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We are going to drive across the U.S.A from New York, New York to Santa Cruz, California. Trip duration is 25 days. We are currently in the planning stages. If you have any suggestions of interesting places to visit, please let us know. Either comment below on this post, or edit our map and add a placemark.
View NYC -> UCSC in a larger map
DeTeXify is a stunning piece of software (embedded in a webpage). When writing a LaTeX document one often wants to place a symbol in the document, but does not necessarily know the TeX command for the document. The solution was to search lengthy pages of symbols. DeTeXify allows you to draw the symbol with your mouse, and then provides likely matches and their TeX code.
Visit number three appears to be falling into place. Four and a half weeks crossing the Drake Passage and visiting Palmer Station. I’ve already spent time at McMurdo and South Pole. It will be nice to complete the U.S. Antarctic Base trifecta.
They say:
First time for the adventure.
Second time for the money.
Third time because you don’t fit in anywhere else.
I say:
First time for the adventure.
Second time for the adventure.
Third time to start a new adventure on a whole different plane.
Then:
Fourth and beyond to collect more data.
Everybody else seems to be discussing and commenting on Twitter so I figured I would too. I don’t know what it is, nor why it is popular, but I do use it from time to time, and will begin a Twitter experiment starting tomorrow morning.
My Twitter usage is limited to following some friends who have chosen to broadcast their activities there rather than on a blog. Most of these people have blogs too, and I follow those also. In addition to following others, I have posted some thoughts there myself, and I’ve set up my parents solar thermal system to tweet when it starts to overheat. I chose this simply because it was the easiest way for them and the technicians to get an SMS on their phone, although there exists an infinite number of non-twitter implementations.
My Twitter Experiment will begin tomorrow, Monday June 14 and continue to Friday, June 19. I am beginning a new project for work, and will tweet my thoughts, progress, trials and tribulations as I go along. The project is officially one week long, although it will continue in other forms for the next few years until I finish my PhD.
The work this coming week will be to write some software to access, visualize, and analyze oceanographic data from the Amundsen and Bellingshausen seas in Antarctica.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has just announced and introduced their six new astronauts. The biographies testify to an impressive lot. I think even if I had completed my PhD when I was trying out for these slots, it does not look like I had much of a chance. Four of the six are pilots: one fighter, two test, and one commercial.
Canada CSA also recently announced their two new astronauts (one fighter pilot, one doctor + astrophysicist).
Within a few months Japan (JAXA) and the U.S. (NASA) will announce their new astronaut corps too.
Looks like I have some studying to do in order to prepare for the next round in about a decade.
P.S. Tim, keep up the good work so I can just buy me a ticket if it comes down to that. I’d really prefer orbital to suborbital.
The R/V Lawrence M. Gould appears significantly smaller than the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer. The LMG holds 26 rather than 37 scientists and is 18 m (60 ft) shorter. That probably means it is cozier but moves more with the waves. And unfortunately it does not appear to have those wonderful wings on the bridge which provide an amazing place for watching whales, seals, penguins, ice, and skies.
The Lawrence M. Gould and the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Source: USAP Photo Library.
Antarctica Knit Hat Pattern Zoom of East African Horn and Southern Saudi Arabia
I recently finished my Antarctic Hat. This post describes how it was made and publishes the pattern. Since I began by posting the finished hat, I’ll continue to work in reverse order.
The final pattern is seen on the right. Click on it for a full size image. The original pattern is shown below. Annotations on the final are either doodles while I was bored, notes about stitch reduction or type (ocean v. land), or markers to remind me where I was when I took a break from knitting.
For each stitch, I simply looked at the pattern, determined what box I was knitting, and decided if it should be ocean or land, and if it was land if it should be green, brown, or white.
In order to make the pattern I began with with the NASA Blue Marble image, and wrote some image processing code to replace the ocean with white (just to save some ink and have extra space to take notes). I knitted a swatch to determine I wanted X stitches, and then placed X gray boxes evenly across the page. A little bit of extra work was done toward the South Pole in order to have the increases mapped onto the pattern.
My X came out to 108. If you wanted to use this pattern with a slightly different stitch count you can probably just add or remove a few columns from the Pacific and Atlantic basins without much effect on the proportions of the planet.
I chose to begin at the Pole and increase because it allows me to take the hat off the needles and try it on my targeted wearer and then continue knitting if necessary. Beginning at the rim and working up leaves less room for adjustments. The first red line is the equator, and the second was my original estimate of where I would stop. As you can see from the finished product I ended up knitting farther north, and even then adding the white-and-black map border.
Antarctica Knit Hat Pattern
I realize I’ve been calling this the Antarctica Knit Hat but it is really the entire southern hemisphere and almost half of the northern hemisphere. It includes Antarctica, all of Australia, New Zealand, Micronesia, and South America (although I forgot a stitch for the Galapagos), almost all of Central America, Africa, and India, parts of the Arabian Peninsula and Asia, and even a pixel / stitch or two of North America.
Spring is not the best season to finish a very warm double knit triple-layer hat. But it is fall in the Southern Hemisphere, and that seems to be a theme with this hat.
I started it a few years ago during my first trip to Antarctica with ANDRILL, and finished it this evening. More posts will come later on the process and the pattern…
Some photos of Minke Whales I took in January and February. The first is a pair, one is beginning to dive and you can see the fin, and the second has just breached while blowing. The second image was two pods, one about 10 and one about 20 in size, swimming around and through each other. I held my camera up to the eyepiece of a pair of binoculars to get a better zoom, hence the strange border on the image. The third is a single Minke in front of Pine Island Glacier.
Other whale news I have recently come across: The Australian Antarctic Division has just performed an aerial survey of Whales in the Southern Ocean. Perhaps they saw some of the same ones I saw.
And National Geographic has a very nice Blue Whale infographic website (including how it compares to the Minke Whales in size and weight). Click around there to learn all about their weight, size, anatomy, behavior, and threats to their health and livelyhood.
Tags: fauna
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