BeigeJournal

I wrote last month about a day spent wandering around Milwaukee with my camera. I have some photos scanned now.

I started on the Hank Aaron trail

The other side of the river has some less interesting sights:

and some more interesting buildings:

Plants can grow anywhere, from barbed wire

to pavement

Birds clearly perch on this tire on the riverside:

There are interesting things stored in the maintenance yards along the trail:

There is a Marquette athletic field with lights:

This is as far as I could go. The concrete on the right was once a rail line, I think. The water to the left is where the path is:

Along the way I saw some work in progress:

Some parts of the Milwaukee river are pretty, like this section with a kayaker, photographed from the 6th street viaduct:

Some areas are uglier:

There are some other interesting places, like this parking lot:

There is a roundabout at the end of the 6th street viaduct. It has a blinky arrow sign

Though it is strapped to a light pole, it was apparently easier to use a solar panel than to tap into the power grid:

I spent a few years in the electrical and computer engineering department. Can you tell?

I’m fascinated by the old outside fire escapes:

While I was on the 6th street viaduct photographing fire escapes, a train arrived at the Amtrak station:

I have some photos from DucKon.

Interesting t-shirts are found at cons. My own I’m blogging this shirt got a number of favorable comments. It was accurate….

Some people, of course, had tails to tell.

Do not let this man’s smiling demeanor fool you—approach his table and you will find yourself with much less money, but much more music, than you had before.

Bill Higgins and Mitch Burnside-Clapp, at the “Oh, I want to fly that!” program.

Eric Coleman, in concert.

Susan Urban and Sandy, in concert.

Becca and Chas, and

Andy, on fiddle, all of Riverfolk. He plays mandolin as well, of course. Did you know there was such a thing as a resonator mandolin? I didn’t.

Chas was singing Yellow Dog when this happened. This gentleman (who’s name I unfortunately do not know) reacts…strongly to some of the funny Riverfolk material.

The energetic Becca (Art suggests that we could solve our energy problems if we could only produce Becca In A Bottle) and equally-energetic Eloise, along with Filk Guest of Honor Steve Macdonald, dance to the music, with Richard looking on in the background and an oblivious Joyce (already ill with what we both are almost kind-of getting over now) in the foreground.

I am here to tell you that photographing giant electric sparks in darkness (without a tripod, yet) is hard. If you try enough times, you’ll get one with someone on the other side’s flash going off while your shutter is open:

Harsh light, kind of cool in a mad-scientist way. This was the GT folks destroying AOL CD-ROMs using a Tesla coil. It is not easily photographed, but it looked really cool.

I have an ordinary O-ring:

By holding it in on opposite sides and twisting,

we can cause it to adopt a kinked shape:

If your first thought is that this reminds you of cyclohexane in the chair conformation, then you might be a chemist.

Remember when fan fiction was just people writing homoerotic Mary Sue stories (or filk songs about them)? Now, with digital video, video effects and editing software, the Internet, and a large dose of Moore’s Law, we have sites like TheForce.net and their theater section. I’ve just looked at a few so far. I’d say that Death Star Repairmen and Duel of the Fakes are pretty hilarious.

[23:00: Even better, Brains and Steel, the big sword fight scene from The Princess Bride, done with light sabers.]

DucKon was this last weekend, in Lincolnwood, Illinois. This will be the first pass at a con report, another will come in a few weeks when I get the many slides I took back from the lab and scan some of them.

The filk was great, of course. The concerts were great. I missed the Friday night concerts due to our late arrival, but the open filk was great, as were the rest of the concerts. Riverfolk were great, as always. They’ve taken to performing Ookla the Mok’s Home, which they do very nicely. As others noted, it is easier to hear the words when Becca and Chas sing it. Susan Urban has an amazing collection of strange, spooky songs. I don’t think I’ve seen Sandy Andina before—she and Susan performed together, and did so very well. Naomi Pardue sang a somewhat eclectic assortment of songs. I’ve seen Eric Coleman at OVFF [must have been last year’s Duck], and he was his usual energetic self. Steve Macdonald, of course, is a spirited performer, and played for a packed room at his concert. He broke his G string during the concert. The old string was auctioned off later, and now my lover is the proud owner of Steve’s G-string. He broke the A string later, during the filk, but that’s just not as interesting.

The Sunday concerts were by Graham Leathers and by Rob Middleton. I’ve seen Graham before, but this was my first extended listening experience. I first heard Nantucket Sleigh Ride many years ago, and, at least once I learned who wrote it, it has been the song I associate with him, but he sings many other songs, as well, of course. I was not familiar with Rob, and I enjoyed his music.

People like hearing my flute, apparently. I always get some positive comments. Filkers are a welcoming bunch. It is particularly nice to hear encouragement from the sort of people who are invited to give concerts.

I also achieved a more important filking goal: I sang Kanefsky’s Right Stuff Rising, which is set to Mad Scientist Guest of Honor Mitch Burnside-Clapp’s Red Star Rising. I’d been hoping to do that ever since I heard Mitch was going to be there. Art, of course, sang his Red Star parody.

There was a Harry Potter theme filk Saturday night. Milwaukee’s Art Warneke has a few and Steve Macdonald has way too many. Eloise had a few that she didn’t actually know the tunes to, so she talked Susan Urban into singing one which she knew the tune for.

There was too much at the filks for me to report it all, or remember it all. Dave Alway read some poems. The ever-energetic Eloise sang a number of songs, in particular some by Blake Hodgetts, including A Habitrail Named Klein and Hot Point, Warm Heart. Phil Parker showed off his finger picking ability. Becca and Chas of Riverfolk played a bunch of songs. Susan Urban had more of the weird and creepy. The other Susan sang some songs. Jason had some death and depression for us. No Harry Potter songs, of course, because there’s not enough death there. Mitch sang some funny stuff. Andy Anda added fiddle and Mandolin for us. Barb and Carol got Richard to sing with them. He always seems a bit reluctant, though he has a great voice. Bill and Gretchen Roper sang a deeply hilarious song about, well, husbands screwing up (“You almost volatilized my kitchen!”).

If I left you out, that’s either because of sleep-deprivation or else I just haven’t a clue what your name is. We had a nice rendition of Lullaby For A Weary World from…someone. That came just before Art and I did…things…to Red Star Rising.

It’s always nice to see people in person. It’s good to have some connection with people beyond LiveJournal. I spent a good bit of time chatting with Eloise, which was very nice. She showed me lots of photos on the little screen on the back of her digital camera. I need one of those. The delay for mailing Fujichrome out for processing isn’t so bad if I’m usually the only viewer of the photos, but it would be nice to get things onto the web faster, let alone show them off right at the event.

Backrub parter Jason was good to see. Sweetie Kitten was there, back from her long trip to Alaska, along with the entire clan. We have a Milwaukee housefilk scheduled for next week, so I’ll be seeing some of the crowd again real soon.

The GT people set up a Tesla coil and destroyed AOL CDs with high-voltage. That was really cool. I did not attend build-a-blinky, but my girlfriend did. These blinkies, they keep getting higher-tech. In the old days, the world’s simplest timer circuit blinking a diode was good enough, now we have really tiny general-purpose digital computers blinking the diodes.

Thanks to all the hard-working people who make the event possible.

I went to General Mitchell International Airport to pick up my girlfriend upon her return from a trip to Louisiana. Her flight was delayed about a half hour by weather, so for the first time in a few years I actually parked and went into the terminal.

As part of my continuing series of used book store visits, I did stop in the Renaissance used book shop in the airport. As far as I know, it is relatively unusual to have a used book store in an airport, but we have one here. I only had a few minutes to spend there, but it does tend to fit the usual profile of lots of books, all over the place, though it’s a bit more organized-looking than some.

In the realm of political statements, there is a hot air hand dryer in one of the men’s rooms in the terminal with a sticker on the button that says, “Press here for a message from George W. Bush.”

Airports are big and complicated and full of people who are distracted and who have never been there before. They try really hard to put up informative signs, and I think they did reasonably well here. The biggest mystery was figuring out which direction to walk in to get to the terminal from the middle of the parking garage. The garage is an especially difficult case because due to the low ceiling with lots of structural beams plus the columns you just can’t see anything, including the signs, from any great distance.

I have finally attained my goal of eliminating incandescent lamps from my home. The only ones left are a few old flashlights, the new ones being LED; the Lava Lamp; the light in the microwave oven; and the light in the refrigerator, which doesn’t run very many hours, assuming that the light does indeed go off when the door is closed.

Home Depot sells spiral-tube CF lamps with the Commercial Electric brand name. The 14 watt version is tiny, smaller in most dimensions than a standard incandescent. Though the ingenuity of fixture designers to devise fixtures that just won’t fit any CF lamp is seemingly endless, these will fit just about anything, even the range hood and the small ceiling fixtures in the hall and bedroom closet. They are quite bright, roughly the equal of a generic 60 watt incandescent, as the manufacturer claims. They also sell a rather large 42 watt lamp that is quite bright, and some intermediate sizes. I do not yet have any long-term reliability data. I’ve had a few Commercial Electric CF flood lamps in use for a while, with one case of infant mortality. Unlike the fluorescent torchieres that have ballasts that you probably are not going to be able to replace, the CFs are reasonably cheap and are easy to replace, so occasional failures are far more tolerable. I also have a number of GE CFs that have been reliable thus far. Color temperature on all of these is on the low side, but not excessively so—the light is a bit yellow, but not orange. There is a 19 watt daylight color Commercial Electric spiral available that I have not tried.

All of these have rather low power factors of just over 0.5, according to my measurements. Residential customers, at least in the United States, are not generally charged for power factor, and the efficiency is so much greater than incandescents that current for equal light output is less even with the low power factor.

I have overall experienced extremely poor reliability from fluorescent torchiere lamps, but I have two in the living room that have lasted years, indeed, outlasted the original tubes. Usually, though, the magic smoke leaks out of the ballast within a few months, so I’m not going to be buying any more. There is an old table lamp with a compact fluorescent lamp in the living room as well, and a single-tube T12 fixture above the bookcases. This all totals 190 watts. The dining area now has a table lamp with CF and a cheap but reasonably good-looking floor lamp from Target with a tall, cylindrical shade covering three CF lamps. The two fixtures total 99 watts. The kitchen ceiling fixture was replaced with a fluorescent a few years ago, the over-sink fixture is an old and crappy fluorescent, and now I’ve found CF lamps small enough to fit the hood over the stove.

The bathroom is all fluorescent now, with CFs over the mirror and two Commercial Electric CF flood lamps in the ceiling fixtures over the tub and toilet. One of those replaces a heat lamp, which besides being expensive to run is not really desirable in the summer.

The computer room has an assortment of fixtures. One very cheap Target torchiere-style floor lamp meant for a standard incandescent but equipped with a CF. One CF flood pointed up from a can fixture. A magnifying glass with circular lamp surrounding the lens serves also as general lighting. A fluorescent desk lamp adds extra light. An old fixture, once alarming orange, now spray-painted white, with a large frosted glass dome, looking slightly like a water tower, holds another CF. The glass cover is entirely closed, making this a rather hostile temperature environment for the ballast of this over-20-watt lamp, but the GE CF in there has lasted years nonetheless. 94 watts total for the room.

The last room to go fluorescent was the bedroom, formerly lit with a 300 watt torchiere. It now has a 42 watt spiral-tube CF in an old table lamp that I’m planning to replace with something a bit nicer-looking, and, most importantly, with a white rather than yellowish shade, and a cheap Target torchiere-plus-side-mounted-light, with a 42 watt CF on top and a 14 watt on the side. Although the top shade looks pretty big, it isn’t tall enough to fully conceal the big, high-power CF. The flexible goose-neck on the side for the extra light is a bit on the flimsy side, too, though it will do. 89 watts for now, but a third fixture with a low power lamp, probably 14 watts, may get added to the set eventually, if I decide I want more light. The X10 arrangement still isn’t final. I have another wireless remote on order from Smarthome, which I think will be all I need. I’ll probably spend more time in there now that the lighting is more efficient.

The hallway light, which does get significant use, is now a 14 watt spiral CF, as is the walk-in closet, even though it doesn’t get much use. The CF lamps, they are cheap these days.

When shopping for light fixtures it always amazes me that virtually nothing is available that shows any sign of fluorescent awareness other than the fluorescent ceiling fixtures, many of which are quite ugly and of very poor quality, though some are not bad. In the commercial world we see better fixtures. My place of employment has very nice ceiling fixtures, in a number of styles, in the new building. As far as portable fixtures go, there exist fluorescent torchieres, usually hard to find and in my experience all too often very short-lived; some fluorescent desk lights, mostly of very poor quality; and anything that can accommodate a compact fluorescent well does so by accident. CFs have been around for many years, and in general are longer than incandescents and are wider near the base, where the ballast is. Accommodating them is not hard, but lamp harps are usually narrow at the base, often interfering with the ballast, and any fixture long enough that a longer, higher-power CF doesn’t stick out the end was probably not designed to be long enough for a CF but rather is simply so large, for stylistic reasons, that a dog could hide in there, and so too, quite by accident, can a CF lamp. One would think that by now someone would be making fixtures specifically designed to accommodate even the bulkiest of compact fluorescents with ease and advertising this feature, but if anyone is, I don’t know about it.

I’m also amazed at how little thought is generally given to the problem of getting light from the bulb out of the fixture and into the room. Quite often where you might expect to find a polished reflector you find flat dark paint. Surfaces you’d expect to be translucent are semi- or completely opaque. Efficiency, clearly, is not considered important, or even considered at all.

While eating on Memorial day at Bluemound Gardens, we noticed that they offer a drink of, I suppose, filk potential:

Tullamore Dew Double Dew
Tullamore Dew and Mountain Dew. Dew both in a glass and see what it does for you.