PDA drawings

The Palm T|X has a little graphic notepad. I never used it for much, but over the past few days I've been experimenting.

I've been intrigued by the work of Doodle Bean, whose daily PDA drawings grace her eponymous blog and her Facebook page. She obviously has some sort of graphic program -- it's time to explore the Palm catalog again! But until then, I find notepad drawings can be quite satisfying.

Laplace lily

A nicely neonized lily, using the Laplace algorithm.

Inverted Sobel duck

More GIMP experiments: Unsharp Mask, then Edge with the Sobel algorithm, then Invert. I think it looks quite gorgeous.

Shards of wildness, even here

1.
Rockville Pike roars at my back.
There, past cement, a flash of yellow:
Goldfinch, balanced on a seed-head.

2.
The storm rolled in while we were at the movie --
Beyond parked cars, the rainbow's limb was
Crossed by lightning-slash.

3.
Gray squirrel, spooked,
Jumps onto snow fence, falls,
And burrows skull-first
Through the rigid orange mesh.

Superstition

Casinos exist in a perpetual twilight, ambient light diminished so the machines can shine. There are no clocks; the seasons of the day are marked by the ebb and flow of patrons, and by early-morning maintenance, oddly mundane in glitter-chiming, stochastic Xanadu.

The old man appeared as I worked a dollar single-play 9/6 Jacks machine at the end of a row near the high-limit area. He reminded me of an older, more eccentric Alex Trebec -- tall, fastidious and careful in his movements, razor-thin, overdressed for a casino. He sat down at the machine next to mine -- an odd choice, since players tend to space themselves out. I glanced at him, and instantly hit my first set of quads in the session.

On that machine, quads return a hundred twenty-five dollars; I had been playing for some time, and was sorely in need of them. "Oh, you have brought me luck!" the old man exclaimed. An odd statement, since it was I who had just won. He turned back to his own machine, and his next hand was also a set of quads... dealt. His next few hands included a straight flush, and a second set of quads. He cashed out for five hundred dollars and stood to leave.

I remarked on his astounding good fortune. "Oh, I won eight thousand earlier today," he said casually. "I am having a good day." As he left, I hit my second set of quads. I hit no more quads for the rest of the session.

The next day, after breakfast, I was back at the same machine. It was the last day of our trip; I was moderately discouraged that I had hit nothing larger than quads in four days of heavy play. I was approaching my loss limit, something that hadn't happened for several trips.

I didn't pay much attention as I held the Ten-Queen-Jack of hearts. Three to the Royal comes so often, and fills in so seldom. And the Ten makes it seem, well, less royal somehow. I hit the Draw button. The Ace-King filled in on the left. I just had time to recognize the Royal Flush before the machine locked and the bells went off.

On that machine, the Royal Flush pays four thousand dollars. Enough to require a hand pay, and tax forms. More than enough to turn a losing trip into a highly profitable one.

"Congratulations," said a voice behind me. I turned to find the old man. He had been walking past my machine when the Royal hit.

"You brought me luck!" I stammered, grasping his offered hand. He just smiled, and walked away.

Hoover

You would think, with my lifelong obsession with pinnipeds, that I would have run into Hoover, the Talking Seal. Yet it was only yesterday that I stumbled across a reference to him on the Web. A few minutes later, thanks to Google, I had the story. And it is a remarkable one.

In the first place, the story is true. Hoover, a harbor seal at the New England Aquarium, could produce recognizable human speech. It was parroted speech -- one hears of dogs who can also say a few words -- but it was no less amazing for that. He learned speech by listening to his owners, George and Alice Swallow, as well as the staff and visitors at the Aquarium. Like the Swallows, he spoke with a heavy Boston accent. He also had a most sinister laugh.

The article on Hoover at the NEA includes an audio file of Hoover's vocalizations. There are more recordings of Hoover here.

Hoover died in 1985, and earned an obituary in the Boston "Globe". None of his children talked, but apparently one of his grandchildren shows some promise in that direction.

One more goodbye

Susanna Holstein, known as "Granny Sue" on the professional storyteller circuit, has posted a heartrending poem about watching a son leave for the war.

...
and yet my son must go
while I wave and smile
and break apart inside

I hope someday soon she will be able to post a poem about watching him return.

Mind your punctuation

From a story in the Globe and Mail: An excess comma may force Canadian company Rogers Communications, Inc. to pay an extra $2.13 million to use utility poles in the Maritime provinces. The contract states that the agreement "shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party." That second comma allows the cancellation clause to apply to both the initial five-year period and the successive five-year terms. This was not what Rogers intended, but it's what the contract states. So decided the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which gets to interpret these things.

The moral of the story: pay attention in school. Imprecision can be costly.

The way the world increasing knits together

It would have been rude to take a photograph. But here is what I saw, in the cental business district of DC, about three blocks from the White House: a small brown-skinned woman, in the uniform of a popular coffee house, with a shopping bag in her left hand, her half-eaten breakfast pastry in her right, and on her head, perfectly balanced, an enormous, plastic-wrapped platter of croissants. She passed me with the easy, rolling walk of a woman from a third-world village. Which she must have been, to have learned that skill so well. The platter barely wobbled. I stared after her in amazement and, yes, envy.

I hope she does well here.

Frosting colors

I deleted this post, then discovered it's the only reason anyone ever reads this blog. Here it is again:

This Icing / Frosting Color Chart appeared on the FOODWINE list:

Apricot: 5 parts lemon yellow, 2 parts pink
Aqua: 3 parts royal blue, 1 part leaf green
Avocado: 3 parts lemon yellow, 1 part royal blue, 2 parts leaf green
Bright Red: 1 part lemon yellow, 5 parts red-red
Brown: 4 parts lemon yellow, 3 parts pink, 1 part leaf green
Burgundy: 5 parts pink, 1 part royal blue
Burnt Orange: copper paste color plus yellow liquid food coloring
Chartreuse: 9 parts lemon yellow, 1 part leaf green
Coral: 2 parts lemon yellow, 3 parts pink
Egg Yellow: 8 parts lemon yellow, 1 part Christmas red
Golden Yellow: 6 parts lemon yellow, 1 part Christmas red
Lavendar: 2 parts pink, 1 part royal blue
Lilac: 3 parts pink, 1 part royal blue
Lime: 3 parts lemon yellow, 1 part leaf green
Mint: 1 part lemon yellow, 1 part royal blue, 1 part leaf green
Moss: 6 parts lemon yellow, 1 part Christmas red, 3 parts leaf green
Old Rose: 8 parts pink, 1 part royal blue, 1 part leaf green
Peach: 4 parts lemon yellow, 2 parts pink
Pistachio: 1 part lemon yellow, 3 parts leaf green
Purple: 2 parts Christmas red, 2 parts royal blue
Rust: 1 part lemon yellow, 3 parts Christmas red, 2 parts royal blue
Strawberry: 2 parts lemon yellow, 5 parts Christmas red
Turquoise: 4 parts royal blue, 1 part leaf green
Maroon: burgundy, red-red, and black

Gold: This is a difficult shade to achieve, however start with - 9.5 parts lemon yellow, .5 part red-red, .25 part kelly green
Silver: Also difficult. Start with 1 part black, 1 part sky blue, added to white icing.

NOTE: In most cases, pink and Christmas Red are interchangeable.

Vivid Colors: Use half margarine and half vegetable shortening in butter-cream recipe.

Brown: Add powdered cocoa until desired color is achieved. Add additional water or Hershey’s syrup as needed.
Ivory: Substitute butter flavored Crisco for part of the regular Crisco in butter-cream icing recipe.
Flesh: A touch of copper in white icing.

Note: Always add orange color to green icing for a more natural shade.