Author Archives: Thor

Know-How for Whom?

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The QSL postcard sent through the postal service is the mechanism used by ham radio operators to confirm their over-the-air radio contacts. This is my dad’s QSL card for his Idaho station.

As an electrical engineer I learned that “all digital devices comprise analog components”.  This has remained true even as quantum effects are now being utilized in computational logic gates (they are defined by analog wave functions).

Radio waves, especially those used by amateur radio operators, are analog signals transmitted and received by oddly shaped and configured pieces of conducting metal parts known as “antennas”.  And the techniques to couple a useful signal to them are part of the arcane art and science of amateur radio.  The sharing of this knowledge is a big part of the ham radio community ethos. 

So I should not have been surprised to receive an email asking for help with “s-meter calibration” of an antenna.  It was addressed to my dad, who died in 2016, but whose email address has been set to forward everything to me.  I get occasional messages from this account, but with diminishing frequency, and usually from some company or service he had subscribed to, but for which there was no “unsubscribe”.  In this case however, it was from one of his fellow ham radio acquaintances looking for advice.

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Thor and Poldi’s Eclipse Reprise- the invitation

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Approaching totality at the Snake River

In 2017 we hosted a gathering of friends at a campground in Idaho to observe a spectacular total solar eclipse.  Seven years later, the sun and moon will once again align over the US, and we have reserved a small section of Texas, 500 meters from the eclipse centerline, to observe it, hoping to repeat that earlier wonderful experience.  

Many of the original eclipse revelers are planning to join us again, but there are some remaining campground openings.  If you are intrigued by the possibility of witnessing a total solar eclipse, please review my original invitation, descriptions, and links below, especially the update that includes the costs of the accommodations.  If you think you’d like to join our eclectic group of eclipse chasers, let me know.  Otherwise, you may want to plan for the next total eclipse in the US… in 2044.

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Field Trip: Harvard Biology Labs

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A panorama of Harvard’s Biology Laboratories building, distorted by the wide angle view (click to enlarge, then click again to see animal frieze details).

I wrote earlier about the unique entrance to Harvard’s Biological Laboratories building, which today is home to the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.  My grandfather, who studied in the then state-of-the-art laboratories shortly after being built in 1931, had taken a photograph in the entry of the building.  I found it to be a beautiful image that captured the novel decorations on the doors and their shadows cast onto the marble floor.  I wanted to see and experience this space.

The opportunity presented itself when Poldi’s “Italian sister” Rossella decided to visit while Poldi was in New York– she also expressed interest in seeing Boston, a few hours away.  I invited myself to join their mini-fall tour of New England and they humored me by helping locate the Biology Labs building on the Harvard campus.  It was as distinctive as I had imagined.

The exterior of the building is adorned with animal friezes designed by Katherine Lane Weems, pneumatically carved into the crest of the brick façade.  It is a large building and the animals overhead command your attention until you notice the life-sized rhinoceroses at ground level, also created by the young artist, and which have become mascots (“Victoria” and “Bessie”) for the Harvard biology community. 

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One Cup of Coffee

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I recall visiting my grandmother and noticing a large coffee cup that stood apart from the rest. I learned that this was a cup that was reserved for use by her father (my great-grandfather) when he came by to visit each week. She would make coffee and they would update each other on family news.

My great-grandfather was an immigrant from Sweden with a strong work ethic and a clear set of moral principles. Among them was that one shouldn’t live to excess, so he allowed himself only a single cup of coffee. With this restriction, a normal cup of coffee wouldn’t last long enough to be done visiting his daughter. She solved this by obtaining a very large cup for him to use whenever he stopped by.

Evidently, this story was so good that Poldi remembered me telling it to her years ago when I inherited that heirloom. When she encountered a similarly sized cup with my sunflower “totem”, she acquired it and presented it to me as a birthday gift. Well, I don’t have the same restriction for coffee consumption, but I will now be able to say that I had only one cup of coffee in the morning.

Late Life Love– continued

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Inside the Wirth Picnic Pavilion with friends and family

Six months ago I posted an item that described my transformation from being a marriage skeptic to being a proponent, while my partner had experienced the reverse conversion.

Regardless of any marriage decision, we made plans to host an anniversary party. Ten years had passed since our “(happily ever) After Party” and our commitment ceremony, and we thought it would be fun to have everyone back to celebrate life, love, and a decade of wonderful experiences, with our family and friends.

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Zoom me up, Scotty

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Who are these people, and why are they jumping out of hyperspace?

This is a computed image. It started as a snapshot of a group at a lunchroom table. There was nothing particularly significant about it except as a record of a pleasant reunion of this group of old friends. And like many such shots of a group at a long table, it is hard to get them all in the frame and to represent each member in a photogenic pose. In particular, the persons at the far end of the table are lost in the distance. It is particularly noticeable with wide-angle lenses, the default for phone cameras.

My test image, a scene shot using a wide angle lens of a group at a table.  Photo courtesy Fred Nourbakhsh.

I wondered if I could re-image this scene so that the people are more equally sized, the furthest members are not so small, and the closest not so big.  This is what would naturally occur if the photographer used a longer focal length lens and stood further back. This is an account of what I learned.

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Death Valley Post Script

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Mount Whitney greets the morning sun.

Lone Pine is a gateway to the tallest mountain in the contiguous US, Mount Whitney. Along the route to Whitney Portal, one encounters the unusual rock formations known as Alabama Hills. They are not in Alabama, and I’m not sure I would call them hills, but they are a photogenic setting for Hollywood filmmakers shooting Westerns. The movie business has become part of the economy of Lone Pine, and the route into Alabama Hills is called “Movie Road”.

For the second day in a row, we found ourselves out in the dark waiting for sunrise. It was cold at this elevation of 5000 ft, and we had to shelter ourselves from a blustery wind, but the sun came up as scheduled, and we were treated to another stunning visual display of morning light and shadow.

It was a beautiful way to start a travel day; we now needed to get back on the road to catch a plane home.

Alabama Hills at sunrise

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Death Valley Finale

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Sunrise at Mesquite Dunes

Alarm at 5:00. Poldi made coffee and we headed to the dunes for sunrise. We returned to the place we had found the previous night speculating where they might be illuminated at dawn. But now it was dark, and our hike was by “dead reckoning“. We couldn’t see them, and we hadn’t scouted them using GPS, so we just headed down the wash in the approximate direction. As we got closer, we could make them out in the gradually increasing twilight.

I wanted to capture the light on the dunes in a time lapse, so I set up the camera and tripod on the sand mound we had just climbed, and started the image capture sequence. I will have to make changes to the camera settings as daybreak approached, but there was now time to sit at the top of the dune next to Poldi, share the coffee, and watch the magic of sunrise as it brought light and color to a new day.

We could make out distant small figures on the dunes– like ants climbing a hill. Several groups would make their way along the dune crest lines, visiting each peak along the contours of sand. Eventually the sun burst over the mountain range to the east, and the sinuous shadows of the sand made a sharp contrast with the now sunlit crests. This was the visual reward for our early morning efforts. It was stunning.

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The Quest for Pupfish

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The Devil’s Hole Pupfish has had a challenging past, and is on the endangered species list.

Our hike today was up Golden Canyon.  We thought we were early, but on reaching the trailhead, the parking had overflowed to the shoulders of the highway.  We had arrived just as a large ranger-led group was heading up the canyon.  It didn’t take long to catch up, and then join them as the ranger explained the geology we were walking through.

Among the things we learned was the evolutionary history of a small fish that lived in the prehistoric lake ecosystem that had once thrived here.  As the lake diminished to become multiple smaller isolated lakes, the fish evolved separately, resulting in distinct species.  They are still found in remote locations in and around the park, and in fact can be seen at a wilderness preserve not far from here!

This fascinated Poldi, who had already read about the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge and she immediately revised our plans for the day.  We completed the hike to our “halfway point” up Golden Canyon (to the magnificent Red Cathedral), then hastily returned to the car and headed to Ash Meadows, a wildlife refuge just east of Death Valley.

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