The Generalized Bridge Project continues apace, with my first attempt at arched piers. Not being able to prototype at home is a limiting factor in my overall velocity. It also means that I am regularly proceeding “at risk.” That means I am taking designs that haven’t been really tested and extending them.

This situation might even be worse: there were serious problems with the “square” arches that I decided to not focus on. So, building a complex structure on top of a problematic structure. This will go well.

21 Jan 2025 - 21:01

Why is it that these are donner everywhere but the US?

09 Jan 2025 - 17:01

I missed the egg nog season at Sol. Instead, this drink has a dill infusion.

04 Jan 2025 - 21:01

At the interval, Bacon Strip has been great. Some less common performers: London Bradshaw, James AND Kerry Darling. Plus Cookie Couture and Shocktavia (pictured)

04 Jan 2025 - 19:01

First drag of 2025: Bacon Strip’s Disco vs. Classic Rock. At the last minute I changed my mind and took the 5D + 135mm instead of the Q2, and now having second thoughts. Que sera sera.

But, R documentation seems to be designed to be bad. Somewhere, someone found a checklist for “Things not to do in software documentation,” and decided to use it as a best practices guide instead. And this manifests itself so powerfully in the documentation for ggplot’s [discrete color scales¹]1. There are two functions documented on this page, scale_colour_discrete and scale_fill_discrete.

The page also has a number of examples of how you can use these functions. It even calls out that a good reason to do it is to get a color-blind safe pallete. The examples are twice as long as the actual function documentation. (althugh it does have plots, which pumps it up a bit.)

What the examples do not have is an actual use of scale_color_discrete (or fill). They also use a relatively advanced technqiue to make the changes temporary if you were to run the example. All of this combines to make the examples really unhelpful. It made sense to me, but that is only because I’ve spent years using ggplot, and I know how it is put together. There are no pathways to any additional documentation that might help scaffold a user’s education.

It’s particularly disappointing because this is a teachable moment. An extra paragraph that says something like “GGplot uses ‘options’ to customize a graph, and you can use this to make small or large changes to a graph. These functions are mostly just convenice functions to make it easier to make these changes. In the examples we’ll show both these functions, and touching the underlying options directly.”

I haven’t been using R as much over the past few months. I only fired it up because I needed to plot the positive values of the ellipse equation against some observed values. I din’t know enough Python to deal with the graphics part, and I don’t have Jupyter on my personal laptop. But, while I am slowly re-skilling myself on Python, I hve never once wanted to throw the documentaiton across the room.

This is a fairly typical power outlet in an economy class seat. The placement of the outlet means that the only safe plug is a UK plug. A Euro-standard two prong is maybe safe (I can’t remember the exact set up of the prongs to make a categorical statement.)

But, what is not in doubt is that this is incredibly unsafe when used with a US-standard two (or even three prong) plug. It’s probably so unsafe that it shouldn’t even be allowed: there is too great of a impetus to fumble-plug, and there is a good chance that one of those exposed, uninsulated prongs is energized.

Honestly, I’m surprised there hasn’t been a lawsuit on this already. This feels like a cut and dried negligence case. There are simple ways to make this so much safer

28 Dec 2024 - 20:12

1. Yes, I am aware of the irony of using Python to generate Markdown for a Ruby-based CMS. At least I’m not using R here.

2. I’m still struggling with Python. I’m now a pretty bad Python programmer: I just don’t know the idioms as well as I (want to

   used to). But, I will say my sojourn in RLand has helped me be a (slightly) better Python programmer. I do miss the R object model (or lack thereof) but that’s a post for another time.

28 Dec 2024 - 14:12

The sun is out today. This may be the first time I’ve seen the sun since arriving in Iceland. At times it felt like I would never see the sun again.

In one of Terry Prachett’s novels, a plot point was that if something didn’t happen, the sun wouldn’t rise the next morning. In the novel, it’s clear that a ball of light powered by fusion energy would appear, but that is a far, far cry from the sun rising. (The novel is probably Hogfather.) A lot of tourist Iceland is about stories being told, re-told, and changed to suit modern tastes; stories are so valuable.

27 Dec 2024 - 21:12

At Kiki Bar in Reykjavik, which is (I believe) the only gay bar in the country. I’m waiting for a drag show which I think is hosted by Faux News.

27 Dec 2024 - 17:12

No one knew when the chain would start. There were sensors somewhere that decided when the chain would start, and the residents of chainsend would only have fifteen minutes warning after the lights started. Of course, there would be days of speculation as early as late September about it and usually two weeks before there were small betting pools. Chain start took an entire day; but once it was working then there would be several days of celebration.

The chain had always been there. Kate’s grandfather said that when he was young, the oldest person in the village told him a story of when the chain was built. But Kate preferred to believe that the gods themselves had built it at the beginning of the world. Too much of it couldn’t be explained today. Not that the Trucks made any more sense: they just kept going seemingly never needing any power.

…

No doubt Kate will sneak on to a truck, ride the chain across the mountains and to the other Land. But that’s a story for later.

27 Dec 2024 - 15:12

And when the EastWest tour lost at least two stars on the inevitable Yelp / TripAdvisor review: at lunch, they were unable to seat two traveling companions together. Now, I know that the tour company isn’t directly responsible for the actions of their suppliers, but they still select their suppliers. When their suppliers (e.g. the lunch venue) falls down it reflects on the parent company. I was going to give the tour guide a decent tip but this was a pretty bad experience for me.

27 Dec 2024 - 13:12

About five minutes later a storm blew in and this was just a white-out condition. This is Gullfoss, the furthest point on the golden tour. Next up is Geysir.

27 Dec 2024 - 11:12

View from the tour van window during a short winter storm.

27 Dec 2024 - 10:12

This is þhingfellur, which is where the Alþing was originally held. In the middle is Silfra: the line between the North American and Eurasian plates. In a bit of a #metauxrhistory, Silfra was the name of the reverse proxy that ran between the dev servers and RStudio, back when we had dev servers and RStudio.

It’s been over six months since I’ve used R. I made the decision that it has to be python from now on.

27 Dec 2024 - 08:12

The line up at tourist bus stop #6. I think this is a marvel of how things just work: 50-100 people line up for any number of small tourist vans and they eventually get on the right one. My traveling companion thinks it’s awful and wants to improve it.

My challenge is that the only organization that has the power to make it “better” is the government. There is a good example that this doesn’t work: airports. The problem here is similar to the airport shuttle problem and there, you have a similar solution: a zone where all the hotels pick up. At best you have some distinction like “zone 1 / zone 2” but it’s still more or less a free-for-all.

I’m not even sure what the metric I’m trying to optimize for here is. It’s likely “tourist confusion,” but how the hell are you going to measure that? In addition, once you know how this works, it’s straight-forward. The TC says it’s time spent, but given arrival times of the vans are not tightly scheduled, that’s not a great metric.

I remain believing that this is the best way unless you want the government to take a very strong hand.

26 Dec 2024 - 17:12

Organ concerts should have either smoke effects or lasers or (preferably) both. The effects should pick out the pipes currently being played - this is not just an effect for effect’s sake. There is a serious point here, letting audience members better understand how the organ works to create the sounds they are hearing.

26 Dec 2024 - 16:12

It looks so typical at the base, where the organ is. Then you look up and it is a creature of nightmares. As well, the lighting is doing this nave no favors

26 Dec 2024 - 13:12

Churches in Iceland. Not looked up if there is a synagogue here.

26 Dec 2024 - 09:12

Bright and early (9:30am) on Boxing Day. Sunrise is still almost two hours away (1:40).

25 Dec 2024 - 19:12

And the main course.

25 Dec 2024 - 19:12

The wine for the main course. I’ve finally read the menu and the beef comes with foie gras and a Madeira sauce. I remember always having a Madeira sauce at Grandma’s house along with an orange cake. I should try to re-do that.

25 Dec 2024 - 18:12

Winter comes fast here: not ten minutes earlier it was clear and while not sunny, at least visible. Then the storm came and a few minutes later it was nearly white-out.

25 Dec 2024 - 14:12

Not quite sunset (15:32 today; sunrise was around 11:20), but dramatic light on the Rainbow road in central Reykjavík.

25 Dec 2024 - 14:12

It’s 29° but feels like 3°. But to the hardy ornamental Brassica, it feels just fine!

25 Dec 2024 - 14:12

An afternoon of some snow and a lot of wind. By the main church in Reykjavik, at a little after one in the afternoon.

25 Dec 2024 - 13:12

To me, this shower control is obviously a pressure / temperature control. However, my traveling companion was convinced it was a hot/cold control, and was deeply confused by the mere existence of a P/T type control. Does anyone else have that reaction? I’m wondering if P/T is a European thing?

25 Dec 2024 - 13:12

In boxes.py, walls do not have to close. Rather than spending hours trying to re-create curveTo using piece-wise segments, just have the wall end, do a .curveTo(…), and then pick up with a proper Boxes.edge(…) to complete the shape.

24 Dec 2024 - 18:12

I had never noticed the similarity between Guinness beer and Irish coffee before. Without labels I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference.

24 Dec 2024 - 17:12

The desert was a rich chocolate cake with blueberry ice cream rosettes.

24 Dec 2024 - 16:12

Christmas Eve dinner in Reykjavík: Mexican. I had a lamb that covered both cultures! Also, nothing is open on Christmas Eve here.

Of course, ChatGPT was little use here. It claims that per most literature, the number of demons is more or less uncountable.

This is likely my second brush: Kyran Thrax. As I write this (a bit late, compared to the date on the blog), Wikipedia was just updated to show that she won Snatch Game. This picture is from five years ago, October 28, 2019 at the Gold Rush, when she was less well-known. I don’t remember her exact progression in the Gold Rush; I went back to the US around Thanksgiving and missed a few shows. By the time I was back and the whole Christmas season was over, there were wider concerns about a novel coronavirus emerging in China.

This was one of my first outings with “The Wrong Lens.” This was an intentional choice to pick a lens that you would not normally want to use for that task; think “extreme telephoto for landscapes.” In this case, it was a 45mm f/2.8 tilt-shift lens for portrait work in low light. (Now, I would argue that TS for portraiture is not a bad idea. But in low light, it’s a hard lens.) The TS features highly in the “wrong lens” series.

In the fall of 2014, I did a poster for SML’s “Boots and Buzzcuts,” an event that’s now on hiatus. I’m pretty disappointed by the poster when I look at it now; the concept would have been better served by two separate posters, rather than trying to shoehorn two images onto one sheet of paper. My memory is that there was a reason for this, and I was effectively over-ruled. However, there were two great photoshoots as part of it: one not (yet) in the photo of the day series, and then this one.

I think this is the only shoot I did with D; there was at least one other shoot with P. This is not the image that was used in the poster: D is throwing a fair amount of shade here, and that was not the image I was trying to construct for the event. The poster uses one about fifteen frames earlier where D is actually smiling.

It took me eons before I finally visited Alcatraz. In my defense, my “tourist” visit to San Francisco was around 1998¹, and I had a limited amount of time. Then, after that, the visits were often mostly to see people. Anyway, about fifteen years later, I finally got to see Alcatraz.

It’s now one of my top suggestions for San Francisco. The National Park has an exceptional audio tour of the jail, and at least in the 2015-2020 time frame, there were often former guards (and the occasional former prisoner) on-site to recount stories and answer questions.

On my first visit, there was an art exhibit in the old prison laundry. I had thought it was something that was done regularly, but never saw another exhibit in my subsequent visits. The exhibit was work by Ai Weiwei, and was a colorful counterpoint to the faded grey around the complex.

The other memorable moment was the next day, riding through a glade of eucalyptus trees, where we saw a koala bear on the ground. It’s very unusual to see one on the ground; and as soon as we got close to it, it ran up the nearest tree. I didn’t have my camera out until it was in the tree.

The blah

One of the more interesting aspects of the photo is that it captures a building that for many years, was not officially there. Because it was a critical piece of national security infrastructure, it could only be referred to as “Location 23.” Right after it was opened, Location 23 featured a rotating restaurant, called “Top of the Tower.” Of interest to me was that it was operated by Butlins, of “Our True Intent is All For Your Delight¹” fame

this was called The Top of the Tower, and operated by Butlins.

The other memorable moment was the next day, riding through a glade of eucalyptus trees, where we saw a koala bear on the ground. It’s very unusual to see one on the ground; and as soon as we got close to it, it ran up the nearest tree. I didn’t have my camera out until it was in the tree.

The blah