Growin' Blog

Finally!

2008-11-03T00:34:00.000-08:00

It only took me 14 months to find Dick and Cowboy's rendition of 甜蜜蜜. Oddly, alot of Dick's other stuff is sickly sweet mando-pop. So I'm still not sure where this came from.

Chapter 1: in a nutshell

2008-11-03T00:30:00.003-08:00

Well, in a wordle shell anyway. It's late.

Yes, I can...

2008-10-26T22:00:00.001-07:00

carve.

My parents' money was so not wasted on art school.

New favorite LC class number

2008-10-15T17:42:00.000-07:00

GV 850.45

Dancing on ice.

Can't help but be a pirate

2008-10-13T19:53:00.000-07:00

(thanks boingboing).

btw: looking at the image heavy posts recently, I have to remark again (or maybe this is the first time, but I've said it to myself a bunch of times): the digital camera has really revived an interest in taking and sharing photographs. Sure, it's no grand Art Project, but I have derived great pleasure in sharing photos of meals and harvests and friends.

Random office finds.

2008-10-01T21:47:00.001-07:00

As promised.

Of course we start with everyone's favorite: a bare breasted cartouche.

And move on to a scenic view:

Then there are exotic weapons:

Check out the detail on the etching:

Really: these things were just sitting on a pile in my office. For at least 4 years. It's possible it's been 9!

Happy sailing!

Astonishing find.

2008-09-30T21:07:00.001-07:00

Today while cleaning a pile of crap in my office--essentially a mound of manilla folders hiding a pile of maps that I made when first moving into my office--I uncovered a set of 49 plates from a 1745 book.

The title is "A new general collection of voyages and travels: consisting of the most esteemed relations, which have been hitherto published in any language." And we do not have a print copy. One of the map sheets has a corner carefully cut out--in exactly the place one would put, say, a property stamp or call number.

We do have electronic access to the book via Gale's 'Eighteenth Century Collections Online,' but it's a crappy scan from microfilm. I'll be scanning a few of these tomorrow to use in a presentation next week. I'll post some here.

Harvest season

2008-08-30T18:18:00.001-07:00

Having just finished a market steak (Dr. Karen might be on to something about beef not tasting as good as it used to: this piece of meat had a texture that I have never experienced in grocery store steak. Like a good piece of sashimi: buttery texture and flavor, seasoned perfectly well with just a bit of salt and pepper before cooking, my teeth marks apparent on the side of the bone after I finished gnawing the last of the flesh off of it) I realized I haven't said much about the harvest this year.

We came as close as we ever have to using the oregano as it became available. The garlic harvest started as it usually does with whips back in late May:

And then just a few weeks ago we pulled a pretty good batch out of the ground:

I've already put in about 8 cloves back in the ground. Another 15 or so are sitting in a cup next to me as I type this. 2 weeks ago we made a massive batch of pesto (which I finished with my steak just now) with the first good batch of basil for father-in-law and friends. There's still about a half pound. This continues to be the garlic we found wild when we first moved in. Now the best heads have a nice stiff neck, purple skin, and produce about 6 large cloves each. I wish they were a bit more productive, but the flavor is excellent.

Around the same time the pesto was made, the first cherry tomatoes came on. 2 plants are producing about a pint a week now. And this afternoon for lunch I had my first two slicing tomatoes (Big Boys) of the year:

It's a bit late. I'm afraid the spring was too cool and I was too slow to get a good tomato harvest. I'm afraid the Santiams and Black Russians won't get a chance to ripen at all now that it's cooling off.

Well, that's the news from Yoo-Gene. I'm off to be the licensed driver for an immigrant friend who's practicing on a learner's permit.

btw: I had an audience the whole time I ate that steak:

Writing updates

2008-08-28T20:48:00.000-07:00

So should I be giving you all the nitty-gritty about how the thesis is going? I've never written a 150 page paper before (that's my budget after a rough outline and one chapter worth of detailed). Actually, maybe my loyal readers (I'm not talking to you Ma) could offer practical advice on how to manage such a document. I sought the advice of my peers, but they didn't bite. We get stuck taking a one-hour-a-week 'thesis writing workshop', but it's mostly used to practice presentations. There's very little workshopping about actual writing.

So...discuss.

(and wasn't that a nice speech that Mr. Obama gave tonight?)

Happy blog anniversary

2008-08-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

An old, old friend got in touch with me today and I sent her the url to the old growblog here. (Later on, L said such a reply is rude. 'Oh, hi. How have you been the last 20 years? Here, read my blog.' Sorry HH.) That made me click on the archive to see what it was I was saying back in the early days. By some cosmic coincidence, today is the 5 year anniversary of this here blog, online diary, travologue, rambling. And boy--I need to do a little housecleaning. Those IM icons haven't worked in months. The archives need a hierarchical menu.

So: 5 years. 432 posts. 2 jobs. 3 months in China. 3/4 of a geography degree. 1 darkroom. 2/3 of a fixed garage.

Hot!

2008-08-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

We're having our second hot spell of the summer. But it's still pleasantly cool in the evenings.

I stayed late this evening to take advantage of the fast network speeds on campus (it's definitely noticeable when surfing Chinese sites) and as I was walking back from dinner admiring the quad in the setting sun I was once again struck at my good fortune: a dinner out; a pleasant campus to walk through; the opportunity to study and work at the same time (despite the overload); being able to eat out at the drop of a hat.

'Blessed' is a word that comes to mind. Or maybe just really really lucky.

2008-08-11T15:37:00.001-07:00

Word is getting out about the newest map of Oregon from Dave Imus.

North Park exploring

2008-08-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

And Hillcrest too! Yesterday a local librarian took my lament (that all food in downtown San Diego comes on the same Sysco truck) to heart and came back to me an hour later with a long list of places to explore and eat last night.

So I cabbed to the Hillcrest neighborhood and, not being hungry at her first recommendation (a lovely-looking Mediterranean place) set off on a rather epic walk. Up to University, across to 30th, and the back down to Upas. There, found via Google, was Zensei sushi. Ate at the bar, had a nice chat with the chef who made my dinner, and even got a free piece of nigiri at the end (because he said I looked "like a hamachi kind of guy." How could he tell?).

He was really surprised when he found out I was a tourist. But he totally got it when I told him about the flavor of the Sysco truck clinging to everything I ate downtown. Still, I guess North Park is not a neighborhood that most visitors make it up to. That's too bad: it looks diverse, affordable (unless those little houses are deceptively expensive), and fun. And well served by the bus I took back downtown.

Sweet suite!

2008-08-03T18:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks Sheraton.

Because I was such a late arrival Friday night, the hotel I’m staying at was completely full. So the upgraded me to the Governor’s Suite. If Arnold does stay here, he enjoys 3 bathrooms, 4 balconies, 2 large flat-screen TVs, and a king-size bed. If he comes often, he has probably learned that the refrigerator doesn’t get very cold, so he should bring home his leftovers if he has seafood.
Speaking of which, I had a lovely spaghetti dinner at Mona Lisa last night in San Diego’s Little Italy. Very nice, with a ton of vegetables mixed in with the prawns. Bell peppers, carrots, and zucchini. Even with the cream in the ‘pink sauce,’ it was probably a pretty healthy dinner. The cannoli was to die for. It was made to order, so the pastry was still very crisp. And the filling was soft and pillowy.

Everyone in San Diego seems to be loving life (except for the complaining Aussies at the table next to me in the faux-Irish pub yesterday). At dinner last night, being a solo diner I sat at the bar. A series of giddy parties came and went as I went. Every single one of them struck up a conversation: it’s her birthday; what are you reading?; how’s that cannoli? Granted, everyone was half- to three-quarters sloshed, but they were all happy sloshed. Even the bus drivers glad to see you—the opposite of most big cities where someone who doesn’t know the system (is my trolley pass good on the bus? Do I swipe it or just show it?).

I snuck up to Balboa Park for the weekly organ concert. Dreamy. The park is the city’s museum campus, and I knew there was a photography museum, but I wasn’t expecting a triple cultural attraction that speaks directly to several different parts of my personality:

(For those of my loyal readers who aren’t my parents, yes, I was a train geek growing up.)

My one complaint about the Sheraton is that the interweb isn’t free in the rooms, so I have to go downstairs to the lobby to post this and research a dinner location. I’m writing this up with my feet up on a deck chair enjoying my harbor view. So, I’ll enjoy that for a bit longer and then head down. As always, click on one of the photos to see the whole day’s worth.

(a bit later)

I assume the reason they make you go to the lobby to blog (check your email, google restaurants, etc.) is because some hi-tech business major figured out that they are X% more likely to sell you a beer for $4.50 than they are to sell you an hour in interweb access for $11.50.

This keen observation also made me remember that the San Diego convention center has a net-nanny web filter installed. While the Chinese government won't let you see websites about Tibet, San Diego won't let you google brew pubs

San Diego GIS fun

2008-08-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

At the ESRI User Conference. The opening session of the education conference was this morning, and the international user conference will start Monday.

They gave a very nice brief demo of features for 9.3 this morning in between a few marketing pitches about how great they are and how much they do for us. The highlight though was the keynote and an ESRI manager giving talks about their own work using GIS for historical research. Oddly, I edited a review of Anne Knowle's Placing History just yesterday. Charlie Frye gave a warm up talk about using GIS to trace his own family history research about revolutionary New England.

Erik Steiner, among others, got a nice shout out from Knowles for his work on mapping the Holocaust.

Wrote down a bunch of stuff, so expect more as the week goes by.

On the 'visiting a new city' front. I won on the lunch front. My first instinct was to walk into a schwarma stand. My second was an Irish pub across the street. I started in the pub, but the couple next to me was complaining loudly to their waitress, and to the manager. The people on the other side was their before me and hadn't gotten their drinks yet by the time I started to consider leaving.

I had finished my schwarma before those other folks had gotten their food.

Upcoming travels

2008-07-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

I am now accepting recommendations for eating and drinking in San Diego. Downtown or transit friendly please.

Celebrate your independence: with mechanicals!

2008-07-06T23:06:00.000-07:00

I realized a life-long dream this weekend. I finally got to jack something up! Sure, it was just a garage, but you have to start somewhere right?

Of course, my carpentry manhood was dashed when my friend Del showed up (he lent me that screw jack) and said: hey, you guys got the Internet? I don't have a computer but I'm on YouTube this week. Del's woodworking is amazing. Watch this video and remember: no metal parts whatsoever. All wood and glue. Note the wooden chain. A WOODEN CHAIN!

It doesn't actually do anything, but that makes it as useful as just about any steampunk device, right? Merlin Mann eat your heart out!

I may post a full photo essay on the garage project at a later date. You should see the dryrot! But at the moment I'm rather thesis driven and the garage is still in progress. The last thing we did tonight was dog-proof the side of it that faces the neighbor's. That rottweiler is friendly, but I'd hate to be the one that let him loose. Oddly, after putting a whole new sill around the whole perimeter, the back wall is now suspended about 1.5 inches above it's new pressure treated sill. Think it could have sunk that much?

What's Growin'?

2008-06-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

Other than a freakish few days in May, it's been on the cool side all spring. This weekend the people who control the weather are obviously attempting to simulate the conditions in Beijing: 90s, with afternoon thunderstorms.

If only they hadn't paid off the grass seed farmers. Add a little air pollution and the we could really be guaranteeing that we only send the most prepared to China.

Anyway, I digress. With the onset of summer, I thought I'd show what's in the ground. The May flower season seemed to be prolonged by the cool temperatures.

There were quite a few nice surprises as we peaked through the tulips and irises. The lonely bleeding heart really outdid itself this year. This is a completely maintenance free plant.
If memory serves, it dies back to the ground and disintegrates so fast and thoroughly that I don't even have
to remove any foliage at the end of the season.

L insists the clematis looks like a giant valentine heart this year, but I think she's just being sappy. We're going to have to replace this side porch real soon--I'm hoping to enclose it, but we'll definitely make every effort to preserve this vine.

As always, the best part of summer is yet to come. As much as I love the showy flowers, the real reason for all this is the veggies and herbs. This year we have 5 kinds of tomatoes in the ground, and three different chilis.

The tomatoes have been especially sad and slow to take hold, but they have all perked up with this week's heat. The cinnamon basil got hit hard by slugs--even with the aid of copper rings. A couple weeks ago I added beer traps though, and that seems to be helping alot. Now if we can just get the grass seed farmers to switch to food crops we can get that pollen count down.

The summer: and track lameness

2008-06-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

On my way to dinner tonight I passed a guy heading west at 11th and Monroe on his cell phone, looking at the lame tourist map that they're handing out to the folks in town for the Olympic Trials. So I say: "Excuse me, do you need directions?"

'Nope, I know I'm going in the right direction. I was just surprised at how crummy this street got for a while.'

"Crummy" was the exact adjective used. You know how you can never think of a snappy comeback when you need one? What I came up with was: "Well, in a few blocks it's going to turn into strip malls." To which he replied: "Oh, so crummy, nice, then crummy."

So many other options:

"What's so crummy about 1920's Craftsman bungalows?"
"I'm sorry sir, we like to call that downtown."
"Hey: I live over there."

Of course, I could have just used the always appropriate: "Prick." But we were told to be extra nice to the visitors.

Just a test. Nothing to see here.

2008-06-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

View Larger Map

Robo-walrus

2008-06-24T16:48:00.000-07:00

Well, walrus-tracker, anyway. These guys really get around!

A nice Endnote discovery

2008-06-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

The ultimate in procrastination: I did a complete reformatting of my hard drive this weekend and reinstalled everything from scratch. With nary a call to technical support. (But honestly, my computer was crawling. Now it reboots in less than a minute.)

And now it's back to work. And I've discovered that EndNote will let me keep track of keywork terms of my own, and will automatically add new keywords from new citations as I work. If I go back now and then to clean up the term list, I'll gradually develop a nice controlled vocabulary. Deleting wonky, database assigned terms doesn't delete them from the actual references though--so nothing is lost through the term editing.

WikiMashup

2008-06-18T11:19:00.001-07:00

A new button has appeared on Google Maps:

Finally warm

2008-06-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

And not a moment too soon, as the outdoor party season starts, er, now.

3 hours left to the quarter. Lots of folks already walking around with parents. The library is officially dead: only 4 inveterate community folks walking around and a total of ten-ish students trying to finish up.

I've already gotten through the worst pile on my desk (the one that sits immediately to my left. The 'attend to me immediately' pile. The one that I picked a 2 month old 'please respond ASAP' memo off of this morning). I also sent thank you notes for all those who helped with my contract renewal for this year (it was a big one: now I only have to renew every 3 years instead of every 2. It's as close to tenure as I'll every get). And I moved a map case. It's amazing what can get done when people aren't constantly asking for help and I'm not constantly running off to meetings or class.

I'll try and update about What is actually Growing this weekend. There are a variety of spring flower photos to post, and slug traps to bait. But L keeps taking the yogurt to work and not bringing the containers back.

Time off

2008-06-06T17:11:00.000-07:00

I am officially taking off from now until Sunday. This will make tomorrow the first day since at least May 3 that I haven't done anything work or school related. I hope it pours rain all day so I can sit around and read magazines after going to the farmers ' market.

Classes are over. I have 2.5 tasks remaining for finals week. Don't expect to hear from me tomorrow--I'm thinking about making it a technology free day.