When I walked into the balmy conservatory from the brisk air of Highland Park in autumn, a weather system developed. I became a cold front and waves of fog rose from my chest as the coolness from my sweater sought equilibrium with the warm, humid air of the conservatory.
Some fotos from Highland Park and the Conservatory (go to my recent fotos stream to view larger images):
I’ve made a few posts about my gas consumption, i.e. I washed my car the other day, oh boy! and Gas Mileage (a comparison between my 1990 Jeep Cherokee and my 2006 Ford Escape), topics that everyone is concerned with, but posts that I imagine few find interesting. Nevertheless, here is an interesting(?) update.
Fig 1. Red dots show data from the previous examination, blue dots show recently updated data. The solid green lines are fits to the two data sets. Significant deviations are annotated, curiously, I’ve failed to annotate the three weeks I spent in Europe and Africa. It would seem that I have held fast to my desire to reduce unnecessary driving. I’ve reasoned that I need an average minimum of 16 miles per day, the trend in the old data was 32 miles per day. The new trend suggests that I am now averaging 23 miles per day. My vehicle gets about 23 miles per gallon, so I spend an average of $2.72 a day on gas (see Fig 2). That’s nearly $1000 a year, or an large LCD HDTV.
Fig 2. Red dots show data from the previous examination, blue dots show recently updated data. The solid green line is a periodic sine wave with a period of one year, the mean price of gas is found to be $2.72 per gallon.As an alternative, I’ve been considering taking the bus to school, it cuts out a significant portion of my necessary driving, about 12 miles per day, but adds an hour to my traditionally 15 minute one-way commute. The bus pass is $50 a month, so $600 a year. Total personal savings, $400 a year.
But now consider the additional time: two hours total for every day I go to school, if I have to go four days of the week, and there are ten weeks in a quarter, and three quarters a year, I will have to justify at minimum of 240 hours per year lost to commute. In wages, during my commute, I am making myself $1.67 per hour, versus ~$16-18 per hour of real work. But then the environment, higher gas prices, and the pleasure that the solitary hour bus ride where I need not think about any thing in particular can provide.
Decisions are the worst.
The RIT’s Bevier Gallery has an interactive exhibition of pop-up books from David A. Carter, Kyle Olmon, and Chuck Fisher. There are samples portrayed as art, i.e. fixed on the wall, along with commercially available works, works-in-progress, and–the best part, in my opinion–larger-than-life mock, unfortunately blank, pages that demonstrate the mechanics of some basic pop-up patterns. Some of the creations are mind-boggling and complex, and yet juxtaposed with benign children’s stories. In some works, the narrative and the pop-up design must have been simultaneously developed, as in Carter’s Blue Two (a page of which is seen in the image above). The exhibit is a must see, if only for the excuse to look and play with a bunch of children’s pop-up books.
Swallowing a button battery is a potentially hazardous affair. A battery trapped in the esophagus is especially dangerous because your digestive acids react to the electric current to create an alkali, which will cause chemical burns in your innards. What do you do if you swallow a button battery and it isn’t lodged in your esophagus?
Watch the stools until the battery has passed. Clean the battery, tape it to a card or wrap it carefully, and mail it to:
National Capital Poison Center (source)
Why am I talking about this? I am doing research. I have been forced to attend Teaching Assistant Training and, so far, it is the most mind-numbing experience I’ve had in a long time. For example, during one presentation on how to create an inviting environment, the presenter spoke to us in the most patronizing manner possible and interspersed her sentences with trite idioms and forced self-depreciating humor.
Such a drastically inane event requires a powerfully drastic measure to supply an adequate excuse to bail. I don’t think I’ll be swallowing a battery though. Back to the drawing board.
I attended the Rochester Flickr Group Meet tonight. There was a large turnout, I’ve never seen so many large–and small, but mostly large–cameras. Another member had suggested we bring a framed print that we could each draw for at random. This is what encouraged me to participate. I brought a print of an astro-photograph I made while I was at a mountain observatory in Chile a few years back. I was very happy when the recipient of my image said awesome as he opened it.
I received a picture of the railroad bridge at Letchworth State Park. The image I received, however, is unique because it is not the same composition seen in this Google Image search (this widespread composition is due to one particular vantage point provided by the park designer(s); such an interesting byproduct). I remembered the location immediately from one of my first visits to Letchworth State Park. Seeing it made me miss my old white Jeep Cherokee, which–incidentally–was the same make, model, and color as the official park vehicles. Funny thing, these memories.