K-Squared Ramblings

Touring the Mt. Wilson Observatory (17 Years Ago)

The Station Fire burning through the Angeles National Forest north of Los Angeles is expected to reach the summit of Mt. Wilson sometime tonight. In all likelihood it will damage or destroy the communications towers and the observatory complex. The Mount Wilson Observatory is an active observatory, and is also of historical importance because of discoveries made there over its 105-year history. In particular: Edwin Hubble’s* observations with the 100-inch Hooker telescope (shown at right) indicated that universe is much larger than was previously thought, and that it was expanding — observations that revolutionized astronomy and led to the current Big Bang theory.

I’ve been to the observatory once, on a tour my family took on August 8, 1992. We’d just come back from a trip to Florida where we visited Disney World and Cape Canaveral during the summer I was 16. I really wish I could remember more about the trip…but I took pictures and labeled them (though not in much detail). With the observatory threatened, I thought I’d dig them out and scan them**. You can see all eight on my Mt. Wilson Observatory Tour 1992 photoset on Flickr.

The Observatory’s website is apparently hosted on the grounds, so the fact that its fire status page is still responding indicates it’s still there and has power. The latest update says that they’re setting up a backup info page at http://joy.chara.gsu.edu/CHARA/fire.php, but that’s showing a 404 error right now.

*As in the Hubble Space Telescope.

**Scanning them was not a problem. Digging them out? That was a problem. I knew exactly which photo album they were in, and thought I knew where the album was. As it turned out, it wasn’t there. It was in an unopened box shoved at the very back of the long,narrow hall closet, such that I had to move 3 other boxes, several bags, and an unused CD rack just to see that it was labeled “photo albums” on top. Edit: And, oh yeah, the trail of ants along the wall, going after the long-forgotten bag of Halloween candy. The wall I kept brushing up against. How did I forget that part?

That’s the missing piece that makes the classic phrase more than a simple tautology. It’s not just that it’s in the last place you look. It’s that it’s in the last place you want to look.

Station Fire Smoke Plume from Irvine

Station Fire Smoke Plume from Irvine, originally uploaded by Kelson.

About 2:00 in the afternoon today, in a park in the Quail Hill area of Irvine. Roughly 50 miles away from the fire, perpendicular to the wind (thankfully!)

That puffy plume looks a lot whiter than the rest, which is clearly smoke, making me wonder if it’s a cloud that’s formed above the fire somehow. Edit: And literally seconds after I post this I spot the term pyrocumulous in another window. So, yeah, it’s a cloud produced by the air heated by the fire. The Wikipedia article has a picture of a cloud produced by this same fire a few days ago.

Scary Fragile on CD

When Butterfly Boucher’s new album, Scary Fragile, came out in June, I didn’t really pay attention to format. I just bought it as an MP3 album for convenience. I didn’t even notice that it was digital-only at the time, but I just got an email for the “physical release” of the album on September 15 and a new concert tour.

The newsletter was a bit confusing, though, because we bought a CD at her concert in June so that we’d have something for her to sign! I guess she must have had a small run printed just for the summer concert tour.

Hangar Sunset

Hangar Sunset III, originally uploaded by Kelson.

Friday evening.

Twidroid Update & Skipper Dan

Woo Hoo! Twidroid’s tweet button is back! #

“Weird Al” Yankovic’s song “Skipper Dan” has been stuck in my head on-and-off all weekend. Living near Disneyland makes it that much more funny. # And did I mention there’s a video?

Sundog

Sundog, originally uploaded by Kelson.

Friday was a good day for atmospheric optics. I watched a sundog for most of my drive home.

Saddleback Haze

Saddleback Haze, originally uploaded by Kelson.

Taken Friday morning. You can really see the layers in the haze that (I assume) has drifted down from the Morris Fire near Azusa.

Elf Storage

ELF STORAGE, originally uploaded by conradh.

A decade ago, Katie saw a self storage place with the first S missing from the sign. She didn’t get a picture, and has been looking for another sign with the same failing ever since.

Last summer we spotted a sign with the S broken. It turns out that the S eventually did fall off the rest of the way.

Open Video, Watch Spam, Weird Al & Twidroid

• RT @openvideo: Help open video spread at SXSW— check out our proposals, vote for them, and tell your open video amigos #
• RT @lol_spam: Spam subject: “With our watches precious minutes will go slower.” So it’s a selling point that they don’t keep time correctly? #
• Aha! My $6 of Amazon MP3 Store credit lines up perfectly w/ Weird Al Yankovic’s $5.99 “Internet Leaks” EP! #

Twitter Apps

• Ugh. New Twidroid hides tweet button behind menu. I hated that in other Twitter apps. It’s like they took away the Easy Button. #
• What I like about Twidroid: streamlines common tasks (less so in 2.5), custom notifications per type. #
• Also: Just realized the “busy” animation in the ada titlebar is actually a miniature game of Pong. #

Magenta Sunset

Watched the sun set, its disc tinged almost magenta by the smoke plume from the Morris fire near Azusa stretching along the horizon.

Tweet Cleanup in Progress

Following through on my thoughts on blogging with Twitter, I’ve started going through and cleaning up the imported Twitter digests made over the past 10 months. Some of the things I’m doing:

• Rewriting titles to be more meaningful than “Line Items for YYYY-MM-DD”
• Rewriting post slugs for the same reason. (WordPress will remember the old URL and redirect it, so it won’t break incoming links.)
• Adding tags and categories
• Reformatting single-item lists as very short posts.
• Reformatting links and expanding shortened URLs (which I’ve been doing for a while now).
• Pulling the “Powered by Twitter Tools” link from the shortest posts, generally those with only one or two items, so that it doesn’t end up dominating the related-posts data.
• Removing redundant items. No need to keep, for instance, a link to an article when it’s followed by a post with detailed commentary on the same article. Or a link to a phone photo that’s followed by a post embedding the same photo, or one of the same subject taken with a better camera.
• Removing really trivial items. Though I’m not always sure where to draw the line.
• Fixing, replacing, or just dropping dead links.
• Update: Uploading photos to show them inline instead of linked. Especially when the original link is dead.

I’ll be updating a few posts at a time for the next week or so, but it should be manageable once I’m caught up.

Meanwhile, I’ve separated my LiveJournal from my Twitter account. There’s no sense in maintaining two archives of ephemera, so I’ve decluttered my LJ: Any “Line Items” that didn’t have comments are gone, and the few that did now have proper titles, tags, userpics, etc.

Raptors and Snow Leopard

• Dreamed I was looking at photos of seagulls by @brionv, who kept joking about how velociraptors were a lot smaller than they used to be. #
• Hmm, the $4 I saved ordering Snow Leopard through Amazon almost covers the $5 for Twidroid Pro due the same day #

Adobe Vulnerabilities Everywhere

Uh-oh: 80% of web users running unpatched versions of Flash/Acrobat. These are being exploited, so check your system! #

Bringing Back the 80s: Super Powers 25th

In 1984, Kenner launched a line of DC super-hero action figures under the name Super Powers. The toys were tied to the Super Friends cartoon, and each had an action: If you squeezed Superman’s legs, he would throw a punch. If you squeezed the Flash’s arms, he would run. Each figure also came with a 16-page minicomic starring the character and others from the toy line.

Today, Crisis on Earth-Blog unites fourteen sites in celebrating this landmark toy line.

• Aquaman Shrine dives with the King of the Seas.
• Bat-Blog covers Batman and his villains.
• Being Carter Hall handles Hawkman.
• Speed Force runs along with the Flash.
• Crimson Lightning is going all-out with a Flash extravaganza.
• Dispatches from the Arrow Cave aims at Green Arrow
• Love Dat Joker brings in the laughs with the Clown Prince of Crime
• Justice League Detroit follows a set of knock-off figures from the era.
• The Idol-Head of Diabolu has only begun to cover Martian Manhunter
• …nurgh… reviews the entire series of mini-comics
• Doom Patrol Blog takes a spin with Red Tornado
• Fortress of Baileytude – Superman
• Firestorm Fan follows the Nuclear Man.
• Once Upon A Geek covers Dr. Fate and the unproduced Blue Devil & Shockwave figures
• Update: Legion Omnicom has joined the event in with a page on Tyr.

Enjoy!

Hero, Twidroid, Headlines & Spam

• Just learned “Holding Out for a Hero” is cowritten by Jim Steinman. Explains why it keeps turning into “Good Girls Go to Heaven” in my head #
• Yeah, I’d be willing to spend $5 for the additional features in @Twidroid Pro. #
• Writing for Twitter via @NNgroup #
• Spam vs SPAM. I suspect it’s way too late to close the barn door on this one. Kinda like “hacker.” #