Coffee Klatch

That’s right! There’s another lander heading for Mars, this time to explore the heretofore unexplored northern polar regions. In May of 2008 it will be leaving Earth and you can be a part of it. “Visions of Mars” is a project that will accompany the Phoenix on its trip and exploration. A silica mini-DVD that will be accompanying the Phoenix will carry personal messages from “visionaries’ of our time to future visitors or settlers on Mars. People like Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke will be including messages. Also on the DVD will be a collection of art and literature related to the “Red Planet.”

Would you like to be a part of that? You can! For FREE! Just visit Fly Your Name to Mars on Phoenix and fill out the form on their webpage (the deadline is Feb. 1, 2007). Your name will then be added to the list of space enthusiasts that will accompany the Phoenix and be left for posterity. After you fill out the form, they even provide you with a nice certificate that you can save and print out.

[tags]space exploration, phoenix, mars[/tags]

Which is it? Pop or soda? Or do you say “coke?” There’s a website that is tracking this important question by inviting people to say what term THEY use. The site also asks you for where you grew up, so it can geographically track the usage of the various terms in its database. You can check out the map and see where the various terms are used. Quite interesting.

http://www.popvssoda.com/ is the site and you really need to go there and voice your opinion. You know how important this is! Click the link, scroll down a little, and fill in the blanks so you can be heard.

[tags]pop, soda, coke, linguistics[/tags]

I‘m working my way into getting involved with the SCA again. One of the things that’s a part of medieval reenactment for many people is heraldry. In the SCA, you can design your own heraldic device (read “coat of arms”) and you can even register it with the SCA, so nobody else can use YOUR emblem. They compare it with the various existing lists, also, so you don’t inadvertently use one that’s already a real-life coat of arms in Europe or someplace else.

The cool thing about heraldry is that it has its own language, describing the colors, stripes, symbols, animals, etc., and their positions. That allows anyone to re-create the device just from the wording, which is pretty cool. An example of the language is: “gules, an eagle displayed or” or maybe “per bend sinister sable and azure, a bend sinister argent between two crosses botonny argent,” which is the device that I’m considering submitting.

Here are a couple good links if you’d like more information:
A Heraldic Primer from the SCA

Pimbley’s Dictionary of Heraldry

You can even get Free Heraldry Clipart to use for creating your own device.

[tags]heraldry, sca, medieval, middle ages[/tags]

There’s a new search engine out. This one’s different in that it attempts to be a virtual librarian or reference service, except she’s not your stereotypical librarian!
It’s called Ms. Dewey and she’s a real person. Well, okay, she’s a virtual person in that you’re not interacting with a live person, but they did record a live person to create Ms. Dewey. When you type in your search, she has a smart remark to say before your results come up. They’ve done a great job of creating a huge bank of responses, so they often match up with whatever your search terms were.

It’s almost like asking a real person! Oh, and I have to say that they picked someone who is pretty hard to pin down ethnically. Turns out she from Indian and Dutch parents. She sort of has a look like the people from The Time Machine who represented many thousands of years of interbreeding. It’s the look that keeps people from saying, “She’s not my type,” since she sort of every type. Pan-ethnic, I guess.

Anyway, then you get your results in a list with summaries and links. Pretty normal results, overall. I was able to find relevant results when I used enough search terms at one time. But what will keep people coming back to this site is the cute girl with the awesome smile who teases and insults you based on your search terms. The results aren’t that easy to work with, since you can only view about 3 or 4 items with scrolling, and you have to wait 5-10 seconds while Ms. Dewey makes a (usually sarcastic) comment about you or your search topic. The only thing this search engine can offer that other, more established search engines can’t is the “virtual human” element.

I predict that it will get a lot of hits for its novelty factor, but it will wear off and people will still keep using their normal search engines. At least until the interface for Ms. Dewey is updated. Now if they promoted that the first few hits were somehow going to be by far the most relevant for you, then it wouldn’t be so bad. But you can’t customize or create advanced searches, and they don’t even have any tips on doing that. Then again, I suppose that defeats the purpose.

Envision a futuristic Star-Trek style computer. You ask it questions, it gives you answers. I think that’s how this Ms. Dewey was designed to act. No frills or complications. Just ask and I’ll tell you. And no more “advanced searches” and dealing with terminology. Just a natural-language interface. Eventually I can foresee a system that allows you to pick your own personal avatar and interact with them to find the information you need.

Summary: interesting and novel. The search engine of the future. Just not yet. But at least SOMEbody took the first step heading down this road.

[tags]search engines, dewey, human-computer interaction, technology[/tags]

For those who haven’t heard, the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is an international, non-profit educational organization which studies and recreates the Middle Ages. There are over 30,000 paying members worldwide, plus untold scads of non-paying participants. There are local groups all OVER the place! Check out the map. If you want to see a list of the kingdoms and what “mundane” lands they cover (or find a group near you), check out SCA Geography. You can find a history of the SCA, a list of activities, resources for newcomers, and tons more on the SCA website. Better still, visit http://www.scademo.com/ for a thorough, well-put-together “tutorial” about the SCA. Their demo describes the SCA as “full-contact Ren Fair with better garb and fewer pirates.”
Basically, if it went on in the Middle Ages (loosely defined as pre-1600 A.D.), there are people in the SCA who do it. Except for maybe the Bubonic Plague. But if you contacted your local group, you’d probably find people that were actively doing combat, cooking, costuming, heraldry, music, dance, brewing, calligraphy, illumination, archery, stained glass, metalwork, literature, and more. You can learn about these kinds of things by DOING them, not just by reading about them.

Events include tournaments, revels, feasts, wars, demos, and that kind of thing, ranging from small, local events to jumbo/LARGE ones. The Pennsic Wars, for instance, often have 8,000 fighters on the field at one time. The largest that I’ve ever fought in was about 100 people. Still way cool, though.

And here’s a picture that I found on Flickr:

Here’s a tip that I’ve learned the hard way. If you’re going to buy a socket set, make sure that many or most have a WIDE drive. Most socket sets have a 1/4-inch drive and a 3/8-inch drive. The drive is the part of the socket wrench that goes into the sockets. Some kits only have a 1/4-inch drive, while others have both sizes plus a 1/2-inch drive for the really big sockets.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work at the library assembling and disassembling metal shelving units. Most of the time I was using a socket wrench that somebody got for the library last year. The problem with this socket set is that all the sockets take the small 1/4-inch drive. But the wrench itself has a 3/8-inch drive. So the adapter that comes with it ALWAYS has to be used!

If that was all, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but when you have to add an adapter between the wrench and the socket, that moves the point of force farther out from the wrench that you’re holding. The consequence is that you constantly have the socket wrench slipping off the nut you’re trying to loosen. That makes for stripped nuts, bruised knuckles, and high frustration levels. You have to use one hand to hold the end of the wrench on the nut, while using the other hand to crank it. And if you have to HOLD something while you’re doing that (not that I’VE had to!), then you end up trying to turn the wrench with the same hand that’s holding it on the nut, ignoring the handle completely.

Yes, it’s a point of frustration, but a word to the wise: when buying a socket wrench set, make sure that most of the sockets DON’T require an adapter.

[tags]socket wrenches, tools[/tags]

If you’ve ever used online resources from a library, there’s a good chance that you’ve used WorldCat. Using WorldCat is like using the online catalog for your library, except that it includes materials from thousands of libraries around the world (mainly North America, but still!). It’s a great way to find what’s out there and which libraries have the things you want. It’s what most libraries use for the foundation of their InterLibrary Loan services.

Anyway, what’s really cool is that WorldCat.org is now online! Also called Open WorldCat, it’s a way for you to use WorldCat without having to find a library that’s a member. And even better is the fact that they have made it possible for you to add their search box to your website or blog. They even show you how to get results in Google and Yahoo! And there are also browser toolbars that they’ve created, so you can download a “WorldCat Edition” Yahoo!- or Google-related toolbar for Internet Explorer or a Search Extension (plugin) for Firefox!

One last cool feature is that they’ve made a way for you to create a link to the WorldCat page for a specific item. So you can use the link wherever you like and have it always go to that particular entry in WorldCat. VERY helpful!

You’ll see that I now have a WorldCat search box on my blog sidebar. Feel free to try it out.

[tags]worldcat, libraries, databases, books[/tags]

Here’s yet another cool web tool. And, yes, it’s from our friends at Google! It’s a Google map! It’s a wiki! It’s WIKIMAPIA!!

Just find a location, add a description, even put in a hyperlink if you want. This is really cool!

Say you want to add your local library to the map (just to pick something at random). It could also be your school, your church, your favorite restaurant, golf course, or shoeshine stand. Find it on the Google map, zoom in good, mouseover the Wikimapia word in the top right corner and pick “Add New Place.” Then drag and resize the box they provide until it’s over your location. Click ’save’ and fill in the blanks! How cool is that?

What a great way to use current technologies to help provide information to others! You can also turn on “upcoming places,” which will make newly added sites show up yellow. Then you can click on these (if you know them) and confirm whether or not the description is accurate, etc. Remember, a wiki is for everyone to edit and contribute to.

[tags]wikimapia, maps, google, wikis[/tags]

Okay, here’s another interesting thing I find this weekend: Man Builds Haunted House Out Of Balloons

Larry Moss is a sculptor who uses balloons as his medium. He’s done people and animals and things, but this week in a suburb of Rochester he’s got a Haunted House that’s 10 rooms and is 10,000 square feet. Visit http://www.balloonmanor.com/ to see pictures from this year and 2004. Moss called it “airigami” and for this event it’s now “SCARIGAMI!”

The picture here is the dragon mouth that is the entrance to the Haunted House.
[tags]haunted house, balloons, scarigami, airigami[/tags]