Month: July 2003

Cosmas’s Map

I’ve been reading A Geography of Geography that I picked up for a quarter at our library’s book sale. Its a chronology of the discipline of geography throughout human history. Naturally, its quite concerned with the spacial aspect of things rather than merely the history.

One of the most enjoyable aspects has been a comparison of world maps throughout time and cultures. Its amazing how slowly maps progressed early on. The Greeks, or people living in Greek colonies slowly improved maps that were quite detailed. Maps that displayed Great Britain were available in 500BC! Yet, the middle ages, and in some cases, organized religion led to a somewhat warped perspective of the world. I recreated this map by Cosmas, who was determined that the world conformed to the descriptions given in the scriptures. I colorized it, and gave the people on the sides more detail, including races, because that’s the sort of thing that might piss the church off. I’m free to do that.

Deck nears completion

The deck is nearly complete, lacking only railings. The decking itself is 2×6 cedar planking, and they’re quite nice. I’ll post pictures of it and the carpet shortly.

Michelle and Sarah hit the beach today with the dogs, and sounds like they had a good time. It was quite hot here in Portland, and the girls escaped to more hospitable climes. The dogs played in the ocean, and the girls had a chance to chat and eat. Barley got to meet Porter & Baci off leash for the first time, and it wasn’t a disaster. Whew.

Scott was stuck in meetings, and I was stuck without a DNS server at work, so we would have been better off at the beach too.

Manzanita is heaven

Spent the latter part of the weekend with Manzanita with my mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and wife. Dog was there too. They were all week, and I got to join them halfway through for some fine sunshine, food, and company. Its really a marvelous place, and I can’t imagine any reason why I’m back here already. Michelle and I took some pictures, and some are good.
Cirrus Rainbow

Of particular coolness is a cirrus cloud rainbow that sort of twisted itself down from the heavens and writhed a wonderful band of colors over the town. One can only hope for such intimate glimpses of the divine. In my climatology studies, nothing quite so amazing appeared. Even if I do find the cause for such a thing, which I image was a downwardly thrusted cirrus cloud, it won’t take away from the amazing beauty of it. Michelle and I were out walking when we saw it. Fortunately, cell phone technology allowed us to contact Kathy to draw her out to see it. We had to hike back to the internet cafe to coax her brother out to view it. Almost as quickly as it appeared, the wind blew it away, and as it stretched, colors fading, it disappeared. What a marvel.

Baby Squirrel

While watering the plants this morning, a baby squirrel hopped across the yard. Looking quite startled, it climbed a tree. On the other side of the fence, two neighborhood cats (Tigger’s subordinates, no doubt) were following it across the yard, evil plans intact. Not wanting to witness the early demise of a squirrel, I sprayed the cats through the fence. They backed off temporarily, but waited at bay for their chance. Determined to protect the squirrel, possibly encourage it to travel by tree instead of grass, I stood between the two, occasionally sending a jet of water at the would be killers. The squirrel eventually realized it wouldn’t get away on the ground and moved through the trees. Good luck little buddy!

Carpet in!

The carpet is in, and it looks quite nice. a brief escape before moving stuff around, I went with Scott and Sarah to Fuck up some Enchilada’s shit at Baja Fresh. I love spicy. Alas, the distraction had to end.

Now I’m moving stuff back in to place slowly. I have a desk again, we can finally unpack stuff, and best of all, the rooms don’t smell like cat piss!

Dissin’ Google

The poop-smiths over at MSN have shovelled another load into print about the problems with Google. Sure, Google does have some idiosyncrasies, but most can be overcome by adding a second word to refine your search. As far as I can tell, this would nearly negate the first two complaints. Besides, I’ve used MSN – you can’t tell me they’re worried too much about commercial links or skewed results.

The third complaint is somewhat confusing, because if you were looking for a book, you’d probably have found it in one of the above-mentioned commercial links. I doubt that copyright holders will be that thrilled about the ability to search the text of books. However, Microsoft, soon to enter the fiction and scholarly journal-publishing realm, will surely sell you access to these tomes.

Woodwork finished

I finished painting the large, opulently pained window in the living room tonight. It took a couple hours, and I can now rest. While I was painting, a child in a diaper who had been riding his big wheel up the street dismounted and started walking up the sidewalk towards Tigger, our cat. His older sister encouraged him to come back, and they rode off.

Michelle, Barley, Kathy & Jason are all at the beach for the next couple days. I’m quite jealous, but at least I’ll be here when the carpet gets installed. It was in town last week, but it was “on the truck” so it couldn’t be installed until Tuesday. Now the delays are just getting absurd.