ken zirkel

Welcome to Abby, a three-year-old pointer / spaniel / whatever (rescue dog), who joined our family yesterday.

Daughter played the Statue of Liberty this week in a school play about immigration. It so happens that the crown of the actual Statue has just opened today for visits, and I got tickets for mid-July. Yay!

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The wife had a conference in Washington DC, so we made it into a long weekend. It was the kids’ first time in the Capitol, and it was my first visit in many years.

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Today I took my first big sea trip with my kayak. I was planning to stay overnight in Gloucester or Rockport to do some photography, when it occurred to me that I should bring my kayak to see some lighthouses that I can’t normally get to. After talking with with the good folks at North Shore Kayak Outdoor Center, it sounded like a pretty easy paddle from Rockport Harbor to Thacher Island in good weather. (Note: this company leads kayak tours to Thacher Island daily, and you can rent a kayak and do this tour with them for only $50).

This trip appealed to me for several reasons, not least because there are three lighthouses along the route: the two on Thacher Island, plus one on Straitsmouth Island.

Here are instructions to do this trip

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I’ve used PearLyrics to add lyrics to my iTunes songs for years (even after the program was withdrawn). PearLyrics was a widget that would automatically search the Web for song lyrics when a song was playing in iTunes, then add the lyrics to the song metadata. This was a pretty good system when I had a few songs, and played them a lot in iTunes.

Now my habits are significantly different. I have loads of songs, and I hardly ever play them in iTunes. I mostly play them on my iPod, but I still want lyrics in the songs. I needed a better system, and it was looking like PearLyrics was failing to work, anyhow. Here is what I figured out after doing some research:

1) I found an AppleScript called No Lyrics to Playlist. It examines your iTunes library and creates a NO LYRICS playlist, which will contain all songs that lack lyrics. This is a necessary first step: now I have one comprehensive set of songs which need lyrics.

2) I installed an application called Gimme Some Tune. Gimme Some Tune will seek out lyrics to the currently playing iTunes song (and album art, as well), and copy it to the song metadata. It has some nifty features PearLyrics does not.

3) I installed an AppleScript called Needle Drop. Needle Drop will allow you to sample each song in a playlist for just a few seconds each. It will play a song just long enough for Gimme Some Tune to find the lyrics to each song. No need to play through the whole song.

So there, after some configuration, I just ran Needle Drop on my No Lyrics playlist. After a short time, my whole iTunes library is set with lyrics and album art. Actually, Gimme Some Tune could not find lyrics for about 580 songs (out of 3900 total), for various reasons. But it was pretty good.

Because I’m completely crazy, and because I have kids, and because I enjoy paddling sports, I was attracted to the idea of getting one of the new underwater cameras. I love my Panasonic DMC-LX3, and the Panasonic DMC-TS1 just came out, and seemed to be getting better reviews than the Olympus, so I bought a TS1.

I used the TS1 for a few minutes in a hotel pool this weekend. Here are my first impressions:

Pros:

• It functions underwater
• It’s pretty responsive for a P&S digicam
• Movies are beautiful looking, and have sound
• Face detection is cool
• It comes in orange
• Did I mention it functions underwater?

Cons:

• Noise levels are pretty high compared to my LX3 (though probably similar to other cams)
• The lens is in such a location that my thumb and fingers keep getting in the way
• Price is really high for what is essentially a basic point-and shoot
• Does not float
• AVCHD Lite movies don’t play on my Mac, and don’t upload to Flickr; I had to convert to another format using Handbrake
• Uses a different battery than my LX3

I’ve just used it the one time, and the TS1 so far is a lot of fun, but I’m really annoyed by seeing my finger appear in my movies. I never had this problem with any other camera, and I’ve used a lot of cameras, so I have to say this is a design issue. I didn’t try the Motion JPG movie mode, but maybe I should. It’s pretty much a dealbreaker to convert all my movies with Handbrake.

Clearly, if you’re not jazzed about the prospect of taking the thing underwater, you don’t want this camera. You can get an LX3 for about the same price. But if you do want to take snapshots underwater, and you have some money to burn, this is not a bad choice. I enjoy taking photos of the kids in the water, which is mostly why I got it. And I expect I’ll use it a lot kayaking and canoeing. (I just got a kayak this month, although I haven’t had the time to try it out yet). I hope I don’t drop it in the bay, though, because it does not float.

Here’s a full review of the TS1 by Shawn Barnett and Mike Tomkins.

A robin’s nest has appeared near our side door. Four blue eggs inside.

I was dissatisfied with my previous garden irrigation system — a combination of soaker hoses and spray hoses — and I knew I had to expand to include two new raised beds. I was also a bit afraid that the distance differential would create pressure differentials in the beds. So I decided to look around at what else I could find on the web.

I was very impressed by the “leaky hose system” described by Wayne Schmidt (scroll a bit down the page). It sounded like a fine system but more work than I really wanted to put in. However, when I priced out soaker hoses (about $11 per 10-foot length), I decided it might be worth it to try Wayne’s idea. Also, I had worked with PVC to make a bird netting enclosure for my strawberries, and I was impressed with the ease of handling PVC pipe, and all possibilities afforded by the cool connectors.

Wayne does a good job outlining the basics of his system: “I drill two rows of 0.038-inch diameter holes six-inches apart at a 90-degree angle down the length of a 3/4-inch diameter PVC tube.” On the bottom, he drills another set of holes 4-feet apart for drainage when the system is off. So far, so good.

My first problem was finding the “micro drill set” he mentions. The smallest drill bit I could find for a standard drill was 1/16″. The guy at Lowe’s looked at me funny when I asked for a “micro drill set”. But he did point me to a set of drill bits for a Dremel, which included 1/32 and 3/64, both of which are smaller than 1/16. 1/32 works out to 0.013125, which is a tad smaller than required. Little did I know, in order to use the tiny drill bits I also needed a Dremel Quick Change Collet Nut Set, which necessitated a second run to Lowes. Ah, well.

The big mystery to me was how to connect the PVC system to my standard household hose. I did discover threaded attachments for the 3/4-inch PVC. To make a long story short — I spent over an hour in the store figuring this out — below is a diagram of my setup.

My irrigation system: Click for PDF.

Drilling the holes was a bit of a pain. I basically decided to draw lines down the length of the pipe, kind of “eyeballing” it with a pencil and 24″ ruler to make a straight line. Then, a second line about 90-degrees off from the first. This is made slightly easier by the fact that my work surface was a wooden deck; I placed the PVC into a groove in the deck to keep it still. Placing a male adapter on the PVC pipe helped a bit, too, as it has an octagonal reference surface on it. As long as the octagon was laying flat, I could pretty much get a good pair of straight lines, 90 degrees apart.

Finally, in the garden. I get beautiful results, as long as the pipe is laid more or less parallel to the ground. The little stream of water is perfect, not too harsh and not too slow. I can even space my holes to match the spacing of the plants in the row.

My garden plans this year are the most ambitious I’ve ever planned. I’ve got two 3×10 beds (new this year) and two 3×12 beds (previously established). I’ve already got a huge crop of seedlings growing. In fact, I probably planted the tomatoes and pumpkins too early, they are getting to be giants in their little pots. Perhaps I should start the tomatoes later in March next year, not the first week of March; on the other hand, maybe I’m doing fine.

That’s the great thing I’m learning about vegetable gardening. Everything is kind of an experiment, and there’s no one “right way” to do it. I’ve consulted two books this year, Square Foot Gardening and Joy of Gardening. Both have slightly different advice to give about planting density and methods. Joy of Gardening, in particular is pretty hard-core about using methods to extend the growing season and getting more yield. “If you’re not losing a few plants to frost,” says author Dick Raymond, “you’re not putting them out early enough.”

I don’t think I got things out early enough to satisfy Dick. I had to prepare two brand new beds this year, and my order of seed potato didn’t arrive as soon as I would have wished. But I caught up this week, and now I’m right about where I want to be:

Sprouted indoors, transplanted outdoors:
Brussels Sprouts (9; might go for a few more)

Sprouted Indoors, hardening off to plant next weekend:
Tomatoes: three or four varieties!
Basil
Pumpkin (2 really big plants)

Sprouted Indoors, will harden off later in May:
Sweet peppers
Hot peppers

Planted outdoors:
Red Onions: my first time
Carrots
Radishes
Lettuce
Chard
Spinach: my first time growing spinach
Potatoes (last week); my first time growing potatoes!

Just sprouting now indoors: for transplant in a few weeks
Melons (sprouted on a wet towel, now in peat pot)
Red Onions
Pumpkins
Lettuce

Here’s an interesting comparison from the news, which clearly illustrates the power of prayer:

In 2005, a Tunisian pilot flying from Italy to Tunisia lost power in both engines. What did he do?

Captain Gharby had turned the controls over to his co-pilot during the emergency and uttered a prayer, instead of following standard procedures that might have allowed him to land the plane at an airport.

The result? The plane went down in the sea off Sicily and 13 people were killed. Mr. Gharby was sentenced to 10 years in prison for manslaughter.

By contrast, in the more well-known 2009 case of US Airways pilot Chesley Sullenberger, faced with a similar situation in densely populated New York City airspace, took over the controls from his co-pilot and followed procedures which he had previously and frequently trained for in simulators. As a result, he brought his plane down in the Hudson River with zero casualties.

The moral? Training and experience will beat prayer every time.