It’s been years since we last journied south to Mt. Angel for the Oktoberfest celebration. Yesterday, my parents, sister and the family all piled in to a van, took some back roads, and took in some Oktoberfest celebrations. We missed the wiener dog races, but the girls loved the petting zoo, pony ride and hay maze. The rest of us enjoyed the food and Spaten.
Author: Andy
Geographic Midpoint
I was trying to figure out the most geographicly convenient place to have an off-site staff meeting and got distracted trying to find the temporally adjusted geographic midpoint for my life. GeoMidPoint gives you a nice Google maps API interface to add locations and time spent to calculate. I’ve been moving west consistently since I was born, and it appears that the geographic midpoint, weighted by time, is in the Salmon River north of White Bird, Idaho.
Whidbey Island in July
The family packed up and headed north to spend the 4th of July weekend with the Dunlaps. It had taken nearly 3 months to figure out a time to meet over the summer, but we managed to pick the perfect weekend. We stayed on Whidbey Island atop a bluff looking south over Puget Sound. It was fantastic, and we had a blast doing some proper relaxing with friends. We ate well, drank well, relaxed well, and roasted marshmallows well. I hesitate to say we slept well, but I hear you can do that when you’re dead.
I think one of the highlights for me was the excellent tide-pooling we did on Sunday morning on what was looking like a cloudy and rainy day. The tide was out quite far and with Stephanie as a guide, we got to see a lot of cool stuff lurking in basins and under rocks. She showed the girls (and me) that if you poke a geoduck, it will squirt water at you. The girls loved it (as did I).
We made a trip over to Langley, which is a quaint and fancy town on the east side of the island. We picked up lunch from the grocery in town and ate it while sampling beers at Olde World Ales & Lagers, then picked up ice cream. Finally, we headed home and swam for a bit with the girls. Ella discovered the joy of goggles and spent half her time underwater. MG isn’t yet appropriately respectful of the water and did her best to thrash out of everyone’s arms.
Meals were great, and not just because the view was so stellar. The first night we had smoked bratwurst from one of Scott’s coworkers and grilled corn. The second night we had Thai beef salad. The third night we had pork loin. Desert should have been the view, but we also did s’mores, which we discovered can be altered by switching out milk chocolate for peanut butter cups. I recommend trying sometime. All of it.
Eventually, the trip ended with a ferry ride back to the mainland and an all to brief stop at Lake Rosiger to catch up with other college friends and a tired car trip back to Portland. Three cheers for summer.
A BrewCycle Built for Two-Teen
Michelle and I enjoyed a ride around Overlook Park on the BrewCycle at the NAOBF this afternoon.
A BrewCycle Built for Two-teen
Uploading a thesis is rather anti-climactic
Last night I uploaded my completed thesis to ProQuest’s ETD service. It marks the end (hopefully) of my graduate work aside from a few signatures here and there. It was a fairly straightforward process and when I finished, I was left with a somewhat confused and disappointed feeling. I guess I was hoping for a “you’ve won” style pop-up congratulating me. Or a party whistle.
I’d have loved to celebrate by cracking open one of the awesome celebratory beers that Scott and Stephanie sent me, but I was still in the throes of some stomach virus that I got from the girls and beer didn’t sound appealing in the slightest. Hopefully my body will sort that out and I can get on with it.
It’s the layers
Wednesday’s theme was layers. And the significance that comes from the interaction between them. And I suppose the effect that the combination of layers has on people.
First, I defended my master’s thesis. The topic was “The Effects of Multiple Thematic Layers on Web Map Use by Middle School Students.” Kind of boring, yeah, but I’ve grown fond of the topic, and I’d say given the response from my committee, they find now faults in my research. To sum it up in a sentence: “Combining multiple thematic layers on a web map will not negatively impact a middle school student’s ability to accurately answer questions with the map, nor negatively impact the response time in answering.”
Ditto with adding a hillshade layer for terrain portrayal. The defense is over and now I’m left to make some surprisingly minor edits to the document before giving it to the school.
But layers can manifest in many ways. The next way can be summed up in this title: “The effects of multiple layers of awesomeness on my victory sandwich.” Yeah. Sesame bagel, some sort of cream cheese, course mustard, swiss, lettuce, tomato and turkey pastrami. I ate it out in the sun, hardly believing that I’d come to the conclusion of my graduate work. Barley got none.
Lastly, I went to see Battles (the band) at the Doug Fir lounge with my neighbor Eric. I was really happy to take Eric (when Scott bailed (boohoo, i tore the tendons off my finger and don’t want to drive 4 hours on a weeknight. Really though, thanks for the beer)) because he’d allowed me to pilot my thesis fieldwork in his classroom and he loves music. Plus, he’s just a fun dude.
The last manifestation of layers was in the music. In a somewhat awkward to see live way, the musicians recreated the fruits of their studio work for us to enjoy. I freely admit that most people won’t like the music – I’m sure it seems like absurd noise to most. But the show was fantastic, and the music can be described as somewhat accurately by the interaction of multiple layers of sound and timings to quite an excellent end. Plus, John Stainer is awesome. They all were.
It’s been really interesting to watch the appearance and now in many ways generally accepted practice of using samplers with live music. It’s a great tool in building and composing complex layers of sound, but it can often prove to be challenge to the in-person experience if the musician is not sure how to engage the audience and the music comfortably. It’s like being with someone who is constantly checking his phone through your conversation. The upside is that instead of another conversation, you get sweet, sweet music.
Did I mention I successfully defended my thesis? Yeah? Ok.
Beacon Rock is a damn cool trail
Ella, Maddie and I took off after cartoons and breakfast and drove east on SR14 (Washington side of the Columbia) to Beacon Rock State Park. I’d seen some cool pictures of the trail, and frankly, they didn’t do the trail justice. We got to the trailhead a little after 9am and after adding several layers (it was cool and windy), we started upwards. Ella is rather fearless on the trail and I kept having to ask her to slow down, not because I cared, but because I could sense Michelle scowling.
The trail essentially winds up a cliff, zig-zagging up the most approachable route, and occasionally doubling back over itself on a bridge. The trail is surprisingly easy, but it’s still a pretty steep climb up. It was easy enough that most of the people we saw were not “hikers,” but they all seemed to get the same enjoyment from the excellent views of the river, east to the Bonneville Dam, and west towards Washougal and Portland.
We hit the top and had a picnic. It was only 10am, but I couldn’t argue with the girls who thought it was the perfect place for some sandwiches. It was – even for simple PB&J. We played on top for about 30 minutes before winding back down. Madeline finally insisted on walking, and made it about half-way down the mountain before I sensed Michelle’s apprehension about the exposure.
I’d recommend the hike without any hesitation. So would Ella.
Ella likes to hike
Ella hiked up to Angel’s Rest in the Gorge all by herself, then all the way back down. When Michelle asked if she wanted to take a rest, Ella exclaimed “This feels great on my legs” as she rubbed her quads. A week later we took a hike in Forest Park, and while she enjoyed herself, she was disappointed that there was no grand view at the end of the trail. We’ll try to pick another hike with a vista next time.
Roof
Several weeks back now, a rather sudden burst of wind and rain hit our house with such force that it peeled the back side (west side) of the roof off. I was changing Madeline on the landing upstairs when I saw the trees down the street start bending and shaking, then the wind hit our house like a compact car. Immediately, bits of shingle and flashing started blowing by the window, and then I heard a sickening sound of something big sliding down the roof.
Michelle and Ella were in the basement when a 5′ by 10′ segment of shingles just slid off the roof on to the ground. We went outside to look and realized the wind had basically picked up the corner of the roof and just peeled the newest layer of shingles back for about half of the backside of the roof. Some of 50’s era shingles had been blown off to, leaving bits of the original cedar shake, and in some places, ship lath, exposed. Michelle and I looked at each other in horror as the rain continued to fall until we realized that we’d actually have to do something so the inside of our house didn’t get soaked.
So, we called my parents to see if they could watch the girls, Michelle ran down to harbor freight to get a big-ass tarp, and I read about how to tarp a roof on the internet. I know – pretty obvious stuff right?
My dad brought over the truck and ladders, I got out my climbing rope and harness, and we set about removing as much extra loose roof as possible before unfurling the massive tarp and nailing it to the roof. We rolled one end of the tarp in 2x2s for a nailing surface, then used other strips to hold the tarp’s edge to the side of the house and roof so it wouldn’t just blow away. We got the roof water-tight, called the insurance company, then barely slept that night listening as gusts of wind rippled over the giant sheet of blue plastic.
We got a few bids on the roof, and by the start of the following week, a dumpster and materials were dropped off. Then the roof came off on one side and was replaced by a new roof. The front side was more complex and took two days. I felt so bad for the roofers as it started to rain at the end of the second day. By the time they finished on the 3rd day, it was pouring. By mid-day on the 4th day, the whole thing was done – and it looked fantastic.
Then yesterday, minutes after paying the roofers, we heard a storm alert on the radio, specifically cautioning about high-winds that can do property damage. Luckily, none was done.
To sum things up
This is excerpted from the concluding remarks in my thesis:
Lastly, I postulate that if this research was repeated using a tool like Google Earth instead of a non-interactive web map that was specifically designed for children, the results would be different. The map and layers used in this test were designed to complement each other when combined. In a tool like Google Earth, the individual data layers come from a variety of sources and are not prepared with combinations in mind. I predict that maps in Google Earth would become more challenging to use, and response times would increase as layers were added. I suspect that this would be the case for adult map-users as well. Since there is currently no cartographer or designer curating the combination of layers, the haphazard symbology, changes in scale, differences in data quality, a poorly designed key, a mish-mash collection of data provider logos, and the scourge of auto-label placement would result in a map equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster, not in a learning and exploration tool.
Yeah, i’m getting a little tired.