Crumbs from the spork

LED bulb replacement project

2011-12-22T22:02:00.003-05:00

BEFORE	AFTER




BEFORE	AFTER

I picked up a large quantity of LED replacement bulbs, to cut down on electric use, and heat, on several lamps in the house. The left side above shows what the incandescent bulbs looked like before being replaced with LED bulbs on the right.

The first row has a chandelier with a couple burned out bulbs, so comparing the amount of light between the two is not quite equal. The LED light is nearly the same as before, and the main way to tell which picture is which, besides the former shot missing some brightness, is the triangular flare near the center. This was caused by the specific pattern the LEDs are shaped in on each bulb -- a bit of a pyramid within the pointed shape.

The second row shows the kitchen lamp, where one of the 5 incandescent bulbs was dead before the replacement. With the dark tint of each glass enclosure, this set seems a bit dimmer than before, but is still acceptable.

The third row is a two bulb fixture. The center cylinder with the power cable, that is threaded for the glass stopper is almost too small for the LED bulbs, which only fit after slightly bending the socket. The incandescent bulbs that were replaced had a smaller diameter than the new bulbs. On the left is a flare from the Edison type filament, and on the right are two flares from the sets of parallel LEDs in each bulb. Because the glass enclosure is open to dust collection, the right picture appears much cleaner and clearer because I polished it.

The fourth row is of the hall light that had 4 sockets, only one of which was lit by incandescent before the LEDs were put up. Unfortunately the old bulbs were small spheres, while the new ones are larger ovals that don't quite fit in the enclosure. I needed to let it hang there without being completely screwed in as it should be. Next time I'll measure the old bulbs.

Inside Track India Back Story

2011-12-04T21:19:00.007-05:00

When Abesh asked me to present something at the SAP Inside Track event in India in December, I checked the calendar and realized not only was it during a camping weekend, the time zone difference meant it was starting around midnight for me, lasting until around 9AM the next morning. I said I would record a video for the "keynote" time period, and try to be online then so I could chat if possible.

After a bit of thought, I decided to make a video with a number of segments, each around 30 seconds, and do "costume changes" between scenes. My original plan was 20 scenes, for a running time of 10 minutes; the final cut was perhaps 15 shots and about 8 minutes, 90 seconds of which was not actually me.

I decided to set up a tripod, point the FlipCam (cheap high definition video camera, now obsolete due to the new owner cutting the product line) at a chair, so I'd be able to fade between takes. The part about pointing the camera at a fixed spot worked very well, only if I had to do it over I'd have come in for more of a close up. The resolution was fine, on the original shots, but the microphone didn't pick me up very well on some takes. I wanted to show different SAP related shirts (or kurtas) so I could not come in too tight, but getting more audio would have meant hooking up another microphone, adding production time to something I wanted to do quickly.

I wrote up notes on the scenes and stories I wanted to tell, laid out a dozen outfits, and started shooting one right after the other. The first take was uploaded to YouTube, even though after watching it I realized the audio was too quiet.

The bigger problem with the rendering of this clip was my choice of "WMV" format. While it looks and sounds okay, the video editor took a widescreen image and bent it to a smaller window. When uploaded to YouTube, there are black bars on the side, which should not be there, and I look thinner than I really am (like a fun house mirror). The other output formats did not have this issue, and I have not found a fix for the WMV format. When I play the file locally with VLC, there is a switch to widen the picture, which works fine. YouTube does not have this, as far as I can tell.

Once I edited together the clips, taking out the time where I sat down or stood up, I wanted to have transitions between them. Again, the video program either did not behave, or I was unable to find the controls I had used in prior work to do fade in or fade out effects. With a short time window, I gave up on the video effects and stuck with sound bites only.

To back up a minute, one thought I had was a sound track with music from India, whether tabla drum, sitar or something like that. But I definitely did not want to include any commercial or copyright sounds. Unfortunately, in brief (or not so brief) searches for drum clips, I found almost nothing free and unencumbered by copyright. I finally came across a site with sound samples that have been placed in the public domain. The coolest part of that was the site was "One Laptop Per Child" - a project I had read about, and contributed to in the past.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Free_sound_samples

There I found information about tabla drum samples from Mihir Sarkar. The actual files are on archive.org, another place I have used, to get Grateful Dead public recordings, and view some old movie clips. Nice site!

http://www.archive.org/details/MihirSarkar

The page said "Sound samples by Mihir Sarkar recorded for Richard Boulanger for use in the One Laptop per Child music library. See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples for details."

and

"Creative Commons license: Attribution 3.0"

Each of the files within the archive are one type of drum "hit". Not being a true music student, and again, in a hurry, I took a few samples, pushed them together using Audacity, and exported as an MP3 file, hopefully with proper tagging to show the required attribution. Check the MP3 ID tags for the track:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/48471093/audio/MihirSarkar-Tabla-MIX-ONE.mp3

From misc

While on a Thanksgiving weekend visit to the home of Marilyn Pratt, I brought along the FlipCam, intending to get Marilyn on camera for a dialogue about the community network and India. There wasn't much time to focus on this (pun intended) and I ended up leaving the camera for her to create a clip late in the evening. I took off early the next day, and while she left a note saying she recorded something, I didn't get a chance to see it until I got home (when it was impossible for any retakes!). Again, one take.

Once spliced and mixed, I needed to render the file, which is always a challenge for me. So may options, some of which work well with YouTube, some of which don't work so well, and some of which don't work at all. And apparently, this spectrum changes more frequently than expected (another story). I decided to have Plan A be upload the entire high definition file with Dropbox, and Plan B be to use YouTube. The reason a file was Plan A was the possibility of internet failure at the event site. Assuming the on-location hosts were able to download the file, bad internet would not prevent the un-keynote from playing.

Two problems cropped up right away. The first was download speed; Abesh was able to download the movie quickly, but he isn't in Bangalore or Kolkata. And as soon as one of the actual hosts began to get the file (which, unfortunately due to the render format I picked was over 1GB), my shiny new Dropbox account was suspended, initially for 3 days. I griped online via Twitter, and was given a reprieve very, very quickly, but even with that, only one of the two site hosts was able to get the file.

With the video uploaded to YouTube as a private link, I thought I was off the hook. For some reason (more than one really), the Plan B did not happen, and much later than I was expecting, I needed to talk on camera to the attendees in Bangalore. I was in Scout Camp, at 11:30 on a Friday evening, trying not to disturb my friends who were administering camp reservations that weekend, and was asked to do the un-keynote on the spot. Eventually, we got the audio and video hooked up,

The Un Keynote:

The outtake video:

dil chahta hai - review of sorts

2011-11-12T16:15:00.004-05:00

I started watching movies from India to get ready for my October trip, and while I can't understand a word of Hindi (OK, I understand 3 or 4 now), with legible English subtitles I can get by well enough to enjoy, or understand enough to experience a portion of what Indians get. I'm continuing to watch DVDs through Netflix, or Instant Watch, that were in my queue, or that my friends have suggested/insisted I watch. The SCNotties awards have given me yet another list of films I never heard of before.

The most recent one I finished is "Dil Chahta Hai" (from the song of the same title I figured out I should pronounce "Hai" as "Hey" not "Hah" or "Hi" as I probably have done). My friends wanted a review, or my comments about the movie, so here goes.

It seems to be a almost mandatory requirement of Bollywood movies to have musical numbers, and while I can and have fast forward through many of them, I listen and watch enough to get the general idea. The primary influence seems to be music videos as originally popularized by MTV years ago, by the likes of Michael Jackson, Madonna, and their pop descendents like Brittany Spears, Spice Girls, etc. Dil Chahta Hai had its share, but they were not too much over the top, and I could tolerate them well enough. I'd be interested to know how faithfully the lyrics are translated in the subtitles.

The script was above the stock Peyton Place-like soap operas I have seen in other romantic comedy/dramas from India, with the characters having good depth, and the performances deeper than shallow. One well-written and acted scene was the "art critic" analysis of one of the main character's painting, where she pointed out the symbolism he displayed indicating he had secrets others would not be shown. She took a risk sharing this with him, per the plot, and he reacted as if someone had opened a door on him.

I thought the character Pooja was quite the catch, and while you could likely predict who she would end up with, the twists and turns were not too cliched. The scenes in Sydney took me back to a visit there earlier this year, and included a real opera (though I only saw the outside of the Opera House). The flashbacks during the "close your eyes" sequence were technically excellent, and the hesitation in the resolution was not quite what I expected (though for a 3 hour movie, the finale can't happen until the last reel). I could swear I heard a didgeridoo playing during some of the Australian scenes. I checked out the back story of Troilus and Cressida (the opera within the movie) and it's not just a somewhat obscure yet insightful and intelligent Shakespeare plays, it's a fairly modern production. Funny that Wikipedia doesn't reference the movie.

The last comment I have is on the younger man/older woman romance, if one could call it that. I'm not completely aware of the traditions in India about divorced or widowed women, but it seems there is more of a stigma than we know "in the West." In the movie, that status difference was a bigger deal than the age, with both the male's friends and his relatives being appalled by his desires, not to mention the woman herself. I was left puzzled by the resolution of this in the plot, with their final scene together being interwoven throughout the movie, and a subsequent scene just before the credits apparently bowing to convention (and perhaps the censors).

I sent the DVD back to Netflix, and the US Postal Service replaced it in my mailbox with the 3 Idiots. How they stuffed all 3 in that small receptacle I have no idea.

Another Innocent Abroad

2011-11-01T01:51:00.003-04:00

Downloaded Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad to read on the way home from India. I thought I had read it before, and probably did, but I've forgotten much of the humor. Twain's dry wit is impeccable once again, skewering his fellow travelers, himself, and with special glee, the tour guide industry.

I have taken small tours of places like San Franscico with a several hour guided tour, which included narration, stops at points of interest, and detours to shops not advertised on the primary itinerary advertisements. Twain's experience is dead-on mirroring of the modern guides I met in my just-concluding trip to India, including non-stop prattle, steerage into French textile shops, and the kind of whoopers they grow in Calveras County. I can't possibly match his razor-sharp insights into the alleged innocents, and for this trip I had the advantage of being solo and not needing to succumb to the whims of the majority. But I was subject to the preplanned routes and rigamarole, and was only able to escape at my peril.

One advantage I had over Twain's experience was an occasional 5 or 10 minute respite from the package deal, by most of my guides. They would say, Ok, you go explore this space and meet me back here, or I can't climb all those stairs again, I will wait here.

So far, I am about 25% into Twain's book, where they've reached Italy. I know the "Holy Land" is ahead, and can't wait for the comparative religion discusiion the irascible steamboat pilot will surely get into to.

I should be boarding the flight to Detroit soon... More later!

Jodhpur, last tourist stop in India

2011-10-31T03:47:00.005-04:00

All good things come to an end, and this day was my last of the package tour of India, except for delivering me back to the airport for the long, long flight home. The itinerary called for the tour to be on Saturday, but with an 8-hour drive from Udaipur, it was almost sunset when we arrived so no point in trying to see much.

On the way, Parveen stopped so I could get an action photo of a water pump. The boys drawing water came right over to the car when we slowed down, so I'm happy the camera worked before that. I think the dog stayed where he was.

The tour included the Mehrangarh Fort, with an initial stop at the Jaswant Thada, or crematorium, which includes memorials to deceased rulers and their kin, plus a building not quite a temple, and not quite not a temple. After nearly a week of hearing versions of Hindu history capsules, I had gotten to the point of nodding my head while thinking about something else. No offense to my friends here, but you can understand a tour guide's monologue can be intrusive, rather than instructive, if carried to extremes.

Given it was Sunday, a holiday after Dewali festivities, many people were visiting the historic sites and monuments. I seemed to have gotten farther from the central tourist routes to the Taj Mahal and sites neared to Delhi, so my American/European presence was noted and commented upon. Some people said hello, struck up conversations, asking how I liked India (here's where my practiced Hindi fell out of mind), and were happy to meet me. One guy turned out to be from Northern California (and later in the airport I met two people from Maryland - the SAP hat and bag were a tell-tale). Teenagers, on the other hand, may have said hello, but typically commented to each other about my presence.

When the tour was complete, we went into the city for a market walk. I'm not sure how the tour guide business operates here, whether the word about my likes and dislikes filtered around the network, but I was somehow steered into a textile building with floor after floor and pile after pile of fabrics like blankets, scarves, bedding and tablecloths. My pack is already overweight, and my budget is way over the limit, and after being shown sample after sample I tried to inch my way out the door. The salesperson, while very nice, persisted in asking me if I would buy gifts for families (and the non S.O.) before I could get a card and exit the premises. Everything was beautiful, intricate, seemed reasonably priced, but I was just not interested. I was not even looking, but apparently said "sure" when I should have said "no, not really." I captured a few seconds of his pitch on video, below.

After this shot, these tykes came over asking for money. Can't say I blame them.

Fort on a hill. Apparently Jodhpur and Jaipur duked it out, and the former won. So to speak.

I was struck by how obsolete and useless a grave site is, with a microwave tower for contrast.

City Palace in Jodhpur. Big cheese still lives here.

Makeshift shade. And it's much cooler now in October.

Carrying the laundry; not sure if this is before or after washing?

Good sense of color in the store decorator staffs.

These looked like melons for sale, but I'm fairly certain it is pottery.

Cab stand. "Follow that two-stroke!"

Store, power pole, trash fire. And some ubiquitous two wheel locomotion.

My tour guide said these were jute rope, but I think some may be synthetic.

Jodhpur market

I suspect these chilies are pretty spicy.

Fresh vegetables in the Jodhpur market, near the clock tower.

PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

Pictures from Udaipur and environs

2011-10-29T11:28:00.007-04:00

I'm in a hotel in Jodhpur, with a band playing Indian folk music by the pool outside, and as much bandwidth as I can muster for four hours. A few images from the past two days, as the hotel in Udaipur had no wireless, and I wasn't interested in sitting in an internet cafe when there were other things to do.

Food

Breakfast on the 26th

Dinner on the 25th

An elephant

Another elephant

Fire dance(r)(s)

Udaipur near sunset

More Udaipur street view

Udaipur tour 28 Oct 2011

2011-10-28T22:10:00.003-04:00

India 28-Oct-2011

Traffic getting into the center of Udaipur was at a standstill Thursday night when we arrived; portions of the old city were closed to cars. After driving around, and not driving for portions of time, Praveen left the car on a street and we walked the remaining half-mile or so to the hotel. The streets in the center are twisted, hilly, and narrow.
Once we reached the hotel, I found the room to be elegant yet sparse. The electrical service is controlled by an outside switch (no leaving the iron on, of there was an iron, and enough power to run one). The bathroom has a hot water heater for the shower, which you must switch on ahead of time to get it ready.

Temple
In the morning, I met my guide, who was going to be Farooq, but instead was another gentleman, whose name was, um, I forgot to write down. I've now heard multiple variations on the Hindu deity naming schemes. His monologue varied from describing the panoply of supreme beings to the origin of the marble and other building material to a little about current conditions.
The center dome was barely visible behind a large wire mesh, and due to angles, not much was evident outside. The exterior of the building had an unbelievable number of carved figures, and each layer seemed to relate to some power or unit.

City palace museum
The Palace is no doubt a great building, with wonderful courtyards, terffici vistas, and an ancient art collection, as well as more recent historic artifacts like photos and mementos of the ruling family. Sadly, we did not see or enjoy much of this due to the crowds from Diwali holiday visiting at the same time. It was an experience to be in lines that channeled into a single small doorway, that led down to narrow winding steps. Generally everyone was patient, except for one person who decided waiting was not for him, pushing through the crowd to reach the bottleneck.
People were extra friendly to me, saying hello, with one gentleman asking me about my travel to India.

No boat ride
I told my guide I was not interested in a boat ride to any of the lake palaces, given the likelihood of long waits, crowded sites, and my general dislike pf boats. He seemed hesitant to change the plan, since it was paid for and he appeared to be ready with more monologues. After a week of seeing 500 year old buildings, I wanted to visit something more topical. Heritage is great, but what about the world we will live in tomorrow?

Water garden
We skipped the boat ride, driving to the water garden (the name escapes me, but one photo geo-location says N 24d 35m 14s, E 73d 41m 50s ). This was less crowded, cool with fountains, and had pleasant greenery, as well as few if any pushy potential guides, trinket sellers or mendicants.

Lunch - Aroma restaurant

For lunch, we stopped at an outdoor restaurant. While the food was good, I felt a bit off for some reason. Maybe the waiter didn't think much of me, or the feeling of eating on a card table under a mildewed tarpaulin, or the lack of other patrons save one gave me a strange feeling. But the food was spicy and filling, and I won't need to return soon.

City market walk
After being dropped off near the city center, my guide directed me through blocks of outdoor and indoor markets, explaining which areas sold which goods, how the businesses were handed down throughout the families, and a bit about how the city architecture has evolved from mud and brick huts to cement and steel structures. I took a few photographs, but with no hotel wireless and limited bandwidth to upload through my phone, the images will need to wait. I sent one through to Facebook, and one to Twitter, I think, so check one of those.
One area I skipped through lack of interest was the gem and stone market. This area is a world exporter apparently, and there seems to be plenty of consumers for those goods. I was able to get a replacement watchband, installed, for what could be considered a bargain. Again, photos later.

Dinner - Ambrai restaurant
Nice place, not too far a walk from the hotel (with a guide, as I don't think a map would suffice). Outdoor setting, live music playing, and more spicy food (mutton sagwala this time). But seeing a rat scampering among tables was a big let down (oh, look, it's Scampers!). The lakes look nice, very reflective views of the surrounding buildings, but the amount of trash I saw on the swales below the locks was enormous, and included at least one live big rooting through it. I hesitate to think what the water quality of such a contained reservoir would be. Probably worse than Baltimore's Inner Harbor?

Concepts and continuations - in Udaipur India

2011-10-27T08:02:00.003-04:00

26-Oct-2011

* water

The first thing, and often second, third, fourth, and fifth things a traveler is told is "don't drink the water" when visiting a foreign land. I had generally hear that phrase in the context of Mexico, though it was said to me a few times about India. Certainly one does not want to risk being ill when far away from home, but how would I reconcile my convictions against drinking bottled water with avoiding stomach illness? People compromise when faced with such decisions, and I admit I have added to the waste stream with more non-returnable bottles. In most of the hotels, I found tea kettles, which let me boil the water and sterilize it, at least as far as pathogens. No ill effect from this procedure. The taste has varied according to my location, as the water is definitely more salty (with who knows what other minerals) in Agra. In the hotel in Jaipur, no kettle, since this is a "heritage" hotel that possesses wonderful architecture, interesting door knobs, great water pressure (and heat), but I would not stress the electrical circuits much.

My driver, Praveen, said recent monsoons have been lower than historic amounts. We visited one city that had been abandoned hundreds of years ago due to drought, and though the site is a historic monument, it is surrounded by development that appears to have sufficient water. During my road travels, we passed rice paddies, which definitely require adequate irrigation; Praveen said once we pass Jaipur we will see agriculture with less water, or maybe desert.

Another aspect is the danger of disease spread by insects requiring water, such as malaria via mosquitoes. Guide books and medical advice was to minimize contact with repellent, and staying indoors. I saw more mosquitoes in the first few days, around Kolkata, then in the last fee days south of Delhi. I know it is important to narrow the risk factors, and while I am not living dangerously, I am less obsessed about seeing bugs that I was initially.

Yesterday we saw cattle being washed in a waterway by the roadside ( and I am sure I have s picture and/or a movie clip). I tired to find out if this is a daily occurrence, and I think the answer is yes, but I was uncertain whether all cattle have such immersion chances. In a lake near the Amber Fort, as well as at other waterways during this trip I've seen people bathing, not to mention the ubiquitous roadside urination everywhere from countryside to high tech office park.

Wastewater treatment plants might be easier to find from the sir than on the ground, unless one can follow the odors. So far, the closest I have been to one was an office building in Bangalore with a sign saying Karnataka Pollution Control Administration.

* electricity and petroleum

India is definitely electrified, at least in the areas I have seen. In some cases, this is limited to a fluorescent light bulb illuminating a shop. In the small village outside Dagrapur, Abesh noted a line tapped from a power main, directed straight into the back of a building. I did not verify electric service was provided to every house, but the fact that circuits were in the vicinity at least suggested it was available.

Dipankar lent me a 220 volt "dongle" to power my US devices while here. It's been absolutely necessary to keep my various cameras and comms from turning into bricks. Abesh said the spark that jumped out when plugging in circuitry was perfectly normal, though I am not sure I can get used to that flash and sound easily. With the dozens of pictures I have taken each day, the rechargeable AAs have worked out great for the camera; I don't think I have come close to needing to switch them during the day.

I think one of my guides said India had no remaining coal reserves, and used petroleum for electricity generation, as well as a small amount of hydroelectric and I guess nuclear. We have passed numerous smoke stack belching visible plumes, not to mention the emissions from the two-stroke "auto-rickshaws", like multi-passenger lawn mowers.

In Old Delhi, my tour guide pointed out the maze of overhead wiring passing overhead, commenting on the availability of power and the lack of regulation or control with such chaos. Maybe it just looks random to an outsider, as do the streets without signs, and the traffic paying no attention to lane dividers, or to the center divider for that matter.

* beggars

I mentioned street beggars on one of the SDN blogs, and received several comments, but did not get a chance to reply during one of my wireless paid-hotel windows of opportunity. The guide books (once again, holy scripture for the mundane tourist) said don't encourage them, don't pay attention to them , keep moving, nothing to see here. Easy for you to say. When a live woman holding a baby steps in front of you, you have to be pretty inhuman not to react. It's one thing to say no, or to ignore, a " hawker" holding sets of jewelry that has no attraction, it's another to deal with someone tapping on your arm, after having eaten large amounts of calories in a restaurant.

The right answer for me is to channel energy and money to charitable organizations that can can help people find ways out of poverty, or improve their health conditions, or otherwise assist them out of the cycle. Can I tell an "honest beggar" from a con artist? Maybe, maybe not. I tried not to take pictures of the snake charmers, monkey handlers, acrobats or other street people, with the idea that I can remember the situation, I don't need to memorialize it.

* design - dome

The evening last week on Design Thinking, which passively participated in, reminded me of the type of brain storming with intense direction I experienced when I heard Buckminster Fuller speak in the mid-1970s. Coming together to solve problems, using technology at hand, and examining the ratios of power use resounded among the teams. So it was a pleasant feeling to see a geodesic dome within a traffic circle in Jaipur. However, pasting the image in the blog post will need to wait until I fire up the PC somewhere on the net as I have not learned the trick of grabbing image URLs on the iPad.

This dome is child-sized, intended for a playground next to a school or in a park. I am puzzled by its placement in a traffic circle, given the difficulty of access, the environmental conditions (road dust and hydrocarbon emissions), and the tight placement. Maybe there is more to that dome than I could see at the time.

* chaos + destruction

Beyond the apogee of my trip, heading for the inevitable splashdown and hopefully a recovery. Several of my guides have attempted to explain Hindu mythology to me, with a triumvirate of birth, life and death being one concept. Knowing the impending destruction of anything can be an impediment to creative thinking and positive energy, so whatever I can get out of this trip, I hope it leads to less chaos.

Everywhere that I saw a street sweeper, a pile of trash on the side of the road, or waste being generated, I tried to compartmentalize and systematize what was occurring. Road side burning of trash that happens in India I have rarely seen in at least 40 years in the U.S., other than maybe leaf burning.

In the end, these are just small thoughts from a small person somewhere in a big world, trying my best.

Agra to Jaipur

2011-10-25T11:11:00.012-04:00

25-Oct-2011, "dateline Jaipur, Rajasthan, India"

My tour of India is going well, seeing lots of sights, learning a lot of culture, and only being slightly penned in by the constraints of tour guide routine that has me running into the same Eurolanders in different transports or restaurants. Hotel wireless is un-cheap, and to make sure this post gets out before the clock runs down to zero, I'm hitting "publish" before I am actually done. If the text stops before the "woman in yellow" paragraph, refresh again later.

Spent the evening in Agra, after another hotel dinner, and then a breakfast. But on the road early, Agra fort is close to the lodgings, and spotted lots of monkeys around the outside of the fort. This is not something we see often in the U.S.

The third shot of the fort below silhouettes a visitor near the mosque, I believe, though I was turned around a few times due to the enormity of the structure. Rais, my guide, said most of the grounds are off limits as they are occupied by the military. Apparently, the buildings are in good enough condition to serve hundreds of years after being constructed.

The next shot is just one of the many street vendors who were selling flowers for Dewali. It's a big holiday here, meaning traffic Wednesday could be even busier, if that is believable.

After the flowers is a shot of me on the bus. The gentleman next to me wanted to get up, but I said he need not bother to move. I know I take up a lot of room, and this angle confirms it.

Inside Fatehpur Sikri, a World Heritage site, I explored the palaces, harem rooms (read: youth hostels of the 16th century), courtyards, balconies, and other palatial digs, or what is left of them after multiple successive ownership. It's amazing what remains today.

Rias kept wanting to take my picture with big buildings in the background, and I'm glad he obliged my desire to get the drinking water and local visitors with me in the same shot. It means more to me than a palace or castle!

Lunch was more Euro-Indian food (Indian dishes, served mainly to European tourists). I did get to see cows afterward in the place next door.

On the road to Jaipur, we started seeing hills after an hour or two, and I spotted castles or forts on a few of them. The shot below juxtaposes an ancient fortress with a more modern communication tower.

As we entered Jaipur, the road became steeper, and then more crowded. The last shot, of the woman in yellow, is one of my favorites from the trip. The car was moving, she was moving, and I took it with a cell phone camera. The new term for this hobby, I learned on this trip, is "phonography" (you could look it up in your Funk & Wagnall's).

Stills

14.03.00 ?

14.39.57

15.23.58

16.28.45

Videos

Delhi to Agra, and points in between

2011-10-25T10:57:00.005-04:00

24-Oct-2011

Came down to breakfast to see playing an Indian version of MTV, I guess, with gyrating guys and girls. It was switched off in favor of other channels, with news, and mostly sports, prevailing. I had Jeera Aloo and corn/mushroom something, which were both good, and hash browns, were predictable (no hidden chili peppers).

Then, after repacking into smaller bundles, I met Praveen at 8 am for the drive to Agra. Traffic was busy in spots, and Praveen commented about the commuting workers, particularly those packed 10 deep in auto-rickshaws.

The distance to Agra is something like 250 km (check), and while we were to be on a national highway (number 2) the amount and variety of traffic was unlike an interstate in the US. I am not sure the pictures along the way can describe the access and egress patterns, the range of vehicular motivation, and the sounds of drivers alerting or informing their fellow travelers.

After having a touch of sore throat Sunday, Monday I felt like sniffling and sneezing and coughing was taking over. Despite the weaving traffic, I fell asleep a couple times along the way.

We stopped for an early lunch (10:30 - check name), which seemed to be a resort in name, but a diner in form. I arrived ahead of a couple tourist bus crowds and had the place to myself. Tailored for the tourist trade, the menu included multinational fare, but not exclusively, so I ordered a vegetable samosa and a mango drink, shying away from fresh squeezed juice with. Bit of regret.

For me, it was nice to be stopped near a major rail line, as I spotted both freight trains (goods wagons) and passenger lines going by, in both directions. Praveen said he had tea and snacks in the back. I guess the caste system prevails in a way. I should get him to have a meal with me, or I should follow him to the "guest house" where drivers and "servants" are served.

South of Delhi is an industrial area, Faribad, which seemed to include not just chemical and manufacturing, but technical schools, street markets, villages, and the usual repair stops.

We stopped at a wayside border crossing so Praveen could pay taxes to the government, whereby hawkers and beggars approached the car, pleading and tapping on the window. The offerings were strings of beads, carvings, trained monkey shows, and who knows what else, as Praveen told me to roll up my window and ignore them.

I missed photos of the Moghul "watchtowers" or milestones, by the side of the road. These seemed to be under 10 feet high, grey stone or stucco, with a few slits I the side. Praveen said that messages would be passed by drum from tower to tower.

The plan was for a short stop at the hotel, then a drive to the Taj Mahal, where it would be close to sunset. We picked up another tour guide, Rasi, who explained the history and significance of the monument. In some ways, I was unprepared to visit the site, not having read much ahead of time, but it is such a famous site that not much else can be done beforehand. Rais patiently walked me though the route to the monument, including a battery powered jitney ride (I opted out of the horse cart), then walking the remainder of the way to the entrance. With security tight for the Dewali festival season, there were 4 lines for scanning - one each for Indian "ladies and gents" and one each for guests.

Rais kept preparing me for each successive phase of approaching the Taj.

Photos of Taj are below, and in Panoramio.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at pharmacist to get medicine for a stuffy nose, which was only 27 rupees, and at a money exchange store, where DVDs, textiles, and more was on sale.

Dinner at the hotel started at 7:30, and at 6pm, when I was hungry , only snacks were available. I did not want to go to the bar for an hour and a half, so I went with the simple "vegetable cutlet." it reminded me of the chicken or beef cutlets one might get in the US, but thicker and less dry.

I decided to skip the hotel wireless charges pf 150 rupi per hour, or 500 per 24 hours

Today (25-Oct) I'm trying to post 2 blogs, within 2 hours, including photos. I'm on deadline, so excuse lack of edits.

Delhi, by air conditioned car, and by bicycle rickshaw

2011-10-23T10:26:00.005-04:00

After sleeping late due to being bedraggled by the intense days of TechEd, being exposed to 10,000 people's possible germs, eating as natively as I could for a week, and being cooped up in an airliner's recirculation air handling system, I had a short breakfast of rice, prahnta bread, and hot salt water, then was met by (Mrs.) Punam Gulati, my tour guide for the day in Dehli. My driver, Praveen Sharma, had described me to her as "long hair and a beard". Guess that would be distinctive in most places.

As my energy levels weren't at their top, we talked about what might be skipped or driven past in case I needed to cut my day short. While I don't want to miss any time outside, it's better to take it easy than get burned out and ruin the rest of the trip.

The first major stop of the day, ignoring slowing down for a photo out of the car window, as the Jama Masjid mosque, built by Shah Jahan (in 1658, per my preprinted itinerary). No shoes inside, no immodest wear, basically meaning women had to don something similar to what my friend D refers to a a "house dress." The paper says this will hold 20,000 people, but from what I can tell, the majority of them would be outside in the sun, sitting or kneeling on hard stone. Punam said this is not the largest mosque in India, but it is one of the most important.

Then, a ride in a bicycle rickshaw (Hello, RediPedi!) through the markets/bazaar (Chandini Chowk) narrow streets and alleys of Old Delhi. Again, Punam was very professional in directing the driver where she wanted us to go, keeping up a constant stream of history, trivia, background information, and pointing out sights to see. We stopped so I could get out and see an even narrower street. She pointed out the matrix of overhead wiring, the lights set out for Diwali, and the purpose of many of the shops and street entrepreneurs. The ride was bumpy, but not as bad as a few of the car or bus rides I've had here so far.

The south side of the mosque is the Moslem section, where there are butcher shops (as opposed to Hindu vegetarianism), with live goats and chickens for sale in whole or in part. I detected animal wast odors more strongly on those streets, though it was just a short ride.

After that, we stopped at Gandhi's final resting place (Rajghat). I chose not to walk all the way to the stone memorial, but viewed the scene from an elevated walkway. I was reminded of Kennedy's grave in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, with the simplicity and a burning flame. There were a few flower arrangements atop the black marble.

We passed government buildings, where I was able to get out and take a few shots of the President's home (pictures, of course!).

Then I stopped in a shop where silk and Kashmir carpets and other products are sold. Very nice tea and biscuits, too.

The last planned tour stop, other than one I skipped, was Humayun's tomb, the so-called "Poor Man's Taj Mahal." Steep steps leading up to a large plaza area, with the tomb building in the center and having just one entrance. I uploaded one shot from this area to Panoramio. Interesting geometrical patterns all around, including on the floors and wall tiles. Punam said the stairs to the higher levels are circular, but are closed to the public.

I asked to skip the last planned stop (to the Qutab Minar) in favor of the National Rail Museum, which was closer in distance, and more to my interest. I learned about the variety of gauges in India, and saw relics of bygone eras, including royal saloons (not "cars"), animal holding pens, and lots of rusted steamhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif engines.

http://www.nrm.indiarailways.gov.in/

For dinner, I was left to my own devices, but apparently Punam trusted my sense of direction (and street sense) to walk to a nearby restaurant. She made it easy, with "right at the next stop light, and right at the one after that." I didn't see anything right away, but another turn brought me to a sign for Subway, which I skipped in favor of M.B.s "multi-ethnic cuisine" just past. Though I was the only patron in the restaurant (yes Kumud) there were others upstairs in the bar area. Tandoori mushroom, and Butter Roti. Plus some sugar candy and seeds for dessert.

Tomorrow: 8AM departure for Agra

Photos, etc.

10:33

10:35

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13:57

15:04

16:44

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17:23

17:41

17:52

Bonus movie trailers - National Rail Museum

From Banyans to Bosons

2011-10-18T03:37:00.008-04:00

Trying to pick up where I left off in the last blog post for this trip to India is difficult, as I had a very early flight from Kolkata to Bangalore this morning, after a long bus ride from Dagrapur to Kolkata last night. I've taken lots of photos, and now that I'm at the SAP TechEd conference center, I can upload a few.

The first shot is from the roadside stop on the bus ride. It was dark (obviously) and this is a handheld, no flash shot. The image can't convey the atmosphere completely, as this is a far cry from typical rest stops in the U.S., sanitation-wise.

On the drive around Abesh's town, I took a few shots out the window while driving, so these motorcycle riders appear distorted as we moved in opposite directions.

Here's a traffic circle, or roundabout: go left, go left.

Another shot of traffic, this time with a slow moving bicyclist.

Some captive wildlife on the side of the road.

Abesh and Haimanti took me shopping, at a larger mall in the town. I'll spare everyone the shot of my pajama pants.

In the village near "the barrage", Abesh explained how the fuel is created from animal droppings and steel mill byproducts for cooking. It's being dried in the sun here.

This is on the road leading from the village back to the main road over the barrage.

It's the tie-die shirt seen elsewhere in the world.

Both Dipankar and Abesh, and all of their family members, were wonderful hosts. I wish I knew how to thank them properly.

A few of the above images have links to Picasa, with geo-locations that I think are correct. If not, they should be fixable.

Eat with your fingers, no spork needed

2011-10-16T20:59:00.011-04:00

After months of planning and communicating, the time to get out of town arrived.

Minor hassle at the airport, with curbside checkin not possible for me. No problems with security or other travel hurdles, thank goodness.

I slept a bit on the plane from Atlanta to Paris, which like every other flight lately was full. In Paris, it was the next morning, though I didn't feel too groggy. Boarding the next flight was a little confusing, with no sections, and not much of a line. Once on the plane though, I had a little more sleep with little turbulence, landing in Delhi late Friday night. I noticed the majority of the plane was not Indian, but many French or other Europeans, with perhaps an odd American.

On Delhi, I found my backpack was not on the plane, meaning I needed to decide whether to continue on to Kolkata or wait for it there. After the travel agent helped get Abesh and Dipankar on the line, I decided to head for the hotel, then to Kolkata in the morning as planned.

some details glossed over

A side benefit of not having luggage to check was a lighter load, and less to deal with. After the 2 hour flight, I got to the baggage area but could not find Abesh. After several tweets, garbled phone calls, and standing around looking purposeful, I spotted him coming from the parking lot pictured above. We then traveled through the streets of Kolkata in a cab, eventually reaching Dipankar's apartment, where he was pacing nervously. I sat, we talked, and I was served food and drinks. A lot of attention and care is directed to guests here, where in the US someone might be more casually greeted or entertained.

Small logistics problem with not having my baggage check when we went out, as I was not thinking another trip to the airport was imminent, so we ended up takng extra time to get back. The city traffic was a new experience for me, with motor vehicles of all sizes competing with pedestrians and cyclists for road space, and horns being used constantly to announce either impending contact, or just warning the car was coming through.

Sunday morning we went to the AJC Bose Indian Botanic Gardens, which included a detour to get bus tickets for later, and waiting for the tour jitney to arrive. I have a lot of pictures from the lakes and trees in the Garden, which I can't easily post via the iPad. More later. I paid 10 times what the others paid for admission, which I had been warned about. It's a case of what the traffic will bear, I guess. And I didn't get to pay, either, because my hosts won't let me take care of anything.

In the afternoon I took a journey with Abesh to his home town, which is 180 kilometers or so from Kolkata, on an air-conditoned bus. Abesh warned me about a possible bottleneck during the trip, but what was unexpected was how aggressively the bus driver passed cars, motorcycles, trucks, and anything else on the road, constantly blowing his horn. Despite this, I was somehow able to get a little bit of sleep. We passed through Shaktigarh and Panagarh, the former being a short rest stop and the latter being the 2 lane bottleneck where speeds dropped dramatically. Fortunately we did not hit anything and arrived in Durgapur after dark.

Abesh got a " tuk-tuk" (3 wheeled cycle/cab) to his house, where I met his parents, and then after a short rest went to his in-laws where his wife and son were staying,

Abesh's father-in-law plays classical Indian music, and we talked about Ravi Shankar a bit. He said friends of his son had visited from Russia, but I was the first from America. He knows many neighbors who have gone to the US for school. The nicest thing he said was being honored by my visit.

sitting still for a time

Then it was back to Abesh's family home, where friends dropped by, and his mom served a lot of food (after me being asked would I like rice to eat). I figured out how to eat with my fingers, to the delight of the family. The worst thing I did was to try to pick up a few rice kernels that fell off my plate. Apparently guests can't do that. Besides the rice, there was lamb, fish, lentils, and chutney (I think) at the end. Abesh's mom hovered, paced, and worried whether I would like the food.

Ahir got a lot of attention, of course, and seemed to like me for short periods of time, I think my nickname will be "Jim-Uncle", according to Abesh.

Bengies Top 10 2011

2011-10-11T15:12:00.010-04:00

Where's my list for 2011? I've been asking myself that for months, as the Bengies season went on and on, into December. It turned out I did not see any of the last several week's shows, but just in case, I held off on this top ten list until the actual last regularly scheduled program.

For reference, the 2010 list is in a story called Bengies 2010, Top 10, and More . Prior year lists are in one post: Lists of Movies That Played at The Bengies, including over 10 years of shows I've seen there.

For 2011, I made it to a lot of weekends, including most of the two dusk-to-dawn shows. Without further ado, my top 10 list - movies that I saw at the Bengies this year:

Cowboys and Aliens
Source Code
Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer
Thor
Harry Potter
Green Lantern
Captain America
Puss In Boots
Dolphin Tale
The Help

Also rans: Contagion, Kung Fu Panda 2, Conan The Barbarian, Rango, Cars 2, Abduction, Hanna

Sat through, just to see them, not very special: Pirates of the Caribbean IV, Transformers 3, Super 8, others to remain nameless

( https://picasaweb.google.com/112896995335139127438/Bengies )

Last year I worked up a list of every movie that played at the Bengies, from the email announcements. I haven't gotten there for 2011; I still might, but it means reading every one of the 40 or so over again, culling out the duplicates, pressing my memory for "did I stay all the way through?" I might yet. Just not today.

Urban park trails

2011-08-16T08:51:00.001-04:00

On Saturday August 13, I went with other OA members to the Carrie Murray Nature Center in Leakin Park. The weather mostly cooperated, as we had a lot of outdoor program for the Scouts who attended, but a bit of rain later in the day pushed us inside to the classroom.

Planning for the event had been tricky, as most Scout units do long term camping in June, July or August, and the OA national event SummitCorps also took a week out of the schedule, not to mention the planning time for it. Different stations had been proposed for the Expo in the city, and we ended up with Cooking, Camping Promotions, Leave No Trace, Pioneering, and my station on the Baltimore Historical Trails.

During a planning meeting the week before the event, I got a chance to check out the Nature Center and the surrounding woods, including taking a hike for about 45 minutes. There is a lot to see in the area, and while the trails are well-worn, there has been serious attention paid to maintaining them.

Photo 1 - the day's activities started with an opening ceremony by several Boy Scouts.

Photo 2 - The Scouts learned about the Baltimore Historical Trails and patches, but seemed just as interested in a map of the city from the 1950s. "You are here!"

Photo 3 - what would a Scout activity be without food? Joe Spellman cooked up the hot dogs.

Photo 4 - Nentico Lodge Chief Ryan Kivinski led the Scouts on a hike, passing by historic artifacts and the Orianda House in Leakin Park. It's a big park, but because we had a map, we did not get lost. No, really.

Photo 5 - Lodge Adviser Mike Parrish, Lodge Vice Chief Zach Dowell, and Lodge Chief Ryan Kivinski, left to right.

Photo 6 - the trail back to the parking lot by the tennis courts (Eagle Drive!). After the rain, note the puddle behind the water bar. A few of these need to have grade changes to the drainage goes off the trail.

Photo 7 - Photo mapping, afterwards, trying to get pictures into Google Earth. The pictures in the top row middle and right were rejected since they have too many "people" in them. The middle one I was able to crop and have accepted later.

Photo 8 - A screenshot from Google Maps, showing the expanse of trees in this park. Anyone notice the typo?

Till the next Scout event in the park!

SummitCorps - Thursday July 14, 2011

2011-07-09T18:07:00.013-04:00

Thursday.

It was very foggy this morning, with temperatures lower than any other day of the week. I put on a long sleeve T shirt, but packed a short sleeve for the afternoon. Breakfast was once again various packaged foods, including cereal bars, granola and trail mix. Nothing spectacular, but there was hot coffee and plenty of drinking water.

We returned to the same spot as before, and since we had connected our trail to the crew working near us, we went over trail sections we had cut before for finish work. One of the challenges of the day was removing a number of logs that were on the side of the trail, stuck together in a way that was likely to cause water to back up, or more logs to cover the trail. There was also continued work on a section that was very rocky; we pulled out the largest rocks, then rearranged some of the to make a passable trail. Once that was done, we took buckets and buckets of top soil to the low spot.

Much of the day was spent fine tuning sections of trail work by viewing the grade by eye, measuring the slope with a MacLeod, and digging out the high spots that would cause future rain to collect on the trail instead of running off. The work was demanding, and much less rewarding than blazing trail, seeing how far one can get ahead.

One of my tasks on Wednesday and Thursday was working on a slope that seemed to have about 4 inches of top soil, embedded with many rocks. Once I found the clay underneath, that meant a lot more soil and rock removal to keep the track usable. A side effect was using that material for fill dirt in other low spots. We needed to keep going back over different sections to pull the duff aside, again making sure the trail would drain.

Links

- photo bucket
- blogspot

SummitCorps - Wednesday July 13, 2011

2011-07-09T17:59:00.006-04:00

Wednesday.

Yesterday I tried to blog using the iPad, and though I can type mainly correctly into the little floating, moving windows, editing pictures and grafting them onto the blog is painful. I spent $30 for an Apple brand dongle, that merely connects the pad to the SD card, because, well it doesn't matter why. It just is that way. The pictures look nice when moved from the camera to the pad, but I've not found a way to crop or shrink them (don't need the entire 1MB JPEG to be uploaded or downloaded, really), and of course, once uploaded to most sites I can't find the URL of the image with any built-in tools that I have found. It's rather silly to have to go find an "app" to view the source code of a web page.

So I'm back to the PC.

Today I felt better physically, though mentally it is still a challenge to be out here far from home.

We kept hearing dogs howling for the past few days, and learned that the National Park seems to have wild dogs. I guess there aren't enough bears to keep the canine population down. The park rangers said they'd like to get rid of the dogs.

Today's trail work was more physical than before, as we needed to move a lot of rocks out of the tread, along with more top soil mixed with the rocks than in prior days.

We saw a bit more wildlife, though I'm not sure why, including chipmunks, various insects, and a few birds and butterflies.

Our trail connected to the next group's, but we need to do a bit of finish work on the tread and on the drainage before we decide it's good. Digging through the rock, top soil, roots, and then grading it is tough on the muscles.

There was a section of serious rock work, where the first of our crews to the location pulled out several large rocks, and by large I mean 2 to 3 feet across. But once those were pulled out, more rocks were found below them. So we'll need to level it out somehow, anchoring and leveling the rocks so the trail is passable on a mountain bike. We're doing "blue trail" meaning the tread is 24 inches wide, or as Bryce calls it "Sweet Single Track."

Picture from day one - The Summit, slightly visible as a mound of dirt on the hill across the highway from the National Guard Armory

The Summit

SummitCorps - Tuesday July 12, 2011

2011-07-09T17:55:00.005-04:00

The second morning of onsite Summit Corps trail work started similarly to Monday - reveille at 5:45 am, meeting for breakfast at 6:30, bus ride starting before 7, and at the site by around 8 am. The food was similar to yesteryday, Philmont trail breakfast and lunch, with oranges and apple juice for breakfast along with various bars, cookies and dehydrated fruit, and crackers, cheese and other packaged goods for lunch.

When we started down the trail, it looked like we would be making progress at the same rate as Monday, but we soon hit a section of rocky soil that slowed us down. Not too many tools could be used in that section, and it became a debate how deep to dig, not to mention what to do with the rocks pulled out. We typically would be putting them on the uphill side of the trail. The rocks could be used later for fill areas, such as from pulling out a stump or fallen log.

Our crew works with different tools, though as the days pass many seem to have a favorite task or area to work on, such as blazing the trail (corridor clearing), cutting small stumps with a pick mattock or cutter mattock, or breaking trail tread with the "Rouge hoe", etc,

There were also more difficult sections of trail to build today, with obstacles such as tree trunks, stumps, and insect attacks including bees and mosquitoes.

Picture links (stupid iPad)

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2

SummitCorps - Monday July 11, 2011

2011-07-09T17:53:00.003-04:00

Monday.

Monday started early at SummitCorps, with real bugle reveille at 5:45, assembly at 6:30, and bus departure before 7AM. The food was a "Philmont breakfast", as was the lunch, but fortunately coffee was available. I drank little, just in case the bus ride was longer or bumpier than predicted. The "20 minute" ride was more like 30, making it seem like our work site is in another county, if not state, from the Bechtel Family Summit.

We had a tool talk, short work assignments, and then we got to work. Water breaks were hourly, and for the people from western stated (like Colorado), the humidity was painful. As I'm used to yard and trail work in this climate, there was not a huge inconvenience for me, and I kept drinking water at a good clip.

Lunch on the trail was around noon, consisting of bagged food like chips, fruit bars, granola, etc., along with a can of ham loaf. It was tasty enough, and filling, but we looked forward to the country fried steak for dinner.

We worked almost 200 yards of finished trail, with another 100-plus of rough cut into a dense thicket of green briers and other growth. We stopped when we got to Point CB5B, which you may or may not be able to find on the site updates.

The drop point was near "Rocky Top Retreat", a low key collection of tents and outbuildings that looks like a way station for the whitewater rafting and other local activities. I think they will benefit from the trail work we're doing.

The Lodge Chief and I started on a plywood sign that will represent the Nentico Lodge flap. We had fun trying to eyeball the design and use the paints available to create a reasonable facsimile.

Pictures, if I'm lucky.

SummitCorps - Sunday July 10, 2011

2011-07-09T17:51:00.003-04:00

Sunday.

I was hoping to be able to post updates from SummitCorps on a daily basis, expecting that even if I could not get connectivity on the trail, I'd have it at the base camp. I was hoping Glen Jean, West Virginia was going to have a cell tower nearby. There may be, but my phone, when it show service, is on extended or roaming staus, and I have yet to get a data packet up or down from here. So I'm writing this as if it will be posted soon, and hope that somehow I can. If you read this before Saturday, then I get through the matrix. My car is parked several miles away, where there is coverage, but getting there before the end of the week is problematic.

The drive to West Virginia was only a bit longer than my estimates, and there was only a short period near the end that I grew weary of driving. To alleviate the fatigue, we pulled into a State information center. After chatting with the two people on duty, we found out on is an Eagle Scout and Cub Scout leader. He knew about "The Summit" and expressed his appreciation that we were working on the project.

I was prepared for conversations with the Lodge Chief on the drive, knowing that I needed to chat so my mind didn't wander. We covered many topics, from the past and future OA Conclaves, to the picnic last Saturday, to the City Scouting initiatives, as well as my career and visions of his future.

Checkin was fairly smooth, though something went wrong with our deposits. We found out the Summit is not far away, but as it is under construction, we were not going to get any tours of the site. We drove the wrong way trying to find the National Guard armory, and saw the gate and guardhouse entrance. You can see a mound of dirt at the top of the hill from the armory.

The route that we came into the area by the SummitCorps base camp, we did not see the New River Gorge bridge, but it's not far and people told us to check it out Saturday. It's closed one day per year for BASE jumping. Most of the project attendees will be doing whitewater rafting on the river Friday, though I an scheduled for mountain biking.

Camp Food

2011-06-30T09:08:00.018-04:00

[today's blog post is by two Scouts, or maybe three, working on their merit badge for Computers at Camp Spencer, BCMSR. The requirement is to write a blog, with publishing optional, but since I have the right gear they can have at it]

food at camp is not the best but it is good enough. camp food is probably cheap because they wouldn't spend that much money on us but its still good.

On Monday we had waffles and bacon for breakfast. For lunch we had ham and cheese with tomato soup. At dinner we had Beefaroni with meatballs, green beans and garlic bread.

On Tuesday we had pancakes for breakfast with bacon as a side. for lunch we had a BBQ pork sandwich with salad. At dinner we had corn, turkey, mash potatoes and salad.

PBJ

The P B & J tasted weird at first but we go use to it and they taste great now.

They haven't run out of bread, peanut butter, and jelly yet. I like their choice of jelly, it's my favorite.

Pizza - party

Tuesday at camp we had a pizza party with Troop 117. The pizza was good while we played cards for camp night.

We also had bug juice, water, and frute punch.

Trading Post

At the Trading Post they have tons of snacks. It is amazing. They have ice cream, soda, candy and beef jerkey.

Salad bar

Mr. Kyle is our wonderful dining pavilion steward. One of his duties is to police the salad bar. The salad bar had condiments that you could also put on your sandwich or other food. It was served at lunch and dinner.

The dressings include an excellent ranch. For a couple days, there was ham and turkey.

Bug juice

The bug juice was only served at lunch and dinner. The flavors included fruit punch and orange. It was mixed strongly and had good flavor. It was always cold too.

Some Scouts thought they saw bugs in the bug juice, but most did not notice. Scouts should drink more water than bug juice and much less soda.

The bug juice is awesome (Mr. Kyle made it) and there was hardly ever a line, except when there was a line

Friday

Today for breakfast we had English Muffins, eggs, hash browns, and bacon. Some said the hash browns were dry and the English Muffins tasted like cardboard, while others said it was delicious.

Camp Spencer, 2011, day three

2011-06-29T10:18:00.010-04:00

There might be a guest blog post for day three - it depends on how quickly the Scouts taking Computers merit badge can get their tasks done.

Adding pictures is a pain, because the iPad blanks out image upload on the google blogger site. In order to embed a picture, I have had to resort to transferring images using the PC or Droid phone, figuring out the URL, and adding that via HTML to the content. Not a good lesson to show Scouts trying to learn computer basics. One Scout in the class saw the iPad and said "but it doesn't handle Flash". Religion choices already made at such a young age!

Adding pictures is a pain, because the iPad blanks out image upload on the google blogger site. In order to embed a picture, I have had to resort to transferring images using the PC or Droid phone, figuring out the URL, and adding that via HTML to the content. Not a good lesson to show Scouts trying to learn computer basics. One Scout in the class saw the iPad and said "but it doesn't handle Flash". Religion choices already made at such a young age!

Wednesday night we went to Scout Vesper service, where camp chaplain Scott Gray told the story of "Unfortunate Tao", a tale of an empirical succession in ancient China. Scouts are also collecting for the World Freedom Fund, which is supposed to help improve Scouting opportunities in other countries.

The first two photos below are in Panoramio, taken at a couple sites in Camp Spencer. I shot them with the Nikon cool-pix camera, then uploaded them through the PC to the web. Still trying to figure out how to move images from the iPad to the internet, and assuming the I in iPad stands for me-me-me, not the Interwebs.

The next seven pictures are from different scenes around camp, not in any particular order. One and seven are from trail work. Two and three are from computers and cooking merit badges (should be obvious which is which ). Picture four is a Staff song/skit, something about Junior Bird Men, with appropriate headgear.

Photo five is the Scoutmaster coffee station, and picture six is Zachary picking at some vegetation outside Hansen Lodge, where Troop 117 is staying.

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Summer camp 2011, day two

2011-06-28T21:15:00.004-04:00

Since Monday's fire drill, camp has been a beehive of activity, so to speak. We are hosting 3 provisional campers from another troop, who have fit in very well with the relaxed pace of our troop. Although one has the same first name as one of our regular troop members, and the other two have the same name, we've come up with appropriate nicknames - Aaron with an A is A-Aaron, and Erin with a E is E-Erin. Isaac taking BSA Scuba is "Scuba Isaac" though the other Isaac is just Isaac.

We have a Con-Ec project to do, one that our troop started working on earlier this year on a weekend camping trip; we will complete trail maintenance on the Spencer Nature Trail, which bleeds into the Red Trail (also known as the Broad Creek Trail now). The effort will be mainly grass whipping, with maybe one or two water bars thrown in for good measure. It's too bad that the trail does not look well-used, and that many of the numbered station posts are out of the ground. Without knowing their original purpose, it is hard to site them properly. We decided not to tackle post hole digging with the current troop alignment.

Monday night was a camp-wide game called "Staff Hunt" where each Unit in camp sent out patrols to locate Spencer staff and return then gently to the dining pavilion area.

One of our Scouts was injured right before camp and we've been trying to convince him to get into the woods. It's a shame to waste an opportunity that only comes around once per year. Maybe tomorrow he will feel well enou to venture away from his home base.

The site inspection Tuesday was better than the day before; we earned a score of 100 percent on the cleanliness of our camp and other safety factors. This is just one of the requirements for a Troop award from the Scout camp. Some of the others are going to be tough to achieve. We'll see what happens.

The Early Bird swim is set for Tuesday and Thursday - one of our adults and two Scouts passed me this morning, heading to the pool as I was heading back from the shower house (before 6 AM :-).

Monday night was the quarter mile swim, for those trying to do the mile swim on Thursday, and for those Scouts taking Lifesaving merit badge. We have four in the latter category and three of them completed the daunting swim. One was so tired from late night chatter he seemed to run out of steam. Let's hope he can get another chance this week, as pool time is not easy to set up.

Tonight is Troop Night, where we can either host a campfire program or visit another site who invited us to their program. We will go to Hansen Lodge where Troop 117 is planning to serve Boy Scout popcorn and have games to play. I picked up some cookies and other snacks at the Dublin Market, including soft chocolate chip cookies as requested by Mr. Louie.

Summer camp, day one,try three.

2011-06-27T11:30:00.012-04:00

Camp Spencer, 2011.

Sunday arrival, followed by health re-checks, and swimming tests.

Typing this at the Scouting Academy, formerly known as the First Year Camper program at Camp Spencer, Broad Creek Memorial Scout Reservation. Leaving for camp Sunday morning was the usual confusion with getting last minute health data, checking phone numbers, and, reminiscent of sandlot baseball team picking, deciding who rides in which car. I should have had a bit more coffee for the ride, as I was beat when we reached Camp Spencer.

Check-in started at 1 pm, and we made it to camp a half hour ahead of that. With staff still shaking down the process, the typical pinball bouncing around occurred before the official time approached. I sidled up next to the registration desk at a few minutes before 1 pm, and was able to get our troop through staff host assignment quickly. The goal of starting medical checks at 1:30 seemed optimistic, given how slowly the site inspection and tent assignment process usually goes. But we made it to the dining hall and through swim checks with little hassle.

Using the newly won iPad and the now venerable Droid 2 as the mobile hot spot while in the woods has presented some new challenges and learning opportunities or, more simply, hassles. The biggest pain has been trying to figure out how to get digital images from either the iPad or a digital camera and then put the image tags in this blog. Blogspot itself has been a little flaky, though how much of that is beginners non-luck and how much actual bugginess I am unsure. Sites like flickr and picasa have each put roadblocks in front of the methods I have used for years to embed images. I resorted to sticking the memory card in the phone, rebooting in the process and other tricks like emailing myself picture linkPs.

OK, fire drill at camp. Gotta go!

Long ago, not very far away

2011-06-01T17:58:00.007-04:00

1973, the year of living fairly dangerously.

Page 1 of the script for "The 1973 Poly Follies" ("52nd Annual").

This copy has been squirreled away in my file cabinet for years, and I only thought about it recently when chatting with Carl Hyman, one of the co-writers, along with Tom Stevenson, and me. The story is getting fuzzier over the years, and is worth embellishing on. The first page seems to have faded more than the others, though one can read most of it in this scanned and enhanced, yet shrunken reproduction.

Per tradition, the Poly Follies opening musical number (after an orchestral warm up or overture) was "Another Opening, Another Show". This was taken from the musical "Kiss Me Late", which played on Broadway in the late 1940s through early the early 1950s. According to the Internet Broadway Database, that play was set in Baltimore's Ford's Theater in June 1948. Did we have permission to use the music and lyrics? Good question, teacher!

Page 2

The script was mimeographed, I assume, though as I recall we wrote it out longhand on yellow legal paper. The 3 of us would gather after school, often at Tom's house in Northwood as I recall, but presumably at the school and other locations.

Page 3

This script was used in the production of the play, as the stage or prop managers version. During rehearsal, various lines were cut or modified. Presumably someone was tracking these edits in every copy, possibly every actor, as well as everyone on the crew who needed a copy.

Page 4

The jokes and gags may seen juvenile, even sophomoric (though we were high school seniors at the time), and they should. The Follies was traditionally a satire, a spoof, a what-I-later-learned-was-a pantomime, or maybe burlesque. There were traditions passed down from class to class, year to year, about the format and content of the show. It was a musical variety, with dance numbers, and showcased whatever bizarre talent we could convince the school staff to let us get away with.

The notation for "Song: Bawlamer [Baltimore] My Home Town" (appropriately pronounced in Bawlmerese) here showcases a talent I thought I had: songwriting. I put together words, and music, on a blank notebook in G and F clefs (or something like that), and the real musicians put it into something the Poly Band (or Orchestra) could manage. Sadly, that manuscript was lost along the way. I remember where I left it, though.

Page 5

Some typos escaped the editorial process, like on this page, when Humph is spelled Mumph once, and "I'll" is rendered as "I8ll or 1811". For those "youngsters" who think Shift-8 gives you the asterisk, or worse, the multiplication sign, here's a shot of my Olivetti "Valentine" manual typewriter keyboard:

Back to the show.

Page 6

Most of this page includes stage directions, written in (by me, in my horrible penmanship capital letters) for the stage director. I recruited my brother Dave for that job, who was 2 years behind me in school (or was it 1?).

Remember: Put all the "Acting Talent" into this that you have and make all practices. Make this Follies one to remember.

Page 7

I'm not sure what happened here, as page 6 definitely ends Scene 1, with directions for "Blackout and Curtain" but Scene 2 just seems to come in with no introduction. I guess the hand-drawn line from the top paragraph means these lines are for the DM character.

Right below that is another handwritten note, indicating that "Mr. Johnson" and "Mr. Filip" are the actors playing Colonel Corn and Lotta Stench.

As I recall, the teachers had a tradition of doing a short skit during the intermission of the main play, though short walk-ons during the main production also occurred.

Page 8

And here we have Mr. Wiseman, another teacher, after the prior two leave. I don't recall us doing all the prop action we imagined when writing this ("Two bushels of corn fall from above"), but who knows?

There's a stage note that the "Tap" number is coming up in one page. The message would have been passed to those in dressing rooms or elsewhere to go to the appropriate stage wings, in costume and ready to go on.

Page 9

The "Tap Dance" was set to the tune "We're In The Money", an even older tune (from the film Gold Diggers of 1933). We were shameless borrowers.

Page 10

One typo that I like on this page was misplacing Glen Burnie north of Baltimore, while it is definitely south of town. I am sure all three of us writers knew that, though whether the mistake was a geographic foul-up, or a mental error thinking one thing and typing another who will ever know.

Catch the "down the zinc" catchphrase, a classic Baltimore mispronunciation. My family didn't pick up that one, but I have heard it and continue to hear it sometimes.

Page 11

Here we have the end of Scene 2, with the directions to prepare for the "Can Can" in 7 pages, and a warning to teachers that "This is your act". Was that Act 1, or Act 2? Was there an intermission?

Page 12

Page 13

A few lines cut here. Not much action. Yak yak yak.

Page 14

Love scene? Then segue to "Shadow Waltz". I must have totally blocked this section of the play from my consciousness. Nothing.

Page 15 (though the numbers appearing on the printed page started over at 1)

Now into Scene 4. The stage directions have a large number of people, blocked into groups by stage right, center stage, and stage left.

Page 16

The snew.

What's snew?

Not much, what snew with you?

Page 17

"Can Can" in one page. The Can Can dance is also a musical, per the Internet Broadway Database. Whether we "borrowed" our music and steps from that show, or from the original roots in France (or some early Western which borrowed it from somewhere else), I have no idea. It's the biggest chorus number we traditionally performed (I was in the line) and required good physical skills. We were not the Rockettes.

Page 18

Most of this dialog was axed. Probably a mercy killing.

Page 19

The end of "Act One" and we go out with the Can Can

Intermission. To the lobby for a Dixie Cup with a piece of ice and soda from a canister.

Page 20 (but unnumbered)

Most of this script page, that starts the second act, was dropped, though there is a musical number for Chaim, and a mention of Lee Kravitz (billed as "Student Director").

Page 21

A lot more axed. Act 2 is getting short of time.

Page 22

The directions call for the "Dollies" in four pages. We had a "walk down the stairs" as I recall, with large dancers making a big impression.

Page 23

This page starts with Act 2, Scene 2. It says for the dancers to make a quick change for "The Tiller". That was more athletic than the Can Can, but just as energy draining.

Page 24

Sing. All the words.

Page 25

Act 2, Scene 3

Not sure what "Kravitz, C2" has his name on this page of the script.

Page 26

Not as funny as the first act, I think. I remember how hard it was to write funny, with stage directions, character development, etc. as a teenager with no experience. We thought we could do it, and hopefully our teachers (like Mr. Jon Gross) quietly corrected our more outrageous excesses. Or kept the outrageous ones in and left out the drab ones.

Page 27

The last page of the script, and it is nearly as weathered as the first page. Stage directions for "The Object Of My Affections" and Scene Four is described as "The Big Production Number". In our dreams.

The last spoken line, another tradition apparently (memory fails me here) is "May Joy and Happiness Reign Supreme". Why not?

Page 28

But wait, there's more.

Autographs on the back of the script; the main reason I retained this artwork all these years.

Names:

Clara Bell Ringer - Louis Chambers (with the female graffiti)
Alan Chon
Dennis Meyers
Carl Hyman (with characters after his name?)
Don Levin (with the facial portrait)
Mike Lewis (?)
Jeff Brown ("73")
Bob "Balmer" Brown
Joe "Chauncey" Pocious
Tate Redding
A cat
Tom "Cecil B" Stevenson
David Braiterman
Michael Rist
Steven Lebowitz
Joe Dwyer
Frederick Wittel
Gregory Buchheister ("D2")
Walter Jones
Fred "Cookie" Hassani

The program book is another story, for another day, maybe. Usually, students did the art work for the cover, and each class (that got motivated, and could afford it) bought a page, or two, and contrived to demonstrate their wit. Oh, and the title of the play is "It's A Broad's Way."

Chesapeake Chapter Ordeal 2011 and The Finder of Lost Objects

2011-04-23T08:34:00.002-04:00

Last weekend in the wind and rain, Nentico Lodge 12, Order of the Arrow, Chesapeake Chapter, held our annual Ordeal for new members and returning Brothers. Again this year I assisted with registration, as well as general service around camp and some membership duties for the Lodge. Rain was predicted on Saturday, but the Friday check-in and sleeping "under the stars" remained dry.

REGISTRATION UPDATES

With more pre-registrations this year than I remember from prior years, we entered as many as we could find into the OA LodgeMaster (OALM) database before the Chesapeake Ordeal, intending to minimize candidates spent in line before the ceremonies. That worked out well, with only a very few people showing up with no records. As usual, though, not everyone who planned to attend showed up, with 8 possible Ordeal members unable to be inducted. They were identified as having no Clan after everyone in attendance had been assigned to an Elangomat.

I puzzled over how to deal with their records, since deleting them from the Chesapeake Ordeal event would lose their pre-pay status. So I decided to move their event record to the next one chronologically. I could not see how to do that from the OALM Event Manager screen; you can only delete from there.

On each individual record in the Membership Manager screen, I selected their Attendance history record, modifying it from the Chesapeake Ordeal to the Arrowhead/Thurgood Marshall Ordeal. Hopefully, if they can't make that one, someone else will push their record to the next Ordeal in the season. At the end of their eligibility, we'll need to figure out what to do, as we still have their registration fee.

LOST AND FOUND

At the end of the weekend, I waited at Camp Saffran for the Summer Camp open house scheduled for later Sunday. As each person left, gear, papers, and other materials lingered in the Nentico Pavilion and the administration building. Once everyone else was gone, I decided I needed to get a lost and found going. I carted the useful gear home and shot the photographs below.

Since that time, one new Ordeal member has picked up the bedroll, but I still have a rain coat, water bottle, and pair of gloves (plus a carved arrow on a string). If you can identify these, let me know and we'll return them to their rightful owners. If not, I guess they go into our Troop trailer with other found objects.

Why is my annual OA dues renewal letter so late?

2011-02-22T18:06:00.004-05:00

Since I took over the voluntary position of adviser to the Membership Committee of Nentico Lodge, I've learned a lot about mailing. Maybe I learned things that I would rather not have known, but I've had to in order to assist getting membership renewals delivered. Since one just arrived today for my son (mine was paid for via the Golden Ticket), I figured it was time to review the steps. Next year we'll do better, I hope.

My training began prior to the LLDC in December 2010, but that was more or less my formal start of the role. We talked about OA LodgeMaster quite a bit, and not so much about the dues process. At that point, I knew we needed to draft a letter, prepare a mailing list, and that was about it. I wasn't thinking about envelopes, postal meters, or much else yet to be revealed.

07-Dec-2010

Harry sent me various forms of the Lodge letterhead, as he has the originals and it didn't make sense for me to scan anything. I thought it would be good to avoid any printing where the masthead or any other boilerplate text is already.

08-Dec

Tony sent me the contact person for the mailing house. In subsequent days, I talked to the person about the process, what format they needed the letter and mailing list in, and other steps that needed to occur. I sent later emails and left voice messages, which stopped being returned. That was strange, but what did I know?

12-Dec

Tyler and I worked on the language of the letter, trying to include updates about recording emails, and fitting everything into place.

13-Dec

Tyler, Harry and others reviewed the draft letter, moving things around to make it work

16-Dec

I met with Eric and Casey to go over the money and resource side of this; Eric said he could set up onlines dues payments. I was a little leery of changing the letter, thinking it was going to go out in a few days, and we had not tested dues collection or reporting.

22-Dec

Tony gave me more instructions on producing the mailing list, and other tips on the process, such as where the envelopes were, or should be. Then it was Christmas, and I stopped working on this until after the New Year.

08-Jan-2011

Bob and Tony and I corresponded about where the dues letters were. I thought we just needed to do a few more things and they would be sent out shortly.

10-Jan

I started working with a new contact from the mailing house, after learning the previous contact was gone late in December. We went over what they had, what they needed, and what I needed to do.

11-Jan

I worked with Joe and Casey on topping off the postage meter, based on the number of letters and the non-profit rate we've always used.

12-Jan

The mailing house found 4 addresses with forwarding instructions in the US system; I found new addresses from ScoutNet. They said changing these would be a re-work charge, so I said never mind.

13-Jan

The mailing house sent images "for approval" of the letter, and the envelope. After reviewing it, I found some fields were not lining up as my document had them

14-Jan

I sent back the revised instructions and the mailing house updated the letter so that data fields were correct.

15-Jan

We sent a mass email to Lodge members, telling them dues renewals would be mailed out soon. Fewer than 100 bounced. The online dues renewal was not quite ready, but we've gotten about 20 as of the end of January.

17-Jan

The online dues renewal was ready. A few folks tried it out.

18-Jan

One set of envelopes was ready for pickup. I drove a set down to the mailing house.

20-Jan

The postal meter funds were ready, but the mailing house needed 1000 more envelopes, as they miscounted their stock.

21-Jan

Big surprise - the mailing house postal clerk said that the letter can't be sent under a non-profit stamp since the content included personal information. After much back and forth, we realized this was strictly true, though it had never been mentioned in the past. They had printed and stuffed the envelopes, but could not mail them. We went through our options, all of which would cost money. There was a lot of shock factor.

29-Jan

Joe suggested we take out the personal parts of the letter, as an option. I didn't like it much, as it would kick back the timetable, but the extra $900 was going to be hard to justify.

31-Jan

The mailing house gave a quote for a revised letter, which was much less than the first class postage would be, so we decided to do that. It meant finding new blank letterhead (over 2,000 sheets), and new envelopes.

01-Feb

We ordered more stationery from Harry.

03-Feb

The mailing house shredded the old letters and we approved the new format. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but my towel was out and waving.

07-Feb

The letterhead arrived at the mailing house.

10-Feb

The carrier envelopes (the outside window envelopes) were delivered to the mailing house.

14-Feb

The return envelopes arrived at the mailing house. This was the last piece of the giant puzzle for 2011.

17-Feb

The dues renewal letters are in the mail...

Defenders Trail, Day Two

2011-02-20T05:14:00.003-05:00

Since I walked the middle section of the Defenders Trail first, in January, I would have to complete the entire trail in 2 remaining steps, whether on one day or two. And since I'm hiking the trail by myself, I want to be extra cautious in not overextending my reach, to find my car is miles away as it gets dark, stormy, or tiring. After flipping a mental coin, I chose the northern part of the trail as my next segment.

Two historic monuments/areas I wanted to be sure to visit on this hike were Battle Acre, and the Aquila Randall monument. A bit of research on the old Defenders Trail guide book, searching the internet with the excellent Historic Marker Database (HMDB), and viewing maps both online and on paper led me to decide to park near Battle Acre, hike south past the Randall monument, then return to my starting point, looping as far north as time, weather and my condition allowed.

Near Battle Acre park are houses, some row homes, and some individual. To minimize interfering with neighborhood parking, I left my car on Kimberley Road very near North Point Road and walked over to the park.

The two photos of the marker, and the center of the park itself, on the HMDB, don't show the whole picture, as it were. The park is surrounded almost entirely by a fence, but it's split in parts, and the gate pillars are askew, as seen above. Because the park is bordered by busy roads, commercial establishments and high density housing, it felt more like a vacant lot than a park on a winters' day. The sad condition of the American flag on a pole at the center contributed to the rundown feeling.

I thought of North Point Boulevard, along with North Point Road, as resembling a dollar sign; the older "road" section being the "S" part, winding along the the original topography, and the newer "Boulevard" section as the 2 straight lines cutting through in a wide, smooth bypass of anything close to nature. I guess that's the price of progress, having fast roads where you barely know what you're driving over, but it means a few things to planning and executing a hike. Normally, I'd want to travel on the older road sections, because that's where the local historical events happened, and because slower traffic can be less risky to the pedestrian. But the newer four lane divided highway has wider shoulders and off-road sections to walk on, including paved surfaces wider than a car, while the older two lane road has few if any sidewalks, and the off-road section is typically not paved any wider than the white stripe down the side, plus the drainage ditches can be hazardous to walk near, requiring more concentration to each footstep than to the world around. With all that, I chose to walk on both old and new areas, varying my route to minimize back tracking. With more people, and more cars to drop off and pick up, you might be better off staying on the older roads, as long as you watch intently for traffic at the narrowest parts. Pedestrians seem scarce around here.

The Aquila Randal monument is less than a mile away from Battle Acre, on the other side of North Point Boulevard. The crossing of North Point Road is tricky, as the northern part merges onto the four lane in a tight curve with low visibility. I'd recommend getting to the east side of North Point Boulevard at the Cove Point Road intersection since it has traffic lights and cars actually stop for periods of time. The intersection with the eastern part of North Point Road is a "slow down and turn left" process, where you'd be racing across the median to get to safety.

Unlike the HMDB photos, which show the business to the south of the Aquilla Randall and North Point Battlefield monuments in the background, the above shot is from the road, with the nearby residence behind. And when I say nearby, it's more like the statue and plaque are lawn ornaments, as there is no separation between their yard and the historic area. You could obviously drive right past this and not notice the historic significance at all.

The remainder of the hike on February 12, 2011, was more contemporary than historic, as I traversed industrial areas near the Beltway, taking a side trip over I-695 to railroad sidings, warehouses and maintenance buildings. Probably the most pleasant surprise was near an enclosed "pond" that I thought was for stormwater management, but may actually be a tidal marsh of sorts, when I startled a great blue heron that was crouched in the vegetation not far from the highway (several feet). As it took off and spread its wings widely, I fumbled to get the cell phone camera on and pointed in the right direction. If you zoom in and look closely, you can see it is on the far side of the water by the time I snapped this.

Once I reached the area I had hiked on the first leg, I turned back north, generally following the wider North Point Boulevard, but side tracking onto North Point Road for variety. When I was parallel to my car, after about 2 hours of walking, I continued north and west toward the shopping center now called North Point Plaza. The older guide book mentioned a "North Point Shopping Center", but I'm not sure if is that one, or the smaller North Point Village Shopping Center near where the drive-in was. After seeing very few people outside of their cars for nearly 3 hours, the activity at the "Amish Market" and other Saturday commercial activity was a big contrast.

As I have visited portions of the Defenders Trail, I've taken many pictures, uploading those that might be interesting to Panoramio, and then to Google Earth. Before I started walking, I noticed Google Earth had few if any photos of the neighborhoods in this historic peninsula. With the second leg complete, there are now 56 shots tagged with DefendersTrail, along with others in the vicinity. The Google Maps truck has driven on North Point Road, and North Point Boulevard, but there is no substitute for putting your own feet on the history trail.

Defenders Trail, Day One

2011-01-16T08:45:00.004-05:00

I've switched from researching/reenacting the Baltimore Historic Trails (though that documentation needs work) to walking the Defenders Trail along the North Point peninsula. There's a great, but somewhat dated and fuzzy, guidebook authored by Buzz Chriest that I'm using to find my way. My hike on January 15, 2011 was more physical exercise than historical research, as I left the book in the car, on purpose, and simply walked along North Point Boulevard. I spotted two of the historic markers along my route.

I began at Saint Monica Drive, parking my car near the entrance to the community of row houses to the west. It's probably called Battle Grove, although redevelopers may have cuter names by now. I wanted to view the site of the defunct North Point drive-in movie theater, which contains only transient vestiges of motion picture audience participation. The location of the screen has concrete footers, presumably cubic yards of the stuff, and rusty sawed-off bolts where the framework was anchored.

A modern-day construction entrance, complete with gravel intended to prevent soil from leaving the site, stands as a warning that these bones of the 1950s/1960s drive-in movie popular culture icon will soon be taken away for burial or perhaps reuse as road fill.

Heading generally south on North Point Boulevard, I soon reached Wise Avenue, passing the intersection with old North Point Road along the way. The major landmark at Wise Avenue, for as long as I can remember, is Pop's Tavern.

Between Wise Avenue and the Beltway interchange are many industrial buildings, some off-shoots of the now-shrunken Bethlehem Steel mill at Sparrows Point, and other major and minor chemical, maintenance or construction facilities, with a smattering of restaurants and bars.

After walking under the railroad and Beltway bridges, I jogged (meaning shifted, not running) over Bethlehem Boulevard to North Point Road, and the route to Fort Howard. Before the highway build up, North Point Road probably hugged closer to the waters edge, but this has been erased by time.

The Edgemere neighborhood on both sides of North Point has streets named for characters of the War of 1812, including Wells, McComas, Armistead and Ross. See myedgemere.com for more information on the history of these names. The Aquilla Randall monument is northeast of where I started my hike, so I need to visit that on a subsequent stage.

In front of the Sparrows Point Middle/High School buildings is a historic marker of the Battle of North Point. Of course, it's documented in the "Database of Historic Markers" but here's another view:

It's another 3 miles or so to Fort Howard, the southern tip of the peninsula, but as the winter day was short, I turned around when I reached Lodge Forest Road. On the way, I spotted this excellent yard art work:

At first I thought this was a neighborhood snowball stand or something, but I'm not really certain. Whoever created it has flair and technique.

On the way back to my car I took shots of the historic marker on the west side of North Point Boulevard that I had spotted on my way south.

Besides being nearly embedded in the industrial area fence, it has a curious "overwrite" of the General's first name, on both sides, as if he had been misnamed on the first try and then renamed afterward.

Recent historic photo (1980s?) of the marker, showing the underling first name.

I have at least two more areas to walk - the remaining trail past Lodge Forest Road all the way into Fort Howard, and the surrounding areas near where I parked, including old North Point Road, and these locations:

Joshua Barney marker (at Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts)
Battle Acre
Aquilla Randall

Not a bad start with a chilly, brisk winter's day.

Court of Honor Chili

2010-12-21T22:40:00.003-05:00

I threw in what I had in the house - garlic, onions, some beans, tomato sauce, chili powder, meat, and what I got at the local grocery store - more beans, and pepperoni.

Yummy!

OA LodgeMaster Client Server testing

2010-12-14T05:54:00.006-05:00

The Order of the Arrow membership database system is called LodgeMaster, also known as "OALM" once you've said "Order of the Arrow Lodge Master" too many times. I tried out the client / server set up for practice. It works, but there are things to be aware of. Below are many screen shots; I'll talk about them in this beginning text.

Let's see, over 15 images of 50KB each or so, that's 750KB. Should not take too long to download...

Image (1) show what the server screen looks like, once you've switched on the feature. I am not showing the setup screen, but there is a key that is generated which each client will need to enter to connect.

Image (2) shows what a client looks like, after connecting. While the client machine will still have a database running, user screens will be connected to the database on the remote server.

Since clients will use one central database, rather than the distributed databases, I would make sure no client machines enter data except in the server/client connection during an event. Otherwise, no new or changed records on the client machine will be visible to anyone else until after all have synchronized later.

Images (3) and (4) show the error messages if a client machine does not have the server's IP address and current key (which changes on each open and close of the server).

So what about synchronization? Neither the server nor the clients can synchronize to the central database (in the cloud) while either are running remotely. See image (5). Because "all the eggs are in one basket", I would recommend trying take check points during the event, such as late night, early morning, or maybe mid-day. All clients need to disconnect, the remote server needs to be switched to normal mode, then synchronization started. That way, all is not lost should that machine crash, especially since the clients databases have no records of any entries during their remote access time.

Image (6) shows what happens when the server goes back to normal mode.

Most of the remainder of the images were recorded during test scenarios where I shut down either the internet connection, the server, or crashed the client process to see how the client/server behaves. Unfortunately, while one message claims "returning to logon screen" I was never able to re-connect a client process once the linkage dropped.

Stopping the client SQLServer process did nothing to restore a live connection; the MSACCESS process apparently manages the menu screens. That makes sense once you realize the client connects to the SQLServer database on the remote machine.

If the remote server is stopped and started again, a new key is generated, meaning each client will need to start up again with that key.

Some of the error messages are not connection-related, but due to bugs in OALM or Microsoft software. "Invalid object names" seem to be due to broken records inside the database. The "Microsoft Office Access has encountered an error" could be due to a bad call, or just general bugginess. Business as usual in the software world.

Despite these test results, I didn't lose any data or need to reboot either system. Given this will be used in a field situation, with lines of people sometimes waiting for check-in, it's important to practice under adverse conditions to anticipate and avoid problems. Motto of the Scouts, right?

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Winter Camping, LNT Style

2010-12-06T05:32:00.002-05:00

The troop camped at Broad Creek this weekend, where lows on Saturday morning were around 26 degrees F. To get the cheerfulness going, we had a small wood fire, in a commercially available fire pan. We didn't cook in the big pan; we had propane-fired camp stoves to boil water.

The breakfast was "eggs-in-a-bag", with whatever ingredients we had, tossed into a plastic bag, and then boiled until appropriately consistent. I had brought my wood-burning backpack stove, so I took a few charcoals from the troop fire and boiled my own cooking/cleaning water.

Yum! Hot breakfast, Leave No Trace way -- with no cleanup, plus a built-in hand warmer.

Too bad I forgot the chili powder. "Bam!"

Bengies 2010, Top 10, and More

2010-12-02T19:57:00.010-05:00

I listed "top 10" movies at the Bengies Drive-In Movie Theatre on Netflix while that site had decent user community access tools. Fortunately, I copied off the 8 years of content, and published it as:

http://jspath55.blogspot.com/2010/03/lists-of-movies-that-played-at-bengies.html

That list included an updated "Top 10" for 2009. In 2010, I visited the Bengies as much as possible, not just to see the shows, but also checking out the marquee nearly every week. Below are 28 photos of the marquee, from the operating weeks between April and November. I missed a few, but not many.

On FaceBook, the Bengies admins asked "What was your favorite DouBBle or TriPPPle feature this season?" I'll avoid the easy answer of the Dusk-To-Dawn shows on Memorial and Labor Day weekend (on the grounds that those were not strictly 2 or 3 movies).

I'm going with the September 24-26 weekend line up, known as "Face Fleas thank you Please, Owls Flipped on Inception" on the email list, which included:

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
FLIPPED
INCEPTION

I had seen Inception before, once all the way through, and once part way through (it was a Friday and I could not stay awake for the last feature). On the third viewing, Inception held up. The other 2 were great drive-in movies. I could have picked other sets just as easily, there were so many great mash-ups.

Top 10

And now for the top 10. As in earlier lists, I saw each of these at the Bengies, at least once, during the current year.

Inception
Get Low
Megamind
Shrek Forever After
Iron Man 2
How To Train Your Dragon
Despicable Me
Secretariat
RED
Robin Hood

Almost-rans: Toy Story 3, Salt, The Last Airbender, Cop-Out, The Spy Next Door, Shutter Island

Honorable Mention (from "FaceBook Night At The Bengies"):

E. T. The EXTRA TERRESTRIAL
NORTH BY NORTHWEST

List culled from the Bengies email service for 2010, not necessarily complete, or in chronological order, but mostly.

Key: "Y" = saw it; "!" = on Top 10 list for 2010; "?" = saw part of it (or can't remember it); " " pretty sure I missed it.

Y THE SPY NEXT DOOR

Y COP OUT

? IT'S COMPLICATED

Y KICK-ASS

Y HOT TUB TIME MACHINE

! HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON

Y THE BOUNTY HUNTER

! IRON MAN 2

! SHREK FOREVER AFTER

! ROBIN HOOD

Y SHUTTER ISLAND

Y THE KARATE KID

KILLERS

Y THE LAST AIRBENDER

? GROWN UPS

! INCEPTION

! DESPICABLE ME

The Twilight Saga: ECLIPSE

Y SALT

Y DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS

VAMPIRES SUCK

THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE

Y TOY STORY 3

? The SWITCH

Y THE EXPENDABLES

Y The OTHER GUYS

THE LAST EXORCISM

Y Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

Y TAKERS

Y GOING THE DISTANCE

? THE LOTTERY TICKET

Y FLIPPED

? The TOWN

Y E. T. The EXTRA TERRESTRIAL

Y NORTH BY NORTHWEST

! RED

Y GET LOW

GREASE SING-A-LONG

! SECRETARIAT

! MEGAMIND

Y DEVIL

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2

HEREAFTER

Y DUE DATE

Y THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Baltimore Historical Trails, Hike # 4 - The "Thinker Segment"

2010-11-26T18:23:00.015-05:00

Hikes: 1 2 3 4

The Thinker Segment

In the "historic" hike guides, the Thinker is mentioned, as is the Poe statue. The former was outside of the Baltimore Museum of Art until 1971, while the latter was across the street in Wyman Park until it was moved to the University of Baltimore campus. The hike route, by coincidence, travels past the new home of Poe, and the Thinker being inside only prevents it being seen as easily as before. It's also prohibited to reproduce photos taken inside the museum, so the image below links from WikiMedia.

My hike plan was easier to begin than the previous 3, because the Metro subway has just 2 stops between Mondawmin and State Center. The historic route went from the Key statue on Eutaw Street to the Baltimore Zoo. Retracing those steps seemed pretty simple, once I parked my car at the zoo lot. Recently, the Sunpapers had a story about street signs, mentioning the longest name is "Auchentoroly Terrace". And there it is (but Terrace is abbreviated...).

The first leg of the hike started either at the Key statue, or the Lillie Carroll Jackson Museum, 1320 Eutaw Place.

The (former) Jackson Museum site.

In the same vicinity...

Traveling east on Lanvale, per the hike guide.

Sometime in the early 1970s (or late 1960s), the house on Lanvale Street were rebuilt, and the street blocked from entrance on Eutaw Street.

I went past MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art; strangely, not mentioned in the historic guide), and then found the next monument listed - the Maryland Line statue. It's across from the old B&O railroad station, taken over by MICA in the 1960s.

The old hike guide asks what the Maryland Line referred to, and when the battle of Brandywine was fought. No hints here.

Then, past the Lyric Opera House, which is growing again, it seems, stopping by the Poe statue.

At this point, the hike guide book goes a bit vague, suggesting that the next important historic building is way up on 22nd Street and St. Paul, ignoring the University of Baltimore, the Pennsylvania Railroad Station, and the historic City northern boundary (AKA, North Avenue).

The back side of Penn Station (there are plenty of pictures of the front...)

I took photos of several churches around North Avenue and St. Paul Street, or Calvert Street. It seems there are at least one per block. I recall visiting Seventh Baptist Church, which still looks open, if not thriving.

Oh, and King and Kennedy Park. I strolled by, but there are no historic markers, at least on the main site. I didn't look closely at the eastern edge, which contains a fenced-off playground space.

After that stop (I'd been inside for a good friend's wedding, in a prior century), I took the parallel route of Calvert Street, shooting photos of a few boarded up houses along side those with decent looking domiciles.

After the Penn Station area, it was up to the Charles Village haunts of my undergraduate era. I'll skip the "when I was there" stories, and jump straight to the Baltimore Museum of Art, or the focal destination of the Thinker Segment.

I observed the Thinker statue, by Rodin, and a few other BMA gems, including trophies from the 1935 Kentucky Derby, the Belmont Stakes, and the Triple Crown itself. Why the Preakness Cup for that year was not on display is a mystery.

If you do this hike, and the Museum is closed, go to the north side of the building and walk around the outside sculpture gallery. It will be more interesting than continuing to walk on Wyman Park Drive. Then, keep going around the lane between the Museum and the Hopkins campus (another curious omission from the earlier hike guide). Take a look at this sculpture:

Unfortunately, vandals have removed the inscription from a Hopkins class (I believe it was 1970, since I saw it on the north end of what was then the lower quadrangle in the early 1970s). It's a shame that it was banished from a prominent location; but perhaps it was intended to be an elevation, taking it closer to "real" art in the Museum, and sculpture valley. Who knows?

The old hike guide asks questions about statues in the park. Here's a hint - one is for the Union, and the other one isn't. The Poe statue, if it were still there, would have predated the conflict. Or, his life did; maybe not the statue.

Instead of sticking to Wyman Park Drive, I wandered behind the old School of Public Health, which now seems to be crawling with Johns Hopkins outposts, though it did appear to still maintain some aspect of public-facing service.

Tin Men

OK, they weren't putting up aluminum siding, but it's pretty close.

Lastly, after passing the Scout building, and crossing the Jones Falls, as well the Expressway it's named after, I walked around the north side of Druid Lake.

I thought it was pretty cool that there was a working water fountain, right next to the largest water supply reservoir in the city limits (the reservoirs in the county are owned by the city, but they are in the county).

The Columbus monument:

When I was young, this memorial was placed in Herring Run Park, by Harford Road and Argonne Drive. I wondered where it had gone to, as I noticed decades ago that it wasn't where it had been originally. On close inspection, part of the dedication has been vandalized.

So there is one last lake:

Per an old map I have (published 1957), the lake is known, or was known, as Boat Lake. I wonder how long it's been since people rowed on it?

The links on the photo (before the map) will show this shot is on the north side. The latest Google maps show there are paths around both sides of the lake that will take you to the Zoo parking lot on the west side. However, it turns out there are fences that block the north paths. So I had to reroute.

Edge of the fence.

Patch with all 4 segments

Below are the links to photos on Panoramio, tagged with "BaltHistTrail4".

You can't go back, or can you?

2010-11-25T05:58:00.003-05:00

Despite what the Eagles sang ("you can't go back, you can never go back"), you can, sort of, go back. Whether you should go back is another question.

Carl talked me into a pre-Thanksgiving tradition, among classmates of the year I graduated Poly, meeting somewhere for drinks and food. I've been in occasional contact with Carl over the years, amplified lately by Facebook and some nostalgia, and some attitude adjustments. We were co-writers, along with Tom, of a high school musical, though we mainly wrote attempted jokes, and I did sneak one set of song lyrics in.

The classes at Poly were, and mostly still are, stratified among A Course, B Course and T Course, though I think the names have changed. Certainly the luster has tarnished from the "Poly Seal" - as noted in the Sunpapers last August (letter to the Editor; original article not found).

The Poly - City football game was held on Thanksgiving (that's today) for years, but has faded to an earlier time (see article). It's now only the private high schools Calvert and Loyola that rate the fan and media attention for such an occasion. Poly won this year, but who knew?

I've only been to one reunion, and that was 5 years after I left school. The idea of getting together and reminiscing about the good times is strange, as I like to think the best times are ahead, not behind. The "A Course" was the top of the school, as demonstrated by academic achievements. Since that time, these graduates should have gone on to change the world. What I heard last night was some tales about the old days, some semi-boasts about offspring and careers, but not much about shaking the earth. I heard about fears of going into the city, the unhappy looks of people around Lexington Market, and the general sense that the world was "better then" than now.

I'm not sure that I'll go back again. But I do thank Carl for extending the olive branch so I could see what's happened to the best of the best.

Danny demonstrates the school colors. He was even wearing the "Poly ring."

Troop 174 Checks Out National Gaming Day

2010-11-11T11:52:00.010-05:00

Post by Guest Authors - Boy Scouts Working on the Journalism Merit Badge.

Preliminary work on Journalism Merit Badge

Event:

National Gaming Day

November 13, 2010

Author (1) - Terrell

National Gaming Day was held on Saturday, November 13, 2010, for the youth and community to come together to play games at public libraries all over America. In Baltimore, children and youth volunteers who do community service played games at the Herring Run Branch of the Enoch Pratt Public Library, on Erdman Avenue in the Belair-Edison neighborhood.

The librarians put out fliers in the community and posted it online. Then, on Saturday, they put out board games for children and families to play, such as Candyland, Monopoly, Connect Four, Chess and Checkers. They also had computer games to play. They put up a screen in the children's section of the library, with a projector, so the kids could play Wii games, such as volleyball and bowling.

They also planned a matinee and popcorn. Some of the games used household materials. The children were stacking paper cups and plates as high as they could. You could hear a lot of laughter and see the cheerfulness.

Cheryl Dishon, children services specialist, said, "National Gaming Day through the American Libraries Association is an effort to connect communities with the educational, social and fun aspects of games and playing board games together." "We're trying to get our neighbors to come in and enjoy the library beyond just researching and looking for books to read."

Most people think of the library as a place for school or learning or information. This library is participating in National Gaming Day to bring more people in to the library to play games and get on the computer. At this library, you can play games in the library but you can't borrow them to take home. This library has movies that you can check out for seven days for $1.
Patricia McLaurin, a mother of two children, came to use the library to check out some books and movies, and saw that games were being played. She said her children had fun.

Also participating at the library was Jordan Bell, a seventh grader, who is doing community service by playing games with the kids.

Author (2) - Winston

The Belair-Edison neighborhood Herring Run branch library celebrates their annual National Gaming Day on November 13, 2010. Poonam Mukherjee, librarian team manager, likes National Gaming Day because it brings families together and encourages people to come again. The library provides games for patrons to play for free.

There were board games such as the most popular "Wits & Wagers" family game, video games like Nintendo Wii sports and PC games. It is called National Gaming Day because it is being held across the country, including Herring Run and Edmonson branches of the Pratt library, according to Poonam Mukherjee of Enoch Pratt.

Game players included youth from elementary to middle schoolers. Some sponsors for National Gaming Day are Demco, which sponsored the video games, and North Star games, which sponsored the board games. North Star gave out over 1500 game kits throughout the United States libraries.

Playing Wii at Herring Run library on National Gaming Day

Poonam Mukherjee (Library Team Manager ) and Cheryl Dishon (Children's Services Specialist) of the Herring Run Branch

Screen shot of the event invitation

Thanks to Ms. Jean, Ms. Pauline and Mr. Jim

Leave No Trace training October 2010

2010-10-24T19:09:00.004-04:00

This past weekend, I took a Leave No Trace "Trainer" course, offered by the Baltimore Area Council, Boy Scouts of America. In some ways, it was "just another weekend in the woods." In other ways, it was more an eye opener than many camping and/or training events.

I'll summarize only a few of the lessons imparted/shared this weekend, using the 7 principles of LNT, more or less, as headlines.

(1) Plan Ahead + Prepare

We as students had prep work to do. Some of us realized that earlier than others; I read the email in detail a few days ahead and had time to print up lesson papers, hunt down drawing utensils (crayons), and think through the teaching process. There were more students than I expected (like, twice as many), so I had them use the buddy system. I also printed on two-sided sheets, which I guess I didn't explain. The wrap up wasn't sensational, though I think with the hands-on activity the class was more engaged and interested than if I had lectured for 10-15 minutes.

Below is a shot of Tom Willis, the main instructor, handing over the group to Tony and Al for their segment. As you can tell by the projection screen, hanging materials, course paperwork, DVD, candy, and etc. etc. that you can't see (food, training books, props, flotsam, jetsam, stoves, fuel, more food, more papers) Tom and the other instructors planned a lot more than we did.

(2) Travel + Camp On Durable Surfaces

As mentioned above, the second part (camping) was my topic. We camped in 2 areas - front country and back country, though they were literally separated by mere footsteps. Below is a shot as we set tents up in the "pristine" area.

If you observe closely, this is typical Eastern seaboard camping zone, with somewhat mature second growth trees, and practically no undergrowth, young trees or loose material other than leaves. 60 years of Scout camping has thinned out the vegetation and trampled the soil. More later...

The phrase Tom used for the active compaction process was "sacrificial sites", those areas closest to the roads and parking lots to attract the majority of visitors. Large parts of Broad Creek are closed to camping, off-limits for fires, and only accessible after serious hiking. But the most public areas are the most impacted.

(3) Dispose of Waste Properly

We had several different views of waste, including minimization, best practices for disposal, and reviews of animal behavior impacts. This shot demonstrates a lower impact clean-up process than the traditional 3 tub method (wash, rinse, sanitize). It's more like a 1-and-a-half tub method, as only 1 tub gets dirty water in it. The one on the right is supposed to be hot (nearly boiling) water, and is used as a source for the rinse, done by pouring our of the small cup. Don Martin set this up for us (I think), and he had to instruct some of us more thoroughly than others not to dip dirty dishes in the rinse. We're so used to the "dip, dip, dip" process that this takes a little thinking.

Cutting down on the dirty water (also by not dipping plates with food particles still on them) reduces the generated waste and thus the impact of broadcasting that gray water over the ground when the cleaning is done. Or is it ever?

(4) Leave What You Find

This one is hard to illustrate, but there's a simulated artifact (cubical cardboard box) circulating through the class, picking up graffiti on the way. Chris, the segment instructor, took a "before" photo so we could appreciate how the relic was degraded by overuse. Very effective.

Also in this category was a discussion on non-native, or invasive species, led by Mike Huneke, a Forest Service professional and Baltimore Area Council Conservation Committee member. He's holding a tuft of "Japanese Stilt Grass" which I had seen but not recognized as invasive. A couple links related to this species:

We walked on the road for most of this hike, but did go through a campsite to assess its impact.

(5) Minimize campfire impacts

Fire damage - see below.

(6) Respect Wildlife

To the right of the picture below, with the bright reflective strips flashing back the camera strobe, is one type of bear bag (cylinder in this case). Again, hard to illustrate in a photo, plus I missed shooting a video of the rope throw attempts over the rafters.

Very sharp eyes will note the official Leave No Trace stainless steel water bottle. I have one just like it, but that one is not mine. I carried the old, Nalgene, deprecated plastic bad material, with all of the seven principles rubbed off. And my old school Sierra cup, plus my newish spork, with the broken-off caribiner.

(7) Be Considerate of Other Visitors

It might be tricky to spot in this small image, but through the right side of our pavilion you can just see the next pavilion. We're so close that we might have been able to hear our respective snoring, if ours wasn't overpowering loud. The neighboring group had a largish campfire, brought plenty of vehicles right up to their tent sites (road or no road), yet were otherwise well-behaved. We probably should have asked them what they thought about our group.

Campfire impacts: Images From Space

I brought a clipped image of the Susquehanna site to the LNT course, showing it to my fellow students when we talked about campfire impacts. Of the many fire rings at Broad Creek, that one probably shows up the clearest from satellite photos as it is in a large open grassy area, while others may be closer to trees that diminish their contrast. As you look at the images below, visualize the tendency of a large circle to motivate Scouts to build large fires, sitting farther away from each other, and creating more and more ash.

Service projects to reduce the size of the fire rings, cutting down on multiple rings in the same camp site (note the 3 or 4 visible in the Camp Spencer view), and shrink the amount of wood consumed are noble goals. Will Scouts respond? Perhaps more likely if they see these are discernible from miles away, in space!

Camp Saffran

Pioneer site

View Larger Map

Susquehanna site

View Larger Map

Flint Ridge site

View Larger Map

Camp Spencer

View Larger Map

But don't forget the food! We used several LNT methods for food preparation, including camp stoves, pan fires for minimal impact, and as few pots as possible. The menus were awesome, the portions satisfying, and we still squeezed in a Saturday night cracker barrel with actual crackers. Not sure about the barrels, unless the bear vaults qualify.

Best Trip Evah

2010-10-10T09:25:00.004-04:00

Tilman and his father sat next to the SAP Community Clue Train contingent, between Frankfurt and Berlin, on 09-Oct-2010. We six, or seven, or eight bloggers, mentors, and SAP code exchange stalwarts enjoyed ourselves with Mark Finnern's homemade Linzer Torte.

Craig Cmehil shared his "big boy" toys with young Tilman, letting him watch movies on the iPad and Touch to while away the hours on the train ride. I think the earphones also permitted us to share state secrets without the chance of Tilman overhearing.

I had asked my fellow riders for a quote about the trip; near the end our young friend pronounced this his "best trip ever!" I've used American vernacular for this post title, which I'm unsure how to translate into German (Deutsch) idiom. Perhaps a community member will fill me in?

Baden-Powell Visits Fort McHenry Camporee

2010-10-02T20:14:00.002-04:00

Saturday October 2nd turned out to be a stupendous day, a complete weather reversal from the tropical storm remnants nor'easter that came through the area Thursday. Thousands of Scouts, Scouters and the general public came to Fort McHenry, the National Monument in Baltimore, for the Star Spangled Camporee.

Some units got to camp inside the fort itself. Pictured here is a visit by Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the world Scouting movement, within the camping grounds.

I'm only sorry more Scouts could not have experienced this!

[update - clearer image than cell phone live blog]

A large bottle of water, please, very, very large.

2010-09-04T15:08:00.004-04:00

We drink "city water" at our house, the kind the comes from the tap, and is collected, prepared, stored and delivered by the City of Baltimore. Years ago as a junior high student, or maybe elementary school age, I toured the Montebello Filtration Plant in northeast Baltimore, one of 2 water supply operations run by the municipal government. There, supplies from one of 2 reservoirs, or in times of extreme drought, river water from the Susquehanna some 50 miles away, is treated. The growing population, and shrinking "woods" around the reservoirs, adds to the risk of contaminants, as does the aging infrastructure.

I'm happy with the water quality, drinking it from the faucet, cooking and cleaning with it on a daily basis. When I get the water bill, I just pay it. At times, literature comes with the bill, either news the government wants to pass on, or this quarter, news that must pass on. Before that, here's a tangential web page showing our water consumption, if not the cost:

http://www.editgrid.com/user/jspath55/SPATH-HOME-WATER-USE

It's about a year out of date as I write this, but since I have the recent bills in a folder, I'll get it updated shortly. I hope.

Anyway, the 1-page insert talked about the fact that the city was being required to make improvements by the federal government (the EPA, where I once worked), and the state was involved as well (MDE; I worked there too). I had to re-read it to understand the background. EPA wants the city to cover the "finished" water reservoirs, for health and safety reasons. Sounds reasonable, until one thinks about the domed stadiums that were trendy for a few decades, starting I think with the Houston Astrodome in the mid-1960s. On another tangent, Google is celebrating the 25th anniversary of "Bucky Balls", one of the inventions of Buckminster Fuller, the man behind the geodesic dome.

The finished water is just one of the storage phases between the uncovered reservoirs and the covered conduits that deliver the liquid over hundreds of miles to homes and businesses. I recall flocculation and settling tanks, under roof, from my tour decades ago, and have seen new structures spring up as the technology and population have changed. We drove around Lake Montebello many times, and Druid Lake on the west side of the city is a landmark near the zoo. Those are uncovered, but I'm not sure if they're the target of this latest regulation. Five locations are listed as needing new covers, with Ashburton, Guilford and Towson the others beside the 2 sites I mentioned.

Searching online, with the keywords "EPA maintains that the city failed to comply with LT2", I found 2 hits, one on a Baltimore City site, and one for Anne Arundel County (with the latter including a PDF file with a scanned image of the letter for some reason).

What caught my eye, probably, was the suggestion that nothing is wrong, but that one part of the government disagrees with another part, or parts. The EPA says the city missed a deadline. The city says that the state order to them was tardy. It sounds like the penalty for missing the deadline is that the public notice needed to be mailed out.

I particularly liked that the notice included a sentence starting with "Please share this information with all the other people who drink this water...". So I am!

Geocoding note. Of the 5 lakes or reservoirs listed, I found Panoramio photos nearly only 3 of them. Sounds like a hike plan to get shots of the other 2. Here they are, if you want to armchair travel to them:

Lake Montebello
Druid Hill Lake
Lake Ashburton - 39 19 14.63 N 76 40 12.02 W
Guilford Reservoir
Towson Reservoir - 39 23 35.67 N 76 35 27.40 W

For the missing two, copy and paste the latitude/longitude pair into maps.google.com.

Baltimore Historical Trails, Hike # 3 - The "Railroad Segment"

2010-08-28T21:13:00.008-04:00

(Previous hike segment posts [1] [2] )

Hmm. Part of the reason I decided to "reenact" the 4 Baltimore Historical Trails was to research the safety factor of the previous routes, not to mention discovering which of the previously suggested landmarks and stopping points are still extant. The third trail turned out to be the most risk (so far), and least similar to the views projected 2 decades ago. I would definitely not recommend anyone repeat what I did, exactly, and I'd probably also suggest talking to local police precinct officers before walking a few of the "Streets of Baltimore."

This post isn't to throw cold water into the face of downtown renaissance and heritage, merely to put the "be prepared" Scout dogma into urban existence.

My idea for the "Railroad Segment" of the Historical Trails was to include the Baltimore subway, also known as the Metro, into the hike access. As I live in Eastern Baltimore County, it made more sense to start at the terminus at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions at Broadway in the city, though parking is at a premium. Parking is free at some of the northwestern subway stops, so others may find these handy. The round trip fare is $3.20, plus I ended up paying $5.50 for parking, so unless you can find a downtown lot under $10, the subway is an option. Plus, for me, the comparison of the most modern technology with the historic stations, rolling stock and passengers of railways gives one something to consider.

[Subway video]

My mind must have wandered when the Lexington Market stop opened, as the next thing I knew I was at State Center, a mile from where I wanted to be. I thought about waiting for the next train in the other direction, but as it was a beautiful day and I knew I'd be at the Market within a few minutes, I hoofed it south on Eutaw Street. One route to Mount Clare Mansion in southwest Baltimore would have been to travel along Martin Luther King Boulevard. I opted to stay on smaller streets since King Boulevard as little foot traffic, not much greenery, and many vehicles whizzing by.

I crossed King Boulevard by the University Hospital complex, then went on a few back streets before emerging onto Washington Boulevard around the 1200 block. It was only a few more blocks to the edge of Carroll Park. I assumed that the mansion was at the top of the only hill in the vicinity, so headed that way. Typical Saturday afternoon in the park, though not as many neighborhood kids playing as I might have expected; probably in front of video screens.

Once at the top of the hill, I found I had missed the last tour of the day (it was already 3:30 PM, not a wonderful time to expect museums to be open). I learned quite a bit about the house, and the neighborhood, from the receptionist, including parking locations, good times to take the tour, and more. After viewing the parlor, it was back outside for a stroll down the hill, back along Washington Boulevard and an attempt to find the previous landmarks. I missed Babe Ruth's house (didn't see Emory Street), and the next stop was supposed to be Mount Clare station, via Poppleton Street.

I should have known, but you can't get into the train museum from the south any longer (the guide pamphlet I have is rather old). So it was back down the edge of a large warehouse, with gross scenery like the photo below, and back around the western edge of the old roundhouse.

And of course, the train museum closed at 4PM, so it was onward again.

The Edgar Allan Poe House, on Amity Street, by Lexington Avenue, isn't much to look at, and once again, tours were done for the day (or are by appointment). The neighborhood was a little grim looking, heading east on Lexington back towards downtown.

Further east on Lexington Street, several people were sitting on porches of row homes, relaxing in the shade of a muggy late Saturday afternoon. I said hello to several, and talked to one gentleman near King Boulevard, who thought at first I was taking pictures (I was tweeting; said I was texting). He opined that I was a teacher, based on how I spoke. Nice compliment, from an unlikely source.

I visited Poe's grave, not for the first time, having seen it in passing many times; probably the most memorable was when John Astin did a Poe reading in Westminster Hall.

From there, the trail led to Camden Station, which has changed demeanor several times since the original trail guides were published. I think we're lucky the building is standing, though it is sad to see it as a memorial to "sports legends" as if that's the epitome of historic legacies. Ah, America.

The directions said to continue on Camden Street to Old Otterbein Church, but at that time, the Convention Center wasn't built, so another detour, under breezeways. A wedding was going on, and by that time I was rather perspired, so I passed on. That's the official end of the hike, but I needed to get back to my car.

My return route was back through Harbor Place (refill water bottles), up Calvert Street to the Metro Station, down underground, and due east once the train arrived. A minor glitch with the ticket was easily solved by the MTA attendants. Aboveground, I came out an a different spot than I went in, which caused a minor head spin.

A Tweet recap, reverse chronological order:

Headed home - Metro station had no cell coverage :( #BaltHistTrail3 6:05 PM Aug 28th via PockeTwit
Harrbor Place, behind the William Donald Schaefer waving statue. Inside for water bottle refill, then headed home. Chalk up #BaltHistTrail3 5:16 PM Aug 28th via PockeTwit
Ugh. The big ugly hotel N of Oriole Park at Camden Yards totally obliterates former views in + out of the baseball stadium #BaltHistTrail3 4:54 PM Aug 28th via PockeTwit
Westminster Hall + Burying Ground, more popularly known as the tomb of Edgar Allan Poe. #BaltHistTrail3 4:39 PM Aug 28th via PockeTwit
Edgar Allan Poe Housen Amity & W Lexington st. Many evil stares. I'm foolish 4 walking these streets alone #BaltHistTrail3 (but exhilirated) 4:37 PM Aug 28th via PockeTwit
Pratt + Arlington. Poppleton was blocked. Amity had a blackened teaspoon - Mr. Yuk! #BaltHistTrail3 Near Mount Clare Station. 4:09 PM Aug 28th via PockeTwit
Missed the last tour (3PM) of Mount Clare Mansion. Onward. #BaltHistTrail3 3:44 PM Aug 28th via PockeTwit
Last tweet delay loop... now at Washington Blvd + Bayard. #BaltHistTrail3 (train whistles blowiing - Howard St. tunnel maybe?) 3:24 PM Aug 28th via PockeTwit
South Poppleton + Ramsay - in sight of the B+O Museum #BaltHistTrail3 3:22 PM Aug 28th via PockeTwit
Oops. Subway didn't stop at Lexington Market, or I blinked. Now at Fayette and Arch Streets. 2:57 PM Aug 28th via PockeTwit

On the Baltimore Metro at Johns Hopkins Hospital for #BaltHistTrail3 parking / trailhead . Ticket "punched" at 14:32. All aboard! 2:26 PM Aug 28th via PockeTwit
heading downtown for third segment of Baltimore Historical Trail - the Railroad Segmet - #BaltHistTrail3 1:40 PM Aug 28th via Twobile

Baltimore Historical Trails, Hike # 2 - The "Shot Tower Segment"

2010-08-16T20:45:00.009-04:00

Barely a week ago, I started on a reenactment of historic trails through Baltimore City, each of four a segment that would have qualified me for a patch segment from the Baltimore Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Though the patches are no longer actively promoted, the routes seemed worth exploring and sharing. In the 30 years or more since the original trails were established and documented, many changes have happened in the area. Besides several of the landmarks either no longer being in existence, or closed to the public, new buildings and even streets have appeared. I'm hopeful that my trail notes will help Scouts and members of the general public explore history and the future in Baltimore.

Segment #1, the Cannon Trail, took me from East Baltimore, through downtown, to Locust Point. While a physically longer trail, at 7+ miles, I didn't make a lot of stops, so completed it in just over 2 hours. Segment #2, the Shot Tower trail included so many stops to choose from, that I was not done for over 4 hours. Planning was similar to the previous segment, with many views of the legacy brochure maps and landmark descriptions, research into which sites are still open, and when. Parking in the downtown area is also a premium, with garages charging $10 or more for a few hours, parking meters only operating for 4 hours, including Saturdays and Sundays. Complicating the logistics was the route, like the first, is not quite a straight line, but certainly doesn't end anywhere near the start.

[Anything indented with a bullet below is a tweet, done either by me, or by someone else during my hike.]

Started #Scouts "old" Baltimore Historical Trail number 2 at Dolphin + Howard Streets (free parking)" Headed to Md Historical Society next. 11:02 AM Aug 14th

My parking choice was near the light rail, though rather than go to a suburban spot and travel both ways, I picked a spot close to the beginning of the trail - Dolphin Street at Howard. I had thought to park a little further south, next to the O'Connor State Office Building, but even though the entire complex is closed on Saturday, the meters are still in effect. Dolphin Street has no meters.

The additional walk to the Maryland Historical Society was just 3 or 4 blocks on Howard Street, including passing landmarks such as Maryland General Hospital, the Eubie Blake Jazz Center, and the A.T. Jones costume shop. Arriving at the "historic" entrance to the Historical Society on Monument Street, I found signs defining one of those doors as the school tour entrance, and pointing out a Park Avenue general public entrance. Yes, it's been a very long time since I was in this museum - 40 years? They still have the original manuscript of the Star Spangled Banner, though now it's on a timed cycle display, I suppose for protection from light. I particularly enjoyed a third floor display of local furniture and cabinetry, though the skills and craftsmanship displayed in those artifacts make my humble woodworking attempts seem quite primitive.

Marylamd Historical Society #BaltHistTrail 11:16 AM Aug 14th

After about 45 minutes in the museum (not enough to properly appreciate the entire collection, but to see many highlights) I headed east on Monument Street to the Mount Vernon parks around the Washington Monument, as described in the early brochures. As might be found in any urban park these days, there were neighbors, transients, shoppers and tourists strolling through, or occupying benches. I took photos of a few of the statues, as well as part of the monument itself. Over the past 50 years or so, I know I've been through those parks, but I doubt that I ever deliberately stopped on all four sides. The easternmost park has the largest slope, and includes some great fountains.

Done wth Md H S, east on Monument Street to, well, the Washington Monument, and parks around it. #BaltHistTrail Saturday, August 14, 2010 12:03:08 PM

That park segment also borders the Peabody Institute; the trail brochures don't require a stop but I recall having walked past and heard piano practice and other music. It just depends when you're there, I guess. Next to the southern park segment is the western entrance to the Walters Art Gallery, and as I recall from school days, was the original entrance. With a 1970s expansion, the formal glassed-in entrance is on Centre Street, where I exited after about 15-20 minutes wandering through the Egyptian and Greek/Roman collections, a tiny fraction of the entire museum. I kept moving as I knew the final stop had tours on the hour up until 3PM, and wasn't sure where else I might stop.

The Walters Art Gallery. Free! #BaltHistTrail Saturday, August 14, 2010 12:13:21 PM

@Baltimore21201 We love the Walters. RT @jspath55: The Walters Art Gallery. Free! #BaltHistTrail

Subsequent to the Walters, I went on a smaller street (Morton) to another small street (Hamilton) to take a shot of the older and newer Walters buildings. Then I headed down Cathedral Street to the Basilica and to the Enoch Pratt Central Library. The earlier brochures say to go south on Charles Street, but if you leave the Walters on Centre Street, Cathedral is a simpler route. I did not tour the Basilica -not sure if it was open, but the gate seemed closed. I went into the library for a few minutes, noting the almost total lack of the old card files, now replaced with computer stations, though there were a few places that might contain file drawers or microfilm spools. I was happy to see still-working water fountains in the main lobby, next to the large assortment of printed bus schedules. Some things are still old school.

At th Enoch Pratt Free Library, Central Branch. Have visted here since the 1950s, or early 1960s for sure. #BaltHistTrail. Saturday, August 14, 2010 12:39:17 PM

@rwang0 @jspath55 Go Baltimore! #BaltHistTrail

Beyond the library complex, my destination was the City Hall area, containing municipal offices, more statues, and the former Peale Museum. I was fortunate to have visited that building while it was still in operation several decades ago.

North Charles Street, heading east on Lexington Street. #BaltHistTrail Saturday, August 14, 2010 12:52:56 PM

Peale Musem (closed), Baltimore City Hall (closed), headed for the War Memorial Building (also closed). #BaltHistTrail Saturday, August 14, 2010 1:12:20 PM

City Hall was closed, on a Saturday, and there were a few people wandering around the park between there and the War Memorial Building. The latter was also closed, and had conspicuous signs directing that rest rooms were for employees only. The park across the street (Veterans Park), as well as the area around the War Memorial Building, state that the areas are closed from dusk to dawn.

As I took photos at various locations, I was thinking about which might be uploaded to Google Earth. As in the prior hike, I looked there to see where images are already available, and where there might be large gaps or angles not recorded yet. Uploading 30 or 40 photos, and geo-coding them, takes some time, but should help in future hike or trail planning.

Also, the overlap with the Baltimore Heritage Walk routes was most noticeable once I headed further east from the municipal buildings, past the Shot Tower and up to the area south of the Main Post Office. The recommended route was east on Fayette Street, then south on Exeter, though it's probably a more interesting walk to stay further west. I did not go as far as Central Avenue this time.

Oh, right, the Shot Tower:

I found Lloyd Street to be very quiet, though I could hear children playing in nearby streets. I took a few images of the synagogue and Museum buildings, then decided lunch on Corned Beef Row was in order.

Weiss Deli (Lombard Street - Corned Bee [sic] Row) lunch, corned beef on rye, what else? Saturday, August 14, 2010 1:41:20 PM

Past the few remaining delis, I entered a neighborhood of more newly built dwellings, including the awesomely named "Horseradish Lane". I know this must be a recent invention, and will need to check older maps I have for legacy street names.

Down Lombard Street a bit further I reached the "1840s" area, just north of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. Not all of these buildings are open, but according to my research, the Carroll Museum remains viable. The staff person at the Maryland Historical Society recommended going to the back entrance (away from Lombard Street) and ringing the bell.

As the only one on the tour, it was a little odd, with individual attention yet none of the camaraderie tour groups often engender.

On time for the 2PM tour of the Carroll Mansion, 800 East Lombard Street. #BaltHistTrail Saturday, August 14, 2010 1:59:18 PM

Completed my guided tour of Carroll Mansion. The only attendee - a fascinating glimpse of history, ending my 2nd Baltmore Historical Trail. Saturday, August 14, 2010 2:46:00 PM

At the Baltimore Civic Center, I mean the 1st Mariner Arena, waiting for the light rail line back to my car #BaltHistTrail. Saturday, August 14, 2010 3:06:12 PM

Within 20 minutes, I had hiked over to Howard Street, picked up a light rail ticket ($1.60) and was waiting for the next train north.

Twenty minutes after that, I was pointed under the Jones Falls at Centre Street, ready to go east on the Monument/Madison street parallel in and out of town.

heading home - Calvert + Centre Streets. Saturday, August 14, 2010 3:26:49 PM

For hike #3, the Railroad Segment, I'm going to have to work the Baltimore Subway into the planning. Maybe start at Hopkins Hospital, go west to the downtown area, then walk the route, ending up at the station near State Center. To the map room!

More Photos

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Baltimore Historical Trail reenactment, hike number one

2010-08-09T20:04:00.009-04:00

On Sunday, August 8, 2010, I retraced a previous Boy Scout trail through Baltimore City, from Patterson Park to Fort McHenry. Though the patches and medal one could earn for a few decades are no longer available, except through patch trading, the routes are visible on legacy guide books, and walking through Baltimore City is an old tradition. I walked from downtown Baltimore to my home near Gardenville in the 1960s once, after spending all my change on books or something.

Hikes and trails often overlap other trails, such as the red and blue trails following the same path for some distance. Likewise the Baltimore Historical Trails overlap the newer Baltimore Heritage Walk, with both overlapping other trails, tours and vistas.

My research started with the Nentico Lodge "Where To Go Camping" Guide, as I'm supposed to be the adult adviser for the Camping Promotions committee. I have kept the contents somewhat updated, though in a few cases, I simply copied over what was in previous guides. A question or two about the "Baltimore Historical Trails" led to me copies of a couple brochures from the 1970s or 1980s, including maps, descriptions, even sets of questions for the hiker.
Despite not being able to earn a patch, I decided I'd try out the hikes.

The first hike, as mentioned above, went from Patterson Park to Fort McHenry. How to be prepared? First, the route is fairly simple. As I've lived both near Patterson Park, and near Federal Hill I wasn't concerned about getting lost. Weather in summertime can be brutal, with either major heat/humidity/smog as well as the chance of torrential rain. I checked the weather, and found Sunday was to be superb, in the mid-80s. Then, file a hike plan, bring lots of water, and get geared up.

Gear for city walking is similar to backwoods hiking, with less concern for insect bites and more concern for sunburn and dehydration. One of the photos I took shows a non-working fountain in Patterson Park. Along the way there were plenty of places to re-hydrate though. I brought a basic digital camera; one caveat in walking through urban areas is to be discrete, not wave around an expensive-looking camera or other gear, and to not take photos of groups of people.

In planning my trip, I decided to leave my car at Fort McHenry, take city buses to the east side, and walk back. The routes were very basic: the number one leaves right from the Fort entrance, and the number 40 goes east/west on Baltimore and Fayette Streets. From living in Butchers Hill, I knew to get off at Linwood Avenue, then walk south to Patterson Park.

The Park was crowded on early Sunday, including soccer teams, tennis players, walkers, bikers, joggers, and many swimmers in the public pool. The Historic Trail guide said to start at the Pulaski monument, and then walk up to the Pagoda.

After walking around the Pagoda, I headed west on Pratt Street. The city was relatively quiet, with a few joggers and dog walkers who preferred the routine of the streets instead of the park. I had memories of which homes had been renovated more than 30 years ago when I lived in the neighborhood.

At the intersection of Pratt Street and Albemarle (not Albermarle as one of the brochures says) is the Flag House, as well as the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. As I was passing by, a tour of the Heritage Walk was going on.

This is what their "trail blazes" look like:

I paused to look north to the Shot Tower, and Old Town, as the former is part of one of the remaining hikes, not to mention an icon of the City of Baltimore (note the plaque above).

Once past the Jones Falls, the tourist density increased, so I plodded ahead, stopping in Harbor Place to refill my water bottles, then walked across the sky bridge to the second leg of my hike: down Light Street toward Fort Avenue.

Instead of taking Key Highway around the hill, I walked up to Montgomery Street then climbed the stairs onto Federal Hill. With a large crowd at the top enjoying the weather and the view, I took a ten minute rest stop overlooking the Inner Harbor.

A few photos of the statue of Major-General Sam Smith, including this one.

After winding through the area behind the American Visionary Arts Museum, I ascended to Fort Avenue via Jackson Street; any number of other routes go up from Key Highway. If you haven't been to the Baltimore Museum of Industry before, stay on Key Highway for that.

I stopped by two parks, including Latrobe Park, that include recreation fields, prior to my final stop at Fort McHenry.

Not a bad day hike!

If I had planned this for Scouts doing their 5 mile hike, I'd probably cut off most of Patterson Park, starting on the west side by Patterson Park Avenue, rather than the entire east side and walking through the park. According to the old trail guide, the entire hike is 7.5 miles (I haven't checked my route yet). I'd also probably stay on Eastern Avenue rather than Pratt Street, especially if it were a warm day.

Next hike?

See: http://nenticocamping.wetpaint.com/page/Baltimore+Historical+Trails

Hike # 2 starts at the Flag House, and then winds its way up to the Maryland Historical Society. To work in the Light Rail mass transit theme, I'll park up north, take the streetcar to Camden Yards, then walk east to Albemarle Street. After the trail is complete, I'd pick up the train at State Center or nearby on Howard Street.

More Photos

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Mortise and Tenon Media Shelves

2010-08-02T12:10:00.004-04:00

Mortise:

Tenon:

Shelves:

(I omitted a few key steps)

Sinoquipe Summer Camp with Troop 350

2010-07-23T10:36:00.001-04:00

It's already Friday, and summer camp has only one day left. The picture was taken Sunday when we were at our cleanest and neatest. It's rained a bit but hardly enough to slow us down.

The Scouts took lots of merit badges, including swimming, first aid, weather and a 2010 anniversary-one-time-only historic merit badge (Tracking, in our case).

The air-conditioned dining hall was a big plus, and the lake scenery was just awesome. Thursday I went with the first year campers on their five mile hike up to the top of the ridge west of camp. It was, figuratively and literally the high point of my week. My buddy Chuck went with me and we had a good time.

From an old polymath to the new generation

2010-07-11T12:49:00.005-04:00

Vinnie asked for a review of his book, "The New Polymath."

Though I've already posted this, that was before I obtained a hard copy.

Less Important

Now that I've been through it once, slowly, not quite looking for typos, but inevitably finding them, I'll discuss one of the chapters. But first, the proof reading. Back in March 2010, I reviewed a late draft of The New Polymath and offered a few corrective suggestions. It looks like many, though not all, made it into the first edition. The ones that didn't make it will remain between Vinnie and I. I'll offer up a couple of hits though, one that was partly fixed, and one that I missed (as did every other editor, apparently).

"a good a" should be "as good". [page 43]
"used in all kinds of games" was changed to "used many games" [page 139]

The first one almost no one will register, as tiny words out of place are typically processed by the brain in the way intended, and likewise with the second.

More Important

I took much more time reading the hard copy than when I read electronic proofs, because the spell and error checking was both under a deadline, and I didn't need to absorb the full meaning behind the paragraphs, merely check that each sentence made sense. Still, I filed away a number of mental threads that I might later use for a book review. In the meantime, numerous others have chalked up their thoughts (Vinnie has a bookmark page for the "mentions"). After digesting my impressions a few days, I decided to focus on one of the multitude of innovations, innovators, and concepts in the book. If I tried to cover more, I think I'd be spending weeks collecting and expressing my thoughts.

The "80/20" vs. the "20/80"

In the introduction to Chapter 9 ("Arsonists: And Other Disruptors") Vinnie presages the conversation with Bill Hambrecht by quoting his (Bill's not Vinnie's I guess) mantra "80 percent of the value for 20 percent of the price." And drops the same phrase in a couple pages later, just before "Learning from the Automobile Service Model", with a final sound bite in the last part of Chapter 9, talking about Verizon, AT&T and other telcos (telephone companies, in case you're not into the industry jargon).

Chapter 10 kicks off with the question "How do you deliver 80% of the value at 20% of the price?," repeating the prelude woven into the prior chapter. What's missing from that narrative, though, is a deeper dive into where the "80/20" comes from in the first place, in order to compare it to a different slant "20/80", and more critically, what it could mean to business executives. I think many will understand the components that are left out, just as they may understand sentences with lost or jumbled words, though I think it's necessary to riff on both ideas. After all, to me, Vinnie's book serves as a jumping off point for many more discussions (not to mention he's given me that facilitator role in the book's epilogue).

Who was Pareto, and why didn't he make it into The New Polymath?

Those who took statistics in school (and remember what they learned), or who have applied statistics in the business world, should have heard of the Pareto Principle (the Peter Principle is somewhat related, but not what we're talking about here). That's where the 20th Century Italian Vilfredo Pareto observed that 80% of the local property (land) was owned by 20% of the population. I'm not going to debate the propriety of wealth distribution, or similar issues such as pollution sources or energy consumption, merely add this to the background of the book. Vinnie's world is full of examples where fixing the 20% of the (number of) problems makes 80% of the (measured total) pain go away. And in my world, focusing on the 20% longest running transactions or batch jobs has a tremendous impact on total system health, though everyone knows that those 20% are not all going away, or they'll be succeeded by a new generation later.

Here is another example from my work, plotting the number of objects in a database against their size:

That's what a Pareto curve is. The implication is one should focus on the first 20%, or the biggest 20%, because that's more efficient use of your time spent in analyzing.

Vinnie, and Bill Hambrecht, look at the same ratio for a different purpose. Suppose we're plotting software price against features (or service instead of software, if you will). The larger, more expensive enterprise software packages, that do it all, cost the most. The smaller, off-the-shelf packages, have maybe 80% of the features, though may cost 1/5 the price. Is that a realistic hypothesis? Are companies willing to give up the promise of do-it-all software for a huge expenditure reduction? Vinnie seems to think so. And to be fair, I think that's where Vinnie can add value to the conversation, sharing the risks of what is being dropped, with the benefits of freeing all that cash flow.

As always when writing on my own time, these ideas are my own, and not my employers. I've used a couple examples from work, but that doesn't mean I'm talking about my work, or anyone else's work specifically.

Off with their heads

In order to toss out over-priced, too-large software, companies would need to be prepared for the massive uncertainty of either going-it-alone, or going with the "little engine that could." That kind of disruptive risk requires a lot of nerve. Simply looking at easily replaceable commodities or services (say, printers or copiers) can be tackled with a tangible risk level. Bypassing years-long enterprise architecture plans for the latest of 41 flavors is another matter. Suppose one had put in a plan to replace proprietary ABAP code with more widely-known Java code, only to find the underlying software platform wasn't going to support future versions of Java, probably because Oracle now owns Sun Microsystems, implying an uncertain future for Java code? Sort of explains why there are still markets for mainframes and COBOL programmers, right?

I'd hypothesize that identifying the 20% largest costs should be a no-brainer for any finance person with access to the right queries. Identifying the best candidates to replace those functions with a stable platform, 80% as reliable (just good enough delivery), and expected to survive past the next contract renewal, will be worthy of a John Grisham thriller one day.

Then there's the flip side, which Vinnie alludes to, whereby locking in with today's lowest cost vendor could then lead to higher and higher prices later, once the critical mass of platform specific customizations have been done. I don't really have an answer for that, other than people will remember your promises the next time you try to come back to the well and get the now-entrenched monkey off your back.

90/90

I'll stop here with a joke reference. Be sure to read the Discussion tab...

The Ninety-Ninety rule

Note to the "thin bamboo"

2010-07-01T05:24:00.002-04:00

I thought it was about time to roll onto a new blog, since the last one has now collected about a dozen useless comments of the form: "........ etc."

This one is from a person Babelfish translated as "The thin bamboo contains.":

The text also seems to say:

The human cannot look like the animal to live equally, but should pursue the knowledge and the moral excellence.

I'm being splattered by writers of Chinese fortune cookies.

Hi, I'm from ABCD!

2010-06-03T02:44:00.005-04:00

For a while, I was actively increasing my LinkedIn contacts, as if it were a board game, where racking up points was a viable strategy to gain specific territories to guarantee prizes or a decent finish. Given the risks of exposing contact information, including personal stuff prized by identity thieves or worse, it might be time to rethink my plan.

I have received a few, but not that many, invites from people I don't know at all. I've tried to be cautious in who I invited, figuring for instance, if I collected their business card at a conference, I had met them (discounting, naturally, the person who takes one persons' card and gives it to the next as a practical joke).

Here's one that stuck out, like, a mile:

The person's name didn't mean anything to me, but then, I forget things like this sometimes. Dale Carn, or what's his name, material I am not. But normally, people list their position as something intelligible. This one shows up as being an "abcd", and better yet, working at company "ABCD". The latter actually has dots, so it's "A.B.C.D, Inc"

Rather than archive or purge this invite, I looked farther. It turns out that the company appears to be a legitimate firm, also known as the "Action For Bridgeport Community Development, Inc." but it located in the state of Connecticut. The erstwhile contact is located, apparently, on a different continent. Feel free to look at this site:

http://www.abcd.org/

I'm not going to link to the firm on LinkedIn, nor the bogon, but it should be rather easy for one to search. I think you will see a not-so-subtle expansion of the actual company, a community-based non-profit, into a global shell corporation, attracting alleged employees with a wealth of self-imposed titles having little if anything to do with being an "anti-poverty agency". And I suspect they don't really have 500 employees.

In the meantime, my supposed contact has evolved:

You'll note a shift from ABCD to EMAC. The connection is a little fuzzier, but I don't see any companies of that name in the "Textiles Industry".

Unfortunately, I have graduated from third degree contact to second degree, one of my more prolific networking friends having accepted the belief that they know this person. I'll be informing my true friend of this for further action. A total of 10 people have been connected in just a couple days, meaning that the decay of LinkedIn usefulness grew that much more.

Is it time to shine a bright light into the dark corners of this practice?

Organizing for City Scouting with the Order of the Arrow

2010-05-15T06:11:00.004-04:00

Friday night (May 14, 2010), I met the Order of the Arrow National Chief, Brad Lichota (his last name sounds Native American but I haven't asked).

Hosted by Nentico Lodge, and the Baltimore Area Council, a group of adult and youth members of the Boy Scouts gathered at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore City to brainstorm ideas on forwarding the goals and mission of Scouting.

It was an impressive group, committed to advancing opportunities to those who are in need. Having a National Chief visit is a rarity, and Brad was a rare young man who quickly absorbed the nature of the challenges, and admitted that his preconceived notions about possible solutions needed to be altered based on what he learned.

Council Commisioner Charlie Morgan sketching out the objectives of the evening.

Me, doing a high five/ten for the camera (A. J. Eckstein and Dave Bobart in the background).

National OA Chief Brad Lichota on the left, Nentico Lodge Cheif Mike Staskowiak on the right summarizing findings with one of the breakout teams.

Continued discussion; yes, the tables are round.

The Scout reservation photo map tracker

2010-03-25T19:28:00.006-04:00

I've been shooting photos at Broad Creek Memorial Scout Reservation for about a year, uploading the shots to Google Earth via panoramio.com. I generally shrink the images to around 200K; the minimum size required is 100K, and I've found anything over a 500K JPEG might enlarge really well, but isn't necessary for the kind of photo mosaic carpeting I'm doing.

Noting the location of each shot is crucial. Those taken near cabins, roads, parking lots, and even fire pits can be spotted on the Panoramio maps pretty easily, if you remember generally where you were, but those taken on trails without satellite visible landmarks need more precise locations such as provided by a GPS.

Once you have an account on Panoramio, upload a few photos and mark their location, as well as giving a description. The description will allow your photo to be found on Google Earth, Google maps, and presumably, through other search venues.

Google Earth selects photos of landscape, although there may be people, animals, or other objects in them to a small degree. As an example, I had one shot of Scouts working on a trail that was originally rejected, but allowed in later on appeal. So don't take shots of your troop, with a cabin in the background, and expect it to make the cut. Instead, take a picture of the cabin, a trail, or some trees, with Scouts in the background for perspective.

Examples:

After a few days (or weeks, or less) photos in Panaramio are reviewed and marked as "selected for Google Earth", or rejected, depending. Some other time later, they will be visible in the Google Earth standalone application. Typing "Broad Creek Memorial Scout Reservation" into the search bar should take you to a list of choices. As of the other day, the top choice is:

Remains of bridge across Deep Run at Broad Creek MSR

That's a shot from a hike I took on the Red Trail in July 2009.

Now for some pretty cool stuff. Panoramio has instructions on embedding map graphics on your web page (like this blog). See: www.panoramio.com/help/embedding

I zoomed around until I was centered somewhere near Lake Straus, then followed their instructions to create 3 views. Each zooms in a little closer; the first is a map shot, the second a satellite shot, and the third a hybrid. Here's the code for the last one:

<iframe src="http://www.panoramio.com/plugin/?lt=39.688233&ln=-76.269021&z=1&user=1197306&k=2" width="450px" height="450px"></iframe>

Thanks to Ranger Rob for requesting this material, and for Scout Exec Ethan for encouraging me. The next installment will cover the Google map API, such as how to put pushpins on maps.

Like this:

= =

= =

http://maps.google.com/staticmap?center=39.697335,-76.271451&markers=39.69892,-76.26973,reda&markers=39.70265,-76.25979,redb&markers=39.69919,-76.24811,redc&markers=39.69678,-76.25256,redd&markers=39.69353,-76.25594,rede&markers=39.687200,-76.248440,redf&markers=39.679840,-76.247140,redg&markers=39.679000,-76.258558,redh&markers=39.685674,-76.267197,redi&markers=39.686375,-76.269268,redj&markers=39.683917,-76.285639,redk&markers=39.689667,-76.280000,redl&markers=39.693444,-76.273056,redm&markers=39.685001,-76.275126,yelloww&markers=39.689889,-76.270833,yellowx&markers=39.690972,-76.265778,yellowy&maptype=hybrid&zoom=13&size=640x480&key=ABQIAAAAdMlF6s87kov8Mrl05Rw-SBT9Z7mkTKr3fvU4XECs59NmY-DJGRT-FZjJmj4Y_FgKwVAkBts9FaO1KA

Construction of the Nentico Camping Award plaque for 2009

2010-03-20T18:12:00.004-04:00

This year, there wasn't going to be a Nentico Camping Award plaque as the costs have risen steadily; the lodge gave out banners to be attached to troop flags instead. As we liked the plaque, Scoutmaster Joe and I made a few of our own for the Chesapeake Chapter troops who earned the award in 2009.

Joe did the brass work with a nice lettering tool.

I took a few pieces of "scrap" wood and cut them into the approximate size of the professional plaque we've received a few times. The February 2010 epic snowstorm interrupted my plans slightly.

I set up my trusty (old) Black & Decker Workmate portable bench just outside, clamped down the wood and set the plunging router to put a nice edge on the award.

Inside, I put a few coats of water-based polyurethane on the wood to give it a nice shine and cut down on fingerprints. It's possible I should have added a layer over the final product.

After cutting out a cardboard stencil to guide the patch and plate, er, placement, I glued down the former and nailed the latter. Joe Greenbeck supplied the patches from the Lodge trading post supply. Maybe next year, if we build one of these for each Troop, we'll have the supplies donated.

OA Lodge Master - who's eligible for Brotherhood?

2010-03-16T17:08:00.003-04:00

Here's one way to use the Order of the Arrow "Lodge Master" web portal to find Brotherhood eligible candidates.

(1) Log on, go to the Member Report Builder

From OALM

(2) Open the Filter Wizard to select and sort the data.

From OALM

(3) Add fields to the default view, by clicking on the field selector.

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(4) Add an Ordeal date range. The reason you might do this instead of looking for current dues paid members is you might find some active members whose dues are lapsed. While I chose a 5 year range, Mr. Tony suggested the range be set to dates older than 10 months. If the chapter's next brotherhood event is scheduled for May 1, 2010, then set the ordeal date range to <= 07/01/2009.

From OALM

(5) Add a chapter to focus on.

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(6) Pick current level = Ordeal, to find those who need Brotherhood.

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(7) The most important step, after leaving the Filter Wizard: click Refresh.

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(8) Use the field selector to pick important fields such as contact info, dropping constants such as state.

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(9) I don't show the sort selection button, but here are the results by dues year. You could sort on Ordeal date instead for a similar view.

From OALM

Our work here is done.

OA Nentico Lodge Service Day

2010-03-13T15:54:00.000-05:00

Saturday before lunch we picked sod, gravel and snow chunks from around the Reservation HQ building. Here is one Arrowman and a helper loading wheelbarrows so the eventual lawn mowers can traverse the grounds.

After lunch we painted the Spencer dining hall ceiling, until we ran out of paint.

Lists of Movies That Played at The Bengies Drive-In

2010-03-06T16:06:00.005-05:00

I've been a drive-in movie fan for years, since moving to a neighborhood near the Bengies Drive-In Theatre, in operation over 50 years. I've posted a bunch of top-10 lists on my Netflix account, once I figured out how to use that feature. But it's cumbersome, so I'm replicating them here, plus adding my list for 2009.

Each of these is a movie that I saw when it played at the Bengies, a lot of them on the first run weekend.

2001

Movies

1	Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
2	Zoolander
3	O Brother, Where Art Thou?
4	Shrek
5	Tomb Raider
6	Spy Kids
7	The Mummy Returns
8	Rush Hour 2
9	Legally Blonde
10	Jurassic Park III

2002

Spider-Man
Austin Powers in Goldmember
Minority Report
Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams
About a Boy
Ice Age
The Sum of All Fears
Lilo and Stitch
The Bourne Identity
The Scorpion King

2003

Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Lara Croft: The Cradle of Life
Secondhand Lions
Pirates of the Caribbean: Black Pearl
Seabiscuit
Finding Nemo
Matchstick Men
Freaky Friday
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Johnny English

2004

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Mean Girls
Spider-Man 2
Shrek 2
The Day After Tomorrow
The Bourne Supremacy
Hellboy
Van Helsing

2005

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Star Wars: Episode III
Robots
Flightplan
Batman Begins
Sky High
Stealth
War of the Worlds
Fantastic Four

2006

The Devil Wears Prada
Akeelah and the Bee
Cars
The Da Vinci Code
Over the Hedge
Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker
X-Men 3: The Last Stand
Superman Returns
Mission: Impossible III
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

2007

The Simpsons Movie
Breach
Spider-Man 3
Shrek the Third
Ratatouille
Grindhouse: Planet Terror /Death Proof
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Live Free or Die Hard
Hairspray
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

2008

The Dark Knight
WALL-E
Hancock
Iron Man
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Henry Poole Is Here
Horton Hears a Who!
The Incredible Hulk
Indiana Jones/Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Kung Fu Panda

2009

To create each year's list, I reviewed the emails from The Bengies, trying to recall which I had seen there, and which I missed for one reason or other. The 2001 list above has the Netflix links, which may or may not work. The 2009 list has IMDB links, just because I haven't put together that year on Netflix. Other years I may fill in the links, or I may not, later.

The ratings from "1" to "10" were done at the end of the year, based on my feelings at the time. I have not gone back and adjusted any of these based on later rethinking or reevaluations.

There are many more movies that didn't make the top 10, plus there are other lists of movies I prefer not to see again. As The Bengies does double features and triple features, I've sat through many that I would not otherwise have seen. I saw UP four times in 2009, and saw The Dark Knight 5 times I think in 2008.

Scout Klondike race and snow cooking

2010-01-30T17:30:00.001-05:00

I set out to make a peach cobbler, albeit with canned peaches, bringing lots of brown sugar, cinammon, some kind of biscuit mix and the all purpose Scout Dutch Oven cook book. The last time I tried this recipe I think I used cans of cling peaches, which were very syrupy. This time I had one cling can and a couple cans of peach pie filling. The picture shows it on the campfire just before baking commenced. Once it starts being served I think I'll need a high speed camera, with 8 Scouts hungry at the end of a day of skill building and sled racing.

Full moon over Lookout cabin

2010-01-29T23:04:00.001-05:00

Finally, lights out. Quiet time.

10 degrees is the low tonight is my guess.

What net communities do I live in?

2010-01-21T18:01:00.008-05:00

Shel Israel asked me about strengths and weaknesses of communities I belong to. After rattling some brain cells around, here's my answer. But first, the questions:

ASUG vs. other communities (SAP Community Network, or SDN)
Are people in one or the other?
Why am I in more than 1?

ASUG vs.

I was an ASUG member before SDN existed, which might explain my feistiness when people say "are you going to SAPPHIRE" and I always reply "No, I'm going to the ASUG conference", co-located or co-opted by SAP Sapphire. I've put a lot of my personal and professional time into the Americas' SAP Users Group. I fully believe in our position as the "leading customer-run SAP resource in the world," " the largest independent, not-for-profit organization of SAP customers" and "the leading resource for SAP customer-driven education." We're regional, SDN is global. We're a non-profit organization (legally); SAP community network is run by SAP, a stockholder owned for-profit corporation. We're run by volunteers. SAP is run, by, well, a command and control German machine.

ASUG members are companies who run SAP, consultants who work in the SAP space, and SAP employees. Anyone who works for a member company can join ASUG, so while there is an annual fee, it should be a trivial cost per person. SDN is "free", although I could argue that it is subsidized by the software costs and maintenance fees paid by customers. ASUG volunteer leaders (folks like me who work at companies that use SAP software) choose content for the annual program; SAP content at TechEd and Sapphire is chosen by SAP marketing teams.

As for web site content, more serious differences appear, many to ASUG's disadvantage. SAP, being a huge global software firm, has an enormous infrastructure of hardware, application developers, and full time paid, world-class content managers. ASUG has a small footprint, both at the organization HQ, and in the volunteer cadre that attempts to keep the content timely and lively. We've seen a significant drop in web site traffic that can be traced to the growth of SCN.

I'm an SAP Mentor, an SCN Moderator, an SDN Top Contributor, and an ASUG Year-Round Community Facilitator. What does that mean? The first category are folks chosen (by SAP, but nominated by peers) to be a think tank. There are many pluses, but some minuses to this. It's a highly visible position, so the grumbling and ranting one might get away with in a small community doesn't fly well in the jet set. And there are times when SAP seems to want us more for marketing advantage than for focus-group or constructive criticism. I'm on the record objecting to their for-profit education and certification programs. Yes, good training is expensive, but a piece of paper (or electronic simulacra) is not a guarantee of quality. I'm not certified as anything, by the way. Mentors are supposed to be the top Nth percentile of the global SAP community.

SAP Mentor Initiative FAQs

Moderators are another breed, although there are some who act both as Mentors and as Moderators. I'm more active as a mentor, I guess, but try to keep busy moderating the forums, blogs and wikis on SDN. The die-hard moderators who deal with the hundreds of messages and posters, particularly the annoying minority who just don't get what a community network is, have my undying admiration. I don't believe the moderators get anywhere near the rewards that Mentors get (though I could be wrong); they're fighting the good fight because they believe in it, not for the recognition or glory.

Mentors get the "(!)"; moderators get the "[M]".

Top contributors are those recognized by SAP community network management as posting a lot of good material on the site. I've been in the top for the last couple years in the "Technical" category, as I write a lot about infrastructure, problem-solving, and software maintenance.

ASUG community facilitators were called group leaders before groups were renamed to be communities. They (groups or communities) consist of several special interest groups, which could be called communities in their own right, or maybe sub-communities. Like SCN, ASUG has sets of communities, organized into technical, process, and industry specific. We had process groups long before SAP came up with the business process expert label. And, we also have chapters, which SAP does not have, except maybe sales regions. ASUG has many geographic areas across the U.S. and Canada that run quarterly meetings, including networking, presentations, and vendor displays. SAP has recently begun having international "Inside SAP" meet-ups, often organized by SAP Mentors. My opinion is that we already have these in the U.S., and it's counterproductive to host competing sessions in the same area.

I could go on about how deep the knowledge is in our vertical communities, especially long-standing teams such as oil and gas, and utilities, but I'm going to hang my hat here, so to speak, with my video (shown at SAP TechEd 2009), the Many Hats of an SAP Mentor:

start video:

end video.

Are people in one or the other?

When we have software issues at work, we'll look on ASUG, SDN, OSS, or open a ticket with SAP support, probably in that order, although much depends on the nature of the issue. Software bugs, pop-up messages, etc., would drive someone to the online support system looking for an issue report. "How do I" questions might lead them to SDN, as long as the search doesn't take too long. But deeper strategic questions of "which module should we switch on" or "does this bolt-on cause side effects" are much more likely to be answered by savvy long-time SAP customers found via the ASUG site. We list their name and company, something SCN doesn't always force.

Whether all companies have the bandwidth to cast such wide nets I can't really answer, though I would guess not many are very active in both ASUG and SCN. I think once people latch onto a community that answers their needs, only high noise levels or traffic atrophying will drive them off. I know that I've brought several SCN contributors into ASUG conferences as speakers, including Richard Hirsch and Harald Reiter. Free admission to ASUG and Sapphire both for speaking? Sure!

Why am I in both?

It's definitely a result of the bridge-building by Marilyn Pratt that 6 of my fellow BITI volunteers are SAP Mentors. Without her forcing the question of "how can we all get along" we'd probably have continued our separate ways.

That's what started us down this path; why does it continue? First, I'm having a lot of fun with both groups. And they have their own rewards. Second, my management continues to see the value of having a global network to turn to for enterprise software management. We've had any number of volunteers drop by the wayside because they or their companies couldn't or wouldn't keep up the momentum.

Third, I'm stubborn. I'll hack and hammer at problems until they are vanquished. As Robert Plant and Sandy Denny sang in The Battle of Evermore:

Tired eyes on the sunrise,
Waitin' for the eastern glow.

Jingle Bell Beaver Day 2009

2010-01-05T05:05:00.003-05:00

We arrived at Broad Creek Memorial Scout Reservation early enough to enjoy a donut and coffee or 2 before moving on to our assigned service project. This year, Ranger Dave asked if we would work on the Red Trail. Since I'd been through there earlier in the year, I knew about where to go and what needed to be done.

We outfitted ourselves with loppers, shears, grass whips and pruning saws, as well as a bow saw or two. In hindsight we should have double checked the tool sharpness, and brought at least one axe.

The first leg in the morning was the area east of the "police" range in Camp Finney. The gate was locked, so we parked outside and walked around the fence.

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/30519764

The large tree to the left needs a better blue blaze.

We cleared the sticker bushes as best we could. Since this is where the trail turns away from the fence, the blazes and path need to show the turn. After working east for about 30-40 minutes, we reached a service road that did not need any maintenance, so turned back west.

On the other side of the range is a pine tree "plantation" - laid out in straight rows, all around the same age. Unfortunately, parts of it are dying, and the lower sections of the healthy part are very fragile.

From Scouts - general

Above you can see Troop 350 clearing the few weeds; below you can see the trail crew relocating one of the dead trunks from the trail tread.

From Scouts - general

One last obstacle removal before the Camp Finney Road is posted to Flickr as a composite photo:

After an awesome lunch at Camp Spencer, we picked up where we left off, parking a bit farther west on the Camp Finney Road to cut down on travel time to the trail.

The Red Trail follows the road south for a bit, then turns west into the wood. That trailhead is overgrown, so we worked on clearing it.

From Scouts - general

Later that day it looked a lot better:

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/30519914

The area I noted earlier in 2009 as needing more blazes is still undermarked.

See this (also in Google Earth):

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/25183738

Further on the trail we cleared a leaning pine tree.

From Scouts - general

...

From Scouts - general

It looks like our SPL grew a moustache while we worked.

This one needs axe or chain saw so we'll need to come back:

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/30520260

Near the end of our day we found another large trunk across the trail, as well as a vague direction for the tread due to the amount of leaves down.

From Scouts - general

I put the "after" picture in Panaramio, which has already been selected for Google Earth.

Now I just need to verify those GPS coordinates.

Does 39° 42' 11.76" N 76° 15' 36.15" W sound right?

Waypoint #20 on my ETrex was:

N 39 42.199 39.70332
W 76 15.552 76.25920

Mastering OALM

2009-12-29T19:13:00.004-05:00

Nentico Lodge is transitioning to a new membership database. In the process of centralizing the storage, we're distributing the data integrity responsibility. It's going to be an interesting next few months. Chesapeake Chapter will be first out of the gate as we have the earliest Ordeal in calendar year 2010. Here are a few comments from my perspective - non-authoritative, unofficial, and maybe helpful.

First, a process flow chart. I came up with this after working on the volume test in early December. It's broken into 2 main areas - Unit Elections, then Chapter Ordeals. The reason for this should be obvious, though the data hand-offs from unit to chapter, and from chapter to chapter, will need to be tested to see how it works.

The "In" circles are where someone will be entering data, either the Chapter Adviser or their designee. Likewise, the "Out" circles represent data reports, on-screen, on paper, or to various media formats. As an example, reports back to Scoutmasters on those elected can help find spelling mistakes or other inaccuracies. I've left out validation of BSA ID numbers for simplicity, but that needs to happen somehow.

The second page, the Ordeal process, looks more complex, but will probably be simpler in practice. The bigger adjustment at the Ordeal will likely be managing the transition from the "old way" to the "new way." I've seen challenges with pre-registration, especially when the forms don't make it to the Ordeal site on time. With a central database, this can be avoided with the up-to-the-minute synchronization process.

The trick to simplifying check-in will be to have as many of those elected on the records as possible. Given that April's Ordeal could include elections as far back as late April or early May 2009, it would not surprise me if someone showed up whose data was not online yet. We'll need a way to make sure they are recorded and the elections are checked.

Here is one screen shot of menus I saw during a test phase:

A few things to note about this:

Someone has to set up events if I can't access "Event Manager". For best results long term, we should agree on a format so they can be more easily found.
Membership Manager needs some practice, and also some rules around capitalization, abbreviations, etc.
Chapter Reports are useful. Once we're back online I'll highlight a few I found. I should have taken screen shots before, so there you go...
Unit Contact Manager sounds like an address book, but it seems to be more of a calendar showing who was contacted when. It's probably useful for tracking many elections, though it will take some time to become familiar with it.
There are exception reports, including a nice one that can do partial name matching to search for duplicates or typos.
I think Service Hours can also be used for meeting attendance. Again, once we're online I will try this at a Chapter meeting to wok out the kinks.

We talked about whether this tool can help the Extended Elangomat program. I believe it can, based on the reporting and organization logic. I hope so.

Lastly, this cryptic pop up:

The answer is not always one or the other. It depends what you want to do. So read, understand, then choose.

Eagle Court of Honor - Henry Sentz

2009-12-05T20:48:00.000-05:00

Tonight, after spending a day at Scout Camp, I was privileged to assist at the Eagle Court of Honor for one of Troop 350's Scouts. After years of work, Henry met all of the requirements, with weeks to spare before his 18th birthday.

In this photo, Eagle Scout Lou Maggio Jr is leading the Eagle Charge and pledge.

Rediscovering trails in Gunpowder State Park

2009-11-30T19:08:00.003-05:00

In the geocaching.com site, there are 2 caches described along parts of the Orange and White trails in Gunpowder State Park:

(1)

(2)

I'm rather partial to these, even if my troop isn't the one listed on the one remaining "Nature Trail" sign, we've done a bit of trail maintenance there. Plus, the image on one of these cache pages is of an Eagle project by our troop.

The Friday after Thanksgiving we gathered at the Marina to begin a few hours of trail service. Besides a lot of leaves and branches in the trail, the Park Rangers wanted us to fix up some faded or missing blazes, and rework a couple of muddy sections.

The first photo shows Sam, Tom, and Mr. Joe placing rocks to forge the wettest area, while Kyle widens the trail step on a slightly drier area.

In the second photo, Sam is blazing a new marker using our impromptu duct tape stencil.

Here's what one of the fords looked like when we were done.

Pumpkin carving at Elk Neck State Park

2009-10-24T16:24:00.000-04:00

Cub Pack 350 is camping out at Elk Neck State Park, along with some of Troop 350. There are lots of activities to keep them busy despite the rain, with nature hikes, beaver dam viewing and pumpkin carving.

There's a pie baking in the Dutch oven. I'm Hungry!

Butch in Phoenix

2009-10-15T23:49:00.000-04:00

Butch McNally joined other SAP Mentors Graham, Sue, Gretchen and I at the Matador Restaurant on the last evening of SAP TechEd 09. A great night, mates.

Waiting for camp dinner to boil

2009-10-09T21:45:00.000-04:00

Evening at camp, tents set up, and the usual hot dog snack being prepared. The Scouts are tired and hungry, but nowhere near as tired as they will be tomorrow at this time.

A full day awaits. Lighs out soon... Not soon enough.

First Class Camp

2009-09-26T19:53:00.005-04:00

Taurean Branch teaching the first knot - the square knot.

(Ken) "Charlie Brown" showing Firem'n Chit basics.

David Hodnett supervising proper flag retirement. @BmoreScout on the left margin.

Bob Gleason supervised a Scout on proper tool care.

First Class Scout Camp at Maryland School for the Blind location 26-Sep-2009.

The Long Tail of Cheerful Service

2009-09-20T08:10:00.005-04:00

The Long Tail

On Friday, I spoke at the Boy Scouts of America Baltimore Area Council (BAC) about Twitter, but mainly it was about social media and its use in service organizations. I tried to emphasize the "why" social media more than "how" to do it. I hope I succeeded.

The meeting occurred out of my digital conversations with Ethan Draddy, the BAC Scout Executive & CEO, as we sparred about how best to use Twitter in our roles as adult leaders. He's a full time paid executive, while I'm a part time volunteer, though my tweet count is a bit higher. As he introduced me, he explained to his team that we had met through Twitter, which I thought was perfect background for why I was there. I suggested to him that my role had been a coach, one who had slightly more experience, but not all of the answers.

When I prepared for my lunch-and-learn session with BAC staffers, I thought of a few key lessons I wanted to share, from what "6 degrees" could mean, to comparing network chats to email, to how one might leverage existing guidance such as the Computers merit badge handbook (and related online resources such as meritbadge.org). One key idea I researched beforehand was the "long tail" theory. I found one explanation of that concept here:

http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/01/the_vanishing_p.html

There's even a book out on the large aggregate markets for relatively unpopular items. It's called The Long Tail.

The book referred to is subtitled "Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More". I'll come back to the "business" and "selling" part later.

As I approached this idea, I asked the audience who had heard of "The Long Tail." No hands went up. Great, a coachable moment for all. When I stepped back to as who took statistics in high school, or in college, then who liked it, there were a few hands for the former, just one for the latter. As a mentor, I realized transferring a concept like this was key to my goal in being there, and that it was going to be tricky.

I drew a curve resembling this image:

On the left, I wrote "Blockbuster"; on the right I wrote "Netflix". When I asked for comments, I heard "bricks and mortar" vs. "internet distribution". That's pretty close to the basis of this theory. The difference between the "long tail" for business and the "long tail" for charitable organizations is subtle. I proposed that the Boy Scouts aren't selling anything. Perhaps they are, but that's not the point. Scouts are a Service Organization. The motto of the Order of the Arrow includes "Cheerful Service".

The chart above shows a larger area in reddish-brown than it does in yellow. For the "long tail" concept to work, you should imagine that the yellow area extends off the chart to the right, and that the total area in yellow is greater than the reddish-brown. In other words, Netflix, with smaller sales of each item than Blockbuster, is more profitable. In the quote above, I'd quibble with the term "unpopular" item, replacing it with "obscure" or "less popular". Clearly someone wants to rent those low frequency titles.

A few thoughts on Scouting and the internet

Researching the concept of low frequency service, I found references to an instance where an individual Girl Scout had set up a web site to sell cookies. This early in 2009; here is one link:

http://babyfruit.typepad.com/mediagirl/2009/03/are-girl-scouts-still-relevant.html

An online article about the story is:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/188714?from=rss

The former article contained a quote:

Turns out Girl Scouts, the organization, does not allow online sales and cites "safety reasons."

Sounds reasonable, though there are debatable points. One such point is doing fund-raising at the office (and where else do people have spare change?):

http://www.hrcapitalist.com/2009/01/girl-why-the-girl-scouts-still-think-hr-people-hate-them-nothing-to-do-with-smaller-cookies.html

This article makes a bold statement:

"NON-SOLICITATION POLICY"

Human resources folks, responding to pressures from above, state that no one should sell their stuff in the office, Scouters included. But promoting Scouting ideals is not the same, in my book, as doing fund-raising. I'm extremely fortunate that my management and company's philanthropic styles permit me time for camping and service projects. I doubt every company is so supportive.

By the way (did you know?)

As an aside, the Erielhonan were relatives of the Iroquois; their name means "long tail" (per itcbsa.org). And the Lenai Lennape word Quenischquney or "panther" translates as long-tailed. When I searched for "Scouting" and "long tail" two other definitions of the term appeared, one being story telling at length, the other being animals with long appendages.

The Lone Scout

In times of less mass transit and no interstates, the Lone Scout program was created to serve youth isolated from others. While it existed separate from the Boy Scouts for under a decade, the Lone Scout concept continues. Per Scouting magazine, there were about 400 Scouts active worldwide as of 2001.

http://www.scoutingmagazine.org/issues/0110/a-lone.html

The handbook is online, too [PDF - 7.2 MB]. It includes a brief discussion of distance communications, suggesting email, and says one Lone Scout "even has his own web site."

Moral?

On the diagram I drew during my chat, I replaced the dollar sign for Sales on the left axis with the word Service. I propose that instead of individual items for sale, that we're talking about individual good deeds, and that reaching out to Scouts, potential Scouts, the general public, and particularly those skeptical of the relevance of Scouting in the 21st century, is imperative. Jim Milham's closing remarks echoed this when he said Scouting needs to continue evolving or we will be left behind.

Question 1 - Red Trail

2009-09-12T14:39:00.000-04:00

After about 5 months since I started trying to complete the Red and Yellow trails at Broad Creek, I reached Question #1 on the Hiker Award list. It's not because I could not find it before, it just wasn't on any hike plans yet.

The rain kicked up a notch, making trail blazes even harder to see than
normal. But I found the marker for the first question and now have 11 left. The biggst distance is in the southeast part of the Reservation, and the most questions left are on the Oest side of the Yellow Trail.

How to behave like an adult

2009-09-05T18:45:00.006-04:00

In the tweet http://twitter.com/LatterDay_Scout/status/3758177998 "LatterDayScout" asked:

Anyone have a good document/policy for adult leader behavior online? I thought I had one, can't find it.. want to put up policy b4 website[.]

A few Scout guidelines came to my mind:

Scout Oath / Law
Patrol method
Buddy system / 2 deep leadership

A reply to the original request mentioned the Oath/Law; I say more specifics are needed here, as not every situation is obvious to all. I added "Patrol Method" as another guide point - if the group agrees that a particular behavior is acceptable, then as an adult leader, I'm going to accept it unless I see a health/safety concern. For buddy system, think about asking another adult to concur with your web publishing ideas.

Youth Protection

The most recent time I updated my Youth Protection certification, the instructor was a long-time Scouter who has dial-up, uses email fairly exclusively, and has little understanding of blogs, wikis, much less Facebook or Twitter. I doubt this topic would get a fair hearing.

"Common Sense" should prevail. However, as new technologies appear, with previously unimagined data sharing capabilities, we need to continue communicating the risks.

See:

Guide to Safe Scouting and http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/34416.pdf

There isn't much there about the web or the internet. All I see on the Sep-2009 release are references to 2 Cub Scout publications:

Power Pack Pals Tackle the Internet (No. 33981)/Power Pack Pals: Seguridad en la Internet (No. 3344646)

Computer merit badge

I'm a counselor for the Computer merit badge, though I've yet to have any candidates despite being registered for several years. One of the first requirements is to talk about online safety. That's where a Scouter can coach a youth how to act responsibly. How a Scouter should act is a different topic.

I believe a Scouter should be a:

Mentor
Role model

... with the former being an active role and the latter being a passive role. I try to be a Mentor to other adult leaders (just ask @EthanDraddy :-). This involves reaching out with new ideas, comments or constrictive criticisms of other Scouters' online behavior, and, well, writing blogs like this one.

Being a role model is having the confidence that your online persona (and believe me, your posts are very persistent - there is a 1992 email from me online: http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ckubwr.html ) represents the ideals of Scouting. I know that I vent sometimes about poor computer software, poor computer performance, and, yes, poor computer software support. I try to maintain a positive attitude, though, and try to find ways improve support, rather than just griping "Augh! I've been put on hold again!"

Networking

Adding friends on social media has been the trend for a few years. How should a Scouter behave here? First, there's a "degree of separation" between me (or you) and a youth or another Scouter. I have no problem asking Scouters to "join my network" - I belong to several.

Asking a youth is a different story. Here are my personal rules.

"Friending" is similar to photo-id'ing (tagging someone in an online photo).

I limit who I ask to:
- my troop members
- my OA chapter (or in some case, active lodge members)
- Ordeal clan
- trail crew (the youth who worked with me on ArrowCorps5, for instance)
- merit badge counseled (since I have met their parents / guardians)
- hikers (e.g., Nemat)

I prefer to have youth ask me, rather than me ask them.

Once they reach 18, I'm OK with posting camping trip photos.
e.g.:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2116298&l=fde335a9a1&id=738663738

Under 18, it's a good question whether or when photos should be posted.

If a Scout parent/guardian signs the latest health form where there is a "media release" question, I feel a little safer uploading photos.

Should a Scout participate in a public event (say, the Dundalk Fourth of July parade), then posting the troop photo seems not only permissible, but a fine way to publicize Scouting.

The main issue I look out for are situations where parents may not know where a Scout lives. This is the leader nightmare, of course, where a Scout's whereabouts are revealed unintentionally. But again, with a signed health form and other notifications - "I've updated the troop web site" I'm not losing any sleep.

Our troop site:

http://www.chesapeakedistrict.com/pub/UnitPages/Troop350/tabid/74/Default.aspx

Baltimore Area Scout Tweeters

2009-09-03T18:46:00.002-04:00

The Sep/Oct 2009 (Baltimore) Area Scouter lists twitter IDs for a few staffers. I'm following most of them, but they aren't saying much. Here's the list I collected:

id . . . . . . . tweets
sonyagreene . . .4
stevebortz . . . protected / requested
kathyherche . . .2
ghurt32 . . . . .0 [new]
Casey_Snyder . . 30
bsacarroll . . . 153
Jim_Barton1952 . 0
luihernandez . . 17
Brian_Debease . .protected / requested
hteller . . . . .0
RiverTerp08 . . .2
MrsCityScouter . 31
mcclellandkevin .23
ahutton0 . . . . 0

I was already following those not protected from view, except one.

The Council Chief Scout has had more to say:

id . . . . . . . tweets
EthanDraddy . . .906

But I have been doing this a while longer:

id . . . . . . . tweets
jspath55 . . . . 7312

A trip to the Hardware Store

2009-08-29T15:15:00.004-04:00

Once again, I found a project that required a trip to Hodges Hardware.

To fix a lamp for my Mom, I needed a socket, plug, lamp cord, and craft glue; the glue to replace the felt on the bottom that I will need to tear off to get the old cord off. The other parts should be self-explanatory.

The filing system at Hodges must be experienced first hand. It is nearly always faster to wait in line for the key cuts, glass and screen door repairs, and propane tank refills and just ask for a part. The staff knows right where everything is, and even more, knows where the part you really wanted and didn't know to ask for, how to describe, much less knew it existed.

I found the socket after prowling the aisles, couldn't find just the right plug, did find the glue, but totally missed the lamp cord. It's in the back room where paint, blinds and other household repair items are. The clerk said "pick out what you want, bring it up and I'll cut it."

Here's what I faced:

The brown cord was behind the white spaghetti on the middle right side of the image.

I'm now confident this lamp will light up again.

Scout Camp The Movie - A Review of Sorts

2009-08-23T09:47:00.006-04:00

I watched "Scout Camp - The Movie" on DVD over a couple nights last week. I would have shared it with my troop, but the Scoutmaster and SPL went on vacation, and I like to keep my Netflix queue churning. Can rent and/or buy later.

Though Netflix had said there was a delay, the movie shipped right away after it came to the top of my list. This is a review (of sorts), but a little background. I heard about the movie a few weeks ago, but then looked for it online.

@LatterDay_Scout Thanks for the "Scout Camp" movie tip and @ScoutCamper link too. Added to my #netflix queue: "long wait" :) 7:56 AM Aug 5th from web in reply to LatterDay_Scout

http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/3417853754

Home from meeting at Baltimore Area Council and meanwhile Netflix has delivered "Scout Camp" ( #scouts the movie). Maybe tomorrow night zzzz
9:29 PM Aug 19th from web

After I posting that, I got replies:

@jspath55 love to hear what you think of #scoutcampthemovie ? 12:59 AM Aug 20th from TweetDeck in reply to jspath55
http://twitter.com/threecoinpro

So, a few of my takes:

I enjoyed the movie, on the whole, and particularly liked the Spirit Stick emphasis, although I failed to see the point of the "free sticks" subplot.
The scenes with Scouts doing flag ceremonies, falling out, patrol yells, and general pranks were about as accurate as you can get, without resorting to plain silliness or typical Hollywood script-by-committee tinkering. Likewise with uniform wear.
Biggest downside from my view was lack of 2-deep leadership in many situations. We don't go on solo trips. Dangerous in several ways.
Do not miss the outtakes with the assistant directors [incorrectly] herding cattle. I was tipped off to this with the altered text of "no animals were harmed during the making of this film. However..."
Troops are rather on the Caucasian side. But, that's probably a truism, unfortunately. Working on it.

Now, how will we use this film? It's definitely superior, from a reality check standpoint, than the training clips distributed at round table and similar sessions. Will it recruit more boys into Scouting? Possibly, though my guess will be it will help Webelos and other Cubs get a better idea of what camp is like than the brochures and web sites tell them, much less the incomplete (almost said incoherent - and realized that is untrue) stories from our not-yet-First Class Scouts.

Links:

p.s. They're going to need to alter the lettering from this:

To this:

:-)

Trail work at Camp Saffran

2009-08-09T21:28:00.003-04:00

We were asked to upgrade water bars on the trail between Lookout cabin, Timberline adirondack and the Nentico Pavilion. A couple of the "before" shots depict the prior water bars, steps, or 2x8 dirt barriers installed with the runoff slope facing up the trail instead of down, weathered or kicked away, or only part way across the trail.

Before

During

The 'During' photos show a bit of the work done by Troop 350, starting with 6x6 treated lumber at the top, pieces rescued from a previous live elsewhere on the reservation.

Stakes were made on site, with points sharpened and the other end wrapped to prevent splitting during installation.

Lower water bars were made from various tree limbs found around camp, such as Scoutcraft, Pioneering and a couple of fire rings. The largest limb is about a foot in diameter.

After

Only 1 'after' picture is shown, although a couple of the 'during' pictures depict the troop testing the stability of the installed logs. We watched as Scouts moved up and down the trail to see if the distance between water bars was correct, and if there was any motion of the logs.

We finished 6 of the water bars, ending up removing one older step that was loose and just backflling the area. Several Scouts commented we should have one more at the lower point of the trail, but as we ran out of time during our Summer camp week we deferred that to another day.

Blue, Red Yellow trails

2009-07-29T06:21:00.002-04:00

On the second full day of Scout camp, I took a morning hike up the Blue trail from Camp Saffran toward Camp Finney and the new water front. I only had about 3 hours before lunch, not to mention it was quite sticky.

I sent time recording locations of trees across the trail, other than small or dead ones I could remove. After meeting the Red trail, I took that to where it meets the Yellow trail at Broad Creek. Along the way I knocked out a few more Broad Creek Hiker patch questions. The answer to #5 was hard to find, even with a GPS, though the number marker was easily visible.

I doubled back up to the Blue Trail for a short tangent, but didn't make it to the waterfront as time was passing. The bird feather in the trail was on BigFoot Road.

More camp fun the rest of the week!

Hacking a rechargeable camp lantern

2009-07-25T22:31:00.006-04:00

I had a basic 6 volt lantern that used standard dry volt batteries, but decided to try to update it to use rechargeable lead acid power supply after disassembling a lantern I bought a few years ago. The fancy one came with a solar panel, a 12 volt car adapter and a 120 volt wall transformer, and included an LED lamp as well as a fluorescent bulb, with a switch for either or both light sources.

The friendly folk at Baynesville Electronics set me up with a "super bright" LED bulb ($2.79) and a pack of 68 Ohm resistors (4 for $1.39). The LED part number is NTE30045 (NTE Inc. link). Oh, yeah, and a couple spade connectors for 35 cents each. Both were red, so I marked one with black magic marker. I also used red and black wire, so that should keep the polarities straight.

First problem was unexpected - while the old and new batteries were about the same size, the wet cell was a bit taller, so the lid didn't fit back on. I chipped off 2 of 4 fins that were in the bottom to keep the square dry cell from spinning.

Then it was time to dip into the parts box for soldering iron, wire, and, eventually, a switch. I was unable to reuse the existing switch as I had to break off part of the metal ring to keep the new battery from shorting, and could not get a wire to stick to the remaining section. It might be aluminum; I'm not sure.

The next to last shot shows the LED bulb lighting up the scene; the last shot was after all the switch rewiring. I believe it should be pretty easy to pull this battery out and swap it into the larger lantern with the solar panel feed.

The battery itself came from an Amazon reseller. SKU was UVUB645F1. Two of them showed up within a couple business days. My only complaint was the weak packaging - both batteries were in thin cardboard boxes, stuck in a padded mailing envelope. At least one of the terminal protection plastic terminals had slipped loose, and the cardboard boxes were torn a little from the mail handling.

We'll see how the light does at camp this week!

Dog days of summer

2009-07-21T17:05:00.004-04:00

Like a lot of projects, my Crumbs From The Spork blog posts have slowed down lately. It's not that I haven't been writing, it's that a lot of it is for work, with non-disclosure content. I did a bit of work getting WordPress installed on my NetBSD machine,thanks to a few links out there which I will recapitulate RSN (real soon now). I've been writing under SharePoint at work (about 70 blogs there in about 6 months), am nigh onto 150 blogs on the SAP SCN site, and generally tweeting short bursts of what has been called my inner monologue.

I also have been shooting Bengies Drive-In Theatre marquee changes nearly every weekend that it's been open this year. Here's one:

From Bengies

What else? Upgraded to NetBSD 5.0; trying to work through how to cutover to X11r7, the first dot release change to X Windows in a few years. Putting stuff onto Google Earth via Panaramio. Doing some geocoding of hikes and trails.

From Crumbs from the spork

Drive-In Daydream

2009-06-25T09:14:00.001-04:00

Here's a special thanks to Julian from the Hull Drive-In Theatre in Virginia. They said they are looking for someone to shoot a feature trailer for them. Wonder how you can convert digital to 35mm stock...