Today my sister sent me a link to MSNBC's map and graph of stimulus package spending around the country.

I'm surprised to see that about $5 billion went to Washington state - the fifth-highest in the country. Not bad for the 13th-most populous state.

Depth of Field calculator:
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm

Related recent photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/susanashlock/sets/72157604767516664/

A really cool set of photos of cascade peaks taken by a pilot & photographer:

http://www.pbase.com/nolock/ncsummer

Probably a good source of beta for future trips.

The down side of having a window office with a view of trees:

When it's windy and the 100-foot-tall trees start dancing around, it's hard not to start picturing what would happen if one of them danced right through the building walls. Right now my consolation is that the trees are so tall that if they did fall they'd probably hit the building high above my office. No cause for concern, really.

I like how remote-controlled helicopters now qualify as "spy drones". Regardless, it looks like it's far more stable than your average RC aircraft.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/british-polices.html

Cool: all the USGS maps for the United States: free, downloadable.
http://libremap.org/data/state/washington/drg/

The quality is comparable to the "TOPO!" series maps or what you get at TopoZone (not that I would ever use TopoZone unless desperate). On the down side, the time to download is ~ 10 minutes at work, where the connection is pretty speedy. It's only a 30 MB file, so I'm guessing that the server is sluggish... Other minor problems: the images were scanned from paper maps, so there are obvious folds in the maps, and there isn't any sort of UI to find the location you're looking for.

For example, if a friend says, "hey, you should check out Mt. Chiwawa - it's a great hike", you need to first figure out which map ("quad") Mt. Chiwawa is in. Most guidebooks tell you which quad the hike is in, but if you don't have a guide book, then a bit of hunting online is in order.

TOPO!, on the other hand, allows me to type in "Chiwawa" and specify the state I want to search in (since I have three states installed) and voila - it shows me where it is on a map... then I can zoom into the appropriate level, and then annotate and print to my heart's content. It also ties in some handy, if not perfect, GPS functionality.


The first picture is from TopoZone (which is nearly identical to the picture from the libremap website), the second from TOPO! Although you don't get any more detail from TOPO!, it's certainly easier on the eye.




TopoZone allows you to search by placename, but then the map navigation process is slow and painful; the map display shows only a small area at any one time. The map quality is similar to TOPO!, but without any smoothing applied, it's less pleasant to look at.

Since I already have the TOPO! maps for Washington state, I will definitely stick to using them. But if I were a starving student or ever without access to the TOPO! maps or travelling to a state which I didn't have TOPO! maps for, I'd be all over libremap.org. (Which reminds me... I'm going to Reno this weekend and New Hampshire next month... :)

http://speedtest.net is a sometimes-helpful check to determine network speeds.

From typical work machine in Millenium:
3763 kb/s down
14131 kb/s up
15 ms ping time to Seattle

Apparently my mom has been collecting this last crop for a while. Note that one is dated May 14, 2006.

1. "Ebola's decimation of gorillas reported"
2. "Oops! The greediest generation leaves college grads in a pickle" (May 14, 2006) - A tongue-in-cheek commencement address by syndicated columnist Dale Dauten ("The corporate curmudgeon").
3. "Science imitates art?" with the handwritten note: "Susan, did the Romans use geometric shapes?" I think she meant geometric paterns, or tesselations, which is what the article discusses in detail. But taken out of context... um... yeah. Anyway, the article doesn't really talk much about science imitating art at all, except that some nonstick pan coatings have similar properties... but no mention of scientists being inspired by 12th-century middle-eastern art.
4. "Price Check" - real estate websites giving widely different estimates for the price of one piece of property. Um, yeah. Makes me really want to buy a house like you've been hinting at for years., mom..
5. "Throws of passion" - about Christian Cantwell winning the U.S. indoor shotput title. Underlined sentences include: "It was either start throwing again or get a job," Cantwell said. "It was very extrinsically motivating." Am I supposed to be impressed that a shotputter chose to start throwing heavy objects again instead of getting a job? Or that he used a multi-syllabic word? She also underlined a section about Shalane Flanagan (who grew up in Marblehead). Am I supposed to be impressed because she's from Marblehead and not recognize her name because she's one of the pre-eminent female runners of my generation?

No other notes or memos were included in the envelope.