttons. Who knows? I might giggle myself to death because the screen reminds me of the "idiot screens" used at food service establishments these days. It's hard to take touch screens as serious computing.

EXCEPT: It occurs to me that I used a version of a screen with a wand as early as 1983 in working on a classified aerospace project. That was serious enough! I'm not sure, but I think that the wand may have emitted a light beam onto the screen when the wand was pressed against the screen, rather than the screen's being touch sensitive.

 

Need a soothing interlude?

With the compliments of NASA comes this video of the sun spinning, accompanied by soothing music. (Found through Slashdot.org.)

If you are inclined toward watching whole episodes of TV programming online, please note the addition of The Universe (TV Series): Season 1, a play list, to the "For Enlightenment" typelist in the left hand sidebar.

Poor birds

Previously, we've "discussed" how the bountiful snow (well, bountiful for around here) that fell on March 25 (see Photos) affected the birds. I pontificated that, "The birds are equipped to cope, for the most part; but, snowy weather makes it easy to gather a goodly crowd at our feeders." Freezing rain is another matter. Here are the words that another birder posted to the Kansas bird list (published online and maintained by Kansas State University - I subscribe to email delivery), yesterday.

"This morning I had to rescue two of our purple martins who had become stuck to their metal house by the tips of their wings and tails because of the frozen rain we had last night.  I freaked them out when my husband lifted me up to their house with the tractor bucket. The female lost a couple tail feathers and managed to get herself unstuck.  The male was more quiet and allowed me to pull the tip of his wing loose from the porch of the house.  He was stuck pretty good. 

"They are all fine now but cold."

Another birder had replied:

"Kinda like sticking your tongue on a frozen ice tray I suppose.  Very tired of this strange weather."

Yet a third birder wrote about a bird in Manhattan KS (about 150 miles NE of here):

"Two minutes ago I saw an ill-timed Blue-gray Gnatcatcher outside my office window in Manhattan. Poor little guy was hopping around like crazy, probably trying to warm himself, wondering where the heck all the gnats are.  I don’t like his prospects for survival the next 24-36 hours.  He didn’t look particularly plump like he could go on an extended fast.

"I love snow.  In December, January and February.  Not so much on April 23."

The weather channel, last evening, presented the data for March 2012 versus March 2013, here in Kansas. In 2012, average temperature (whatever that means) was 46+ degrees; in 2013, 32+ degrees. Average of all years is about 34 degrees; so, this year was actually closer to "normal" than was last year. Last year produced the warmest year in 120 years, here.

In March of 1967, we moved back to the Wichita area from the Seattle area. The day on which we drove into Derby (the 8th), the temperature hit a low of 0 degrees (Fahrenheit), as reported at McConnell AFB about three miles north of Derby. On the 11th, the temperature hit a high of 88 degrees. That is what I call "strange" weather.

Addition of a few hours later:

I saw a blue-grey gnatcatcher in our back yard - first of the season. Obviously, it's not likely to have been the little bird from Manhattan; but, at least one blue-grey made it through the 25-degree temperature of last night.

Wise words

In a comment to a posting by Rain, "view from yesterday", la perigrina (of Santiago Dreaming) included a quote from Robert F Kennedy.

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is [sic] love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country."

Especially considering current news reports, we surely could benefit from following the late Sen Kennedy's wise words.

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The entire paragraph, from Robert F. Kennedy: The Dream Lives, follows:

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need
in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States
is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion
toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still
suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago:
to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of the world."
Robert F. Kennedy

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My paternal grandmother would have been 129, today. Although she died in 1978, I still miss her - one of the gentlest souls I've ever known.

 

Ask an Atheist Day

Secular groups are designating today as Ask an Atheist Day to encourage respectful, polite conversations with people of all beliefs.

P.S. Compassionate Atheists have set up a fund to aid victims of the Boston tragedy. For more information: Atheists Giving Aid.

Addition of a few hours later:

An email from Stu has just been opened which contains a link to Big Bang Didn't Need God, Stephen Hawking Says. Thanks, Stu!

Technical postings from Slashdot.org

Crowdsourced Effort May Have Found Soviet Mars Mission's Remains11

Posted by timothyon Saturday April 13, @07:20AM
from the crispy-on-the-outside dept.

A story at Slashgear says that the remains of a Soviet mission to Mars may have been spotted — on Mars — by enthusiasts poring over old photos taken by a NASA orbiter. The article points out that the find must be confirmed by further imaging, but matches the seekers' expectations. From the article: "The community at VK.com/Curiosity_Live crowdsourced a mission to find the Soviet Union’s long-lost Mars 3 spacecraft, with the site’s leader, Vitali Egorov of St. Petersburg, Russia, creating models of what hardware from the spacecraft should look like. With this reference, the community combed through a large image taken five years ago by NASA’s MRO, identifying what is believed to be the craft’s parachute, lander, terminal retrorocket, and heat shield."

 

Stephen Hawking Warns Against Confining Ourselves To Earth165

Posted by Soulskillon Saturday April 13, @09:30AM
from the universe-won't-mourn-a-mote-of-dust dept.

alancronin writes with this excerpt from CNet:"Stephen Hawking, one of the world's greatest physicists and cosmologists, is once again warning his fellow humans that our extinction is on the horizon unless we figure out a way to live in space. Not known for conspiracy theories, Hawking's rationale is that the Earth is far too delicate a planet to continue to withstand the barrage of human battering. 'We must continue to go into space for humanity,' Hawking said today, according to the Los Angeles Times. 'We won't survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet.'"

 

Ask Slashdot: What Should Happen To Your Data After You Die?111

Posted by Soulskillon Friday April 12, @05:17PM
from the it-is-your-solemn-duty-to-clear-your-departed-best-friend's-browsing-history dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Death is Nature's way of telling you it's time to get off the Internet. But when you finally shuffle off this mortal coil, you leave something behind: all your email and other digital assets. That's a huge problem not only for the deceased — once you're on the wrong side of the Great Beyond, there's no way to delete those incriminating messages — but also any relatives who might want to access your (former) life. And it's a problem Google's seeking to solve with the new Inactive Account Manager. (In an April 11 blog posting, Google product manager Andreas Tuerk suggested that Inactive Account Manager wasn't a 'great name' for the product, but maybe the company shouldn't be so hard on itself: it's a way better name than, say, Google Death Dashboard.) Inactive Account Manager will delete your Google-related data (Gmail, etc.) after a set amount of time, or else send that data to 'trusted contacts' you set up before your untimely demise. Which raises an interesting, semi-Google-related question: What do you want to have happen to your data after you die? Give it to loved ones, or have an automated system nuke it all? Should more companies that host email and data offer plans like Inactive Account Manager?"

 

From the third (last) article, "...Google product manager Andreas Tuerk suggested that Inactive Account Manager wasn't a 'great name' for the product, but maybe the company shouldn't be so hard on itself: it's a way better name than, say, Google Death Dashboard."

I disagree. I think that "Google Death Dashboard" has a certain flair!

Buffy should expect - Beautiful ICE!

Buffy wrote, in a comment on Bogie's blog, "We tend to get the same severe weather that moves east from Cop Car's area." Thus, I want to show her what she is expecting.

Driving home, this afternoon, was like driving through a fairy land - still, at 3:00pm, the vegetation was coated with a layer of ice. Some of the trees/shrubs have purple buds, some have full-blown white florettes, and others have various colors. The layer of ice (which I could not see this morning because the sun had not yet arisen when I left home) gave everything a pastel look - a look that Monet would have struggled to convey. The wonder is that so much of the ice made it through the day. The ground is warm and the ambient air temperature has been around 28 degrees all day.

I'll let Bogie tell the story of the last two photos.

Listen to the Big Bang

From Slashdot.org, I learned of a posting on a University of Washington webpage that included the above-embedded simulation of the sound of the Big Bang, and the following text.

______________________

April 4, 2013

Listening to the Big Bang – in high fidelity (audio)

 By Vince Stricherz         

News and Information

A decade ago, spurred by a question for a fifth-grade science project, University of Washington physicist John Cramer devised an audio recreation of the Big Bang that started our universe nearly 14 billion years ago.

....

As the universe cooled and expanded, it stretched the wavelengths to create “more of a bass instrument,” Cramer said. The sound gets lower as the wavelengths are stretched farther, and at first it gets louder but then gradually fades. The sound was, in fact, so “bass” that he had to boost the frequency 100 septillion times (that’s a 100 followed by 24 more zeroes) just to get the recordings into a range where they can be heard by humans.

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For those who read the comments along the way:

dubstep 

Web definitions Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music. Its overall sound has been described as "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubstep