Hyper-Intelligent Blue

Twenty years ago, I had a difficult choice to make.

You had just been born moments before.  You were beautiful and tiny.  But the doctor said you were, maybe, having some trouble breathing.  So they prepared to take you out of the delivery room for observation.  They said I could come with you, leaving your mother behind.

She was obviously exhausted, sad, and terrified by the idea that her baby may be in trouble.  How could I possibly leave her alone?  “Go with him” she said.  And it was true, the choice was clear.  You were only a tiny baby, and this was your first hour on Earth.  I was your father and I needed to look after you.  So, I went with you to the observation room, and watched with wonder as you took some of your first glimpses at the world around you.

As it turned out, you were just fine.  The breathing issue cleared up, and you came home with us at the usual time.  Before we knew it, you were growing up.

Now, it is twenty years later, and I have another difficult choice to make.

You are graduating from the Army’s basic training and advanced individual training (AIT) for the Military Police.  You had many challenges along the way.  You worked so hard to get where you are and we are so very proud of you.  We really should be there.

But now, for different reasons, your mother is obviously exhaused.  She is sad, and terrified by the idea that her body may be in trouble.  How could I possibly leave her alone?  “Go with him” she said.

But this time, I did not.  Before, you were just a tiny baby.  But now, you are grown.  You are a mature, intelligent, strong and moral young man.  You are a soldier and an MP.  You no longer need us to look after you, altho we still will.  This time we know.  You are going to be just fine.

My name is Tom Zielund and I believe in the power of democracy.  I’m not running for office, but I will be voting.

When I was in second grade, I remember quite clearly one day in reading class.  I had been working on an assignment and came across a word I didn’t recognize. I went up to the teacher, pointing to the word to ask for help, but she just laughed and walked away!  I was embarrassed at first but eventually I realized the joke. The word was L A U G H.

This is a recurrent problem in English.  Words are archaic.

Language changes over time.  As a linguist I recognize this as a natural process.  Somewhere in the distant past, the GH in laugh was pronounced perhaps like the CH in “ach du lieber”.  Now it has softened into the sound of an F. This is a common process known as lenition in linguistics.

In contrast, spelling has changed little since the printing press.  As a technologist I recognize this as a natural process as well, but not a welcome one.  Written English has become a legacy system. The disconnect between spelling and sounds and all the exceptions you “just have to know” are the costs associated with maintaining backwards compatibility with older ‘versions’ of English– starting with the English that was around at the time of Gutenberg.

 

Six

 

Hundred!

 

Years ago!!!

 

Why do we keep up this charade?  There’s lots of small reasons, but the biggest one is because we, the users of English don’t bother to change it.  Language is not something that is given and we must live with. Language is a democratic process.

Democracy is not just about suffrage.
We can, of course, vote at the ballot box for our leaders.
But we can also vote with our wallets, by supporting the kind of businesses and products we prefer.
We can vote with our feet by walking away from a brawl, or vote with our fists by taking one on.
And, we can vote with our pen, or with our keyboard, by writing the way we want to write.

Therefore, from now on, I plan to vote for a simpler and cleaner written English by boycotting GH.

I am Tom Zielund, and I say, Enuff is Enough!

I received a Manifold origami puzzle set as a gift and found them quite entertaining.  I got through the first couple colors and realized there were no solutions online other than a couple examples done by individuals.  Therefore, I am sharing the crease patterns for the solutions I found for each of the first 20 (except one I lost).  This is not as clear as a step-by-step, but it should serve as a very effective hint.  I’ve marked each mountain fold with a red dot-dash line, and each valley fold with a blue dashed line.

Happy folding!

Here is a vintage printer’s cabinet drawer that I picked up many years ago.  I really like it because it sits at the intersection of history, technology and linguistics, three of my favorite topics.  The varied sizes of the spaces in the drawer were originally used for holding letters; the largest spaces for the common letters.  Now, it’s also a decorative and functional piece with space to display small items of various sizes.

I realized recently that I needed to make a giant-sized replica of a printer’s drawer.  Because bigger is better, right?

I built the replica five feet wide and four feet tal.  It has a plywood back, 2×4’s around the outside, and 1×3’s for the letter-spacers.  I cut dados along the sides and ran 1×3’s across the entire length as letter-separator/shelves.  There are dados in the crossways shelves as well to put short sections of 1×3 as vertical spacers/supports.  Here’s a picture of the work in progress.

To make it look aged, I added stain with the cross-shelves in place.  Nothing special to make it look aged other than being a bit sloppy.  After this was complete, I selectively removed sections of supports and shelves to make variable sized spaces.  The unstained wood shows through where cross-ways shelves were removed, which adds to the aged effect.

Each small cell is about 4 inches high and 5 inches wide.  Thus a 2×2 cell is just the right size for an 8×10 picture.

Here’s a couple views of the completed project, installed and filled with memorabilia.

 

 

In remembrance of my grampa, Jay Hvistendahl, I’d like to share a letter of his.  During WWII, he worked at a glider manufacturing facility– gliders that were made to be towed behind a powered plane and then be released to fly by momentum and thermal updrafts and such for quiet surveilence.  The following letter describes a situation he got into there while testing an experimental engine designed to give them partial power to increase their range– not intended for take-off.

What follows is his account of what happened during testing one day.

 

December 6, 1944

To: Mr. Murray Whitehead

 

The usual group came out to the airport on Sunday; Nowak, Chapman, Knudsen, and several others. Inasmuch as Murray Whitehead did not show up, we decided to try out the new propellers on the power glider and were just going to taxi the ship back and forth on the field, as we had done In the past.

 

We got the ship out and started up the engines, taxied around to the end of the runway. It just so happened that I was the smallest of the group and had taxied it several times before; thus, I became the “guinea pig” for this afternoon’s taxiing, We had gassed the ship up and everything was set for several runs up and down the field. Then all was clear and there were no ships on the field or about to land, the first run down the airport was started.

 

I didn’t have the throttles clear open this trip, but they were just about there, and noticed that with the new propellers, the thrust was much greater and the ship moved across the ground a lot faster than it ever had before.

 

After much wing dipping and maneuvering at the end of the field I finally managed to turn around by myself, and by making “S” turns, finally got straightened out on the runway and headed back down wind. Upon reaching the hangar end of the field, John Nowak was waiting there to turn me around for the next run into the wind. He straightened the ship around and I started down the field with full throttle.

 

It wasn’t far until two or three little bumps in the field put me up into the air a few inches. The next to the last bump evidently set me down in a small hole, which bounded the ship about ten feet in the air.

 

Much to my surprise, it didn’t come down again. Inasmuch as I was then three-quarters of the way down the field, I had about one split second to make the choice of crashing the ship into the telephone lines and fence at the end of the field in trying to set it down, or trying to climb over the same obstacles and set it down in a plowed field the other side of the airport.

 

The boys say that it looked like I went underneath the wires between the posts at the end of the field. However, I actually cleared them by a good nine inches, though I assure you that I didn’t get out to measure it at the time.

 

Once over the wires, it was necessary, or at least it happened that the ship dropped down below the trees that were just ahead and I was in a predicament for good—figuring I was going to wind up in the top branches of these trees. However, several sparrows that were sitting on top of the trees now have no feathers, and I did manage to get over.

 

From then on, not caring to set the ship down away from the airport due to the long time it would take to tear it apart to bring it back, I decided to hedge-hop until I could, once again, get back to the field and land. I skirted the first half-mile of the fields at about fence-top altitude, came to a road with trees and wires, and had to struggle over again.

 

On the other side of these, a little bit of altitude was saved, and the ship then was about fifteen feet above the ground. Had a farmhouse and some trees and wires ahead of me to hop over, as I was too low to turn. We made these all right, without too much to spare. I had come on this way straight ahead for about a mile and a half, and was heading into a hill—so- I had to do something about that.

 

By this time the altitude must have been in the neighborhood of 25 feet. So I attempted a very, flat bank to make 180° turn, and headed back towards the airport. In this slight bank, the resultant skid dropped me down to about six or eight feet above the ground.

 

The next mile, hopping over what seemed to me like a thousand trees and fences, I managed to gain enough altitude to make another flat bank into the wind, in hopes of getting a little higher. As I started to make this turn, I looked flown to my left and noticed that I was coming into a corn field nicely out with very beautiful corn shocks about four or five feet above the ground, and it was necessary to weave the wing tip in and out, to avoid hitting them. I was so intent on this operation that 1 didn’t notice what was coming up on me from the front.

 

Once I leveled out, here was a very beautiful cow barn smack in front of me about fifty feet—at least, it looked that close—and I still swear, to this day, that there must be a groove in the top of that barn, I don’t know how else I got over.

 

On the other side of the barn, the altitude remained at about 25 feet, evidently from what I gained in zooming the barn. I didn’t look back, but Imagine the farmers are still trying to round up their chickens.

 

All this time, the little motors were pouring all 16 horsepower and it sounded like three or four out boards in a race. I don’t know what I would have done if one of them had ever missed a beat. Anyway, another 180° turn was necessary, because the same hill was still there (it hadn’t moved) and, as usual, in making this turn I, found myself once more clipping the hedges.

 

This time the turn didn’t come out quite 180 and- I found myself headed into a small village with an enormous water tower staring me in the face and a cotton wood which must have been about 55 feet high, just in front of it, I was too low to turn either way, and there was not much chance of diving to gain speed, so resigned myself to the few words “I guess this is it.”

 

However, I still didn’t give up but gained all the speed possible in what little diving I could do, hauled back on the stick, and lo and behold I found myself up above the tree and yet high enough to clear the water tower—and if you don’t think that’s a big relief you’ve got another think coming! The little ship had more pep in it than I’d given it credit for up to this point.

 

All this time that I was battling with the trees and fences, barns, and what-have-you, Laister was hovering over me in the company Stinson, like a mother bird. Evidently he had his fingers and toes crossed, because I am here to tell this story.

 

With this altitude of about fifty feet (by the thumb rule, for you see, I had no instruments of any kind in the ship either to tell me how fast or how high I was) I headed for the airport just as fast as those lovely little motors would carry me.

 

By the time I came over the trees at the end of the airport, the ship and I must have gained about seventy feet, and with this very comfortable margin, to what I had had before, decided to turn back into the wind and try to climb a little bit higher.

 

From then on for the next hour, by circling back and forth over the airport, the amazing altitude of 1800 feet was finally reached, and by experimenting as I got a safer altitude, I could tell how steep I could climb the ship without stalling.

 

Along about 1500 or 1600 feet, Chapman and Nowak pulled alongside in the Stinson 105, and with various funny motions, tried to tell me that I was going too slow. I could have answered them in some pretty strong words that I knew it but that there was nothing I could do about it because I knew that it was just above the stalling speed, which made me traveling about 45 miles per hour. (They verified this later).

 

Johnny motioned with five fingers to me through the window. He was thinking in terns of 50 miles per hour and I was thinking in terms of altitude all this time, and mistook him in meaning climb to 5,000 feet, and all I could do was laugh at him because I was having trouble trying to get to 1800 feet.

 

By this time, with the nervous experience near the ground and the cold, I was shaking and chattering, and decided to make a landing.  I shut off one engine at a time and glided back into the airport, as a glider,  which felt much better to me.

 

The result of this accidental flight is as follows:

 

I was in the air an hour and ten minutes; traveled at an average speed, I should Judge, of about 48 miles per hour, and climbed very close to 1800 feet. It was still going up at this point, but my temperature was going down so much that I had to come in.

 

I feel that, if we have a little more horsepower, it will be a fine combination for an enjoyable sport—the combination of power to take the glider into the air, and on shutting off the power, becoming a glider to soar around, as all dyed-in-the-wool glider pilots like to do.

 

This little episode is written simply because I am so tired of having to tell it to every other person I meet at the plant.

 

Thought you might be able to use it in wilder release or some other way, whatever you see fit.

 

JH:JB                                                                  Jay Hvistendahl

 

I suddenly got the notion: if chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream is honest, then you ought to be able to use it to make chocolate chip cookies.  I decided to give it a try.

 

First, I got some cookie dough ice cream

 

 

Then melted it down and separated out the dough and chips.

 

 

I assembled the bits from the bowl together.  One big bowl of ice cream contained about as much dough as a pre-measured cookie square like those shown here:

I assembled dough from two brands of cookie dough ice cream and baked them, shown here below the pre-made cookies.

On the left: Blue Bunny.  On the right: Kemps

As for the taste.  Vincent gives a thumbs up for the Kemps cookie, and I must say the Blue Bunny cookie was better than the pre-made ones 🙂

Note to self: this is how the trip went.  Apologies to anyone else who might read this, its just kind of a memory dump.

Sunday: Hard landing at Midway, otherwise flight uneventful.  Raz was disappointed we were renting a minivan.  Amazingly easy drive to the hotel, and well received there.  The Homewood Suites in the Vanderbilt neighborhood was very impressive.  Mom and dad arrived around 7:30.  All were hungry.  Went to the Roadhouse bbq across the street.  Good stuff, but kinda slow.  Later on we played cards in the hotel lobby while Vincent got a story from Gramma.

Monday: Breakfast at the hotel was very good!  Then we went to Centennial park on foot. Raz enjoyed the swings, and Vincent ran around and around outside the Parthenon.  Next, to the Hermitage, home of General (and sometimes president) Andrew Jackson.  Stayed until around 3.  Stopped at a burger place on way back to Hotel, called the Pharmacy.  Very good.  Late lunch made dinner at hotel moot, but tried a bit anyway and it was very good.  Tried to get to the Bluebird Cafe for the 9:00 show, but they sold out just before us after a half hour’s wait.  Disappointed, we returned and stopped by Chuy’s, a Mexican restaurant, just before they closed for late dinner.

Tuesday: Breakfast at hotel, then off toward Franklin by way of the Cheekwood botanical gardens.  Wandered the grounds some, down to a pond ,then uphill to the art museum in old manor house.  Between Cheekwood and Franklin, stopped at the Loveless Cafe.  Delicious southern cooking. Vincent had the “best chicken fingers ever”.  In Franklin, we killed time a bit until 6:00 when we met at the stuck pig, or pugnatious pig, or something like that (Bunganut Pig, that is).  Beautiful night, appetizers and drinks outside, cards, and of course music.

Wednesday: Morning’s tourism was the Opryland hotel, just to see the place.  From a tourist’s point of view, I can say this place is amazing!  We wandered a couple of hours, eventually having some lunch, and riding the Delta river boat.  Vincent really liked this experience, as he told one of the shuttle drivers all about it later.  Then we spent some time at the nearby mall where Mary could get some retail therapy.  Stopped by the hotel to rest, and then off to the WildHorse Saloon for the evening linedance show.  Vincent ran around having a ball when the dance floor was empty, and he joined the first dance lesson.  But really, only Mary and I actually enjoyed the place.  Mom and dad took the kids back to the hotel, and Mary and I got a date night out of it.  Stayed at WildHorse a bit, then moved on to the Silver Dollar Salloon next door for another couple songs, then over another door or two to the Hard Rock cafe (but sadly with no live music.)  Back around 11:00, and all was well.

Thursday: Since mom and dad had to go home, we took a road trip with them part way… to Mammoth cave in Kentucky.  Only an hour and a half out there, so not a bad drive.  Raining pretty hard when we got there.  We had not much time at the park with everyone, but enough for lunch at the cafeteria.  Then mom and dad headed home while we braved the depths of the earth for two hours on the Drips and Domes tour.  I hadn’t been in a cave since I was about Raz’s age.  Raz was not a fan of a long walk underground, but we all surived.  The drive home was uneventful, and left us with a few more hours in the day.  We went to Puckett’s grocery for dinner.  Very good food, and an excellent show by the Music City Doughboys– a country swing group similar to Asleep at the Wheel in both style and skll.  The kids enjoyed it, but after dinner had had enough for the day.  They went back to the hotel on their on via the shuttle.  We were a little worried since this was their first time doing something so independent, but we found all well when we returned later.  Meanwhile, Mary and I got a bonus date night.  Wandered a bit more, down Printer’s alley then backup to a shop on Broadway.  Then a couple of music venues with random bands of a quality only found in a music city!

Friday: Packed up fom Homewood Suites and went straight to Gen Jackson riverboat.  Too early for Lunch for me, but the show was very good.  After the show, wandeed the ship a bit, and played poker with Raz while Mare and V watched musicians on the upper deck.   Afterward to the Opryland hotel.  Compared to the Homewood suites, the hotel side of Opryland was a big  step down.  Was almost ready to be done travelling though 24 hours before the trip finished.  But then we found the Delta island Fountain, and my faith was restored.  If you ever get the chance to visit Opryland, the fountain show must be seen.

Saturday: Left exceptionally early in the morning.  Everything went well.  Only the two hour stopover in Midway slowed us down.  Even the snow was nearly melted by the time we returned.

 

 

1. The first rule of Book Bingo is you must read books.
2. The second rule of Book Bingo is you MUST READ BOOKS.
3. The third rule of Book Bingo is you must follow orders, unless in doing so you violate rule one or rule two, or by your inaction allow them to be violated.

Silliness and literary reference aside for a moment.  To put it simply, you play Book Bingo by completing a row, column or diagonal on a book bingo card.  Each card has 25 different reading challenges organized into 5 rows (1-5) and 5 columns (B-I-N-G-O).  The rules of the reading challenges on a card may contradict the general rules below, but if not, the following general rules apply to completing challenges:

• You complete a challenge by reading a book.  Reading a print book, E-book, or listening to an audiobook all count as reading throughout Book Bingo.
• Each book must either obviously or arguably qualify for the challenge.  For example, a detective mystery definitely counts as “Crime”.  You might argue that How I Killed Pluto could count as “Crime” as well.
• Each book must be read in whole unless otherwise specified.  If the instructions on the challenge say to read every other chapter backwards, then you don’t have to read chapter 2 if you don’t feel like it.
• Each book can only used once per Bingo card.  Reading it twice doesn’t count.
• A book should not be way too trivial for your reading level.  Carl Goes Shopping may be ok if you are a toddler
• Note that challenges may be modified by comments appearing before or after the BINGO grid.  Read the card carefully.

To help give you an idea what a Book Bingo challenge is like, take a look at a completed Book Bingo grid from my first time playing.

Book Bingo can be a private challenge, but can also be a social game.  If you are part of a group playing Book Bingo together, typically everyone gets the same card and you share with the other players whenever you complete a row, column, or diagonal.  Once you do, brag about it.  Send an email.  Post a comment on Facebook, Twitter, or just stand up and yell to your fellow Book Bingo players.

You don’t have to be the first to complete a Bingo to win at Book Bingo in a group.  Although it may seem like a competition, it is not.  It’s a shared personal challenge.   The fun is in seeing what everyone else is reading in response to the same challenges.

You don’t need to use a web page to play Book Bingo, but you can (or soon will be able to).  If you would like to try using my book bingo application, you can find it at:  http://zielund.com/library/book_bingo/.  For the moment, it doesn’t have instructions, but if you want to try, write to me and I’ll help you get started.

I hope this makes sense.  Good luck, and have fun.

 

The file, survival-island.zip contains a Minecraft map with an adventure quest.

Download survival-island.zip map

I recently completed the basic beginner’s woodworking project, and built a set of pine bookshelves in the basement.

Before:

After:

Loaded with books and games:

Gallery of pics: