Jay Bazuzi's personal blog

A money that aligns with beauty

2011-11-11T23:24:00.001-08:00

Some of you may know Robin McKann and his Windfall Forest. They bought 20 acres of beautiful forest off in Port Townsend, WA. An FSC-certified operation, they expressed their love of the forest with their harvesting methods. This wood has gone in to some beautiful projects, from art pieces to houses. But they didn't make enough money to pay the bills, even with a very flexible lender. One option available to them was to clearcut the forest. That would have let them pay off the mortgage.

There's something a little strange here. Say you have a a forest that you could clearcut for $200M revenue, or you could log sustainably for $1M/yr. You're financially better off with the clearcut. That's because you will receive more than $1M/yr on the interest on $100M.

This isn't about "greed" as much as it is about "making a living". We are all faced with similar choices every day. Even if we want to do beautiful things, our money system puts a lot of pressure on us to choose money over beauty. Is poverty the only way to live beautifully?

Another way of describing this is the "discounting of future cash flows" - that money you make in the future is worth less than money you make today. Thus, it is in your best interest to sell the future for today, which is exactly what we've been doing. We destroy forests, poison the air and the water, overfish the oceans, privatize the commons of human ingenuity, corrupt the genetic code of life itself, to make a profit. Not just an elite, greedy few, but nearly everyone involved in the adult activity of making a living. I am in awe of this powerful magic.

What if we wanted the opposite - for the future to be more beautiful than the present. Could you imagine a kind of money that would support restoration of salmon habitat, organic local farming, and strong communities?

I want to live in that world.

Is it all about income inequality?

2011-11-02T12:31:00.000-07:00

I just got this email:

Research seem to show that while the 99-1% split is there and is sadly unfair, a bigger problem exists among the less educated in vast portion of the population.

The most troubling problems that leave many Americans at a disadvantage have gotten lost in the debate over the top 1 percent of earners vs. the bottom 99 percent. http://nyti.ms/uNdkLs

One way to glibly summarize that article above is to say "while income and wealth inequality only oppressed people of color and white trash, we could ignore it; now that it affects white college graduates, it's getting attention." And that is itself a worthy concern.

However, I am wary of any attempt to summarize the "true purpose" of the Occupy movement. As a leaderless movement, it has as many purposes as it has participants.

Complaints about income inequality are also expressions of greed and jealousy. "You got rich, and I didn't; that's not fair; give me your money!" That's a difficult position to defend.

hile income inequality in the USA is certainly a factor, it is not the only one that brings people to Occupy. Certainly that would not be enough to motivate demonstrations in 1000 cities worldwide! Pollution, energy, war, food, politics-for-sale, and police brutality, are common concerns among Occupyiers today.

Personally, I am dissatisfied with any messages asking to return to the way things were, to reinstate Glass-Steagall or tax the rich at 1980 levels, etc. First, the way things were is exactly how we got here today. Second, I don't think things were that great then, either. Third, it's impossible - the coal is already mined, the CO2 already released in to the atmosphere, the fish already caught.

I believe that the true purpose of the Occupy movement is still not known, at least not broadly. I think that the issues raised by Occupiers share a deeper common cause that we are not fully ready to address. I think of this movement as part of humanity's "coming of age ordeal", and we still need to go through that ordeal before we are ready.

"Corporate Greed" is only a symptom

2011-10-19T00:06:00.000-07:00

Occupy Wall Street has successfully avoided publishing a list of demands, which is wonderful. However, one of the more common messages is "End Corporate Greed". While this may be useful as a rallying cry, it's worth asking the question "Why is there corporate greed?"

Is it just because people are greedy? The 10th commandment seems to think so.

Is it because these corporations are run by Jews, and Jews want to screw over everyone else? The American Nazi Party seems to think so.

If you agree with either of them, then I probably can't convince you otherwise. That's fine, we're all in this together, and I believe we can find a way to take care of each other. However, if you're open to other points of view:

An obvious answer is "capitalism". Suppose you & I are competing for the same customers. I behave greedily (pollute and break up unions to maximize profits), while you attempt to behave ethically (clean up after yourself and treat your workers well). My prices are lower. Investors will drive my stock price up, while yours crashes. You go out of business and I am a darling of Wall St. This is "success" in the free market.

Thus, the "corporate greed" we see is merely a symptom of the system that corporations participate in, not a feature of a few "bad guys" at Goldman Sachs or wherever.

You might argue that the big corporations don't participate in a free market - they use their considerable lobbying power to gain market protections for themselves (while letting the rest of us fight each other over every penny). However, the same principle applies: in a competitive system, where each player seeks to maximize their own self-interest, the only sane and successful tactic is to attempt to influence lawmakers in your favor, at the detriment to others. So, maybe the "free market" label isn't accurate, but clearly the greedy behavior is still merely a symptom of the system we create.

Going a little more deeply, note that nearly all businesses depends on debt. They borrow money, do business, take a revenue, and pay off the debt. A creditor will only loan your business money if they believe you can turn a profit. That is, only profit-generating activities are likely to gain access to money. Restoring salmon habitat, or sitting at the bedside of a dying person is not profit-generating so it's very hard to get paid to do that. Building machines that clearcut forests faster is profit-generating, so it's easy to get money for it (at least as long as there's a demand for lumber).

So, if we are concerned about the effects of "corporate greed", we're going to need to go much deeper than, say, the Volker Rule or prosecuting some CEOs. This is too much to fit on a cardboard sign, but it's important that we be willing to look at underlying causes as the Occupy movement continues.

I accept that you may disagree with my analysis of the causes; even if you agree, you may notice that it's possible to go deeper still. There's plenty of room for more study here.

Occupy Port Townsend

2011-10-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

Port Townsend's population is only 9000, and we don't have the headquarters of any major financial institutions here. Still, today we had a lone protester at the corner of Sims Way and Kearney St.

View Larger Map

I took my kids to see him. I felt like I was taking them to the zoo. "Now kids, this is what a 'protester' looks like." Really, I wanted them to have this in their memory if the Occupy movement leads to something bigger, or if they ever consider protesting something themselves. They will have a concrete memory to work from.

He let me take his picture. 3 pictures, since his sign had 3 sides.

"Protest Locally"

"Support Our Troops"

"YouTube is Life Unfiltered"

That last one has me the most concerned. The only protester, with only 3 messages to share, and one of them is about how a Google property is so great.

Possible reasons your Ford 8N won't start

2011-09-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

Over the summer I helped my friend Bill get his Ford 8N running again. He used it to clear the snow on his driveway over the winter, but then couldn't get it going again in the spring.

If an engine runs but has issues, there are some straightforward ways of troubleshooting. But when it won't start at all, there are many possible causes. You hit the starter, it cranks, but doesn't fire. Out of gas, stuck carb float, blown head gasket, bad ignition coil, burned points, etc. What could it be?

Here are the main issues that we had to fix to get Bill's tractor going again.

Elbow fuel filter clogged. Unscrew the intake elbow from the carburetor and examine the filter. It should be clean and empty. Bill's was solidly packed with gunk. We put it in a vice and aimed a propane torch at it, then blew out the ash. There are supposed to be 3 filters on the 8N, but only one was operational, and the tank was dirty. So we drained the tank most of the way, dropped in a length of chain, and shook it around. Drain, rinse, repeat.

Distributor rotor broken. We had 3 rotors break on us. If you're getting no spark, this is a good thing to check. 2 of them were because the new distributor cap was a bad fit. We ended up buying a rotor + cap together from Napa, and they worked well.

Battery backwards. Ford 8N, and many older 6-volt engines are positive ground, with negative leading to the starter. Someone convinced Bill otherwise about a month ago, and the machine has been cranking backwards ever since. It was compressing fresh air and trying to ignite it, then blowing it back out the carburetor. *sigh*

Some troubleshooting techniques:

A little carb cleaner sprayed in the air intake or directly in to a cylinder will tell you a lot (it acts like starter fluid). If the tractor still doesn't fire, then the problem isn't fuel related.

A spark plug overgapped (1/4" or more) is a great testing tool. Pull a spark plug wire off one of the plugs, connect it to the overgapped plug, grounded it to the metal. If you still get a spark, then electrical issues are probably not the problem.

You don't need much compression to get started. Compression testers are useful for diagnosing engine health, but they are only useful when the engine is hot. To get started, you just need to make sure you have *any* compression. Pull all 4 spark plugs, and put your thumb over each hole in turn. If you feel good pressure, that's enough for now.

Fawns

2011-05-24T19:08:00.000-07:00

The other day I saw a doe walking with two tiny fawns, and snapped this pic:

One is just on the other side of mom, and is hard to see. The other is hobbling across the street. Its front hooves were turned under. Looked painful.

What's in my pockets?

2010-12-30T21:46:00.000-08:00

I'm amused to find this collection of items in my pockets today:

Ford truck headlight wiring upgrade

2010-12-26T21:26:00.000-08:00

I've had the 1975 Ford F-350 for about a year now. It has plenty of problems (some of which I listed in my previous post), but it's what I expect from a 35-year-old truck.

One problem I've been ignoring for a while is the headlights. While driving at night, they would turn off and on. Intermittent electrical problems are difficult to diagnose, and in this truck the wiring is nuts. Three-and-a-half decades of dirt, decay, and home "repairs". It's often hard to tell what color a wire is, and who knows if it will match the wiring diagram? The only good thing I can say is that the truck lacks many of the modern features that would add complexity (a chime when you don't put on your seat belt, or ABS brakes, or a "MAINT REQ'D" indicator).

I studied the wiring diagram, but it didn't tell me much: wires go from the headlight switch to the headlights, and don't do much else. Duh. I tried wiggling the wires that I could see, to trigger a loose connection, but it didn't work. I held up a multimeter near the truck, but it didn't care. I tried looking around the internet, but couldn't find anything that matched my symptoms.

I ended up just avoiding driving after dark. Since I didn't use the truck very much, that was OK.

In the fall I started using the truck more, just as the days were getting short. Right now our sunset is around 4:30pm, so the "don't drive at night" tactic is very limiting. So, I went looking for help on the internet, again. This time I found something.

http://www.ford-trucks.com/article/idx/0/039/article/Whiter_Whites_Brighter_Brights.html

The problem:

The stock headlight wiring sucks. The wire is quite small (#18) and it follows a very long tortorous path from the battery to the headlight switch, down to the dimmer switch and then back thru the engine compartment to the headlights. There is several volts lost thru all this wiring and switches, so the lights only get maybe 10-11 volts instead of the 13-14 they should have.
The other problem is that all that headlight current heats up the headlight thermal breaker, which eventually dies from the well known "flashing Ford headlights" syndrome.

His solution is to run a new circuit to supply the headlights, and use the existing wiring to control a relay on that circuit. This is pretty basic automotive wiring. (It's right at the edge of my comfort zone, which tells you something about how I am with automotive wiring).

I went to the local auto parts store and bought some supplies:

- A couple relays, with sockets:

- A small fuse panel and fuses:

- A tube of dielectric grease

- 14 AWG wire - big enough to carry the headlight load

I also used a some 18 AWG wiring, crimp connectors, and heat-shrink tubing I already had.

I mounted the fuse box on the side of the engine compartment. Heavy steel was tough to drill. 2 holes to mount the box, plus one for ground screws.

I used the fuse box instead of in-line fuses for two reasons. First, the in-line fuse holders I tried fell apart in my hands. Second, the starter solenoid already had 5 wires attached to one stud (1 from the battery, 4 to various systems) and I would be adding 2 more. A fuse box can do the distribution, instead of everything being bolted on the stud. I only put these two new circuits (high beam / low beam) on the fuse box for now, but I may move the others over later.

I reused the existing headlight sockets, but leaving 3"-long pigtails to splice in to. They're only 18 AWG, but at that length it'll be OK.

I put silicone grease in every connection to keep out water & air, so it won't corrode. Solder + heat shrink tubing would have been more secure, but I think this will be good enough.

The headlights seem brighter now, although I don't have good before-and-after comparisons.

While I was looking around the engine compartment, I noticed a bunch of disconnected wiring on the right side. There's a space for a battery that isn't there, a ground cable for that battery, and what looks like a second starter solenoid, but is actually a battery isolator relay. This truck used to have a slide-in camper long ago.

The reason I started working on this headlight project was because I got stuck while working on the motorhome. Its battery isolator was dead, and I was having a trouble finding a replacement. I was at the auto parts store looking for one, which they didn't have, so I bought the bits for this headlight project. Yay, got my isolator for free. :-)

We were totally lied to by our album covers!

2010-07-15T22:05:00.000-07:00

I use Skype video to stay in touch with my far-flung family. I was just thinking about how video communication appeared in futuristic films when I was a kid. Take, for example, this shot from 2001: A Space Odyssey:

(I took it from this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWwo6JpMceg).

Notice anything funny? Something that doesn't match our real experiences with Skype? She's looking at us.

In real, face-to-face communication, we look each other in the eye. I look at you and see you looking back at me.

When I Skype with my brother, I look at the picture of him on my screen. But the picture he sees isn't taken from my screen, it's taken from my camera, which is usually on the top of the monitor. So to him it looks like I'm looking down instead of looking directly at him.

In the videophone sequence in 2001, and in just about every other videophone scene in a movie ever, the person on the other side is looking at a camera. It looks natural, but it almost never happens.

Recent media seems to be getting this right. For example, this NSFW video by Morningwood (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kYLImd8_Xc).

I've noticed that the larger my screen is, the worse it gets, as that tends to increase the gap between the camera and the picture. I have taken to shrinking the Skype window and putting it as close to the camera as possible, to make it look more natural on the other side.

I wonder how long it will take for technology to make this easy? I wonder what technology it will require?

Maybe when digital cameras become dirt-cheap (like $0.01) and microscopic, we can make an LCD display with an array of cameras embedded in a matrix across it. Then the software can track the eyes of the person on the other side, and pick the camera closest to those eyes.

Mini-rant: 4-port USB hubs in LCD monitors

2010-06-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

I always get LCD monitors with USB hubs in them, but they're always limited to 4 ports. That's not enough!

2 go immediately to keyboard and mouse.

The remaining 2 are shared with all my other USB devices I might have, like:

- portable scanner
- flash drive
- headset
- web cam
- smart card reader
- GPS device
- camera

Now, if they'd used 7-port hubs, they could have put 3 ports on the back (one would be the camera) and 4 ports down the side, and I'd be pretty well set.

Technological Innovation I'd like to see: USB and audio in video cables

2010-06-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

I have these cables running from my monitor to my desktop PC:

- video
- audio to speakers
- USB

It gets worse if you have audio to microphone.

3-4 cables running from A to B is dumb. I know that HDMI includes audio, but it's hard to get resolutions over 1920x1080 with HDMI. And, no USB.

I wish DVI had included channels for USB and audio. Then I could have a cleaner space behind my desk.

Technological Innovation I'd like to see: USB control of monitors

2010-06-28T09:29:00.000-07:00

I already have a 4-port USB hub in my LCD monitors, but it's just a bolt-on device. It shares only a housing an a power supply with the monitor.

I wish the monitor itself was a USB device. I hate pushing the tiny buttons on the bezel, trying to navigate awkward menus to change monitor settings. Instead I'd like to do it in software.

I already have a USB cable running from the PC to the monitor, so we're almost there!

I have heard that Mac monitors do this, so I'm just wishing that PCs would get their act together. It should have happened years ago.

How to start Where are Your Keys?

2010-03-29T11:02:00.000-07:00

One thing I've always struggled with, since I first started learning Where are Your Keys (WAYK) was how to start learning WAYK!

Before watching the first WAYK video, I had heard discussion and description of the game, but still didn't get it. A short time later I felt like I understood the game, but didn't know how to explain it in a way that actually made sense. Conclusion:

The only way to understand WAYK is to play it.

That implies:

Explaining WAYK ahead of time is a decelerator.

The thing to do is get playing as quickly as possible.

Another thing that I struggled with at the very beginning was the question "what am I supposed to be doing here?" Should I be trying to memorize signs? Is getting the answer to "what's that?" right important? It certainly was in my high school German class. I found myself trying hard to remember the sign for "black pen" and sign it quickly enough to keep up with the video. This is also a decelerator.

Better to just play along, and let it go how it goes. I suspect that complete newbie players need to get this message early on - that just playing along is fine, don't worry about trying to learn. I don't have enough experience with this to be sure, though.

Another thought came to me from listening to a recent WAYK debrief podcast. (I think it was this one.) Justin said that he doesn't do 2 colored pens with first-time players, because it's simpler for them to get just "pen" instead of dealing with colors. This is spot on. I think that it's particularly important to get the newbies immersed in the game as quickly as possible - really playing, not thinking hard - so they can understand how to play faster. In fact, for the very first few rounds, I would limit to just 3 objects instead of 5 (maybe even 2!). It's Technique: Bite-Sized Pieces with a very small piece for someone who is just trying to figure out eating for the first time.

On a similar note, I think that explaining Travels With Charlie is interesting, but until you've played the very round, I think it's a decelerator. Just get playing as soon as you can.

Jay's techniques for total newbies:

I've been imagining the situation where a stranger and I both miss the bus. We have some time to kill until the next one comes, and I ask if they want to learn sign language while we wait.

1. Give the shortest intro possible (Technique: Short Intro)

If you'd like, I can teach you a little sign language. We're going to have a very simple conversation about these objects. I'll start, and you join in as soon as you are read.

It may also help to add:

Don't worry about trying to learn something and get it right. Just play along. If you're not sure what to do, just copy me.

2. Play simply (Technique: Simple Set-Up)

Use 2 or 3 objects, instead of the regular 5. Pick objects with simple names (a rock is better than a 1 dollar bill). Don't use two similar objects that require differentiating (only 1 pen).

3. Start playing alone (Technique: Play Solo)

Explain the sign for "What's that?" in English. Then ask and answer "What's that?" for each of your objects in turn. If your newbie doesn't copy, remind them to.

After a few rounds they will be comfortable enough that you could have them start asking you.

Now your players are not complete newbies. You can add a couple more objects in perhaps including color. You can have conversations about how the game works, what to do, where we are going, Techniques, etc.

Adaptation when you have a non-newbie

If you have two or more players, where one is a total newbie and one is not, you can play with the more experienced player instead of playing by yourself. That will probably work a little better.

These are just my ideas, I haven't had much chance to test them on folks. I'm sure I'll learn more as I do.

WAYK Arabic - Travel's with Charlie

2010-03-26T20:45:00.000-07:00

When using Where are Your Keys? to learn a language, we use Technique: Travel's with Charlie to describe different levels of language skill, based on the ACTFL scale.

Here is my translation of this scale for Palestinian Arabic:

Level 1 - Tabouli Babaghanoujh Hummos.
Level 2 - How to make hummos.
Level 3 - Explain why olive oil is so good for you.
Level 4 - Negotiate peace if the Middle East.

To put it another way:

Level 1 - Eat Arabic food
Level 2 - Make Arabic food
Level 3 - Why Arabic food
Level 4 - Get everyone to eat Arabic food

Great hummos

2010-03-26T20:38:00.000-07:00

Whenever I go to a potluck I bring hummos. I follow my Tata's recipe, which I've been eating since I was a baby. We eat it with every meal. It's a comfort food for me, so whatever is leftover after the party is something I will enjoy.

Traditionally they would use a mortar and pestle to grind the beans, but today we all use a food processor. They probably made fresh hummos every day. One day I hope to try the old way. In the food processor, I make a double recipe.

- can of chick peas (aka garbanzo beans), drained
- clove of garlic, peeled.
- fresh parsley
- 1/3 C raw tahini
- 1-2 lemons, juiced
- 1/2 t salt
- olive oil

Pull the leaves off the parsley, as the stems don't taste good. Put them in the food processor, with the garlic. Process until the garlic is diced.

Add chick peas. Process until somewhat smooth.

Add tahini, lemon juice, and salt. Process another minute. These ingredients should be adjusted to taste.

Put in a bowl, smooth the surface, and cover with a thin layer of olive oil.

To eat, tear a small piece of pita bread, bend it in to a scoop, and use it to pick up some hummos. Pop it in to your mouth, and announce Sahtein.

Got a cold?

2010-03-25T19:47:00.000-07:00

A friend was feeling down about how often her young child has been sick recently. I wrote some thoughts on it to her, and now I'm posting them here.

I hope they get you thinking.

Conventional thinking is "colds are an enemy and must be stopped!" They're the problem. We combat them with antibiotic drugs, hand washing, coughing in to our elbows, etc.

A common progressive view is that it's really good practice for her immune system. The cold challenges you and you get better at fighting off future colds. "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger." They're a necessary evil.

Another common progressive view is that you only get sick when you haven't been taking care of yourself. If you just get enough rest, good nutrition, avoid sugar, avoid stress, etc., your body will be strong enough to fight off a cold. If you get sick, it's because you're weak. They're a symptom. (Or a punishment, if you're in to that sort of thinking.)

Consider the possibility that being sick is beneficial right now. That the body invites the sickness in to do something important. Something it can't do itself. Suppose you're tired but don't let yourself sleep. So, you get sick. Then you sleep. See? It worked!

Or you need to be coddled and cared for a little extra. You get sick. People around you give you a little extra care. See, it worked again!

Or you have some toxins in your body that you can't clear for some reason. But chest cold triggers a lot of mucus in your lungs, which your body fills with toxins and then coughs out. Tada, it worked! Thank you cold!

I don't mean that you should try to get sick by eating badly, increasing your stress, or avoiding sleep. Do take good care of yourself; it feels good to do so! But when the sickness does come, give it a chance to work. Maybe it's doing something really good for you. Rest, eat chicken soup, and let people take care of you.

Mainstream: Colds are the problem.
Naturopath: Colds are a symptom.
My radical view: Colds are a cure.

WAYK Arabic 3 - Want Have Give Take

2010-03-13T12:15:00.000-08:00

This time, we actually play a couple rounds, and talk about Want/Have/Give/Take.

You can play along a little here, but really you gotta lead your own game. See http://www.whereareyourkeys.org for more.

WAYK Arabic 2 - CraigsList Mine/Yours

2010-03-13T10:44:00.000-08:00

As a followup to my initial What's That? video, I present a "Craigs List" of Mine / Yours / etc.

As before, this video is meant to plug in to a Where are your Keys game that you run, not to lead you in a game. See http://www.whereareyourkeys.org to learn more.

Arabic words are often modified based on the gender of the person you're talking about. So, for example, "your" is different for a boy or a girl. I don't know a good way to represent this in ASL. Ideally we'd develop some pidgin sign technique for this aspect of Arabic, which would apply through WAYK Arabic.

Budget

2010-02-03T21:57:00.000-08:00

The feasibility study is pretty much done. The only real outstanding question I have is whether the county will allow us to build the kind of house we want. I won't be able to get a solid answer until I actually apply for a building permit, but I'm hoping to get a hint now, before we actually pay for the land. I do know that there are straw-bale houses in the area, as well as an underground / fully bermed / living roof house, so that establishes a precedent for alternative construction.

With the time available before closing, I'm going to try to draw up a budget. There will be a lot of hand-waving, but it'd be good to get the sticker shock out of the way. If it's outrageous, we can still walk away.

Here's some numbers I have to compare to:

Tom Elpel built his first house in the early 90s, using foraged rocks, trees from a forest fire, and his own labor for $10/sq. ft.

Over the last 5 years he built another house, using many reclaimed materials and his own & volunteer labor for $15/sq. ft. He was very ... resourceful.

I talked to a log-house builder in the next county. He said they build the house at his facility, then disassemble, ship, and reassemble. (When I was visiting, a guy was using a drawknife, which is awesome.) He said that a log house shell is typically $30/sq. ft., while a finished ("turnkey") house would be $150/sq. ft.

There are a couple companies that do upscale, compact, eco-friendly manufactured homes. One of them is Greenpod (http://www.greenpoddevelopment.com/pods.php). Another is ideasbox (http://www.ideabox.us/). They both work from a single-wide design, and will add on modules for a little extra room. They're low-energy / clean air / sustainable materials, so we thought about using one instead of building our own. Two problems: they're too small for a family of 5, even if we like each other a lot, and they're expensive. ideasbox fortino is $150k for $1250 sq ft. (that's $120 / sq. ft.). Greenpods:

Pods start at less than $160.00 per square foot. This includes module fabrication, but not the cost of your land, site preparation, transportation and setting of Pod, or site improvements.

That's a lot of additional costs. Our water hookup fees (not actually running the water pipe) will be $9000, for example.

There's something troubling about theses prices. For one thing, a $150,000 is inherently not "green". If you're planning on buying one, where are you going to get $150,000? Talk to any eco-nut, and they'll tell you there's not much money to be made doing sustainable work. All that money's gotta come from somewhere. We are quickly converting all natural capital in to money, and that's tough on the ecosystem. Similarly, the money you spend on the house will be used to direct more of the same behavior. The economy is inherently eco-unfriendly. Just look at how much waste we create here in the most affluent country in the world. The poor parts of the world that are making a lot of waste are doing it in a desperate attempt to copy us!

This is why the "eco-mansion" feels so wrong to me. That kind of luxury is always wasteful.

That doesn't mean that we have to be miserable to "save the planet". Quite the contrary! The eco-mansion is a substitute for our true desires; when we meet those true desires we find the most fulfillment possible.

What a delicious tangent.

Anyway, there are some points to measure against. It's spreadsheet time.

Good network printer/scanner wanted

2010-01-26T22:18:00.000-08:00

I have a Lexmark X4550 printer/scanner/copier. I love that I can scan stuff and that it's wifi, and that it's pretty fast, but I hate so much else about it. I have been in the market for a better unit since the day I got it, but can't seem to find just the right thing.

It requires you to install a bunch of software on your computer. It's clearly not very good software, and I worry about what havoc it could be causing. It's a slow install, too. Also, there are 6 different versions, by OS. So for each computer I have to download again. And because it's big, the download is far from instant.

To scan over Wi-Fi, it goes like this:

load the document
switch to scan mode
browse a list of destination computers, and pick one
wait while it queries the computer for "applications"

This sometimes fails after a minute
These are things like "File, Email, Web Browser, and Computer"
"File" brings up a custom Save As dialog on the target computer. You can't hit ENTER, you have to actually click Save. If you scan again before saving, the first scan is lost.
"Computer" means to launch Lexmark's crappy scan touch-up software

select an application (I always use File)
click Scan Color or Scan Black
wait while it scans
on the target computer, save the file

It has a USB port, so I can carry a laptop to it and plug in directly. This installs a second instance of the printer, which I don't really want, since I'm just trying to scan. When you do that with Windows Vista or 7, you can't use the Scan buttons any more. Instead you have to launch Windows Fax and Scan an use that interface. It's a fine interface, but it's at the computer, and scanning should happen at the scanner.

I have one pre-Vista machine, my Windows Home Server (which is based on Windows Server 2003). If I plug in to USB there, the Scan buttons follow the same sequence as Wi-Fi.

I don't scan that often, so I tolerate it, but every time I use it I am annoyed.

The print functionality is OK. The installed software insists on speaking "Printing Started" over the speakers. It sometimes fails to print with no obvious reason. Every print job asks me if I want to register, even if I check the "don't remind me again" option. It does paper jam more often than I expect, but maybe that's a hard problem.

The print & scan quality are good enough that I have no complaint. And at my low usage level, the speed is fine.

What I really want

Small. I want something unobtrusive.

Internal paper trays. Less likely to get peanut butter on the paper.

1-touch scanning. Load the document, click scan, and be done. The file should appear on a network share on my server ("\\SERVER\Scanned Documents").

Easy setup. On a new computer, do Add Printer -> Add network printer, and it finds it and downloads the driver from Windows Update.

Wi-Fi. I want to print from any computer in the house. But this isn't a requirement, because I could plug it in to the server and share it out there.

All-in-one isn't a requirement. I would accept a separate printer and scanner, if that's what it took. I'd even plug the scanner in to the server if that's what it took to get one-touch scanning. If they were separate units, I'd probably get a color laser from Dell Outlet, as they're not too expensive. The long-term costs are lower, as the toner doesn't age like inkjets, and I don't print much.

I've tried googling for printers, but it doesn't work. "network scanner" turns up packet sniffers. "scan to share" turns up anti-virus software.

Truck

2010-01-21T12:26:00.000-08:00

Last fall a friend was moving from Port Townsend to Bainbridge, after her husband got a job in Seattle. They had just sold their second car, when they realized they needed a second car for a few weeks, until the move was done.

She decided to buy a really cheap truck and then sell it again 3 weeks later.

The next day she gave me a ride and asked if I needed a truck. I figured it would be useful for the house-building, so I said yes. I ended up buying the truck from the original seller, and loaning it to her for the 3 weeks, which simplified paperwork.

I paid $1000 for a 1975 Ford F-350 Ranger XLT (it's 35 years old). Gasoline engine, automatic transmission. A hundred things broken, but the chassis and engine may still be functional in another 35 years.

It's an extended cab, which means I can carry the whole family. Between the very low gas mileage and the limited safety features, I avoid doing that. There are no shoulder belts, let alone airbags. The best thing I can say about it safety-wise is that it's heavy.

I bought a service manual right away. Here are things I know to be broken:

The rear window slides are full of moss
The rear sliding window panes are supposed to have aluminum borders, but they fell off
Turn signals / wipers / fuel gauge / heater fan sometimes don't turn on. Turning the ignition off and back on usually brings them back. I am guessing a bad relay.
Engine temperature gauge never moves.
One running light needs a new bulb
There's a socket under the hood for a lamp to light the engine; needs bulb
Driver's seat sometimes leans back by itself
Middle rear seat belt is broken.
Water leaks in somewhere, so the floor is usually wet.
Tailgate latch is broken on one side; pliers required to open.
Tailgate is warped, making it very hard to close.
Rear bumper is broken off the chassis on one side. Other side is strong enough to hold it on.
Lots of bare wires under the hood; what did they go to?

There are two gas tanks. I have replaced both gas caps. One was nearly impossible to open, because they key was cut wrong. I finally got the hang of it, but decided to stick with non-locking caps. The other one had a worn-out gasket, and I figured for safety and shelf-life a new cap was a good idea.

Reid hates it. He doesn't like the smell. He sees how much is broken, and tells me I wasted my money. But it's a 1-ton truck, so it can carry a lot.

New blog for the house

2010-01-20T16:10:00.000-08:00

I've created a new blog just to write about the house-building experience. The URL is http://jbazuzihouse.blogspot.com/.

WAYK Arabic 1 - What's That?

2010-01-05T18:45:00.000-08:00

I've been learning to play Where are your Keys since the first video appeared 4 months ago.

I spent the end of December visiting family, including my Arabic grandmother. She always wanted me to learn Arabic, and was disappointed that I hadn't done so. Now, at age 35, I was finally ready.

To use this video (and those that will follow), you'll first need to learn Where are your Keys. Do that at http://www.whereareyourkeys.org. Practice until you can are fluent in What's That? before you try to learn from my video. Also, my videos don't show full games, but instead the snippets necessary to get you started playing the game. You'll have to make the leap yourself.

I spent about a week learning the basic words and practicing with those that could help me. Arabic is a complex language, and I needed to figure out what parts to use with WAYK. Their impulse, of course, was to teach me the name of every object we came in contact with, and I had to resist that gently.

My elders were born in Jerusalem, and came to the United States in the 1970s to escape the violence. Their dialect is geographical; Arabs from other places speak differently. They were very poor, so they probably spoke differently than other classes. They are Christian, and that may affect their dialect as well.

My goal here isn't to be able to speak with Arabs I might meet; it's to get closer to my family. So, it was important to learn the exactly dialect of my grandmother. If you want to learn Arabic for a different purpose, you will need to find a different "Fluent Fool" to help you out.

Some books

2009-12-19T10:58:00.001-08:00

Some great books:

The brown book at the bottom left was written by my grandfather. The one at the top left is Joy of Sex.

"My influences include"

2009-12-18T19:16:00.001-08:00

There are a few people who have influenced in the last decade, and I was just thinking about who they are, how I found them, and how they are connected.

While visiting my in-laws we were served home-made kefir and raw milk. I was definitely hesitant at first, but we didn't get sick. My mother-in-law (MIL) also showed us Nourishing Traditions (NT). We read & discussed the whole visit, and came away with a bunch of new ideas.

The MIL bought us our own copy of NT, as well as a copy of Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz, aka Sandorkraut. This book blew my mind. It's not just a recipe book. It continued to change my thinking about micro-organisms and about industrial vs. home-made food. It also got me thinking about issues beyond food: death, compost, and social change. When he wrote a second book, The Revolution will not be Microwaved, I bought it and read it immediately. Both of Sandor's books have a safe home on my small bookshelf.

While trying to learn more about Ginger Soda, I came across an article called The Economics of Fermentation by Charles Eisenstein. Something about this guy's writing spoke to me. It was wonderful to read, and made complete sense to my way of thinking. I looked for more, and found his book The Yoga of Eating. It blew my mind. For the first time I understood Yoga Breathing. I now read everything he writes (book, blog, audio, video).

Sandor Katz came to Seattle to give a workshop in the summer 2006. My twins were just 5 months old, but I went anyway, exhausted but enthusiastic. He was teaching Wild Fermentation, while Frank Cook was teaching Wild Foods. I had never thought of eating wild, and Frank was way over my head, but he sure got me thinking. He recommended a book called Botany in a Day by Tom Elpel. Tom had self-published 4 books, and offered them all together at a discount, so I went for it. The others are Direct Pointing to Real Wealth (which fell flat with me, but maybe it's time to re-read), Participating in Nature (which got me thinking about primitive living skills; now I go in to the woods almost every week), and Living Homes. Now I'm working on plans to build a new house for my family. While I won't be building in quite the same way as Elpel, his thinking about the how & why of homes has shaped me greatly. More recently I read Rob Roy on Cordwood & other topics, and realize that I match Rob's outlook on life more closely than Tom's.

There's another thread, and I can't remember all the details. Even though I love learning, I deeply disliked going to school. So much about it seemed wrong. I heard claims that I was supposed to be learning math, science, literature, etc., but actually was learning very little of those things for the time I was there. It was such a cruel place at the same time. I decided early on to homeschool.

As a young adult I discovered Lies my Teacher Told me by James Loewen, although I can't remember how. At the same time I read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and some of the work of John Taylor Gatto and John Holt. They got me thinking about how school works, and why. Eisenstein talks about it, too: school is perfectly suited to preparing you for an adulthood spent doing work you don't care about.

As a parent of a spirited child, I was grateful to discover Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. More recently I've watched some of his videos on Youtube and it has moved me deeply. Both Rosenberg and Eisenstein explore the way that our language is structured to a society of good vs. evil, the separate self, control of nature and human nature, etc. The roots of these values go very deep indeed.

Any reading on homeschooling quickly leads you to Unschooling. I have been a parent for 8 years, and I still haven't figured out how to be an unschooling parent. I used to think it was because my son was so spirited, but now I think it's because I wasn't ready for it: I still had work to do on myself.

My step-brother turned me on to a podcast by Willem Larsen called The Learning Revolution. The podcast immediately preceding was both exciting and confusing. It was an interview with Evan Gardner, about his method for learning languages quickly, called "Where are your Keys?". WAYK is an amazing way to learn languages, but also shows us different ways to think about learning. Ways that don't fit the conventional model of education, with its hierarchies, systems of control, and misery.

All of these things are connected.

The world is in crisis: global warming, coral reef death, peak oil, H1N1, the heart disease epidemic, rising asthma and Asbergers rates, obesity, economic collapse, the war on drugs, the police state, the prison industry, the growing gap between rich and poor. There are many more for this list, and they are all the same problem at root.

Similarly, these work of the people mentioned above is part of the solution. The coming turning of the age. From fermentation to unschooling to home-made houses, these people are seeding the ideas that will help us remember a new way of being, if that makes any sense. Living in the gift, believing in the more beautiful world that our hearts tell us is possible, recognizing that you and I are not separate, but instead expressions of the same universe.

I hope you will read the works of these folks and let them move you, and become a mover yourself.

Build a house

2009-12-18T18:14:00.000-08:00

We've been looking for a house to buy, and haven't quite made it. We got close - an offer on one that didn't stick, and another that was already pending when we found it - but for now we're still looking.

Eventually I decided to revisit what I had learned about alternative house construction. Materials with low embodied energy, reclaimed materials, build-it-yourself, insulation, thermal mass, solar gain, and integrated design.

That last one is important. Integrated design. By that I mean thinking about how each part of a house design relates to the rest. For example, laying out the floor plan so the plumbing can all be together ("wet wall").

In Permaculture (and in nature) every element serves multiple roles. Chickens don't just produce eggs; they also consume food scraps, protect the orchard from pests, turn soil in the garden, and produce fertilizer. In conventional house construction, we use studded walls, meeting the needs like this:

strength - studs, OSB sheathing

fire resistance - drywall

insulation - fiberglass batts

beauty - drywall, siding, paint

thermal mass - none

Contrast that to Cordwood, my current DIY favorite.

strength - cordwood

fire resistance - cordwood

insulation - conrdwood

beauty - cordwood

thermal mass - cordwood

Furthermore, Cordwood is cheap and accessible for the amateur. No fiberglass to make you itch, either.

In addition to building our own house, we'd like to grow much of our own food. Chickens, ducks, goats, honey bees, a small orchard, and a big garden. Maybe pigs. You don't need a whole lot of space to do that, but I don't want to be buying a lot of food for the animals: I want them to roam and forage for themselves a lot. That means having a little land. I don't need to produce enough food to sell, but I do hope to produce more than we need and trade or gift the surplus.

Then again, I don't want some sort of rural McMansion. A hundred acres I can call "mine". 3000 sq. ft. of house at $120 / sq. ft., with active solar heat management and laminated "green" floors. Driving 20 miles just to see friends or by shampoo.

We've found 1.7 acres for a reasonable price. That's more than enough to grow all the food we can eat, but not enough to feed all the animals we could want. That's OK.

It's outside the city limits, which gives us more leeway with codes & construction methods. However, it's right over the line, so we're close to stuff, including a bus line. It also has city water in the street.

It's wooded. I have reservations about clearing land. But the alternative is to buy land that someone else has already cleared, which isn't much better. However, land that has been abused (e.g. gravel pit) and is super-cheap would be an opportunity to bring rich life back, which I like. Anyway, I love the woods so being wooded isn't terrible. And having a supply of wood for building and fuel is good, too.

In the new year we plan to put an offer on the land. Then we'll build an outhouse to explore the building techniques we're thinking about. Then a temporary shelter. We have a year on our current lease to get all that done and then start building.

I also hope to inspire others with my example, and by teaching what I learn. You don't have to have an enormous, expensive, toxic, wasteful home. It can be modest and comfortable and beautiful and cheap and healthy.

More to come, I hope.

Solar house design

2009-11-12T02:54:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about building a house. Ideally it will be cheap, modest, super energy efficient, comfortable, beautiful, and low maintenance.

My friend Andy loaned me a book called The Passive Solar House, by James Kachadorian. There are a bunch of worksheets in the back, and I turned them in a Google Spreadsheet. (I accidentally drank caffeinated tea in the evening, so I'm up late.)

Then I plugged in data for my family and my house, and found a lot of bugs. Fixed the bugs, then fixed some more, and found some interesting data.

Summary

I can stay comfy in winter for ~1 cord of wood per year. That's dry, seasoned hardwood in a woodstove. A masonry stove will be more efficient with that wood.

This area doesn't get that cold (good) but doesn't supply much solar energy (bad). Having lots of big windows helps, but not enormously.

Most of the heat loss is through windows (especially at night) or from replacing air.

Details

The house design I'm using is built in to a hillside. The north side is fully bermed. The east and west sides are bermed part-way, but leave space for some egress windows and a doorway.

The south side is mostly windows. Just how much is a variable I'm playing with. Some web sites recommend floor-to-ceiling windows, which is expensive, but creates an in-home greenhouse, which can be very beautiful.

The book points out that windows may allow a lot of solar gain in the summer, but then lose a lot at night. In many climates, it's a wash: adding windows only increases temperature fluctuation. Then you need to add thermal mass to compensate. Glass insulation ranges from R-1 to R-3, which isn't much.

The design is 48' x 32', for 1500 sq. ft. That's more than we really need, but if I'm going to build a house in the ground, I figure I should design a little extra room. Size can matter a lot, so I will ponder these numbers carefully.

In my calculations I'm ignoring 2 areas of thermal mass. The design includes large planters in the greenhouse area. The moist soil can hold a lot of heat. The walls may be built out of concrete block, filled with dirt or concrete, which will add a lot more thermal mass. I haven't accounted for either of these factors, but I should.

I'm calculating wall and ceiling insulation at code requirements, approx R-20 and R-30 respectively. Glass is double-paned, which is R-2 (ouch!). Both can be improved, for greater cost.

The book recommends replacing 2/3rds of the interior air every hour, to keep it healthy and fresh. I don't know hot that compares to conventional homes, but it seems like a lot.

The calculations assume 72 degF as the ideal internal temperature. I'd be happy with 68, but I can't figure out how to work that in yet, but I will.

What is "Where are your Keys"?

2009-08-30T19:00:00.001-07:00

I heard of Where are Your Keys a while back, and it seemed cool, but couldn't understand what it was from the limited materials available at the time. Now we're starting to see some more material, especially video, and it's making more sense to me. I think it's awesome.

I want to write down what I think it is, both to clarify my thoughts and maybe to explain it to others.

Where are Your Keys ("WAYK") is...

...a way to transfer a language from one person to another. It does this very quickly, and in an easy, relaxed way, in contrast with the miserable experience of the classroom.

...a way to transfer language fluency instead of language knowledge. Conventional language learning often begins with rote memorization of vocabulary. Memorizing a large vocabulary will not make you sound like a native speaker; children who are just learning to speak have a small vocabulary but still speak with a comfort and natural ease that is out of reach of students in conventional language classes. By comparison, WAYK builds fluency: the ease and grace of a native speaker.

...a way to teach / learn sign language. Signing has the unique property of working concurrently with speech: you can talk and sign at the same time. Sign is a fundamental part of WAYK.

...a way to teach WAYK. When you play WAYK you are taught the techniques that are being used in the game. You walk away knowing how to play WAYK with others. You can then use it to further disseminate the language skills you have just learned. This is especially important for endangered languages, of course.

...a tool for student or teacher. As a student in WAYK, you aren't being "filled with knowledge" by a teacher; you become your own teacher, and are responsible for your own learning. Hence, a teacher of a language can use WAYK with a group of students, but a student can also use WAYK to learn from a reluctant native speaker. The latter is great for "rescuing" endangered languages of indigenous peoples.

...modular. WAYK is composed of many small techniques, which can be applied one at a time. Each has a memorable name. The first technique is called "Technique": the use of small, individual techniques with memorable names. The first WAYK video is about this very topic:

...open source. Anyone can create new techniques. As WAYK spreads, the collection of techniques grows quickly.

...light on materials. You don't need textbooks or a classroom or a chalk board. They seem to start with 5 objects (red pen, black pen, white rock, dollar bill, and stick) and a table to sit around.

Up until now, Where are your Keys has been spread in person, playing the game face-to-face. This has created a geographic restriction on dissemination of the game. Now the people behind WAYK are working on internet videos to teach the game, so people can learn it without traveling to Portland, OR. They just started; you can watch the progress at http://whereareyourkeys.wordpress.com/.

New centerboard (part 9) - Pouring in the real centerboard

2009-07-07T00:02:00.000-07:00

With the test pouring done, we started making plans for the real thing.

In the test, as the lead cooled, it shrank and pulled away from the sides. To fix that, I wanted to use a smaller hole and slightly overpour, and then use a hammer to smush the middle, driving it towards the edges. Also, I read I should taper the edges of the hole, so the lead would flow around it, making the lead hold on to the shape of the wood. This would also smooth the transition when the lead shrank. In both cases, I needed a smaller hole, so I reduced from 6" square to 5" square for the first cut of the hole, with the plan to cut some more away for the taper.

The 1" spade drill bit provided the corners again. This time I used the jigsaw to cut the sides of the hole, since the circular saw wouldn't fit in the smaller space. I then turned the jigsaw to cut a 45 degree angle, and shaped the edges a bit. I followed with a rasp to take the edges closer to a 30 degree angle.

I didn't want to use screws on the inside edge again, since the lead hadn't flowed around them well. Nails seemed like a better choice. The plans show 3 nails per side, but getting them in without splitting the plywood seemed tricky, so I drove one in to each corner. Because the corners weren't tapered, they seemed stronger and needed help holding the lead in.

Because I wanted to overpour the lead for later pounding, I added a top mold, with a hole cut in the middle. The top mold also means that being perfectly level isn't required. So now the bottom layer is a 10" square; the middle layer is the centerboard with a 5.5" hole cut out, and the top layer is a 10" square with a 4" hole. A 1" pour hole would have been easier to cut (with my 1" spade bit), but harder to aim for. It would also have held in more heat, and I wanted the lead to cool faster so it would burn less wood.

I was told that lead was thin, so make sure everything is clamped tightly in place. I didn't have a clamp deep enough for the inside corner of the molds, so I used a lead-acid battery (in a case to protect from heat) to apply pressure in one corner. I've seen a section of railroad track used for this purpose. I'm not sure where to find one. Clamps did the other parts.

I decided to switch back to the cast iron pan instead of the coffee can. The coffee can didn't have a good pour spout, which was a problem during the test pour. I saw a lot of extra lead left behind in the can, so I used pliers to pull out some, and then melted out the rest. It took a long time to heat the can through the cast iron pan (pictured), so I removed the pan and heated the can directly. At this time I noticed the pan handle was so hot that I couldn't hold it long, even with the gloves. I timed it at ~10 seconds: not enough for a pour. I figured I could use the vise grips on the handle.

Once the extra lead was out of the coffee can, I put the cast iron pan back on, and then put the block of lead in. After 1/2 an hour of burning there wasn't any molten lead. It was breezy, which carried the heat away quickly. The cast iron pan had a lot of surface area and thermal mass, making it harder for the small campstove to do its job. Finally, the large block of lead was only touching the pan base at two small points, because the lead block was too big to fit in the pan. I needed to cut it like before, but now it was very hot.

I attacked it with a drill bit this time, drilling a series of holes in a line on one side, and then the other, and then poked at it until the lead split easily under my pliers. I gathered up all the shavings and put them in the pan, along with the two large blocks of lead. The shavings melted first, and helped transfer heat in to the block, which worked well.

To keep the heat from blowing away, I surrounded the setup with the panels from a plywood play house. When that didn't help enough, I added a piece of ceramic tile (from my "scary sharp" setup) on top of the pan, as a loose lid. Even better would have been heat reflectors, perhaps tile with foil over them.

After another round of waiting, the lead was melted. There was a little dross again, so I started skimming. After 5 minutes of "final" preparation, the lead had started to solidify at the edge of the pan. To work I had removed the plywood panel wind breaks and ceramic tile cover, and the wind was carrying away my heat.

Put them back in place, and waited again. Decided to do the pour quickly, so things would still be hot.

After another 15 minutes or so, the lead was all melted again. I clamped on the vise grips but found that it was too heavy to lift that way and stay under control. I used a second set of pliers to get both hands working together.

After the lead cooled, we removed the top mold, and saw that there was way, way too much lead. I shoulda stopped pouring when it was just ~1/16" up in to the top mold. Instead we had 1/4" or more. I experimented with removing it with a wood chisel and a block plane, but ended up buying a cold chisel to cut it away.

We spent a couple hours with hammer and cold chisel, to remove extra lead. Then we used the hammer to smooth the surface of the lead on the top, which caused it to bulge on the bottom. Hammered the bottom back to shape, then flipped and attacked the top again. After a while we decided it looked good enough. There was a gouge where we dug too deep at one point, and we were able to mostly repair it but not completely. Epoxy will have to fill in the hole.

I'm not certain if the centerboard will sink like it's supposed to. The new hole is considerably smaller than the old one (and the plans), and a substantial amount of lead is left over. However, the new centerboard is made of a denser, heavier wood, so it may be OK. If not, I can drill a few smallish holes and cast in the lead scraps.

Here's the good (bottom) side, in its final form.

- ~~Clean up the cuts that went off the line~~
- ~~Draw and cut the curve at the top~~
- ~~Plane down the leading and trailing edges~~
- ~~Cut a hole and pour in a lead sink weight (first time pouring lead!)~~
- ~~Cut a gap for the pivot~~
- ~~Prepare 1/8" sheet brass as pivot hole reinforcement (in progress)~~
- ~~Drill 5 holes for fid and lanyard (ooh, the easy part)~~
- Epoxy and paint
- Install centerboard & lanyard
- Put boat back on trailer

New centerboard (part 8) - Failure becomes success

2009-07-06T12:33:00.001-07:00

After failing to melt lead with a propane torch, I went looking for stronger tools.

Many instructions say to use a campstove to melt the lead. You want to be outdoors so the fumes don't collect (where do they go?). I didn't want to buy a new campstove for just one use, so I searched for used ones. There aren't many around. I finally found one at Marine Exchange, a used boating goods store. The salty old guy there suggested I use a weed burner, instead. It would produce a lot more heat, which meant I could melt the lead faster, using much less fuel. It took him 10 minutes of searching to find all the bits I would need: a hose with a regulator, a fuel switch, and fittings to adapt between each. Most of that time was finding the right combination of fittings. $10 for the set.

He also suggested a coffee can as a crucible, and vice grips to pick it up and pour. When I felt how heavy the cast iron pan + 11 lbs of lead was, I decided to get a coffee can. Who buys coffee in a can any more? I think most people buy it in plastic or fresh-ground in paper. It took a while to find one, but eventually I tried freecycle, and someone delivered it to my door. (Thank-you!). I didn't have vice-grips, so I decided to use 2 large pliers.

I borrowed a propane tank from a friend, and enlisted the help of my father-in-law who was visiting.

The block of lead was too big to fit in the mouth of the coffee can. My father-in-law said that a hacksaw would gum up easily with lead, and suggested a different approach. We used a hammer and a prybar, and perforated down the center. Flipped it over and repeated. Then leaned it against a concrete step and wailed with a sledge hammer, at which point the lead bent and we could pull it apart and put it in the coffee can.

We got all the propane hose bits hooked up, with Teflon tape between the fittings, and soap water to look for leaks. There were a lot of parts! Here's the setup, ready to go:

We fired up the weed burner and pointed it in to the can. The breeze blew the flame away from the can, so we made no progress fast. We moved in to the garage, with doors open for ventilation, and tried again. After 10 minutes we saw lead at the top melt, drip down, and freeze at the bottom. It looked like it would take a long time. I was getting tired of standing there holding the weed burner, so we turned it off and looked for a new plan.

Filled the propane tank up, to make sure there'd be plenty of fuel. (6.9 gal for $17). Went to the local general store for a camp stove, and found a basic model for $22. It was listed as 10,000 BTU, although I suspect those numbers are as much marketing as anything else.

I saw that it would screw in to the propane bottle that came with my little torch, but I was worried that there wouldn't be enough fuel for our job, and wanted to use the big tank instead. We looked through the set of fittings they had and picked one that seemed like it would work.

The next day we hooked up the camp stove to the big propane tank, went to light it, and got nothing. No fuel was coming out of the stove. We noticed that the small propane bottle looked like it had a pin on it that could open something on the stove's fitting, and figured we needed something more complex to push it. At the hardware store we found a different fitting that didn't just adapt to the right thread of for the camp stove, but included the little pin that we thought was missing. The hardware store also had a hose with the left-threaded fitting on one end, for a big propane tank, and a "throwaway" fitting on the other end for the camp stove. It was exactly what we needed, but at $42 I passed.

Back home we put the new fitting on, hooked it up, and again got nothing. *sigh*. After further pondering, we figured that there were two regulators involved, and that might be the problem. One built in to the hose, sitting right on the propane tank. The other in the camp stove's tubing. I guessed that they interfered with each other, and that stopped it from working.

We removed the regulator on the hose, and saw that it had different threads on each end. That meant I needed another adapter. I also saw that hose end was left-threaded, and there was a small adapter between it and the regulator.

We loaded all the equipment in to the van and drove back to Marine Exchange to find the right fitting. After 10 minutes we found two fittings that, together, would do the job. Drove back home, reassembled, and got leaks. Lots of leaks. We eventually figured out that one of the new fittings was really meant for plumbing, not for propane, and wouldn't seal well with the other fittings. Also, two of the fittings that should have worked together were leaking a little.

Here's the full collection of fittings:

We went back to the hardware store, and looked for alternative fittings. After 10 minutes of pondering, I decided to spring for the $42 hose that was exactly what I needed, instead of a cobbled-together collection of many parts that kept failing me in different ways. I wanted to get the lead melted already! I also picked up a pair of vice-grips, because having them securely clamped to the can seemed safer.

Put the lead in the coffee can on the stove, and turned it on. After about 1/2 an hour it was all melted. I used a cheap metal spoon from the thrift store to skim off the junk on the top. Poured it in the mold, saw it bubble and settle, and then let it set.

After it cooled I took it apart, and examined the result. The lead had pulled away from the edges all around, up to 1/8". It had not flowed over the tops of the screw heads; they probably cooled the lead quickly and were too high and thick. The bottom was relatively smooth and shiny, while the top was rough. During the bubbling stage, some tiny splashes of lead had left little bits sitting around, which we collected for later use.

New centerboard (part 7) - failed test pour

2009-07-06T12:31:00.001-07:00

The centerboard is made of plywood, which is bouyant in water. We want it to stay down, so we have to add some weight. One way to do this is to melt and pour lead in to the board. The original was done that way, and I decided to do it again, reusing the lead.

Casting lead was all new to me, and it took a while to get things together. I decided to do a test pour first, and then repeat in the real centerboard.

To create the test setup, I started with two 10" x 10" pieces of the same plywood as the centerboard is made of. Neither was scrap, I'm afraid. The plans call for a 6" x 6" hole, to hold 10.9 lbs of lead. I drew a 6" square, then measured 1/2" in from each side. A small pilot hole, followed by a 1" spade drill bit in each corner got things started. To avoid tearing up the exit hole, I drilled 1/2-way through all 4 holes, then flipped and drilled the other side to match. Finally, used my small circular saw to cut the edges of the hole. That isn't very safe, as the saw wants to jump when the blade hits the surface. A jigsaw is safer, but straight cuts are harder and my circular saw is a better tool than my jigsaw.

Lead doesn't stick to wood, so I put nails and screws in the inside edge for it to mold around. I used both I wanted to see which would work better.

For a crucible (to hold the lead), I bought a 6" cast iron pan from the thrift store. Everyone recommends a coffee can, but I thought the built-in handle and pour spout would be useful.

I had a propane torch from a yard sale years ago, and decided to give it a go for melting the lead. It's a classic, probably from J. C. Penny. The instructions are amusing. In those days, you didn't need to worry about fumes from melting paint.

Applied the flame to the lead and all that happened was the lead and paint on the surface melted. I used the opportunity to scrape a lot away, but no lead melted. Not enough heat.

New centerboard (part 6) - pivot plates.

2009-07-05T20:30:00.000-07:00

The plans call for a pair of brass plates to reinforce the pivot hook on the centerboard. After popping them out of the old centerboard, I used a mill file to bevel the top edges, to smooth the transition to the wood.

The plans say to use screws to hold the plates in place, but the original didn't have them. Spent some time with the drill to machine some counter-sunk holes. Drilling brass it tricky, but I got the job done eventually. I have an ancient J. C. Penny drill press that didn't help much. I gave it away a few days ago, and will get a good one if I decide I really need one.

Used a mirror-sharp chisel to cut slots to bed the plates in the centerboard. If the plate had been placed on the surface of the plywood, all shear forces would be taken by the screws. The plates are 1/8" thick. The 3/4" plywood is a little thinner than advertised, and cutting it down 1/8" on each side would leave less than 1/2" of wood to take the strain, in an area where strength matters. So I chiseled through 3 plies, which makes them about 1/16" deep. Seems like a good compromise. The plates fit very snugly, which helps make sure they can transfer the shear forces to the wood.

I also decided to use some Gorilla Glue to hold the plates to the board. It is strong stuff, and grows by 4x as it cures, and sticks to just about everything.

I practiced screwing in to scrap plywood and found that it was easy to drive too hard and strip out the wood in the hole. I decided to use my bit and brace ($3 at a used building supplies store!) to do the last turns of the screws. I also experimented with different size pilot holes to see what works the best.

So, the installation procedure was:

Wet both the wood and the metal plates
Dab on a very thin layer of Gorilla Glue
Wait 5 minutes for things to get tacky (gold lamé?)
Install one plate
Drive screws with the drill most of the way in
Use the brace to finish the screws off
Flip and install the other side.

It was at "flip" that we saw a problem: the screws were slightly too long. The screw tips poked through the wood on the other side, which would stop the other plate from fitting properly. Meanwhile, the glue is drying...

I quickly grabbed a Dremel grinder bit (I don't have a Dremel, just a grinder bit, left over from making a lock pick set 12 years ago), tossed it in the drill, and ground down the tips of the screws. They are soft brass, so it went fast. Then I put the other plate in place and clamped it down while the glue cured.

Meanwhile I cut the tips off the other screws so they wouldn't be too long. I used the grinder to shape them to a little point, to help the screw get started. Gorilla Glue reaches 80% strength in a an hour or two. After lunch I unclamped and drove in the remaining screws.

The result worked out OK, although I do see one corner bulging because of a screw that's still too long. Oh, well, it's too late to change and will be OK.

From Jay Bazuzi's personal blog

As you can see, the slots in the brass overhang the wood by about 1/16", so they take the strain first.

Next:

- ~~Clean up the cuts that went off the line~~
- ~~Draw and cut the curve at the top~~
- ~~Plane down the leading and trailing edges~~
- Cut a hole and pour in a lead sink weight (first time pouring lead!)
- ~~Cut a gap for the pivot~~
- ~~Prepare 1/8" sheet brass as pivot hole reinforcement (in progress)~~
- ~~Drill 5 holes for fid and lanyard (ooh, the easy part)~~
- Epoxy and paint
- Install centerboard & lanyard
- Put boat back on trailer

Living on in memory

2009-06-06T19:53:00.001-07:00

When my mom died, people sometimes told me that she would "continue to live in our memories". That sounded like a load of crap to me. She was dead and gone, and pretending that she still existed just because we remembered her was false comfort.

Today I had some different thoughts on the matter.

They start with a question of the nature of self: are we each distinct, separate, isolated beings? Or are we an expression of the ecosystem, and our relationships with the rest of the universe? For as long as I can remember, I've had the first perspective, but since reading The Ascent of Humanity I'm asking myself if the second makes more sense.

In the first, Mom was contained exactly within her body. She ended at the "skin boundary". Everything inside was her, and everything outside was Other. Or maybe her body was just a host, and her Self is some mote that is hosted inside the body. I'm not sure, but I was sure that the Self is complete contained within the body.

In the second, Mom is the expressions of the ecosystem that created and grew her (her parents, her food, her intestinal microflora, the air she breathed, the people and animals she loved, the woods she walked in). That includes our memories and thoughts of her. When she died, the body began to decompose, and our memories changed to incorporate that knowledge, but all the "outside the body" aspects of Mom continued to exist.

In the second, perhaps we would say that her existence was largely diminished by her death, but not eliminated.

Lessons from agriculture vs. hunting and gathering

2009-06-06T19:20:00.001-07:00

I'm channeling The Ascent of Humanity here:

We learn about the nature of the universe from our experiences. What does a lifestyle of agriculture teach, compared to a lifestyle of hunting and gathering?

Agriculture	Hunting and Gathering
I get by because of my hard work	The world generously provides me with my needs
There is only as much food as I grow	There is as much food as I need, just waiting to be found
Work hard today for results in the future	Play today; do tomorrow's work tomorrow
Nature is cruelly indifferent, destroying my food without reason or purpose	Nature is generous and kind, providing my food without asking anything in return
Food (and everything else) is finite	Food (and everything else) is infinite

In conventional discussions of primitive living, our descriptions sound a lot like the first column: The life of uncivilized man was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"; our pitiful ancestors had to struggle every day just to get by, "let's blast those fuckers back to the Stone Age". However, that's only because we take our precept ion of the universe and project it on to our perception of prehistoric life.

The good news for us isn't just that the second column is possible, but that the second column is true. The universe is inherently generous and kind, and we live in it as it is. Our only mistake is to believe that the first column is the truth.

We live in abundance.

Sienna convention

2009-06-01T07:27:00.001-07:00

A friend recently opened a coffee shop here in Port Townsend, called "Better Living through Coffee". He takes his drip coffee very seriously.

Apparently his business is an attractor of Toyota Siennas. In red.

There's another, non-red Sienna just out of frame on the other side of the street.

In the woods

2009-06-01T07:23:00.001-07:00

From Reid's wilderness classes.

A perfect forked stick for making a grilled sandwich:

Young people climb trees.

I took the twins with us one time. Here they are enjoying lunch.

Camera phone pics

2009-06-01T07:18:00.001-07:00

The camera on my phone produces low-quality pictures, which is better than the no pictures I would get without it.

Apparently this water fountain is perfect for their purposes:

Dylan and Carcassonne:

Zephyr and I at the county courthouse.

Farewell to Phil Bolger

2009-05-25T20:17:00.000-07:00

Phil Bolger, who designed 680 boats, including the Suprise from Master and Commander and the boat I own, a Bobcat, died yesterday.

http://www.gloucestertimes.com/punews/local_story_145224017.html

Thinking of my reading of Eisenstein, I want to say that Phil made the world a more beautiful place, which is the best any of us can do.

New centerboard (part 5)

2009-05-25T19:41:00.001-07:00

We know a family with 2 homeschooled boys; the older was really interested in working on the boat with me, so we invited them over. I showed him the work and he started planing the bevel. He ended up doing the rest of the side I had started. Later I tried clamping the centerboard on to the work bench in the garage and found that I could plane better there than on sawhorses. I beveled unevenly on purpose. The low point on the centerboard is often the first thing to hit bottom, so I left it thick for strength. (Perhaps a little metal reinforcement would be good here?). I also left it thick around the hook. You can see this in the path of stripes.

From Jay Bazuzi's personal blog

When the centerboard is up, it is held in place with a fid.

For the fid there are 3 holes in the centerboard. One is in the full up position, for beaching, trailering, shoals, etc. I've never messed with centerboard positioning very much, but when I have an easy-to-move centerboard, I will have a chance to experiment. I need the holes to be big enough for a 1/2" fid, but I don't have a 9/16" bit. I do have a 5/8" bit (uggh, these fractions are confusing!), but that hole seemed way to big. I ended up drilling with my 1/2" bit, and then wiggling the bit around to make it a little larger. Then I got the advice to put a couple thick layers of epoxy on the centerboard before I paint it, so I figured I should make the holes bigger now, so the epoxy doesn't make them too small. I drilled to 5/8" afterwards. (Yes, the bit kept jamming; it sucked.)

I drilled a 1" hole to hold the stopper knot for the centerboard lanyard, and then a 5/16" hole from the edge to the 1" hole to put the lanyard through. I practiced doing this a couple times on a piece of scrap plywood, and I'm glad, because it's hard to do well. The drill wants to drop to a softer ply, would would make the hole off-center. An awl + a very tiny pilot hold did the trick. Even so, it's hard to drill through the edge of a board and keep it perfectly centered. I was a little off when I came out in to the 1" hole, but not by much. (And it's better than the original centerboard's lanyard hole, so I'm happy with that.) If I ever do this again, I will look in to a jig.

From Jay Bazuzi's personal blog

The plans call for a metal plate around the hook to reinforce it. It says to use 1/8" brass plates, at 3" x 5 1/2". I wasn't sure if I could pull off the old plates without damaging them. The plans say to screw them in place, but the old ones were just epoxied in. Turns out that made them really easy to remove: a prybar under one end and they popped right out. (The alternative was to buy new brass from Amazon; $25 for a 12" square sheet, free shipping with Amazon prime, but without a bandsaw it might be hard to cut.)

From Jay Bazuzi's personal blog

Using a 1/4" bit to provide a starting hole, I used my grandfather-in-law's J.C. Penny jigsaw to cut around the lead sink weight in the old centerboard. Now there's no going back! The lead is held in place with small nails or screws, but the jigsaw only hesitated at these. After cutting 2 1/2 sides, I was able to pry the rest of it out. Wow, it's heavy! Duh. 11 lbs. (The alternative was to buy lead on Amazon, which I was surprised to find.) Now the old centerboard is really light. I suspect the wood I'm using is denser than they old centerboard, so I may not need as much lead to sink it. Hmmm.

From Jay Bazuzi's personal blog

While cleaning up I spilled the big bin of legos right in the sawdust pile. I don't really want glue, wood, and and metal shavings on the toys that my kids like to put in their mouths, so I hauled the legos inside for a washing. There are piles and bins of drying legos all over the kitchent.

From Jay Bazuzi's personal blog

The brass plates are supposed to be set in the plywood. Not flush, but not on top, either. Without that, the brass would scrape the inside of the centerboard trunk. Cut flush would take 1/4" out of the 3/4" plywood (which is really more like 5/8" thick) and leave it weak at the point where strenght matters most.

I bought some chisels and a small mallet, and experimented with cutting a 1/16"-ish deep hole in my scrap plywood. I think it will be fine. However, these chisels aren't as sharp as they could be, so I'll spend some time on the sharpening plates before I cut the holes.

From Jay Bazuzi's personal blog

I think I will use both screws and some Gorilla Glue to hold the brass reinforcement plates in place. Belt-and-suspenders, I know. But better to make it easy to remove in the future + more secure now. I brought some #10 3/4" brass screws (like metals, right?) and experimented with drilling a hole in the brass for them. I also beveled the edges of the brass a little, to make the transition to the plywood fairer.

From Jay Bazuzi's personal blog

I am worried that the screw heads sticking out would focus the force of the moving centerboard and gouge the centerboard trunk. I plan to countersink the screws, but again, if I sink them too deeply, I'll loose the strenght of the brass. My plan is to sink them 1/16" in, leaving 1/2 the thickness of the brass plate under the screw, and only a little bit of screw head sticking out. Another reason I'm planning to use Gorillage Glue - to alleviate the stress on the screw holes.

I plan to cut the slots for the brass plates to be a snug fit, which should also help.

From Jay Bazuzi's personal blog

The lead pouring plan is coming together. I decided not to go for an asbestos plate to back up the hold, instead using a piece of scrap plywood. I will do a test pour in a scrap piece, so I can develop my lead casting skills, and then do it for real. The only thing I'm missing right now is the propane tank, and a friend said he'll loan me his.

Updated TODO list:

- ~~Clean up the cuts that went off the line~~
- ~~Draw and cut the curve at the top~~
- Plane down the leading and trailing edges
- Cut a hole and pour in a lead sink weight (first time pouring lead!)
- ~~Cut a gap for the pivot~~
- Prepare 1/8" sheet brass as pivot hole reinforcement (in progress)
- ~~Drill 5 holes for fid and lanyard (ooh, the easy part)~~
- Epoxy and paint
- Install centerboard & lanyard
- Put boat back on trailer

Eisenstein on school

2009-05-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

Check out this short video of Eisenstein. It's part 2 of 3, but it stans well on its own.

New centerboard (part 4)

2009-05-07T12:39:00.001-07:00

Used a plane to smooth the curves around the centerboard, followed by some 80 grit orbital sanding.

One of the steps is to bevel the leading and trailing wet edges, to reduce friction and increase lift. I started to do that along the bottom edge (which is the leading edge when the board is down).

I then realized I needed to cut the hook in so I would know where to stop bevelling. I want to keep plenty of wood in place there, to keep it strong. I used a 5/8" drill bit to shape the main pivot point, and the circular saw to cut the rest of the slot. A 4-in-hand file/rasp to round the edges and smooth the transition between the hole and the straight cuts.

I also want to leave the lowest point a little thicker, since it gets beat up a lot when grounding, beaching, launching, or loading.

As you can see in the picture, the colors of the plys help to make the bevel even. I'm not trying to create a scarf joint, so perfection isn't required, but it's a good place to practice. Ideally the stripes are straight / parallel / equal width. There are 12 plies in this 3/4" sheet (although it's actually slightly less than 3/4"). The outer plies (the veneer) are thinner than the others. My plan is to bevel 4 plies worth, leaving the middle 4 plies intact (although maybe I will round the transition from the bevel to the middle section).

I've also been shopping for lead-pouring equipment. So far I have:

small cast-iron pan as crucible (thrift store)
long metal spoon to scoop impurities (thrift store)
weed burner / valve / hose / regulator to melt the lead (Marine Exchange)
lead (gonna pull it out of the old centerboard)

Still need:

asbestos tile
maybe a coffee can as an alternate crucible
heat-proof gloves
tongs
propane tank

Updated TODO list:

- ~~Clean up the cuts that went off the line~~

- ~~Draw and cut the curve at the top~~

- Plane down the leading and trailing edges (in progress)

- Cut a hole and pour in a lead sink weight (first time pouring lead)

- ~~Cut a gap for the pivot~~

- Cut some 1/8" sheet metal to reinforce the pivot (will try to reuse the old one)

- Drill 5 holes (ooh, the easy part)

- Paint (no epoxy)

- Install centerboard

- Put boat back on trailer.

The Ascent of Humanity

2009-05-06T17:02:00.000-07:00

I'm reading another book by Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity. It's very slow going. I read a section and have to take a break to chew the words. It's amazing. It has taken me 2 weeks to read 2 chapters.

I have some quotes to share:

Thanks to god Technology, we will leave behind all vestiges of mortality and enter a realm of without toil or travail and beyond death and pain.

This is a message we seem to hear a lot. Yesterday I heard it from the cashier at the cash register. She pointed to the way that most money is electronic today, and that this is an example of a trend to a virtual life (which, when complete, presumably mimics real life exactly?)

One thing I like about this quote a lot is that if you remove "Thanks to god Technology", it sounds like a message we're used to hearing from many religions. That suggests that science and technology is a religion for us today.

Next quote, when discussing the way that language is used to separate the words from the speaker:

The goal would seem to be to pretend that the words had no human author at all, existing purely as objective facts. Indeed, use of the first person is considered bad from in academic writing - a convention the author of the present work finds ridiculous!

How witty.

Bad sign on the bus

2009-05-06T16:56:00.000-07:00

I was in Seattle taking the city bus to Adventuress. There was a sign that said:

Metro has provided 3 billion rides since beginning operation in 1973!
Thank you for helping Metro reduce traffic, congestion, improve air quality and save you money.
You're one in ~~a billion~~ 3 billion!

I know that the phrase "one in a million" generally means "you're more special than the rest of the members of a set of a million people", but here it means "you're lost in the crowd". Doh.

New centerboard (part 3)

2009-04-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

Made some progress on the centerboard today.

The big 41" arc had a few high spots, which I brought down 1/8" at a time.

Two of the corners are rounded with 3" radius. Marked that line and made 3 straight cuts to get closer to that curve. My plan is to use the new plane to round it out. (I just realized that my jigsaw has an attachment that lets you do fixed-raidus curves. Oops!)

Had Julie the artist pick a curve for the top, and made 3 cuts to approximate that, too.

All the cutting was with the circular saw.

Here's where things stand:

New centerboard (part 2)

2009-04-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

Got a Stanley 118 low-angle block plane on ebay, $35 shipped. I read this was a good one, and I needed something that could plane end grain on plywood.

I set myself up with the "scary sharp" system (wet-dry sandpaper, cheap ceramic tiles, and a honing guide). By the end the surfaces of the blade were mirror-reflective (although slightly distorted).

Here's a pic of the old centerboard and new one.

Patterns of behavior and the subconcious

2009-04-04T18:40:00.001-07:00

Some quotes from Yoga of Eating, ch 13 - Dieting and Self-Acceptance, which got me thinking.

[Y]our body shape is integral to your current pattern of being. It's your body's proper and appropriate response to how you live and who you are.

and

If the body-soul has decided that obesity is the appropriate response to a given set of psychological, spiritual, and physical conditions, it will use whatever mechanisms are necessary to achieve this state.

So, if you decide to make some change in your life to reduce your weight (like cutting out carbohydrates), your body may respond with increased appetite, aversion to exercise, or reduced metabolism.

What's interesting to me about this is not what it says about dieting and weight loss, but what I can learn about my deep unmet needs and fears and wounds and how to heal them.

I think of the choices I have made which have lead to my current body shape. I didn't overeat just once, and suddenly get fat. I did it over, and over again. I was proud of my reputation for someone who eats a lot of food. I also have eaten many, many sweet foods. I no longer eat Hostess, but that doesn't stop me from consuming plenty of sugar. As a teen I would eat Betty Crocker frosting straight from the tub.

There's more to this than just "here's how I ate and got fat". Perhaps a pattern of behavior like this is indicative of an unmet need that the "body-soul" is trying to fulfill. That means our habits can be a tool for understanding the subconscious. Let's look at some examples from my life:

I think I wish to be healthy and attractive and fit, but somehow that hasn't stopped me consistently making decisions that took me away from those ideal. Why is it?

I think of all the times I could have ridden my bicycle somewhere, when the weather was fine, and I had enough energy, and I had enough time, and the ride was quite doable, and somehow I talked myself out of it. Why?

I'm not just fat: I am also terribly inflexible. I can't come anywhere close to touching my toes, legs straight. This is inconvenient a lot of the time, but that hasn't motivated me to stretch regularly. Why don't I stretch?

I also have pretty bad posture. I carry my head well forward of my shoulders. This means pain in my head, neck, shoulders, and back, and sometimes secondary pain in other parts of my body. Why don't I hold myself with good posture?

There's some reason I have made these decisions this way, consistently, for so many years. This isn't just about discipline or habits or not knowing that I was harming myself or not knowing a better way to do things. There's a reason I have stuck to these patterns of behavior that goes beyond such things.

It seems clear to me that this is the work of my subconscious (cue ominous music). There's some unmet need behind these patterns of behavior. They can give me a starting point for digging in to my deeper self to discover those unmet needs and maybe find some healing.

I don't think I can group "overeating" and "overweight" in to the same behavior pattern. When researching food issues recently, I came across a story of a woman who would binge on food, and then work out excessively to burn the extra calories, so she could stay thin. This person had one issue that motivated the overeating, and another that motivated her to burn it off.

A friend used to binge and then go on strict diets to keep her weight down. She had one issue that motivated the eating, and another that motivated the dieting. Her life coach encouraged her to stop the diets. She promptly gained a lot of weight, and she seems to be a much happier person, having let go of that harsh treatment of herself. I think her thin shape was an expression of her self-loathing, and her fat shape is an expression of her love for herself and her joy in life.

I talked about harmful behaviors above, but this applies to all my consistent patterns of behavior, including the ones I like. Digging in to those can help me understand myself in ways that I want to be careful not to change.

In Harville Hendrix's Getting the Love you want he hits on a similar notion when he says that your spouse's consistent complaints about your are likely to lead you to childhood wounds and your adaptations to those wounds. He's right, but you can go further and look at all consistent observations, from your spouse, friends, coworkers, family, and self.

Take a look at how you live your life. What are the things you do a certain way, consistently? Why?

Tonight on FOX

2009-04-03T16:52:00.000-07:00

Episode 1 of Dancing with the Stars of Joss Whedon Shows (originally aired second-to-last): Sweet vs. Summer Glau.

New centerboard (part 1)

2009-03-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

My boat (12' Bolger-designed plywood catboat, called a Bobcat or Tinycat) has centerboard trouble. It sticks badly, and I have to work hard to push it down and pull it back up.

Getting it out is a bit funny: you have to pull it out of the bottom of the boat. The boat is in the 400-500lb range, so getting it off the trailer, on to the ground, and rolled over is not something I can do solo! I finally got some friends over and 4 of us were able to lift the boat, roll it on to its side, and pull the old centerboard out.

My first plan was to use an orbital sander to lower the high spots, put a layer of fresh paint on it, and put it back in. Progress was slow at first, so I bought lower, and then still lower grit sandpaper. I then found that one side had been epoxied. I think that means the other side got soaked, and the board warped from the uneven wetness. I also did some measuring and found that the centerboard is about 1/8" thicker than specified in the plans. I decided to go for a new centerboard.

Original plans suggest laminating 2 or 3 layers of 3/8" or 1/4" plywood to make a 3/4" centerboard. I also want to make a new rudder at some point, and it's laminated to 1 1/2" (6 layers of 1/4"!). Instead I bought a single 8' x 4' sheet of 3/4" marine plywood at Edensaw Woods for $120. (I bought it with all 3 kids in tow, and we strapped it to the top of the minivan. Home boat building, yeah!)

Plenty of things stopped me from attacking the new centerboard, including lots of uncertainty about how to do it. I spent a while trying to cut and plane a small piece off the corner of the plywood, just for practice, and did learn that working with 3/4" plywood is hard work.

I eventually read some thoughts about overcoming procrastination with action, and decided to get cutting. I placed the old centerboard on the plywood & traced a line. Then I attacked it with my small cordless circular saw (not quite powerful enough, and won't cut a curve) and my grand-father-in-law's old J. C. Penny jigsaw, which will cut a curve but slowly, and it likes to splinter the veneer as it goes. I also decided to curve (a 4" semi-circle) the top point of the centerboard, instead of cutting it straight like on the plans. I think it'll look nice. (Maybe I'll discover why it was specified to be straight.)

It took 3 sessions of cutting, but today I finally finished separating the new centerboard from the rest of the sheet. What's left:

- Clean up the cuts that went off the line

- Draw and cut the curve at the top

- Plane down the leading and trailing edges (need a low-angle plane)

- Cut a hole and pour in a lead sink weight (first time pouring lead)

- Cut a gap for the pivot

- Cut some 1/8" sheet metal to reinforce the pivot

- Drill 5 holes (ooh, the easy part)

- Paint (no epoxy)

- Install centerboard

- Put boat back on trailer.

What I really want

2009-03-03T12:18:00.000-08:00

Continuing on thoughts from Transformational Weight Loss.

Last night at dinner I stopped in the middle of the meal to get a drink of water. While standing at the sink I asked myself "do I want to eat another serving?" I noticed that I was hunched over, and corrected my posture. Immediately the pressure in my stomache became uncomfortable. I realized that I was holding myself in a hunched position to avoid the discomfort of being so full, and to make it possible to eat a little more. I decided not to eat more at that time.

Later I made a quick run to Safeway for some essentials. We usually buy our groceries at a food coop, so the Safeway is always a bit of culture shock for me. It's enormous; there are so many cashiers; there is a lot of non-food things, like school suppies and motor oil.

There are also a ton of candy / desert / junk items, like soda, cookies, cakes, pies, chips, etc. Safeway's cakes look pretty good, and they kept catching my eye. I was tempted to buy one, but had some reservations. I want to reduce my body fat, and a cake probably makes that harder, but I'm trying to follow Eisenstein's rule of "eat what I want" instead of "eat what I think I'm supposed to eat". I was also afraid that if I brought it home, the kids would wolf it down, and I don't want them eating that junk. "Protecting" them by eating it in secret seemed like a really bad idea, just because eating in secret is a warning sign for me, and I didn't like the hipocrasy of giving a cake to myself but not to them.

I decided to follow my true desire, if I could hear it. I asked myself "what do I really want right now?" I tried imaging eating different things, etc., to see what message my body would send about my needs. I immediately had the answer: "I want my back to stop hurting". I stretched a little right there, went home, and took some ibuprofen. No cake.

I had been unaware of that back pain the whole time. Ignoring pain is something I've gotten good at, and I want that to change.

The pain is telling me something more than "take ibuprofen". It's saying something like "sitting that way is harmful" or "these muscles want to be stronger". Unfortunately I'm suffering from a long, slow chest cold right now, so there's not a whole lot I can do about it right now, but I'm keeping the message in mind until I feel better.

Fearing the end of addiction

2009-02-03T22:21:00.000-08:00

I few years ago I read The Yoga of Eating by Charles Eisenstein. Every time I read something he writes, it resonates with me. He is able to see clearly and then tell us what he sees. I just finished another book of his, Transformational Weight Loss, which I sometimes call Yoga of Eating II: More Yoga of Eating.

I was trying to explain a tenet to Reid, now 7 years old:

When you eat, your body sends a message about whether this is a food you need right now. You can trust this message. The thing I've gotten away from is being able to hear this message. You can probably hear this message more clearly than I can, because I have more practice not listening to it.
When you eat what your body doesn't need, if you hear the message clearly, you will not like the taste of the food.

He asked me if that meant that he might eat some cotton candy and not like it. I gave him a simple "yes", but realized that I had a deep fear of that happening. I was afraid of the possibility of junk food not tasting good, of comfort food not providing comfort. As I thought about it further, I found that I've had that fear for a long time, but hadn't been aware of it before. When I read The Yoga of Eating and tried to put what I learned in to practice, I think this fear blocked me, but I didn't know it at the time.

As I tried to understand the fear, I realized I had fully faced it once before: when I was thinking about quitting smoking. It went like this: I knew the powerful desire I would feel when I went too long without a cigarette, since I experienced it every day. Every minute the craving gets stronger, the misery gets more intense, and it just continues. Whenever something prevented me from getting my fix (say, being in an airplane), it was very stressful. When I considered the possibility of quitting smoking, my subconscious didn't register it as "Ahh, freedom from that dependency and an end of the misery of craving", but as "I will never be able to satisfy that desire, and the misery will increase forever". Instead of hope, I had despair. I had to recognize that fear before I could actually quit. I was entirely successful, and haven't smoked for 9 years.

I know that I use food as a distraction, from anger, boredom, loneliness, or physical pain. (For some people, fatigue goes on the list, but I use a computer for that one.) I am so used to doing this that I usually don't realize it, and just think "I am hungry". The other day I overate and the feeling was so uncomfortable I kept thinking I wanted a snack, because the flavor would distract me from the discomfort. Silly, huh?

Anyway, when I consider the possibility of hearing my body's true messages about food, and that I might try to eat a cookie or a pizza or whatever and not enjoy the flavor (because I don't need the nutrition), that idea is really scary. My fear is that I will want a distraction from something, and food just won't work. I'll be stuck with the discomfort, unable to divert my attention, because I don't like cookies all of a sudden.

I want to get to the bottom of this.

Bread log

2009-01-27T07:50:00.000-08:00

I have been experimenting with sourdough breads, with limited success. Most of the breads have been edible; one even tasted good; none have had a pleasant texture.

I'm making it hard on myself. I'm using a sourdough starter from wild cultures I harvested in my kitchen. No commercial yeast. The flour is whole wheat. No white flour. No baking soda or other tricks. I also don't like to measure.

I want to write down my most recent attempt, so if it's successful I can work from it.

3/4 C starter
3/4 C water
2 1/3 T olive oil
1 1/2 T honey
1 1/4 t salt
2 2 /3 C flour

Neaded for 5 minutes. Rested for 5 minutes. When I came back, it was really springy. Neaded for 5 more minutes, at which point it was no longer springy.

Covered in olive oil, back in the mixing bowl, left in the oven overnight with the light on, door cracked.

In the morning it was huge and looked wet. I dumped the whole thing out, intact, on to a cookie sheet. Slashed the surface. In to 350 degF oven for 45 minutes.

Let it cool for 30 minutes.

The crust is crispy. The bread is sweeter than I expected. Delicious. This is a good starting point.

Bobcat

2009-01-12T21:41:00.001-08:00

See, it's a cat-boat. Get it? Get it?

Climbing

2009-01-09T12:01:00.001-08:00

Reid is in a school district-sponsored homeschool group that does weekly field trips. Next week they are going to an indoor climbing gym. The group leader sent out an email saying that they needed people who were certified to belay while kids climbed, and offered to pay for anyone who wanted to take the training. I agreed to do it.

Wednesday night, in the pouring rain, I drove the hour+ to Bremerton to the climbing gym.

Everyone there was compact, lithe, muscular, slim. I felt like I stood out, at 280 lbs. But I was not about to let that stop me.

The other student in the class was Rick, who looked like he was in his early 20s. He was smaller than me and also quite fit. He said he was shipping out in a few days, for 6 months, and planned on climbing with his buddies while deployed.

We spent 1/2 an hour in a classroom practicing knots and learning the equipment.

Then we headed to the wall. They gave me climbing shoes in a size 13. Right right foot is about 13 extra-wide, and my left foot is about 1/2 a size bigger. Ow! But we didn't have a lot of walking to do.

Rick and I took turns climbing the wall on an easy path. I was glad to be able to climb to the top each time. I weight 70 lbs more than Rick; I wonder if he coulda done it with a 70lb pack? Sure, I'd like to be 210 lbs, but I'm also proud of having the strength to climb this wall anyway.

When I was climbing, the instructor strapped Rick down to the ground so I wouldn't pull him in to the air. Heh.

We eventually switched to a different area with a more difficult climb. Near the top it tilted back to a slight overhang. By this time I was too tired, and didn't even have the energy to try the hanging part.

It was fun and exciting stuff. If there was a wall here in town I'd consider climbing there periodically. I wonder how well balanced it is as an exercise? Seems like it hits a lot of muscles, but some more than others, and that it doesn't encourage flexibility.

On the way home my hands were shaky and my arms tired. I slept very hard the next two nights.

When I was about 11 years old we went climbing in summer day camp. My fear of heights was quite strong then, and I didn't want to do it, but felt pressured to anyway. We didn't have nearly the equipment that I saw the other night: no harnesses, no belaying devices.

When rappelling, just had two ropes: one tied in to a harness shape around my waist, led up to a belayer at the top of the cliff, who was tied to a tree; one rope around his waist, led down to me. I was supposed to let me rope out a bit at a time as I walked down the rock face. As soon as I stepped over the edge, I slipped and fell and was very, very scared. I worked my way down in deep fear. At the bottom both hands were purple from gripping the rope.

So next week we all go back to the climbing gym. I'm hoping Julie will come and climb a little, but who knows.

New network topology

2008-12-13T11:12:00.000-08:00

Annoyed by the constraints of the old setup, and wishing to make use of the Draft-N cards in so many of my computers, I bought a Linksys WRT310N, which has both GigE and 802.11n.

The GigE is valuable because the WHS can't support N, but does support GigE as well, so a cable between them gives me fast access to the server over WiFi.

This means I can sever the wire between the WHS and the MCE, and the desktop can also be wireless.

The new topology is generally simple: each computer is connected only to power & its peripherals. The exception is the TELCO -> Actiontec -> Linksys -> WHS -> external HD. (The interconnects are Cat 1 telephone -> Cat 5 100Mb/s Ethernet -> Cat5 1000Mb/s -> USB 2.0.)

Because the only wires coming out of that section are power and telephone, I have a little more flexibility about where they should live. I pulled the old stereo cabinet out of the garage to hold it all, and it looks decent. The other equipment in my "rack" is a UPS and the printer/scanner. (The last has WiF, so it could be anywhere, but this is the best spot.)

There are a few other benefits of this change:

- The Actiontec Wi-Fi is outside the firewall, so I turned off security. Anyone who needs internet can use it without hassle.

- Ripping DVDs to the server can be done at any computer, transferred over 802.11n (not just at the MCE over Ethernet).

- Since the MCE doesn't have to write to the server any more (and it always authenticates as Guest), I can restrict Guest on the server to improve security.

- A lightning strike on the phone line can't reach the rest of the network.

Now that it's all done, and my mind has relaxed, I find myself wondering how to improve things. Imagine if the laptop supported 802.11n, and SATA. I could put 2x 500GB drives in it, and a second Wi-Fi in the PCMCIA slot. It could replace the linksys, working as a wireless access point, NAT for the home, firewall to the outside world. It wouldn't have to be wired to the Actiontec, since it could uplink over wifi. It wouldn't need to set on the UPS, since it has battery backup built-in. The only wire would be power.

The drives would cost $230; the laptop could be a Dell D630 for about $500 on E-Bay. After other items, shipping, etc., it'd be $1000, which is way to much. But I can imagine for free.

EDIT: One of the things I dig about this setup is that almost every item was under $100. (The laptop was $300, a couple years ago, so its value is close to $100 now). If someone breaks in to my home & steals equipment, it won't be that difficult to replace, and I have good backups.

Old network topology

2008-12-13T10:44:00.000-08:00

I recently purchased a new router, which triggered a set of cascading changes in my home network. First, the old setup:

Actiontec GT704-WG. Qwest DSL used to require you to have an Actiontec GT701-WG, which has a DSL modem, a 100 Mb/s Ethernet port, USB, and 802.11b/g. I managed to fry mine with a sloppy firmware upgrade, and bought the 704 at Best Buy to replace it, with the assurance that it would be well-supported, since it's almost the same thing. Unfortunately, they're both junk. Neither Qwest nor Actiontec provides firmware updates, and their feature sets are somewhat limiting. There aren't any open source firmwares for them, like Tomato or DD-WRT.

Windows Media Center on an old Dell 400SC. This was marketed as an entry-level server, but really it's just a desktop PC like any other. I've added a WiFi-N card.

Windows Home Server on an old Dell D600. This is a laptop, which seemed like a great idea for a WHS. I love that it has a built-in keyboard, monitor, mouse, WiFi, and battery backup. Unfortunately it only supports IDE drives, so I'm limited to 250GB, and they're expensive. When I ran out of storage, I added an external drive, and eventually replaced that enclosure with:

A 2-bay external SATA enclosure. This contains a 1TB drive and a 300GB drive.

Also: A desktop with a Wifi-N card, a D600 (used as a laptop, gasp!) with 802.11g, and a new Lenovo T61, with WiFi-N builtin (sweet, sweet laptop).

Constraints: The only phone line is in the kitchen, which isn't a good place for electronics. The video collection lives on the server, but is played on the media center, and 802.11g isn't fast enough for DVD playback. Pushing data between the desktop and the server over WiFi was really, really slow. The WiFi in the Actiontec unit is really bad at doing in- and out-going traffic at the same time.

Solution:

- server sits right next to the media center, with an ethernet cable between them. It doesn't need to be a crossover, because everything is autosensing these days. It doesn't have any DHCP; both devices complain that there's "limited connectivity", but they can still see each other just fine.

- A long phone cord runs over the door from the kitchen to the main desk. It plugs in to the Actiontec, which has Ethernet to the desktop (making desktop<->server links much faster).

computer = laptop

2008-11-20T17:54:00.001-08:00

I once thought of a laptop as being a special-purpose computer, with miniaturized, slower components, a built-in screen/keyboard/mouse, and a battery, for 3x the price.

These days, the speed & price difference between desktop and laptop computers has gotten smaller. Battery life, screen size, and portability have improved to the point where laptops are useful for general-purpose use. I guess that's why laptop sales exceeded desktop sales 5 years ago.

Now I think of a desktop as being a special kind of computer, with important components missing (screen/keyboard/mouse/battery), that takes up too much space. In exchange for giving up all that important stuff, it's a bit cheaper.

"Computer" now means "laptop" to me.

(Ironically, the first laptop I ever bought is a server.)

I wish Vista sleep was a little smarter

2008-11-20T17:53:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's just because I have kids underfoot, but I often need to put the laptop down in a hurry. I want to close the lid & slide the laptop under the sofa where it's safe. A minute later I'm ready to work, and I have to wait for wake up & log in. It's about 10 seconds, but I want it to be less than 1 sec.

I wish Vista hybrid sleep worked like this:

When I close the lid, the display turns off immediately.
After 2 minutes, standby
Later, hibernate

(Yes, I'm assuming we're talking about laptops. What else is there?)

What I really want out of this is that I can close the lid and open it again soon, before standby and session lock.

New blog for code

2008-11-11T12:09:00.000-08:00

I decided to create a new blog just for coding-related stuff: http://jbazuzicode.blogspot.com/.

Live Mesh

2008-10-18T16:58:00.000-07:00

I recently installed Live Mesh here at home. You point it at a folder on your computer, and those files are copied / synchronized over the internet.

If you put Mesh on another computer, you can have those files synch'd there. Microsoft also provides 5GB of storage on the internet that is kept in sync, too. You can use a web browser to access those files from anywhere.

This isn't a new idea. Even Microsoft's Groove did basically the same thing, as did FolderShare (Which Microsoft bought), and DropBox, which was recently mentioned by Joel. It's done particularly well, though.

If you have more than 5GB, you can still sync the files to other computers, just not the Microsoft-hosted "Live Desktop". And get this: you can still reach those files at mesh.com because it takes care of funelling them there. Nice.

I pointed it to my "Documents" folder ("My Documents" in Windows XP), so now when I put a file in there on one computer, it's waiting for me on the others. I also pointed at my "Favorites", which is very convenient. I was using Google Bookmarks + Google Toolbar before, but I like this a little better.

My brother sent me a hard drive with all his photos on it, as an off-site backup. Now that I have Mesh, I've copied his data on to my WHS and added it to Mesh. It's too big for the Live Desktop, so I told it not to sync there. Then I made him a co-owner. He will point mesh at his copy. The delta will be kept in sync, so if his entire island burns down, he won't lose any data. My plan is to sync my data to him the same way. (Using a hard drive over USPS for the initial sync is probably quicker than DSL.)

I always wished WHS had federation; this gets us most of the way there.

You'd think hotels would figure this stuff out

2008-08-25T06:53:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty used to the idea of living spaces being a little quirky. If you miss something in the original plans, and want to fix it later, it's expensive, dusty, and inconvenient to change plumbing or drywall or whatever.

But you'd think hotels would figure this stuff out. The rooms are small, they're all very similar to each other, and this is their area of speciality, right?

So I'm sitting in a room near Niagara Falls, at the desk. My laptop power supply is plugged in to an outlet on the ugly lamp on the desk. But get this: the lamp has to be on for the outlet to work. I'm not talking about a wall switch that controls a wall power outlet; this switch is 3in (7.6cm) from the outlet.

The bathroom (washroom) has a little cubby with an extra sink. There's no where near the sink to hang a hand towel. There's a blank wall in just the right spot to put a towel bar.

There's a scale for guest use. It's the kind I remember from the doctor's office. A balance scale. It's in the room with the indoor pool, right next to the entrance to the showers. Probably quite expensive, and accurate (and precise!) throughout its range, at least when new. There's a sign on it saying that it's off by 8-10lbs (so much for Canadian metric....). And a sign on the wall next to it asking that you not use it while it's wet, because it is rusting. But it's by the pool. If you don't want it to get wet, don't put it by the pool. Duh?

It said that Dylan was 36lbs, Zephyr 42, and I 282lbs. I don't know how to map from that to real weights. *shrug*.

Pizza

2008-08-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

We used to order Paggliacci Pizza, before I quit work. Now we're trying to save money, and the pizza in PT is not quite as good as Paggliacci, and we think we can make more nutritious pizza.

We started by buying premade sprouted-grain crusts, adding toppings, and heating. These were definitely good pies.

Then we found frozen dough made by Village Bakery, which is just across the bay in Port Hadlock. It's white flour, which is a bummer, but wow is a good, fresh dough fantastic.

Here you see two pies that we made recently. They're similar, but spiced differently - kids vs. adults. Olive oil, garlic, pepper, oregano, mozzarella, kalamata olives, mushrooms, sausage.

This is a bicycle?

2008-08-08T17:23:00.000-07:00

A couple years ago, when I started taking Reid to school in the mornings, I got a tandem trailer for the bicycle. It bolts on to my bike, giving Reid his own seat, handlebars, pedals, and wheel. No brakes, of course.

When the twins were big enough to go along with it, I took one of those enclosed trailers for 1 or 2 kids and pulled them around in it.

Sometimes I wanted to pull all 3 kids somewhere, so I'd hook it all up together. Bikes + passengers were 450+ lbs. 5 wheels. Impossible to back up. Tight turns need extra clearance. It was certainly good for looks & comments of passers-by. I finally got a picture of the "full train" as I call it, to share with you, dear reader.

Reid got comfortable riding his own bike this spring. He was also getting so big that there was too much flex in the rig when going slowly up a big hill. It was time for him to graduate to riding on his own.

I wasn't sure if I should hold on to his tandem trailer for the 1.5yrs or so until the twins were ready, or sell it now & look for a replacement when the time comes. I don't know how I'd take both of them anyway, since two of these things bolted in tandem would be very unstable. I've seen a picture of one with two seats, for two kids. But I don't think they can be found in the US. Maybe I could get a kidback tandem and bolt a tandem trailer on to it. Maybe I'll learn to weld and build something custom. Who knows?

I decided to offer the tandem trailer as a loan to some friends, and at the same time, post it on Craigslist for a high price. I figured that if it sells at a high price, then I can use that money to buy whatever I decide I want when the time comes, and have less clutter in the meantime.

Sure enough, someone in town decided to buy it. So, it's gone for now.

If you're considering biking with kids, remember that flex will matter a lot. The extra weight of the load + the extra pedal force you put in trying to pull it will push your frame harder. If you have a cheap bike, or a racing bike, it'll suck. My touring bike is built stronger than average, and I still wanted more stiffness. If I was doing it over, I think I'd go with the Burley Piccolo, which connects to a rear rack, not the seat post. It's stiffer, and the tandem trailer leans properly in turns.

Bobcat sail #7

2008-08-05T07:17:00.000-07:00

It was a pretty day so we took the boat out again.

I'd like to find ways to make the whole process faster. Right now it looks like this:

Prep

Hook trailer up to the van
Back it up the driveway to the garage
Remove cover & stow
Load and secure spars
Load, test, and secure battery
Load life vests
Ensure all lines are in order

I know that sounds simple, but yesterday I was doing it with a couple 2-year-olds underfoot, so it took 1/2 an hour. Then of course there's the non-boat prep: sunscreen, clothing, water, food, etc.

Rig

Hang launch pass on rear view mirror
Remove spar supports
Remove trailer lights & wire
Place sail hoops over mast partner
Climb up on boat, lift mast up & step it
Stow spar supports in van
Place spar/sail bundle in place
Tie boom and gaff parells; hank sail on to hoops
Reeve sheet through 3 blocks, fasten to boom
Remove all but 2 sail ties
Untangle the 4 lines that run aloft (would be 5, but I don't have a flag halyard yet)
For each of peak halyard, throat halyard, and topping lift:

Untie the ends
Reeve one end through deck block & tie stopper knot
Tie other end to the appropriate part of the gaff

Pass lazyjacks through boom, tie off
Mount motor
Attach motor leads to battery; test it
Mount rudder on stern
Mount tiller on rudder
Set out fenders
Uncoil dock lines; ensure they run fair
Remove strap that holds boat on trailer

That seems to take me about 35 minutes solo. When I did it with Jack's help, it was much, much, faster. At this point, I drive around to get in line for the boat launch.

Yesterday there was only one person ahead of me in line, but he was solo and very, very slow. The tide was almost exactly at mean low low. That made the launch ramp quite long. He backed his truck down, then walked all the way up the ramp & down the dock. Then led the boat to the trailer, then walked all the way up & back down, etc. I'm not complaining, though - gotta have patience at the boat launch.

Launch

Back down ranch (a long way this time, but I did it pretty smoothly)
Pass dock lines to Reid on dock
Cast off bow hook
Push boat back
Drive away & park
Walk back to boat
Don PFDs
Lower motor; test it
Cast off
Let Reid motor out of the marina
Raise fenders

Of course, we're not sailing yet.

Sail

Turn in to the wind
Cast off sail ties
Haul both halyards
Turn off & raise motor
Go!

There, that's the list. I wonder what I missed? I'll edit this blog post later, and probably carry a printout as a checklist.

On this trip, we took the same path as the third trip. If you look closely on the satellite map, you can see the old railroad spur that would carry train cars out over the water to interface with boats. A big section of that trestle was removed, but the piles are all there, cut off right below the mean low low water level. By putting the centerboard up, and the motor part-way down, we were able to thread our way between them, but just barely.

On the beach, there was no where to tie up, because the water was so far out. So we just held the painter for the 10 minutes that we were there.

In the background in this picture you can see a bald eagle perched up high. We also saw a raccoon swim the stretch between the rock wall on the left and the railroad structure on the right. I didn't know raccoon could swim, but I guess I'm not surprised.

Reid wanted to stay ashore, so I took Zephyr in the boat on the way back. I didn't want to deal with the under-water piles again, so instead we sailed the narrow, shallow, but sandy-bottomed gap that you can see behind the boat.

It was a quick run back, but Zephyr got annoyed with me for tacking back and forth, instead of going in the right direction, heh.

I sailed the whole way back through the channel and up the dock. It helps that I'm getting to know the tacking quirks better. It also helped that the wind was coming from a favorable direction, from one side of the channel instead of straight down it.

After hauling the boat out of the water, I wash the trailer down thoroughly, undo all the rigging work that I listed above, and go home. At home, there's more to be done to put the boat to bed. Last night I skipped it, because I think today I'll go sailing again. And maybe tomorrow, too!

EDIT: Fixed photograph to link to a big version.

Bobcat sail #6 - the rest of the family

2008-07-28T23:04:00.000-07:00

Today I got the chance to get the rest of the family in to the boat. Reid was at a day camp that went to Fort Worden. There's a boat launch there, and a lot of beach, so we decided to go sail & play.

Picked up a cheap $7 life vest for Julie, so we'd be legal. Eventually she'll probably get a more comfortable vest, but having a spare adult PFD is always a good idea.

Even though I have an annual launch pass from the Port of Port Townsend, I still had to pay $7 to launch at Fort Worden, because it's a state park. *sigh*. The ramps was also covered in thick sand, and there weren't any fresh water hoses to rinse the salt off afterwards. Well, at least there were two ramps, so no waiting (especially no waiting for the folks behind me).

While the twins played at the beach, I rigged and launched. Then Julie + twins came over & hopped in the boat. We motored out and put up the sail. Dylan was scared for the first 10 minutes, but then got in to it. Both twins had a blast. Julie found a little niche where she could sit without being in the way. A 12' boat with 4 people in it is tight!

We pointed for the open channel trying to get a little more wind. There wasn't any, but there was a little more wave action, which was interesting. Especially on the way back, as each wave zoomed us forward toward the beach. Weee!

I sailed as close to the beach as I dared, showing off the boat the the beach-goers. When we got to a good spot, I put up the centerboard, ran up on the beach, and hopped out. I think it was a big surprise for the folks on the sand! I dropped off my passengers and pushed the boat out in to the water.

While the twins continued to play on the beach, I played in the boat. Sailed around until I found Reid (he was too into his play to talk to me). Headed away from the beach a little and then figured out how to pee in to the water (kneel at the transom). The wind was dying as I was heading back. Then after 15 minutes or so, I saw a broad stretch of dark water along the beach: wind! It had stopped while changing direction. The new wind was strong & smooth, and carried me quickly back to the boat launch area.

I set up a perfect approach to the dock: got a little upwind of the entrance, headed for the end of the breakwater, dropped down at the last second, rounded up at the dock, and had to bail out: there were kids jumping off the dock to swim. I ended up "walking" the boat up the dock, hand-over-hand. Got 3 splinters. One was long & thick, and broke off when I tried to pull it out.

View Larger Map

Backed the trailer down, picked up the boat, and down-rigged. There was a lot of sand in the boat, thanks to our shenanigans, so I decided to try to wash in salt water. There's a drain plug in the stern, so I pulled it out, and backed the trailer down in to the water to flood the boat. Well, it put a few inches of water in, but the boat was floating still, and lifting the trailer! I guess that's good for safety.

Then, with the extra weight of the water in the boat, I couldn't get up the ramp. The drive wheels kept spinning in the sand. I was able to clear sand from the tires' paths and get out. Ran the bilge pump while I helped Reid de-sand him self & get in dry clothes (he was so cold!), and then we came home.

At home, the routine looked like this: back the trailer up the driveway (wee!). Remove the spars and hang them from the garage rafters. Hose down with fresh water to remove salt: every bit of metal on the trailer I can reach + some parts of the van. Then hose down the inside of the boat, too. Pump out the bilge again. Take the battery to the bench by the charger. Drive the 20' to park on the street. Unhook the trailer, and unload most things from the boat. Lift the tongue up as high as I can, and hold it there while water drains out the stern. Say "I am He-Man!". Put trailer back down.

There, now I'm caught up blogging about the sailing trips.

Bobcat sail #5

2008-07-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

Even though my friend wanted me to build a new rudder before going out again, I wanted to sail more. We found a day of nice weather, and Reid & went down to the marina.

Reid says he doesn't want to sail, but he does want to motor. Once we exited the marina, I let him motor until we had some sea room, and then had him point the boat in to the wind while I put up sail.

As an experiment, I didn't raise the sail up quite so high (you can pick where it sits on the mast). I saw two significant effects: the boom keeps hitting me on the head (duh), and the peak doesn't sag, since the peak halyard has a better angle on the gaff. That means better sail shape (yay).

I got to practice my tacking, and felt like I learned to do it a bit better. Learned another trick: when stuck (or almost stuck) in irons, ease the sheet. Sheeting in will make the boat weather-cock, so sheet out stops the wind from spinning the boat. For a little more help, push the boom out far, which will make the wind actually spin the boat the right way, helping to complete the tack.

Reid complained of boredom eventually, so we dropped the sail and I let him motor back to the marina. This boat is a little quirky under motor power, because the rudder hits the prop if you push the tiller one way, and the prop hits the rudder if you turn the motor the other way. The most effective steering is to operate boat the rudder and the motor together, but it's tricky. Reid is getting the hang of it through, and safely got us back in to the marina. I decided to have him motor up the channel to the launch, which meant that I could go forward to handle the bow line. It worked pretty well, and Reid loved it.

Bobcat sail #4 - seek professional help

2008-07-28T22:37:00.001-07:00

Having had trouble tacking the boat in small quarters, I went looking for help. An aquaintance here in Port Townsend has been boating here and elsewhere, on a variety of boats, for many years. He has a boat in the marina. 4 boats parked next to his house. A couple in the workshop. And an inflatable in the garage. Sheesh.

He offered to come out sailing with me and see how the boat did. We loaded up, headed down to the marina, and got in line for the boat launch. Normally I rig the boat first, and then get in line, because it takes me 35 minutes to put everything in place. Plus, I usually go on weekdays when there's no line. But we figured we could rig the boat quickly together.

So, we got in line, unhooked the bungees that held the spars in place on the road, and then the line moved. I started the van up to move forward, but it wouldn't shift out of park. Weird. I had never seen this before, and wasn't sure what to do. We waved the next people in line on by, and started trying random things. Fuses seemed like a good bet, so I checked each one in turn. In my tow vehicle (the family minivan), there are some fuses by the engine, under the hood, and others in the cabin under the steering wheel. After checking the first set, I found myself in the awkward position of putting my head where my feet normally go to look at the inside fuse box. Lucky me, I was also sitting on dog shit that was deposited in the road. I figured that since the shifter won't go out of park without the brakes on, maybe I should look at brake-related fuses. Sure enough, that one labeled "STOP" was blown. Replaced it, shifted in to D, and pulled forward.

I later figured out the problem: one of the wires to the trailer lights had pulled out of a butt connector, and I had twisted the wires together in a hurry to get going. The bare wire had hit a ground, shorted out, and blown the fuse.

Anyway, we rigged, launched, and parked the van. Then we noticed that the motor wasn't doing nothing, as the battery was dead. Still don't know why - it has been holding a good charge otherwise. Oh well, we can sail on and off the dock, right?

Headed out of the marina, and played for a while, taking turns at the tiller. We studied the way this boat tacks, shifting our weight around for different effect, and getting stuck in irons. Wow, getting out of irons in this boat is a pain. After I had trouble with it, my friend took his turns, and was also frustrated with it. Well, glad to know that I'm not the only one.

Figured out 2 important rules for tacking this boat, especially when going slowly: don't steer too much, or the rudder will stall and just be a brake, and make sure you turn far enough that you can start sailing again, or you'll just get stuck.

What I later figured out, after much pondering, is this: the rudder in this boat is small and oddly shaped, which makes it work well when going fast, but it does nothing while going slowly. Also, when the wind pushes on the sail, it wants to turn the boat in to the wind (presumably because the sail is out to one side, off-center). When the boat is moving very slowly, the turning force of the wind is still there, but the rudder is doing nothing, so the boat turns in to the wind. So, if I tack badly & lose all my speed, the boat then tries to turn upwind and tack again. If I try to steer to counter the effect, the rudder stalls, brakes the boat, and makes the situation worse.

So: turn far enough that I can get speed up before the boat weather-cocks and tacks again, and steer gently until I have that speed.

My friend sailed us back in to the marina, around it a few times for practice, and then headed for the launch dock. He got caught in irons a few times, the situation being worse because of the squirly wind in the marina. But he did figure out another trick for dealing with the situation: get out the paddle and do a sideways stroke over the transom. This will kick the stern out, completing the tack, and let you get going again.

I'm very grateful to him for coming out and helping me learn to sail this boat better.

He has suggested that I build a new, larger, deeper rudder to replace this one. A taller one that lets the tiller come over the transom, instead of through it, so the tiller can be hinged up to get it out of the way. I'd really like to master the boat as-is, but I also want it to sail well. I'm going to build the new rudder as an exercise in boat building, and to hopefully make the boat handle well, but I don't know which rudder I'll keep using. We'll see.

I was amazed by how many people recognized him & said hello. Guess he's spent a lot of time at the marina.

Bobcat sail #3

2008-07-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

It was time to take Reid out & actually let him control the boat. The whole family drove down to the marina, and Julie helped rig. Launch went smoothly, and then Reid & I motored away from the dock. Once we were out of the marina, I let Reid take over. He was really interested in motoring, so I let him drive under power the whole way around the marina to the beach. We were going pretty much directly in to the wind, and we kept getting blown off course, which was challenging for Reid to handle.

When we got close to the beach, I sent Reid out on the bow with the painter. He threw it ashore to Julie, and we hopped out. The painter wasn't long enough to tie up anywhere, but I always keep a couple long lines on board, just in case. With a sheet bend in place, I tied up to a large piece of driftwood.

After 10 minutes talking to passers-by and using the shore head, I noticed that the boat wasn't rolling back and forth. The water level had dropped a little, and the boat was on the sand. A firm shove got it afloat, and I started to make plans to head out. Reid decided to stay behind and play, so it was just me for the trip back.

It was amazingly cool to walk down the beach with just my feet wet, with the boat by my side. Empty, with the centerboard up, it only draws a few inches. The rudder doesn't even have to come up, because it has an unusual design that keeps it very shallow.

With the sails raised, I shoved off the beach, and sailed away. The trip back was very fast... until I missed the marina entrance, and had to beat back up to it.

View Larger Map

If you've been following my story so far, you know that tacking this boat has sometimes been tricky. Well, now it was time to tack a lot. It took *forever*. A gaff catboat doesn't point nearly as high as a Marconi sloop with a big genoa, so you're making a lot less progress to windward on each tack. Also, when going slowly, the boat loses nearly all its forward momentum when tacking. And finally, sometimes things go all to hell mid-tack I the boat stops working and I get all stuck and confused. So, it took me like 20 minutes to go 50 yards. Sheesh.

I had considered trying to sail up the dock to the launch ramp, but after that ordeal, I knew I wanted to put the motor back in. I am proud of how that went, though. I made a plan ahead of time of what I was going to do. I tested the motor to make sure it was read, and sure enough, it was not. The leads had come off the battery. Good thing I checked! I reconnected and headed in to the marina. At a certain point I had planned, I took up the topping lift, scandalized the sail, put out fenders, dropped the motor, and headed up the channel. Arrived gently at the dock and tied up.

When loading on to the trailer, I finally got the trailer depth in the water just right. It needs to be deep enough that you can pull that boat on without superhuman strength. It needs to be shallow enough that trailer actually holds the boat, or the boat will just drift away. Bigger boats typically are pulled up with a winch, but I don't have one. Smaller boats are easy to pull on to a trailer, or even lift right out of the water by hand. I'm just in between.

It was about 5 hours from when we left home until we got back. I hope I can find ways to speed this up, since I enjoy sailing much more than rigging!

I need to figure out how to tack this boat well.

Bobcat sail #2

2008-07-20T23:44:00.000-07:00

My 6-year-old had heard my promises of making him "first mate", and was disappointed that he didn't get to come along on the maiden voyage. The next day we were free, we drove the boat down the hill to go out again. This time I was going to take him along.

The whole family came along, including the in-laws. It was getting late in the day, and the weather was cooling and the wind was picking up. The ringing of halyards against aluminum masts filled the marina. It was pretty gusty, so we put a reef in. The plan was for the 5 landlubbers to go play on the beach while Reid and I sailed. Secretly, I wanted to sail over to the beach and meet them there.

The launch went fine, with the quirkyness I mentioned before: no rudder control at low speed coming off the dock.

The gusts still had me uncomfortable, so I decided not to let Reid take the helm, and not to sail out of the marina. He was disappointed again, but coping. We sailed around inside the marina, and then headed back to the dock to call it quits. A couple times I had trouble tacking, like before, but not too bad. Coming up the narrow channel to the launch, I got stuck again, and had to fend off and bail out. Damn. Then I turned on the motor, hoping it would help me not stall through the tacks, but it didn't help.

Eventually I dropped the sail and motored back to the dock. I asked Reid to step ashore with the bowline and tie up. He was pleased as punch to finally have a job. You should have seen the super-secure cleat hitch he invented.

We pulled the boat out of the water, put her to bed, and went home to eat supper.

View Larger Map

Bobcat sail #1

2008-07-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

My in-laws came to visit just after I bought the boat. I spent a couple days sorting out the lines, deciding how I wanted to bend on the sail, etc. I probably put the mast up half a dozen times, getting things worked out.

I had never driving with a trailer before the day I bought the boat. Launching requires backing up, so my father-in-law and I went to the high school parking lot to practice backing up. (It's summer, so the lot is empty). I got the basic feel of it, enough to try the real deal.

I tried to find a used life vest, because I really don't like buying new things if I don't have to, but I didn't see any at the "Marine Exchange". However, they did have cheap, ugly galvanized cleats, so I bought a couple to put where there were some matching holes. I ended up getting a new vest at West Marine (and I hate buying at chains, too), but I wanted to get on the water. $30 got me an annual launch pass (but it's only for the next 6 months).

The missing cleats would have been a good spot to tie fenders. One fender ended up on a halyard cleat. One on the pin that holds the centerboard up. One on the mainsheet cleat. Also, no cleats aft for dock lines, so I put one on the CB pin. Make do with what you've got, right? Unfortunately this allows the boat to spin around its center. Oh, well.

My father-in-law helped me rig the boat & launch. As I sailed away from the dock, I discovered the first quirk of sailing this boat: if you are trying to turn downwind from a broad reach, at low speed, well, you can't. The long sail, sitting way out, creates a lot of weather helm. The rudder, being pretty small, doesn't do much at low speed. So, instead of turn downwind to head out of the channel, the boat just sailed straight towards a hard thing. With a few feet to go, it picked up enough speed to make the rudder work, and turned.

I sailed around inside Boat Haven, and then, with a little confidence, headed out of the marina. A couple small loops, and then made my way back in to the marina.

View Larger Map

Now, I'm not an old salt, but I've sailed a number of boats in close quarters, and almost every time I docked under sail. I've done it in boats from 8' to 35'. But today was apparently not my day. I was trying to tack up the channel, and suddenly everything went wrong. The boat didn't move the way I thought it would. It wanted to run in to hard things. I was totally confused. I decided to fall off, head out, and try again, and had to fend off hard things because of the quirck I mentioned before.

The second approach, things started to go haywire again, so I fired up the little electric motor. It's mounted oddly, well outboard, and causes the boat to turn to port. It also blocks the rudder's full range, which makes compensating difficult.

Finally the boat was moving under power, things seemed to be going smoothly, and I was headed back to the boat launch. I decided to add a little more power, turned the motor up to full, and wham! the motor jumped off the mount! It fell in, completely submerged, hanging by the wire, and continued to run, spinning every which way. I reached in and turned it off, coasted to the dock, and tied up.

The remainer of the trip was without incident, which is surprising, since I had never retrieved a boat on to a trailer before.

30 minutes of sailing across a 5 1/2 hour trip.

Several people approached or called out and asked about the boat. It seems to get a lot of comments. I enjoyed the attention.

Deer & the esophagus

2008-07-01T19:45:00.000-07:00

Deer come to our yard pretty often, which I really dig. Recently we've seen a fawn on occasion.

But check this out:

Boat update

2008-07-01T08:24:00.000-07:00

Good news on the boating front.

First, I followed Jake's advice and talked to Rob at the Wooden Boat Foundation. He got me hooked up with an "intermediate" class, which goes beyond the basic tacking and jibing. We motored, docked, picked up moorings, anchored, navigated by charts, and the like. We did it in Townsend Bay, so I got experience with currents, waves, salt, and tides, which don't happen on Lake Union.

The class took place on a Thunderbird, and I just happened to notice one for sale on Craigslist.

Saturday I went down to the Center for Wooden Boats for a sharpie class, in preparation for the upcoming festival. Man, people at CWB are SO FRIENDLY. Wow. I guess I had forgotten just how nice everyone there is. I am now checked out on sharpies at CWB, which means I'm allowed to skipper Betsy D. and Colleen Wagner with a boatful of non-sailers.

To get to CWB, I ended up driving from PT to Bainbridge and taking the ferry. I wish I could have done buses, but they just don't work well on Saturdays.

After CWB, I drove up to Mukilteo to look at a boat for sale. A 12' Bolger/Payson Bobcat/Tiny Cat. I decided to buy it, but the buyer wanted cash, and the ATM wouldn't give me enough money. I gave him a $200 deposit, and caught the Mukilteo/Clinton ferry home. Drove up Whidbey to Keystone, and parked the car on the side of the road. This way I could walk on the ferry, which is much cheaper.

The next morning after breakfast, I saw that the ferry was about to leave, so I hopped on the bike, zoomed over to an ATM to get out another $1000 in $20s, and then got to the ferry just in time. Parked the bike at the terminal, and walked on. Then drove the van back to Clinton, ferry across, and back to the boat.

Handed over 92 $20 bills and a $10 bill. Then we talked about each of the bits and peices, and rigged the boat in the driveway. Downrigged and loaded the bits and peices in to the van.

We were about to hook up the trailer to my brand new hitch, and saw that my hitch ball was 2" but the trailer was 1 7/8". (Why are there 3 hitch ball sizes? Arggg.) The seller had agreed to give me his hitch, but we couldn't get the bolt loose. It had been on for 8 years. I thought about taking the ball and tongue together, but the receiver socket was a different size. (Why are there multiple sizes? Arggg.)

WD-40, rap with a wrench, then get a good pulling position on the ground and off it came. However, we couldn't get my ball to come off, either. It was brand new, but had a lock washer and had been torqued down tight. We tried WD-40. A vice. Different tools for leverage. Eventually we decided to seek professional help.

The seller gave me directions to a U-Haul place. The directions were good, but it turns out the SR-99 isn't marked as such in that area. Weird. Eventually I had to ask for help, and finally found the U-Haul. There was slow line, but eventually I got some help. The guy was really nice, and very helpful. He had enough leverage to take the ball off, no problem. But then the other ball's screw was too small for the hole. (Why are there multiple sizes? Arggg.) He gave me a shim, put things back together, and sent me on my way, no charge. Thanks, U-Haul!

Back to the boat. Put it on the hitch, plugged in the lights, and took off. Got to the Mukilteo ferry terminal about 30 seconds too late, and had to wait for the next boat. Ferried to Clinton, back up to Keystone, but missed the ferry. I was there in time, but they didn't have enough room on the little ferry, and I had to wait 90 minutes. It was a beautiful day, so I took a nap in the boat.

After driving off the ferry at Port Townsend, I stopped for the bicycle and threw it in the boat.

The kids spent the entire evening playing the my new boat. And much of the next day.

Last night I measured all the lines that came with it, and today I'll be rigging it in the driveway.

I still need to figure out where to attach dock lines & fenders (seems to be missing a few cleats), and get some PFDs, and learn to back up with a trailer, and the maybe I'll get to go sailing.

7 ferry rides in 2 days.

The Perfect Boat

2008-06-14T23:26:00.000-07:00

Since moving to Port Townsend, I've been longing to go sailing. I'm very greatful to the generous folks who have allowed me to come along on their boats, like Mycia. But what I am missing the taking a boat out myself. I've learned a lot on other people's boats, but there are some things you can only learn when you are responsible for the whole outing. The Center for Wooden Boats gave me the chance to do these things, but there's nothing like that here.

So it's time to break the first rule I set for myself when I started sailing: don't own a boat.

First, I have to decide what I'm looking for. Here's a short list of everything I can think of:

Traditional wood construction, which I love
Within my ability to maintain (which isn't much!)
Small enough to pull behind the bicycle, since I abhor driving
Small enough to car-top, so I can skip the car trailer
Small enough to launch at a beach, so I can avoid the boat launch
Small enough to row, so I can skip the motor
Cheap, so I can continue my adventure without running out of money
Safe, stable, and dry enought to take the kids out on Townsend Bay
Big enough to be comfortable.
Big enough to carry not just the 5 of us, but also our dear friends in Mill Creek, who are also 5.
Big enough to take a multi-day trip with the family, and explore various anchorages
Capable of transporting us to visit my brother in Hilo.
Big enough for us to live on, as we explore the 7 seas.

Obviously, there are many contradicting items on my list. Note that speed is not on my list. Nor is status of a fancy boat.

After pondering my options, I decided to buy a cheap, used El Toro or similar. It meets the small, easy to launch, easy to haul, etc. However, I got advice from some wise folks, and decide that I needed something a little bigger to be able to sail in comfort & safety, especially with a kid on board. So, I'm now looking for something between 10' and 22'.

Wish me luck finding the right boat!

23rd Classic Mariner's Regatta

2008-06-09T23:29:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the Classic Mariner's Regatta in Port Townsend. I headed down to try get on a boat, as I haven't been sailing in a while.

First stop was the skipper's meeting. The sun was out, and the sky was gorgeous. I was worried about a sunburn, and didn't bring a hat, so I bought a hat from the Wooden Boat Foundation with "23rd Classic Mariner's Regatta" on it. In case I forget. Before we had cast off, the sky had clouded over, and we didn't see sun again all day.

There were two other folks who were looking to crew but didn't have a boat. All 3 of us ended up on Mycia. She's a 73' LOA schooner, with a large deckhouse. We came on board & met the other crew who were already there.

After getting the grand tour, I realized that I hadn't brought enough food for the full day. The skipper said we had 15 minutes. We were docked right by the Otter Crossing Cafe, so I went there to order a sandwich and use the shore head. Turns out they were really busy, and took 25 minutes to make the sandwich! I stepped back outside, and saw that I had missed the boat.

I considered going home, but all my gear was still on board, including my keys*. They bay was now dotted with sails. Finally, I saw one more boat motoring through the marina. I ran down to the end of the dock and hailed them, asking for a ride out. They pulled up close, and I stepped on. Once out on the water, they motored to Mycia. Mycia was pulling an inflatable dinghy, so they came up next to the dinghy, and I jumped down in to it, sandwich in hand. Then I hove on the painter, boarded the schooner, and said hello to my shipmates. What a way to start the day!

I had a blast. Worked my butt off heaving on lines to get things trimmed as best we could. My hands were sore all the next day. Thoroughly enjoyed my sandwich (egg and bacon on a tasty roll). Plenty of wind, which Mycia likes. And after the race, we kept sailing out towards Fort Worden, where the wind was even stronger. She was heeled well over, and really moving. Finaly we came back in to port, said goodbyes, and I headed home.

I was so tired that the next morning I got up, made fed breakfast to the family, and was back asleep by 10:15am.

Today I took a paint pen and wrote "CREW" on the bill of my cap. Again, just in case I forget.

I want to thank the boat that delivered me. I didn't get her name, nor the chance to properly thank her captain. One notable thing about the boat: the cleats and winches for the jib sheets were held in place with woodworking clamps. I figure that's a good way to experiment with positioning.

I left my phone number with Mycia's skipper. I look forward to getting out with them again.

*Keys to my bike, of course.

Dinner with Alexander

2008-06-04T22:17:00.000-07:00

While in Richmond for the wedding, I asked my grandmother to help me learn some of her cooking. I grew up eating this stuff, and it has deep meaning for me. It's to the point that feeding people is a way of showing them my love. I think it's the same for her, and I've watched her feed & otherwise care for us all for many years.

I wasn't able to do as much hands-on as I had hoped, because I was chasing my 3 kids around and needed to spend time with other family. Still, I got to learn more about how to make these dishes:

Wara' dawali, aka stuffed vine leaves, aka grape leaves.
Makloubeh
Kifta

When we got back home, I first made a batch of hummos, which turned out awesome. I particularly like hearing Dylan say "hummos". I also cheated at making lebneh, by just straining Strauss whole milk yogurt. Good news, though: it's really good yogurt, so the result was very tasty lebneh. Unfortunately the food co-op put Strauss yogurt on sale, so now they're out of stock.

Yesterday I made wara' dawali. It turned out really good, especially considering it was the first time I made it on my own. I particularly liked the fact that it tasted like what I grew up with, which is different than what you get at retaurants around here. I used way, way too much salt, but still not as much as my grandmother!

I still have some leaves left (I ran out of rice, and couldn't stuff them), and I need to figure out how to get brown rice to cook well in this context (my family always uses Uncle Ben's converted), so more practice to come.

I look forward to making this dish for friends.

Guess who got married?

2008-06-04T22:05:00.000-07:00

I have a new sister an law! Chances are if you're reading this, you already know that. Here's what you don't know: the minister is an awesome kisser. Thanks Alane! I guess that's a priviledge of being best man.

Mixed thoughts: I think these two make an awesome couple. Their leis looked very cool. I got to help dress the groom. At the reception, I toasted them without a mic. I know I was loud enough, becausehwen I screwed up, the people in the back laughed.

I didn't lose the rings.

Adventuress Crew

2008-03-27T07:51:00.001-07:00

After helping with maintenance on Adventuress, I agreed to be a tester for their new web site. The first thing I saw was an announcement that they'd be training volunteer crew. Volunteer crew? Perfect!

I spent a Saturday on board in training, which included a sail around the bay.

The next day was the first public sail of the season. Since my family is a member of Sound Experience, we got to come on for free. We set up the bicycle train & all 5 of us rode down. The twins explored the cabins, including standing on my shoulders to peek out the focsle hatch. They eventually fell asleep as the trip was coming to an end - great timing! Reid got to look at plankton in a Microscope.

Monday I took Reid to his homeschooler's gymnastics class. It's held in the post office building, of all places, which is a fancy, century-old structure perched up high over the bay. From there I got to watch Adventuress sail around while he was in class.

Monday night I looked at Adventuress' schedule and saw that there wouldn't be many opportunities for me to volunteer, so I better get with it. They sail from a variety of ports, but only a handful of trips are from Port Townsend. They do day sails for a few hours, as well as 3-7-day trips, but I don't think I can fairly leave the family overnight.

First chance was Tuesday. So I showed up at the docks Tuesday morning, and they said they'd put me to work. It turns out that the group that was coming out was a homeschooling group, some of which had been at the gym class the day before. Funny.

Next chance was a public sail on Saturday, but we were out of town for a birthday party.

Easter Sunday we planned to do an egg hunt, but it was rainy, so we had a small event in our living room. Then I headed down to the docks for a public sail that afternoon. It was a pleasant sail, with enough wind to get us going, but not enough to make it "interesting". That is, until we were putting the sails away. We were training to furl the enormous mainsail, when a squall hit, and winds climbed to about 25mph. We could barely get the main under control, and it was suddenly cold, dark, and rainy to boot. When we were back at the docks, the weather cleared up, and we did what we could to make the boat neat -- shipshape.

Monday was the last day sail I can do for a while. It started off well for me. As soon as I stepped on board, I got to climb on top of the main gaff to downrig some extra lines they had placed up there for the wind. I enjoy the feeling of being able to climb; something I used to think I couldn't do. The participants were school kids, mostly 8th graders, who had come all the way from Yakima. It was quite a full ship, with 45 kids + 2 adults + crew. When we were headed back to the docks, I got to take the "small boat ride", zooming along in a little inflatable dingy, to be dockside when adventuress came in. Weee! When we were furling the staysail, we all sang "lean on me". There's a lot of music on Adventuress, and I love singing, but I'm not used to doing it with any kind of audience. Maybe in time... At the end of the day, I said my thanks and good-byes to the crew, and they responded quite heartily.

Wednesday there was a postcard from Adventuress, signed by many of the crew & staff, saying thanks.

I love the fact that we both feel indebted to each other. I am grateful for my chance to go sailing, to learn so much more about sailing in general, and this boat in particular, to see this beautiful ship in action, and to give others (passengers) the chance to get on the water, as well. I know that Adventuress & Sound Experience benefit as well: they got my help, and I know that organizations like this also feed on the energy that volunteers bring. Mutual indebtedness is the basis of a strong community. Bring it on.

At the beginning of May they'll be back in PT for a day; I hope I get to go out with them again then. After that, it's September, around the Wooden Boat Festival.

Adventuress maintainance

2008-02-25T09:35:00.000-08:00

Reid & I spent Sunday working on Schooner Adventuress. I had the opportunity to sail on her a couple years ago, and when I moved to Port Townsend, I was looking forward to the opportunity to connect with them again.

They do maintainance work over the winter, and invite folks to volunteer for a "work weekend" each month. We went to help in January. Reid found another kid & the two of them played. I watched the kids & sorted the fasteners (huge collection!).

This time I spent the morning scuffing the varnish on the deckhouse, in preparation for a new coat. They were getting ready to sway up the main boom, and Reid helped tie some lines on for the purpose. He learned the marlinspike hitch and put it to good work.

The afternoon was spent with spars. The main boom and main- and fore-topmasts were stowed on deck, being the most unwieldy (least wieldy?). We swayed up the main boom, with folks pulling on lines in 8 directions to keep it under control.

Once it was secured, we were sent to "spar land" (a storage space far away) to get the other 4 large spars - main gaff, fore gaff, fore boom, and "club" (which I'd call the jib boom, but what do I know?) . They had a dolly made of the rear axel + wheels of a car w/ a small superstructure. A spar was hauled out of the shed (up to 8 people to lift them) and balanced on the dolly; a second spar placed next to it. We then walked the spars to the dock, and carried them down the dock to the boat. My shoulder has a sore, red area from bearing the weight.

Once the spars were placed on deck, we cleaned up and called it a day. The crew of Adventuress will sway up the remaining spars on their own, they being much smaller than the main boom.

The end of the world as we know it

2008-02-21T18:08:00.001-08:00

Every time I read something by Charles Eisenstein, I love it. I usually feel like he's saying what I want to say, but I don't even know it.

Yesterday I read his Waiting for the Big One, and it was no disappointment. I particularly liked his list of "doom and gloom credentials", which begins with:

First and foremost, I am aware of the environmental crisis: climate change, desertification, coral bleaching, tree death, topsoil erosion, habitat destruction, irreversible loss of biodiversity, toxic and radioactive waste, the PCBs in every living cell, the vast swaths of disappearing rainforests, the dead rivers, lakes and seas, the slag heaps and quarry pits, the living world reduced to profit and pavement.

I am aware of Peak Oil and the dependency of all aspects of our economic infrastructure and food supply on fossil fuels. And I realize that no conventionally-recognized alternative energy source can possibly hope to replace oil and gas any time soon.

and goes on and on. In my printed copy, this list filled 2 pages.

A couple years ago I went to an unconventional doctor who claims to be able to ask your electromagnetic aura questions, and get answers. Things like "is mercury in your body the cause of that skin condition?". I was sick at one point, and he suggested an antibiotic. I told him that I try to avoid antibiotics, and so he asked my aura which of several treatments I should choose, to balance my principles & need for treatment. The answer was grape seed extract.

I have no idea what an "electromagnetic aura" is. I'm generally a rational science-loving type of person, and nothing that he does fits in to my understanding of how the world works. 5 years earlier I would have laughed at him and gone on with my life. But, thanks largely to Charles Eisenstein's writings, I've learned that there is dramatically more truth than science can find. Science has strict rules about what it can do, which is fundamental to why science is great, but it's also very limiting. If we lived our lives relying only on scientifically-proven truths, we would live incomplete lives. At some point you have to make a decision based on something else. That something else is "faith", although I hesitate to use the word. I don't mean "things you believe regardless of contradicting evidence", but "things you believe when evidence can't help". I can't prove that this doc is a quack; I can't prove that he's able to do what he claims to do. I know that I need more than what conventional medicine can offer, so I accept what he tells me.

I've been suffering from restless legs since I was a teenager (now it has a name & web sites & there's medication, but for a long time I couldn't even explain it to people around me.) This doc told me that it was emotional; that I am angry; that the target of my angry is mankind in general; that I am angry that people could act so badly, and allow people to act so badly.

He's right that I have this anger, but I hadn't really identified it before. However, when I read through Eisenstein's list yesterday, it suddenly made a lot more sense. That list is exactly what I am angry about. He nailed it for me, exactly. It was an intense experience for me to see the list, and see the complete outline of my frustration. I plan to read through it again, to see where it takes me.

Dear Diary

2008-02-18T17:47:00.001-08:00

Good sleep last night. The baby slept on my from 11pm to 7am or so. Then Julie kept the twins while I slept another 90 minutes. Still tired, but Julie is sick & shoulda been the one to sleep in. Found that last night's chicken noodle soup (what's a chicken noodle?) was out all night; put it on LO to simmer until lunch time. Breakfast as usual (eggs w/ sausage & cheese, tea w/ milk and honey, toast w/ butter & jam).

Clear skies & sun. Took the kids out to play on the bike while Julie slept. Pulled all 3 in the bike trailer over to the house with chickens. No one home, so we rode on through the neighborhood, and then home. Zephyr & I played outside another 1/2 hour. He says "bike" now, but says it as "kai-ka", after Dylans "bike-a". Cleaned the garage & prepared the speakers for sale.

Got Home Server back on line.

Lunch of hot, dense, overcooked, delicious soup. Played Black and White 2 Demo with Reid while everyone else slept. Kids now watching Curious George. Again. Gonna play a little more now.

Tomorrow is a big day. Doctor; Laurel arrives. Must clean a bit.

--
-Jay

Dylan, Zephyr, and Terra

2008-02-11T19:10:00.000-08:00

They were cute. My camera phone's color correctness is disappointing, but I think it still works.

Port Townsend construction irony

2008-01-22T10:22:00.001-08:00

This morning we awoke to find conutility workerrs outside our house. There are a bunch of trucks with flashing lights. All the workers are wearing bright orange vests. Two guys are holding those stop/slow signs at the ends.

The irony is that traffic on this street is so very, very light. A couple cars per hour is normal here.

Signs of Port Townsend: Getting to the library

2008-01-10T15:21:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I was looking forward to moving to Port Townsend was that I was hoping for a place where I could live without the car. So far it has gone well - the car pretty much sits in the driveway, untouched for days.

Today we walked to the library for a story time event for toddlers. We put the twins in the double stroller for the trip there. When we arrived, we saw 3 strollers already parked outside. I think that's a good sign.

On the way home, Zephyr refused to ride in the stroller. As he walked, he stopped at each puddle, observed the relationship between the reflection and the real objects, dropped a rock in & observed the corruption of the image, then picked up the rock and walked on. He had a fantastic time. When he got home, he was cold & wet, but 15 minutes later he was warm & asleep.

Biking the wrong way

2007-12-13T22:01:00.000-08:00

Today I drove the U-Haul truck from Port Townsend to Sequim to drop it off. My plan was to bring my bicycle along, bike from the drop-off to the bus stop, and catch the bus back home. This bus only runs about every 3 hours, so it was important to time things correctly. I failed.

First, I didn't have internet access working in the new house, so I couldn't look up bus info, and couldn't remember it well.

Second, I wasn't paying attention to the clock.

Third, I rode my bike on the wrong path. Here's what I could have done:

View Larger Map

(Assume I cut across that sharp left turn that Google Maps won't let me do, because it thinks this is for a car.)

But I turned left too early, and meandered around for a while. Here's what I did instead:

View Larger Map

That's 7.5 miles. I'm pretty impressed with myself, considering how long it has been since I was in shape, and how, with the move & everything, the last couple months have been little exercise and a gain of 10 pounds.

And then, after the bus ride, I rode the bike up the big hill to the house.

And then, I put the babies in the stroller, and walked to the grocery store to get dinner for the family.

I'm feeling proud of myself, and very hopefull for my future exercise.

An attempt at an immutable Queue

2007-12-08T20:45:00.001-08:00

Eric said he will write about an immutable queue implementation. I really like the way the immutable stack turned out, essentially using references between Stack<> objects to implement a linked list, but I couldn't figure out a similarly elegant way to do the same thing for Queue. Maybe people who are more clever will come up with something better, but I just had each Queue<> object contain a list of references to elements.

I wrote once in C# 2.0, using an array to store the elements. The code would be cleaner if I used a List<>, but then I would be harder to verify immutability.

class Queue<T> : IQueue<T>

{

public static readonly IQueue<T> Empty = new Queue<T>(new T[] { });

readonly T[] elements;

Queue(T[] elements)

{

this.elements = elements;

}

public bool IsEmpty { get { return this.elements.Length == 0; } }

public T Peek() { return this.elements[0]; }

public IQueue<T> Remove()

{

T[] newElements = new T[this.elements.Length - 1];

Array.Copy(this.elements, 1, newElements, 0, newElements.Length);

return new Queue<T>(newElements);

}

public IQueue<T> Add(T value)

{

T[] newElements = new T[this.elements.Length + 1];

Array.Copy(this.elements, newElements, this.elements.Length);

newElements[newElements.Length - 1] = value;

return new Queue<T>(newElements);

}

public IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator()

{

for (IQueue<T> Queue = this; !Queue.IsEmpty; Queue = Queue.Remove())

yield return Queue.Peek();

}

System.Collections.IEnumerator System.Collections.IEnumerable.GetEnumerator() { return this.GetEnumerator(); }

}

Then I rewrote using C# 3.0, taking advantage of the rich support for sequences. The code is much simpler, but I think that's basically because the IEnumerable extension methods do pretty much what I did in my first attempt. But I'll take it. J

class Queue2<T> : IQueue<T>

{

readonly IEnumerable<T> elements;

public static IQueue<T> Empty = new Queue2<T>(new T[] { });

Queue2(IEnumerable<T> elements)

{

this.elements = elements;

}

IQueue<T> IQueue<T>.Add(T value)

{

return new Queue2<T>(this.elements.Concat(new T[] { value }));

}

IQueue<T> IQueue<T>.Remove()

{

return new Queue2<T>(this.elements.Skip(1));

}

T IQueue<T>.Peek()

{

return this.elements.First();

}

bool IQueue<T>.IsEmpty

{

get

{

return this.elements.Count() == 0;

}

IEnumerator<T> IEnumerable<T>.GetEnumerator()

{

return this.elements.GetEnumerator();

}

System.Collections.IEnumerator System.Collections.IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()

{

return this.elements.GetEnumerator();

}

Immutable data class generator: it lives!

2007-11-24T20:31:00.001-08:00

Well, it works. You invoke like this:

. .\Library.DataClass.ps1

class MyClass {

field ([string]) S

field ([int]) I

} > MyClass.cs

And then you can write:

MyClass mc = new MyClass.Builder().SetS("xxx").ToMyClass();

MyClass mc2 = new MyClass.Builder(mc).SetS("yyy").ToMyClass();

And the output looks like:

internal partial class MyClass

{

public readonly System.String S;

public readonly System.Int32 I;

public MyClass(string S, int I)

{

this.S = S;

this.I = I;

}

public class Builder

{

public string S;

public int I;

public Builder()

{

}

public Builder(MyClass value)

{

this.S = value.S;

this.I = value.I;

}

public virtual MyClass ToMyClass()

{

return new MyClass(this.S, this.I);

}

public virtual Builder SetS(string value)

{

this.S = value;

return this;

}

public virtual Builder SetI(int value)

{

this.I = value;

return this;

}

The main issue is that the ToMyClass and Set* methods are virtual. I think I may be hitting a bug in PowerShell, but I'm still researching it. For now, this will have to do.

Here's the implementation of Library.DataClass.ps1:

function Class

{

param (

[String] $name,

[ScriptBlock] $memberScriptBlock

)

$class = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeTypeDeclaration $name

$class.TypeAttributes = [System.Reflection.TypeAttributes]::NotPublic

$class.IsPartial = $true

$constructor = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeConstructor

$constructor.Attributes = [System.CodeDom.MemberAttributes]::Public

$class.Members.Add( $constructor ) | Out-Null

$builderClass = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeTypeDeclaration "Builder"

$class.Members.Add( $builderClass ) | Out-Null

$builderConstructor = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeConstructor

$builderConstructor.Attributes = [System.CodeDom.MemberAttributes]::Public

$builderClass.Members.Add( $builderConstructor ) | Out-Null

$builderConstructor2 = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeConstructor

$builderConstructor2.Attributes = [System.CodeDom.MemberAttributes]::Public

$builderConstructor2.Parameters.Add(

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeParameterDeclarationExpression( $name, "value" ))

) | Out-Null

$builderClass.Members.Add( $builderConstructor2 ) | Out-Null

$realizeMethod = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeMemberMethod

$realizeMethod.Attributes = [System.CodeDom.MemberAttributes]::Public

$realizeMethod.Name = "To$name"

$realizeMethod.ReturnType = $name

$ctorExpression = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeObjectCreateExpression

$ctorExpression.CreateType = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeTypeReference($name)

$realizeMethod.Statements.Add(

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeMethodReturnStatement(

$ctorExpression

))

) | Out-Null

$builderClass.Members.Add( $realizeMethod ) | Out-Null

# return a hash of the CodeDom objects related to

# this field

function field

{

param (

[Type] $type,

[String] $name

)

type = $type

name = $name

readonlyFieldDeclaration = $(

# CodeDom doesn't support 'readonly' fields.

# See http://blogs.msdn.com/bclteam/archive/2005/03/16/396915.aspx

# $field = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeMemberField($type, $name)

# $field.Attributes = [System.CodeDom.MemberAttributes]::Public

# $field

New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeSnippetTypeMember("`tpublic readonly $type $name;`n")

)

fieldDeclaration = $(

$field = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeMemberField($type, $name)

$field.Attributes = [System.CodeDom.MemberAttributes]::Public

$field

)

parameter = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeParameterDeclarationExpression($type, $name)

fieldReference = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeFieldReferenceExpression(

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeThisReferenceExpression),

$name

)

parameterReference = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeVariableReferenceExpression $name

setMethodName = "Set$name"

}

& $memberScriptBlock | foreach {

$class.Members.Add( $_.readonlyFieldDeclaration )

$constructor.Parameters.Add( $_.parameter )

$constructor.Statements.Add(

$(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeAssignStatement( $_.fieldReference, $_.parameterReference ))

)

$builderConstructor2.Statements.Add(

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeAssignStatement(

$_.fieldReference,

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeFieldReferenceExpression(

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeVariableReferenceExpression "value"),

$_.name

))

)

$builderClass.Members.Add( $_.fieldDeclaration ) | Out-Null

$setMethod = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeMemberMethod

$setMethod.Name = $_.setMethodName

$setMethod.ReturnType = $builderClass.Name

# This should be Public,Final, but that fails for me. Possible PowerShell bug?

$setMethod.Attributes = [System.CodeDom.MemberAttributes] "Public"

$setMethod.Statements.Add(

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeAssignStatement(

$_.fieldReference,

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeVariableReferenceExpression ("value"))

))

)

$setMethod.Statements.Add(

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeMethodReturnStatement(

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeThisReferenceExpression)

))

)

$setMethod.Parameters.Add(

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeParameterDeclarationExpression( $_.type, "value" ))

)

$builderClass.Members.Add( $setMethod )

$ctorExpression.Parameters.Add( $_.fieldReference )

} | Out-Null

$csharpCodeProvider = New-Object Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider

$sw = New-Object System.IO.StringWriter

$codeGeneratorOptions = New-Object System.CodeDom.Compiler.CodeGeneratorOptions

$codeGeneratorOptions.BracingStyle = "C"

$codeGeneratorOptions.BlankLinesBetweenMembers = $false

$csharpCodeProvider.GenerateCodeFromType( $class, $sw, $codeGeneratorOptions )

$sw.ToString()

}

PowerShell DSLs: Using hashtables and scriptblocks together

2007-11-24T07:32:00.001-08:00

Previously I presented the use of hashtables and scriptblocks as DSL input formats. You can also convert between them, with processing in between. I tried that out, and I think the result is interesting enough to post. Again, here is the input:

class MyClass {

field ([string]) S

}

The previous code would use the 'field' function to manipulate the class object as appropriate:

function field

{

param (

[Type] $type,

[String] $name

)

# add the field declaration

$field = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeMemberField($type, $name)

$field.Attributes = [System.CodeDom.MemberAttributes]::Public

$class.Members.Add( $field )

# add the ctor parameter

$ctorParameter = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeParameterDeclarationExpression($type, $name)

$constructor.Parameters.Add($ctorParameter)

# add the ctor initializer

$fieldReference = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeFieldReferenceExpression(

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeThisReferenceExpression),

$name

)

$ctorInitializer = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeAssignStatement(

$fieldReference,

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeVariableReferenceExpression $name)

)

$constructor.Statements.Add( $ctorInitializer )

}

& $memberScriptBlock | Out-Null

But another idea is to have the 'field' function produce a collection of CodeDom objects that can be assembled later.

# return a hash of the CodeDom objects related to

# this field

function field

{

param (

[Type] $type,

[String] $name

)

fieldDeclaration = $(

$field = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeMemberField($type, $name)

$field.Attributes = [System.CodeDom.MemberAttributes]::Public

$field

)

parameter = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeParameterDeclarationExpression($type, $name)

fieldReference = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeFieldReferenceExpression(

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeThisReferenceExpression),

$name

)

parameterReference = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeVariableReferenceExpression $name

}

& $memberScriptBlock | foreach {

$class.Members.Add( $_.fieldDeclaration )

$constructor.Parameters.Add( $_.parameter )

$constructor.Statements.Add(

$(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeAssignStatement( $_.fieldReference, $_.parameterReference ))

)

} | Out-Null

I suspect that the latter model is a little better because it separates concerns. Consider if I were to add other statements to my language, such as 'property'. The 'foreach' at the end could probably be written in a way that works for both fields and properties. However, the hashtable is slightly concerning, because it's not typed – if I get the key names wrong somewhere, I'm screwed.

I find that I'm spending quite a lot of time on this, but it's important that I find a way to create DSLs quickly. I figured that right now I'm just learning the techniques, and then if I master them, then I can do it more quickly when the time comes.

Immutable data class generator: Skeleton implementation

2007-11-23T21:03:00.001-08:00

I've made a little progress on my PowerShell DSL for data classes, and figured it's a good time to show it off.

Here's the input format at this point:

class MyClass {

field ([string]) S

}

(I'm using the ScriptBlock approach.) I generally like the syntax, except for the need to add parentheses around the type. The alternative is to use a fully-qualified string:

class MyClass {

field System.String S

}

I'm not sure which is better, but I'm going with the first one for now, because it allows a more specific type than string.

The basis of the implementation is to write methods named 'class' and 'field'. 'class' is simple; here's an excerpt of the important bits:

$class = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeTypeDeclaration $name

$class.TypeAttributes = [System.Reflection.TypeAttributes]::NotPublic

$class.IsPartial = $true

$constructor = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeConstructor

$class.Members.Add( $constructor ) Out-Null

$class

The implementation of 'field' could go in several different ways. For now, I've written it to manipulate the class as appropriate, e.g.:

$field = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeMemberField($type, $name)

$class.Members.Add( $field )

$ctorParameter = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeParameterDeclarationExpression($type, $name)

$constructor.Parameters.Add($ctorParameter)

$fieldReference = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeFieldReferenceExpression(

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeThisReferenceExpression),

$name

)

$ctorInitializer = New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeAssignStatement(

$fieldReference,

(New-Object System.CodeDom.CodeVariableReferenceExpression $name)

)

$constructor.Statements.Add( $ctorInitializer )

(I'd like to attach the full script, but I don't see a way to do that in blogspot). It generates this output:

internal partial class MyClass

{

public string S;

private MyClass(string S)

{

this.S = S;

}

EDIT: See PowerShell DSLs: Using hashtables and scriptblocks together for a different view of this code.

Immutable data class generator

2007-11-23T21:02:00.001-08:00

I'm working on a DSL implementation for defining "data classes" with certain properties in C# (see http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/ericlippert/archive/2007/11/13/immutability-in-c-part-one-kinds-of-immutability.aspx for an example of the output).

PowerShell DSLs: Script block input

2007-11-23T14:07:00.001-08:00

As an alternative to using a hashtable for input, you can use a script block. Here's a script-block-way of doing the same thing as before:

class MyClass -accessibilty:public {

member string S

}

and here's one of many ways of handling it

function class {

param (

[String] $name = $( throw
"name is required" ),

[String] $accessibilty,

[ScriptBlock] $memberScriptBlock = $( throw
"member script block is require" )

)

" $accessibilty class $name {"

& $memberScriptBlock % { " public $($_.declaration)" }

" }"

}

function member {

param (

[String] $type = $( throw
"type is required" ),

[String] $name = $( throw
"name is required" )

)

declaration = "$type $name;"

}

What's happening here is that the first word on any line becomes a function, and the remaining words are parameters to that function. So, you're now creating an "internal DSL" in PowerShell. This lets you work in a more idoimatic PowerShell manner.

PowerShell DSLs: Hash table input

2007-11-23T08:31:00.000-08:00

lassOne way to take PowerShell DSL input is in the form of a hash table. Taking from the Data Type with Builder example, you could write input as:


 @{
          kind = 'class'
          name = 'MyClass'
          accessibilty = 'public'
          members = @{
               type = 'string'
               name = 'S'
          }
     }

How do you consume this input? Here's an example. (Note that the code generation side is not the focal point here -- the way that we interpet the input is what matters.)


if ($input.kind = 'class') {
 " $($input.accessibilty) class $($input.name) {"

$input.members | foreach {
 "  public $($_.type) $($_.name);"
}

 " }"
 
}

Which generates this output:


        public class MyClass {
                public System.String S;
        }

This approach seems most effective when you need to express a lot of attributes on a single element. The downside is that the input seems a bit verbose and unnatural in some cases.

PowerShell DSLs

2007-11-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

I've written before about my attraction to Domain-Specific Languages and my curiosity about using PowerShell to handle them, but I only recently got any time to think about it more. I'm working on a DSL implementation for defining "data classes" with certain properties in C# (see http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/ericlippert/archive/2007/11/13/immutability-in-c-part-one-kinds-of-immutability.aspx#comments for an example).

I have only 3 examples of PowerShell DSLs to work from, and I don't see any guidance in this area, so I figured I'd write about what I find.

Table of Contents

Prior art
Why PowerShell?
Custom invocation w/ a library
DSL tool invocation
Hash table input
Script block input
Using hashtables and scriptblocks together

Warning: technical content ahead

2007-11-23T07:15:00.001-08:00

While working at Microsoft, I had a blog for work-related issues at blogs.msdn.com. Now I need a new place to write these things, so this blog will now include technical content, along with the food, politics, family, etc. that have come before.

Reid's Journal Entry: Making Apple Crisp

2007-11-09T17:27:00.000-08:00

Today Reid made apple crisp. I wanted to know more about it, so I asked him some questions.

J: How many oranges did you use?
R: Zero oranges. It only takes apples and a few other ingredients, which are kind of like spices. Butter,

J: Oranges?
R: No... I mean, yes

J: What else?
R: Weeds. Then we milk and cereal. This is going to be so funny! Don't write that.

J: After you mixed it up, what did you do?
R: I baked it for 2000 hours. What zee doh.

J: How did it taste?
R: It's not ready for that part yet. We added 2000 drops of stevia in. Time for what it tasted like. It tasted like... stevia. Of course it would.

A new adventure

2007-10-19T15:26:00.000-07:00

Today I announced broadly that I'm leaving Microsoft.

I sent 3 emails. Two went to the discussion groups of tools that I own, to announce the change of ownership of these tools. Strictly for business reasons, but then the news started flowing, and I was starting to get questions. So I sent out the third - to basically every person I've worked with in the last 11 years.

What's next?

I'm going to be a stay-at-home dad. The twins are 20 months old. Reid is 6. We want to homeschool Reid, and eventually the twins.

Living off savings will require that we spend a lot less. We currently live 1.9 miles from Microsoft campus, which is a damn expensive place to be. With me not working there, it doesn't make sense to live here, so we're moving away.

We've picked Port Townsend as our new home. It's such a cool city. 8000 people. 25mph speed limits. Hopefully we can bike & walk just about everywhere.

It's also a good choice because I love old, wooden boats, and PT has plenty of them. But that's for the future - right now, our attention will be on the family. Catching up on rest, taking good care of ourselves, being together.

I'm trying to leave Microsoft on good terms, and that includes trying to wrap things up on my current project so that it will succeed when I'm gone.

There's also a lot of work to do to get the house ready, purge our stuff some more, find a new home, pack, and move. Whew!

Great music you haven't heard before: Mindless Self Induglence

2007-09-06T22:46:00.000-07:00

Electronic punk. Real punk - they actually step outside of what's acceptable. Good for them.

They're starting to get known, it seems. I wonder how that will change them?

The track that got me was Panty Shot. Somehow this live verson is so much better than the studio recording.

Great music you haven't heard before: Emergency Broadcast Network

2007-09-06T22:42:00.000-07:00

Here are some bits of music that I think are really great, but that aren't widely known. Maybe I'll do a few posts.

Emergency Broadcast Network

Industrial + electronica + video. I found these by accident. I was in the record shop, flipping through the industrial section, and picked out Telecommunication Breakdown because it had an interesting cover.

3:7:8 is particularly catchy.

A boy and a dog

2007-07-01T16:24:00.001-07:00

The difficulty of purging toys

2007-05-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

My friend over at Confessions of a Hoarder talks about her difficulty decluttering kids' toys.

I have a hard, hard time dealing with toys, too.

I have been able to purge just about every group of things I call "mine": my hair, my computers, my motorcycles, my tools, my clothes, my books.

Once my wife got the bug, she started purging her stuff, too. That has been going well, and we work on it together.

One of the reasons I find toys difficult is that I'm making the decision for someone else. I know that, by getting rid of 1/2 of my books, I lose something (the opportunity to read that book at a moment's notice, the status symbol of books that define "me" to visitors) and gain something in return (space on the shelf, ease of managing my stuff, order in my home, money that I don't have to spend on more storage). I can decide if that trade-off is the right choice for me.

However, with the kids toys, I know that most of the gain is the parents' (for it is our feet that hurt when we step on a marble; we are the ones that separate the blocks, trains, wedgits, and legos) and most of the loss is kids' (they don't have access to a toy that they might enjoy).

What I remind myself of is how much the kids gain, too:

- Their parents are slightly less cranky.

- Their parents have more free time to spend with the kids, to cook nutritious meals, to take care of themselves so they can take care of the kids.

- Kids, too, like a clear, open space to engage in play.

- Clear, open spaces are particularly good for wrestling with Dad.

- Being able to clearly see a small number of toys works better than being surrounded by a plethora. It gives kids a chance to really focus their play in one area, and to not be overwhelmed when considering what play to do next.

- Kids play with non-toy things as often as toy things. Wooden spoons and sofa cushions are current favorites. Those items serve double-duty (yes, you can stir with a wooden spoon), thereby increasing their "density" in the home.

I've noticed recently that even the babies (16 months on Saturday) will often not think of playing with something until someone points it out to them. So, providing them with bucket upon bucket of toys won't really help them find fun. Having just 1 toy can meet their needs, if there's someone to help them get engaged.

In January I put a bunch of kids' toys in storage. It was a really good choice -- the kids haven't missed the toys, and life has been a bit easier since.

Date Night

2007-05-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

As parents of 3 small children, it's rare that Julie & I get to spend time together, just the two of us. Luckily for us, we found someone who was willing to babysit all 3, and we went out on a date.

We went for sushi.

As you can see, this is a happy thing.

How little do we really need?

2007-05-15T13:27:00.001-07:00

Reading http://confessionsofahoarder.blogspot.com/2007/04/off-topic-guest-post-over-at-happy-jet.html got me thinking.

Every Thanksgiving my extended family rents a large house at the beach. There are usually about 16 people there, of which I contribute 5. For those 5, we only bring 2 suitcases, 2 backpacks, and carseats. There are only a few toys, unlike the hundreds of overflowing toys at home.

There are clearly some things missing, like clothes for the other weather, but still, we do very well with very little.

One important factor is the help we get. For example, with other adults around, we have time to keep up on laundry, washing every day, so we only need 3 days worth of clothes.

It's something we think about often when working on decluttering and pondering how much we really need for our happiness.

-Jay on a Pocket PC phone