The Hobbit Cometh

Get excited people.  Gandalf will, once again, wield his old greybeard-era staff.  I prefer the old staff.  It is gnarly rather than the new symetrical white staff that lasted for part of one movie until the bad dude, who must not be named, broke it.

Hopefully, the director and any script coaches will help the performers pronounce Gandalf with that short A on both syllables.  Frodo did an excellent job.  It was, perhaps, the most memorable pronunciation of a name in the trilogy.  This should be a new category of award for actors.

At this point I've got nothing else to say but I do expect some really good comments.

Goldenfleece

Rising from the dusty electrons...

...bacenook emerges from the ashes of digital demise!

If only to say:

"I like Christmas cookies!"

Thank you and...good night!

Windy Goodness

Ok folks, just so you don't think i abandoned the world's only antisocial network, I'll let you in on a big secret. I'm a rebel. Actually, not. The thing is...I like kites. Whew, that felt good. Now that's off my chest I can share the gory details.

I saw a bunch of amazing kite-boarders out at the beach. After watching them for awhile, I started wondering what the kiting world had to offer old guys. So, I started digging.

I found a worldwide industry roughly split into two main categories: foil kites and inflatable kites. There is some amount of crossover in that some foils can be inflated and used on water.

Of the brands I looked at, the most impressive are Peter Lynn, Ozone and HQ. Within these are more categories. Though lots of folks break kites into numbers of control lines, I really only care about the 4 and 5 line kites. Within these most controllable of the kites, there are fixed bridle and sheetable (adjustable bridle kites). It appears that it's probably easier to learn on a fixed bridle kite and then transition to a kite with an adjustable bridle.

The sheetable kites have a significant advantage in a couple of respects. First, they are usable and controllable in a wider range of winds. They are also safer in high winds and/or gusty winds.

More control means more complexity. And, where your life is on the line, it makes sense to have some serious practice and comfort with the controls.

So, the basic progression is to go with a starter like the Ozone Imp Quattro or the HQ Hydra. Then, it might be good to go with a good fixed bridle trainer like the HQ Scout or the Ozone Flow. Once comfortable with the controls, it would be good to go with something with more responsive controls and more safety features.

There are many options, among the sheetable (aka depower) kites, but, in my opinion, the foils are safer, sturdier, and seem to offer the maximum variety of applications for snow, land, and water kiting. In this bunch, I like the HQ Apex, Ozone Access to learn on. Once comfortable with those, I like the HQ Neo and a really innovative inflatable from Peter Lynn Kites called the Charger.

The Charger is referred to as a twinskin or an ARC. It is a depower kite and is inflatable. It can be used on land or water. It is also the only kite that has the ability to automatically return to the zenith (another safety oriented feature).

There is a lot of info out there. I've done lots of reading. This is certainly an oversimplification of the topic. But, it sure takes less time to read this instead of all that stuff.

Later Dudes

I'm Not a Doctor but I Play One Online

Let's say you had a smart little brother who went to med school. He's really really smart and he has the school debt to prove it. But, did he go to Harvard? No. But, you can. Best of all it's free.

Remember the OCW Initiative?

Harvard Medical School offers a ton of courses online that are OCW. As long as you don't need credit for the courses or any teacher interaction (like you get any teacher interaction at med school anyway), you can take these classes. You just might be able to one-up your little brother.

http://mycourses.med.harvard.edu/public/

OCD About OCWi

Open Courseware, Open Learning, and other acronymically tempting word combinations are being slung around by some big players in the educational community. Namely, Harvard Medical School, MIT, UC Berkeley, Tufts, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon and a few others. There are quite a number of smaller schools in the same boat. Utah State University is a good example of a not-so-famous school with an extensive commitment to the Open Courseware Initiative.

What is this all about? Well, it's about sharing and improving curriculum for teachers and schools. For the rest of us it's about free education. Unless I need credit and/or teacher interaction - I can get a number of years of advanced education, including medical, without spending a dime.

Eventually, I'll share links.

Goldenfleece

Dangerous, But Oh So Tempting

I often look around for cool new balance challenges. These often become purchases under the guise of Christmas gifts that the children are required to share. The sharing requirement is also thinly disguised as a "share amongst yourselves" statement when it really means "share with me...please".

A waveboard was the first one. we graduated to Xsliders after that. I keep looking at the Freeline Skates but...Xsliders seemed like a better alternative. I purchased unicycles the next year. To date, the unicycle is unconquered. Mi esposa wants jumping stilts. These are boots with big springs on them that let you jump insanely high. This item is where we begin crossing over from challenging to just pure danger.

Speaking of danger - let me introduce you to the Freebord. This particular instrument of death lets you slide around like a snowboard. The carving movement is sort of like a skateboard but more fluid. They don't have full bindings but do have a little slot that your feet slip under. If you go to the website at www.freebord.com you will find videos of kids, without any protective gear, flying down streets. One of the videos shows how easy it is to stop by showing a kid just about getting creamed by a car. That is truly sickening. I need to thank them for making me break the first sweat I've had, in an Intel cube, ever.

Now I know why snow sports cost so much. It's because there is a surcharge for what I like to call "potential give". I'm not saying that snow will always be soft to land on - like a fluffy cloud. But, I'm almost certain that any kind of snow - not talking about the obvious relative, ice - is softer than a bite of asphalt, concrete, or car.

Having said that, I can't deny that I really want to try it. On the other hand, I'd like to live.

Coolest Research Engine EVER!

As I was finding out about software available for plotting math functions, I found the Mathematica website. Mathematica is the software that tortured me at school. I loved AND hated it. It helped me do my homework and it frustrated my learning experience in so many ways.

I actually owned early versions of MathCAD and Derive. Derive was my favorite. It was simple, logical and helped me get my homework done correctly and quickly. I'm over it now. Mathematica is still around and more powerful and flexible than ever. I can get it for Mac OSX, Linux and Windows platforms. MathCAD, in all its glory, is stuck with Windows. Sadly, Derive has been absorbed into a calculator maker's firmware or has died.

But, coolest of all is a very simple online research tool that will plot mathematical functions as well as tell me wild facts about my birthday. Here's where the company behind Mathematica surprised me. Go ahead and give it a whirl.

www.wolframalpha.com

See their suggested search entries on the website and, above all, don't forget to put in a little test function like f(x)=x/(x^2-1). You won't be sorry.