Rest areas all look kinda alike, don’t they? Even with beautiful mountains…

Posted on by

Location Taken: See below.
Time Taken: June 2010

I honestly am not certain exactly where this was taken. My memories state it was a rest area in New York state. The roads we took then would place it on Northbound I-81. The photos taken around it place it in southern upstate New York. And yet, when I go look at all the rest areas in southern New York on I-81, none of them match the geography in the picture. Either the list of rest areas I was working off of was incomplete, or my memories are off. And, given how strong my map sense is, I’d doubt the list first. But I haven’t found a more complete list.

I really do have a strong sense of where I am. I have never gotten lost. I have gotten turned around, pretty much only when I’ve just switched over to a shift of driving directly from a nap, such as the time I took the exit heading to Harrisburg, PA when trying to head west from Breezewood, PA – which, if context clues have failed you, means I was heading east. My brain just saw “Harrisburg”, said “that’s more to the west, isn’t it?” (since the route I take more often through Pennsylvania is way to the east in the state), and ignored the fact that Harrisburg’s really in central Pennsylvania, if anything more east of center. Even then, I figured out that I was going the wrong way within miles, by noticing that the sun was coming from the wrong direction. Yes, the sun. *geek cred attained*  I wouldn’t exactly call that lost, and that’s the closest I’ve ever come to being lost.

A lot of this ability to know where I am comes from a natural obsession with maps. Before I go anywhere unfamiliar, I love checking the maps of the area, figuring out the layout of the land and roads. I’m also really good at correlating what’s on the map with what’s in the world. It’s one of those natural things. Another natural thing is the ability to memorize the roads very quickly and accurately. I only need to head to a place once (by following directions) before I’ve got it memorized, with maybe an additional one or two times required if it’s highly complex or easily confused with other areas.

That’s what’s causing my confusion for this picture. Rest areas aren’t exactly distinct enough to tell apart just from the layout. They’re designed to be somewhat similar, since they all have about the same services provided, plus the need to be easily navigable to weary travelers. Mind you, there is some distinctiveness in building design. If I had a picture of the outside of the building, I’d be able to narrow it down more. But the layout of the road area? The only difference is whether it’s surrounded by grass or forest, and how much of a slope there is. The on-ramps almost always look the same, as does the parking lot. Some states have more varied layouts (the rest areas on the Ohio Turnpike have a different look than the ones on the east coast of the US), but it’s always designed with function and efficiency in mind. Which leads to things looking similar, alas.

I always get a little irritated when I can’t place a photo. You may have noticed that I include a link to the actual latitude and longitude of the place the photo was taken right below the photo. That’s more for me than for any readers. I delight in figuring out where something was taken, so I can figure out what I’m looking at. Already, several of my posts have had their content stem from that. I hadn’t a clue about the Manitou Islands being a volcanic pipe, or the history of Chimney Island, before I started researching what those islands were names.

I would have loved to do the same for the lake in this picture.

Instead, it shall stay nameless, at least until more research (or another visit to that rest area) reveals it to me.

  

Mine away with Me

Posted on by

If the above image looks familiar to you, congratulations, you’ve been exposed to Minecraft before! Also, congratulations for being able to stop playing it long enough to look at my post! (Ok, it’s not quite that addictive.)

For those who don’t know, Minecraft is the ultimate sandbox game, and for those who are still confused, sandbox games are those where you can do what you want, how you want. The rules are just there to give you a framework. Minecraft also is frequently compared to Lego in the way it works.

The art style is deliberately retro, with large pixels all over.  It fits the block motif, it provides a distinct appearance, and it saves on processing power.  But as low-resolution as it is, it can still be beautiful.

You start the game in a random location in a random world, with nothing. All you have is your hands, and the world around you. The world is made of blocks, and (almost) all of them can be destroyed, picked up, and placed as you want. Some require tools to collect, so the first task is to find a tree and punch it.

Yes, punch it.

Punch it until a piece of it falls out.

No, that doesn’t make the tree fall over. The rest of the tree is perfectly happy to just sit there, floating in mid-air.

Then you take that log, make it into planks, then make those planks into a workbench. Then you hack down more of the tree, make a wooden pickaxe, use said pickaxe to get stone, craft stone tools, use them to get iron, make iron tools, and delve deep into the ground to find diamond. To make diamond tools, of course.

All along, you build. You need a home, after all. It’s a place to store your stuff, after all. And you’ll need it come night.

Monsters come out at night, after all.

I’ve been playing this game since October 2010, while it was still in the Alpha phase. The creator, Notch, was still working on it all by himself, letting people buy it while still in development (technically, it was a preorder with the bonus of playing the game as it was still being developed). He never did any advertizing on his own, just let it spread by word of mouth. I was somewhere around the 500,000 person to buy the game. Now, over 5 million people have bought it. Notch has formed a company, and is a multimillionaire. Minecraft was officially released last November, just over a year after I bought it. Notch has handed off Minecraft to his employees while he works on other games, but those employees are doing a fantastic job continuing to update it. And they still don’t advertize much, beyond giving their players free reign to show what they’ve created to whomever they want.

Minecraft is what you make of it.

You can build a small house of your own, and tame the land around you, building farms and pastures.

You can play with friends, and conquer the world together.

You can spend your time crafting weapons and armor, find a stronghold, and journey to the mysterious End Lands to fight the near-invincible Ender Dragon there.

You can modify it, changing the way it looks and plays to just about anything you want.

You can spend all your time building fantastic creations, and not care about the monsters at all.

You can even build Middle Earth to scale if you wanted. One group of players is.

It’s your choice.  Completely and utterly.

  

Dinner with the Humboldt Penguins

Posted on by

Time painted: December 2011

Penguins!

This was a commission by my Dad, to create a painting for his sister for a Christmas present.

It would have been easier if I knew more about my aunt than “she’s a dental hygienist” and “she likes penguins”.

My Dad’s side of the family isn’t very close. I haven’t seen my uncle on that side for, what, a decade or more? It’s just not a high priority for them to get together, and they’re fine with that. And I don’t have any cousins on anything on that side either, it’s just me and my sister.

My Mom’s side, on the other hand, is rather close. Well, as close as a family full of social phobes can be. I’m not sure if it’s nurture or nature (most likely a combination), but social phobia seems to be hereditary on that side of the family. Along with high intelligence. The combination leads to really interesting family get-togethers, and very little drama.

We don’t have the drunk uncle, the feuding aunts, the cousin who got in serious trouble with the law (or should have) that far too many families seem to have. Instead, we just kinda get along. Social phobia tends to make one a bit more observant of others, a bit less likely to make a fuss without thinking about it first, and a lot more accepting of people just going off and doing their own thing. It makes Christmas (and other times) somewhat relaxing. We might not be doing things together 24 hours a day, since we all need along time. We might not have a massive food-filled party inviting half the neighbors, partly because very few people in the family like to cook (I’m an exception to that, and I’m pretty sure I’m already one of the best cooks in the family at age 26). Instead we just get along, in our own shy and geeky ways, playing pinochle or just sitting around all reading our own books.

As for the painting, it was a bit of a rush job. I made it in a week. And most of that was painting and repainting the gradient in the background until I was happy with it.

It’s done using Chinese Painting Colors. They act very similar to watercolors, including being water-soluble, but have a few differences. I actually tend to use them more as you would oil paints, building up layers of color until it’s right rather than laying down a thin glaze of the already-correct color as you do in watercolors.

The colors aren’t quite right in this piece. I use a lot of the indigo paint in my paintings, because of the lovely dark blue-with-a-tint-of-green it produces. However, when I scan it, it loses that tint of green, and heads straight for solid blue. This piece is far more monochromatic on the computer screen than it is on the page.

But it’s still full of penguins. Humboldt Penguins, to be specific. One of the penguin species that live nowhere near the south pole, and in fact most of their range is above the Tropic of Capricorn, so they’re downright tropical penguins!

The reason they live as far north as they do is the Humboldt current. It is a cold, slow moving current running up the western South American coast from Antarctica, and presumably the penguins followed it up the coast. It’s teeming with life, from otters to dolphins to penguins to lots and lots of the fish we eat. It’s not a very well-known area globally (South American in general has that problem), which may be part of why the best video I could find on the Humboldt Current is from a conservancy trying to stop overfishing. It’s a bit propagandistic (if, in my political views, propagandistic for the right reasons) so if that bugs you, you can just mute it and see the lovely video of the local animals. Or watch it in Spanish. I had been hoping for a nice nature documentary on this ecosystem or the like, but there’s little of that on Youtube. What there is all has a political bent, mainly focused on the very real problem of overfishing in the area. Here is another piece of that type, a rather well done one. But it doesn’t really talk about why the local area is so rich in sea life. I really couldn’t find much in general about it.

At least they have adorable penguins.

  

A Tale of Two Chimneys

Posted on by

Location taken: Thousand Islands
Time Taken: June 2010

Just like the post three days ago, this picture was taken at the Thousand Islands at the border between the US and Canada where the St. Lawrence River emerges from Lake Ontario.

This one actually features one of the islands.

This island is called Chimney Island, and is also known as Bridge Island. The chimney is quite visible in this picture, standing on the highest part of the island. A bit less visible is the house on the left of the island in this picture, one of the many summer homes that dot the islands. No sign of any bridges though.

Part of the reason for the dual names is because there’s another of the thousand islands who claims the name Chimney Island. That one also has a second name, Isle Royale, though that shares its name with several other, much more famous islands (such as Isle Royale in Lake Superior). There’s also a French variation to the name, Île Royale, which is also an island off the coast of French Guiana in South America. This made it a bit challenging to find more information about this island, but I did find that a fort was built on Isle Royale by the French, and a battle was fought there. The fort survived the battle, but didn’t survive the building of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Apparently, not even the island truly survived that. Only remnants survive.

But that’s the other Chimney Island.

As for this one, it seems that there was also a small fort on it, a poor miserable place on bare rock with smokey chimneys. It fell into disrepair over the years, vandalized by the very soldiers who lived there.

The island does have some interesting tales about it, though. According to this interesting webpage, there’s an older tale of mysterious murder lurking in the annals of history.

Apparently, back in the days of trappers and traders, a French-Canadian of unknown name and occupation built a house on this island, and brought home his beautiful bride, a woman of mixed white and native blood. One day, some farmers looked and saw the island coated in flames. They rushed to help, and found a canoe, half-burned and bearing the French-Canadian, his head cleaved in two by a tomahawk. His bride was nowhere to be found, their identities were lost to time, and the murder never solved.

  

The Blurring of the Cicadas

Posted on by

So close, so blurry, so buggyLocation Taken: Harrisburg, PA
Time Taken: July 2010

It was the end of our long trip across two countries. We were almost home, after a side trip up to upstate New York to pick up our dog from the friends who were dogsitting her. Then, just after a traffic jam on Interstate 81, our car started acting weird. One of the tires felt… spongy.

And then there was a small thump and our car was tilted. We had a flat tire.

We pulled off to the side of the road, and started working on switching it for the spare. A friendly police officer (probably checking on the traffic jam uproad) pulled over and helped. Given how fast he was at it, he probably helps a lot of people with flat tires. We also asked for advice on where to get it fixed.

Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, which in the US, means a lot of smaller stores are closed. Including all the mechanics in the area, apparently. So we drove on back roads, moving slowly because our spare was one with a maximum speed allowance of 40 mph (about 65 kph), until we finally ended up at an Auto Center in Harrisburg, PA, about 36 miles (58 km) from where we started.

It was very hot that day, somewhere near 100OF(38oC), and we had a dog with us. We couldn’t just leave her in the car while we got things sorted out, so while dad talked to the people at the auto center, I walked the dog around the area. There was a shady spot with a bit of grass and trees on the other side of the building, so I sat down with her for a bit.

And there, on the side of one of the trees, was the discarded husk of a cicada.

So I, of course, took a picture of it.

I really like the photo, so I was devastated to open it up on my computer later and see that the focus was just enough off to bug me. The screen on my camera was not detailed enough for me to see that the husk was fuzzy in the photo.

When you’re doing close-range photography, you’re dealing with short focal lengths, where only a plane of half an inch, or less of space is crystal clear while the surrounding areas are blurred. This is called Depth of Field.

This blurring is actually rather useful in photography. It isolates the subject, making it easier to make it the focal point of the picture, the spot where the eyes are drawn to naturally in an image.

However, this still requires the focus to be right on the subject, rather than, say, a quarter-inch off.

There are some fancy cameras that can adjust focus after the photo’s been taken (such as the Lytro), and the Photoshop people are working on some fancy new algorithms to remove some of the blurring from photos. However, I am still unemployed. I can’t afford experimental cameras, or even a version of Photoshop made in the last ten years (I’m still using Photoshop 7, the last one before they started calling it “Creative Suite”, and no, I’m not going to download an illegal copy).

So, for now, this almost-perfect photo will have to stay almost-perfect.