Document Destruction - 19 April 2024

I still get a lot of paper documents and statements in the postal mail.  I know enough about email that I do not trust it for reliable delivery, but that is a topic for another screed.  I get regular notices of attempts to "recover" my password that I did not request.  Security - actually computer insecurity - is a real thing.  With all the hacks and breaks in the world, it is still important to clean up your paper trail.  Here is my suggestion.

I start with a paper shredder.  I used to use a strip shredder that produce long strips from the sheets fed into the top.  This was OK, but newer shredders are "crosscut", and they produce "chips" of paper that are far harder to reassemble.  Go for a crosscut shredder; strip shredders are obsolete.

Many years ago, it was sufficient to simply dispose of the shredded strips in the garbage, but this is easily improved (in a defensive cannot-reassemble sense).  I started mixing the shredded paper in with the used cat litter.  I would dump the cat litter into paper grocery bags and put the shredded paper on the bottom.  This may not stop someone from reassembling your shreds, but it will certainly make it unpleasant for them.  If you lack cat litter, coffee grounds will work well as a mixer.

This worked well for a long time, but I have two further improvements to offer.

As a base protocol, I shred anything that has personal information on it, especially anything that has an account number or other ID on it.  However, this helps a reassembler because they have some guarantee that they are spending their time and effort to assemble something of value.  They can even focus on areas and shredded bits that have, say, numbers in the hope that the number will prove to be the account number.  Do not give them any hints.  A simple and effective improvement is to shred a lot of stuff that is generic or not sensitive.  First, shred the envelopes that the documents come in.  Second, shred all the supplementary informaton in the envelope - privacy notices, advertisements, and the like - after you take it out of the envelope.  The shredders tend to clump pages as part of the shredding process, so take things out of the envelopes to disassociate them.  Expanding this, shred nonsensitive information:  junk mail.  This increases the bulk, making it harder to find the good stuff.  Further, it confuses the reassembler because they have far more material to select from.  

The last improvement is probably the most effective.  Compost the shreddings.  I mix my shreds with coffee grounds.  Use your home grounds and augment the bulk with used coffee grounds in bulk from your local coffee shop.  They will be happy to provide you with the day's bag of used grounds.  The used grounds may contain a few paper filters, but they will break down, too.  Mixing shredded paper and coffee grounds in roughly equal parts is a good mix for your compost pile.  I think the coffee grounds qualify as "green" and the paper as "brown".  If you have read much about compost piles, you will recognize that green-brown blending accelerates the compost action.  Be sure to moisten everything to get the pile cooking.  In the short term, the wetted coffee will stain all the paper brown, making it much less legible.  In the long term, you will have dirt for your garden, dirt that cannot be reassembled into anything.  You can add any vegetable or yard trimmings that you wish to your compost.  There are particular warnings against using certain weeds in home composting, and I would strongly recommend against using animal waste of any kind in a garden compost pile - no dairy, no meats, no bones, no grease, and no animal waste.

In summary, the shredded paper and coffee grounds will create a soil amendment that is totally secure and cannot be reassembled or read.  Even the composting process obliterates much of the information on the shreds, so this is pretty good security for a homeowner.

As usual with any security process or advice, adapt this to your particular circumstances.  If you oversee a lot of wealth, this advice may not be sufficient for you.  If you oversee nominal or minimal wealth, this is a low-cost, low-effort way to protect your personal information.

Eclipsis Ipsa - 8 April 2024

Astronomy is the Sport of Optimists in the PNW. 

Twas a bit of a disappointment in Seattle today.  It was supposed to be the day of the great North American Eclipse of 2024, but we had two things going against us.  First, it was overcast and raining.  I know this comes as a surprise given the general climate in Seattle, but we had some sunny days this past week and will have a few more this coming week, but not today.  Second, we were only in the 10-20% band, so the eclipse, had it been visible, would have been a small notch in the bottom of the disc of the sun.  Not a terribly memorable visual and not much of an impact on the overall solar illumination.

As a small consolation, have some chocolate-covered gummi bears.

10km ebike ride to awaken the limbs - 16 February 2024

After weeks of rain, a day of snow, and overnight frosts, I grabbed a partly sunny day to unwind my limbs and refresh the e-bike.  I just puddled around the neighborhood for 6.2 miles, up and down and around.  It was a bit on the cold side, 47F, but I was able to wrap up.  The main "save" was the pair of gloves that I wore.  My fingers get cold after the frostbite session on that China trip.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/sgey47DQpqEUi76HA

Books I Read in 2023 (sez Kindle) - 7 January 2024

Reading books had fallen off my list.  I was reading lots on the Internet and lots of magazine articles, but had rather dropped books.  This was not a particular plan, but I have long been a reader but I dropped significantly.  When COVID hit, it got even worse, worse to the point that it worried me.  Somehow, I was viewing reading as a Bad Thing, a Poor Way To Spend Time.  I will blame a boring, unrewarding job and the isolation of COVID (which are probably proxies for something deeper).  

In response, I resolved to read more.  I used the innate accounting of Kindle to keep track and I pretty much gave up on paper books.  Some would say I am behind the curve, but I have always liked the physical sense of holding a book and turning the pages, so moving to a Kindle was quite a revolution for me.

So to recap 2023, Kindle says I set a goal of 30 books (I did), of which I read 48.  Not bad.  As of 7 Jan 2024, I have read for 90 weeks in a row ( 17 April 2022 - 6 Jan 2023, inclusive) and have a continuous daily reading streak of 154 days.  I object to the 154 days because of the way that I believe that Kindle works.  I could complain to Amazon and suggest they add a feature to give readers a way to edit the days-read statistics, but it is simply not worth the effort to them or to me.  My complaint about Kindle comes from my experience as a traveler.

My experience suggests that Kindle only counts days-read when you are in WiFi or cellular contact.  If you are out of contact, it does not matter how much or when you read, Kindle does not count it.  There are a couple of 1-2 day gaps in my record as kept by Kindle, and these happen to be travel days, days when we were out of the US and out of WiFi range.  Furthermore, I am not convinced Kindle handles time zones correctly, a sort of Kindle jet lag, but I do not have very much experimental data on that claim; the no-WiFi-no-cellular bug is more obvious.  As a result of Kindle's behavior, I claim my reading-days streak is much longer than Kindle reports.  So be it.  I will work on the weeks-read streak because it is unlikely I will be out of WiFi or cellular service for an entire week.

List of books I finished in 2023:

1. Hide, Tracy Clark
2. Number Go Up, Zeke Faux,
3. The Spy Coast, Tess Gerritsen
4. The Crossing (Bosch Legacy), Michael Connelley
5. The Burning Room, Michael Connelley
6. Black River, Matthew Spencer
7. Slow time Between the Stars, John Scalzi
8. Just out of Jupiter's Reach Nnedi Okorafor
9. The Long Game, Ann Leckie
10. Falling Bodies, Rebecca Roanhorse
11. Void, Veronica Roth
12. How it Unfolds, James S.A. Corey
13. Lookin gGlass, Andrew Mayne
14. slow Horses, Mick Herron
15. Agent to the Stars, John Scalzi
16. Stargazer, Anne Hillerman
17. Spider Woman's Daughter, Anne Hillerman
18. Eternity, Greg Bear
19. Eon, Greg Bear
20. The Reversal, Michael Connelly
21. The Brass Verdict, Michael Connelly
22. The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly
23. Sharpe's Revenge, Bernard Cornwell
24. Sharpe's Rifles, Bernard Cornwell,
25. Going To The Sun
26. the Black Box, Michael Connelly
27. Desert Star, Michael Connelly
28. Noumenon
29. Dark Sacred Night, Michael Connelly
30. Quantum, Patricia Cornwell
31. Fields of Fire, Marko Kloos
32. The Overlook, Michael Connelly
33. Kaiju Preservation Society, John Scalzi
34. The Drop, Michael /connelly
35. Abadoon's Gate, James S.A. Corey
36. 9 Dragons, Michael Connelly
37. Caliban's War, James S.A. Corey
38. Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey
39. Red Moon, Kim Stanley Robinson,
40. Murder Theory, Andrew Mayne
41. Under Enemy Colors, S. Thomas Russell
42. Echo Park, Michael Connelly
43. The Closers, Michael Connelly
44. The Narrows, Michael Connelly
45. Lost Light, Michael Connelly
46. City of Bones, Michael Connelly
47. Bandwidth, Eliot Peper

Annular Eclipse - 14 Oct 2023

Swinging across North America today is an annular eclipse.  The path of the shadow enters the US west coast in Oregon and swoops southwest toward Texas.  Seattle is somewhere in the 80-90% range, yeilding a crescent partial eclipse.  If the weather were better, we might have gone southward to see it, but overcast and raining was the forcast, and that is what we got overnight with partial clearing in the morning.  Clearing enough to see some of the eclipse.

The photo shows the peak of the eclipse as projected onto our driveway.  The mechanics of this effect are complex.  The driveway is unusually reflective from the overnight rain.  There is a small maple tree in the copse of woods that produces an array of pinholes.  The same effect is not seen in other areas where only evergreens (trees with needles) or rhododendrons are growing.  Finally, one needs to be standing in just the right place to see the crescents.  When standing off to the side or too far back, one sees just a blur of light and no crescents.

Wormholes, psychadelic drugs, and a dryer - 16 July 2023

 Well, this looks interesting.   

July 17 at 9am ET, a new web-only series by Steven Soderbergh called Command-Z premieres in which Michael Cera leads a team using a wormhole in a washing machine to alter the present by traveling back in time.

https://extension765.com/blogs/soderblog/command-z

Greenland paddle from a tree, Step 1 - 19 January 2023

Birch trees, particularly silver birch, seem to be popular for landscaping in our area.   Unfortunately, they seem to have a short lifetime as trees go, something around 40-50 years in our area.  To be honest, I am not sure the particular trees I am talking about are silver birch, but that is my best guess.  About 40 years ago, the builder of our neighborhood put three birch trees in our back yard as specimen trees.  They formed a nice contrast against the dominant evergreens (cedar, fir, and a redwood or two - I think the redwood is a specimen tree, too, by the way), but the birches never really liked out winters.  At least, they were constantly shedding smaller branches, but the snowloads would bring down major parts of the tree. 

In a winter storm about five years ago (c. 2018), the two larger trees were snapped off.  One was badly damaged and I removed it, while the other was severly damaged and I was hoping it would recover.  Well, after four years, I decided it was not going to recover, that it was worsening to the point that it was threatening to fall on the house, so I took it down.

Most of the 40-foot-plus tree became bark mulch or firewood, but I kept a 12-foot section from the base of the tree.  My plan is to make a Greenland paddle from it.  With luck, I might even be able to get two paddles from it.  I hope to be able to get an 8-10-foot 8x8 out of the trunk that I can use for the paddles.

I started by leaving the trunk on sawhorses outside the garage.  While this was convenient and gave me free space in the garage (workshop), I think it greatly slowed the drying of the wood that is required to work it.  I used a small chainsaw to remove one side (hidden on the bottom in the photo) in a crude styling of an Alaskan sawmill, but that did not work well.  I finally decided my only option was to bring the log inside the protected space of the house - the unheated garage will keep the log out of the rain.

The log has been sitting in the garage for about two weeks, and it is already looking drier.  This could be wishful thinking; likely is wishful thinking.  As an experiment last night, I took an electric planer and started trying to remove the bark as a poor-man's jointer.  The chainsaw was faster but I think the planer produces much better results.  The resulting wood is prettier than I expected.  All the talk of Baltic birch brings plain grain to my mind, and this looks to be more interesting.  The interesting bit may be planed off in the end.  We shall see.

Unofficially, my moisture meter shows 34%.  I suspect this is optimistic as most of the readings are "off the charts" - too moist to measure.  I hope a few more weeks in the garage will show the needle moving in the right direction.

A Quiet Week - 1 January 2023

Tradition dictates that the last week of the calendar year is a quiet one, and 2022 has been no exception.  We spent some holiday time in Eugene, OR (source of the photo is Spencer Butte) after a delay due to an ice storm (freezing rain).  It was a quiet drive home and some quiet days since.  We did get miscellaneous wind storms that required clean up and a snowstorm that required a bit of shovel work, but nothing serious.

Along with the clean up from the windstorms, I have continued pruning.  Yesterday, I pruned Grandma's climbing rose by our back deck.  We took some cuttings from the original Grandma's rose at Keats Island, rooted them, and planted them by the back deck.  I say "planted" - it was barely more than sticking them in the ground.  The cuttings have happily taken to their new location and provide color in the spring.  I plan to build a rose arbor this year to allow them to better flaunt their colors.  The original rose at the cabin continues, having survived the trauma of construction and the repeated attacks of local deer.  It is now on an ad-hoc trellis that keeps the bulk of the plants above the reach of deer, so it is also quite happy.  The Keats trellis was very much a spur-of-the-moment design from lumber on-hand, so I am now in the mode of continuous repairs.  Last summer, I had to realign a couple timbers and re-screw them together.  I tried to find a recent photo of the trellis but I seem to have focused my photographic energies on other interests.  I will have to get out the large ladder to accomplish anything in 2023.

To anyone reading - Happy New Year!  May 2023 bring successes and peace.

It took me a couple minutes, 28 October 2022

Reading bumperstickers is an old hobby of mine.  I have been reading them for years.  I do not know why as most are pretty boring.  "My child is the honor student of the week", or someone's favorite politician, or "Wall Drugs".  So when I run across an interesting one, it is a secret pleasure.

In the parking lot of a nearby grocery store, an unusual bumpersticker was found.  It took me a few minutes to work it out, so I will delay the reveal to give you, dear reader, a chance to read the secret message.

Another odd hobby of mine is to read license plates.  Well, not merely read them, but interpret them.  Today, personalized license plates are common and "reading" a plate is a common game.  However, at one point, license plates were not personalized and they all seemed to use a single format:  AAA NNN, or three letters and three numbers.  I suspect this simple rule was the result of sample bias, but it held true for many years in my experience.  I used to interpret the AAA letters as computer instructions.  "BRA 565" became 'BRAnch", "BNE 354" became "Branch if Not Equal", "ADC 757" became "ADd with Carry", "LDA 324" became "LoaD Accumulator", and so.  Not all three-letter groups had actual instructions that correspond to anything I had seen or used, so part of the game was to make up instructions that fit.  A famous example would have been "HCF 523" for "Halt and Catch Fire".  A silly little game that kept me alert on many long highway trips.

In my first reading of the curious bumpersticker, I thought about convenient substitutions that might resolve into something, and that thought is partially right.  I finally realized the entire expression does not resolve into one thing, rather there are independent pieces that resolve into separate things that, in turn, combine into the meaning.  The key was to realize that there is nothing one can do to reduce the square root of minus one except i.  Yes, one could stick in Euler's formula (e^(i*pi)+1=0), but that is more complex rather than simpler.  So we have, potentially, three tokens and the middle one is "i".  (As an engineer, I might try to put in a j rather than an i, but let us put that aside.)  That leaves the E/c^2 and the PV/nR.

Well, the first E that comes to mind is Einstein's - E=mc^2.  This immediately reduces to mc^2/c^2, or m.  This give us "mi" plus a third token.

By inspection, it is clear the third token is a play on the ideal gas law: PV=nRT.  If you take the ideal gas law and rearrange it to put the P, V, n, and R terms on one side, we are left with T.

Our solution is: miT, normally written MIT, and that is consistent with the playful spirit of the puzzle.  Do you have an alternative solution?

Jibe 1 - sloppy use of cases, and an educated person would use formulae that have uppercase M and I.

Jibe 2 - a graduate of a proper engineering university would know that j is the correct terminology for imaginary numbers and this was clearly created by a mathematician rather than an engineer.