mike.whybark.com

overnights

2012-05-20T08:35:54Z

I haven't been staying up late to catch NBP games for a month or two, but happened to notice an interleague game between Rakuten and Hanshin was slated for 2, Japanese time, I thought I'd see if I could catch it. I managed to find a feed in the bottom of the first, and the game is in the seventh inning break, Eagles leading, 10-4.

I think. For some reason the feed is now showing commercials over booth chatter, no ad audio, the stadium chants behind the announcers.

Anyway, every time I find one of these NPB streams I am amazed anew that it is so trivial to find a random realtime TV broadcast originating so far from where I watch.

One of the surprises for me tonight was looking at the Eagles' standings - they are often kind of a bad team, and their most effective pitcher, Masahiro Tanaka, has been on the DL for a while. So noting that the team is third in the Pacific League and in a three-way tie for third in interleague play came as a surprise!

water

2012-05-20T03:14:40Z

walking up the hill from the beach with the dog, we came across a lake!

ooooni

2012-05-19T03:47:03Z

such good uni tonight, man, easily in the top two ever.

impatient

2012-05-18T00:37:33Z

Next week I officially have the OK to do just over three miles a day. I have found it terribly hard not to just do that this week. I'm theoretically about six weeks out from five a day. I think right around then I will start concentrating on speed once more.

Slow

2012-05-16T22:28:12Z

Seven years later, I finally have my drawing table set up and ready to go.

A dream deferred

2012-05-11T01:05:24Z

On a whim, I checked a certain well known classifieds site to see if the guitar I dreamt about was listed. I had a very specific set of finishes and hardware in my mind. Lo and behold, there it was, triple binding and all. It was even cheap.

Lucky for me, the President was in town and I had a bunch of shit to get done, so I deferred the purchase. I am sure this is the right thing but I do actively try to listen to dreams, so maybe in a week or two. Although, honestly, what do I need another underplayed guitar for?

Dream scenes

2012-05-10T14:42:33Z

Running out barefoot into the dusty dawn street, dodging barrelling lights-out traffic. Both the cars and myself were charging to the side of the canal to watch the transit of the gigantic blue and white submersible recently acquired by some dream magnate of my mind.

A black-and-ivory Les Paul with gold trim.

A conversation with someone about the essential brilliance of Roger Ebert.

A near miss

2012-05-10T01:27:23Z

After Monday's barnburner of a ninth-inning comeback, which featured a tremendously excited Muenori Kawasaki scoring the winning run just before he was gleefully mobbed by his teammates (including the happiest Ichiro I have ever seen in Seattle), when a pal offered a pair of tickets to Tuesday's game on short notice, I jumped at the chance.

I took Dan again and met up with Ken and Mary and their friends. Before the game started I swung by the bullpen and noticed that ex-Rakuten pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma was out near the fence, a level down from where I was standing and about fifteen feet away. I started yelling for his attention, and a couple of Japanese travelers joined in. I learned I was mispronouncing the guy's name, but the three of us got his attention.

When he looked up I waved my Rakuten cap at him and he smiled broadly and doffed his cap graciously. The Japanese guys hustled down and joined the small crowd of folks (mostly Japanese) who were getting autographs from Iwakuma. I, of course, had left my pens at home in the rush to get out the door.

Next time. Pretty sure there are only two other Eagles caps in town.

The game was great, if it was disappointing to see the M's lose. In the third, Detroit manager Jim Leyland got the boot for arguing with the ump and the Tiger's pitcher Justin Verlander nearly followed suit, angering the home plate ump to the extent that it looked like the guy was gonna charge the mound for a rousing bout of fisticuffs. All this while the bases were loaded. The crowd was on its feet.

The Mariners loaded the bases once again. Naturally, it was in the ninth, and it was a long and exciting inning. The crowd was up and yelling (or maybe it was just me yelling, I am still hoarse) and the Detroit pitcher seemed to be on the verge of losing control of his pitches, nearly an exact repeat of the night before.

Sadly for Seattle, he pulled it out and the Tigers won, 6-3. It was a very exciting game, as was the one before. There is one more game with Detroit this week, tonight, and I kind of expect it to be great.

tetched

2012-05-10T01:09:36Z

a couple of days ago I ended up using my laptop for my early-evening leisure computing, a role previously reserved for my iPad.

at some point in my web browsing I became puzzled when the computer was failing to respond to my input.

only when I literally heard my fingernails clicking on the screen did I realize why links weren't working.

Come home

2012-05-07T01:31:55Z

Hope you are well. Get home safe, soon.

spring

2012-05-05T20:29:36Z

he is hunting honeybees. i issued a strongly worded caution.

went to the game with Viv last night. M's lose!

That's the M's bullpen. See the one pitcher sitting apart from the other guys? That's Hisashi Iwakuma. He got up a couple of times to toss a ball, but was never seriously warming up. He was talking with his translator and reading or taking notes some of the time, and kind of absently holding a baseball, passing it from hand to hand.

Next game, I will make a point of getting down there with a pen and yelling my lungs out until his translator pops his head around the corner of the shelter.

primal

2012-04-29T22:06:02Z

This is a fine way to recover from one's yard work on a cold, cloudy day.

nerds over the trenches

2012-04-29T22:03:49Z

Spent a delightful Saturday at the all-day seminar on Great War aviation held at the Museum of Flight. Long-lost compadre Cliff Hare was there in a wingman capacity.

Here, he floats though the zero-gee environs of the Space Station module.

Highlights of the seminar included a report on a detailed windtunnel analysis of the doughty Fokker DVII, conducted at the UW windtunnel in the 1990's.

One of several graphing-oriented slides.

The 1/4 scale model used for the tests.

This slide was from my favorite presentation, an overview of research techniques and results for learning about aircraft color schemes and insignia and how the appearances of a plane changed over time. The presentation was something like a primer in spectro-chemical and microscopic analysis of paint and canvas composition in scientific art history, except instead of preindustrial masterworks by Leonardo, it was the hurried and evolving efforts of factories and line crews.

This slide shows the contemporary appearance of the left-side cross insignia cut from Manfred von Richthofen's celebrated, and fatal, red Fokker Dr.1 (the worn swatch to the left). The crisp graphics to the right show the stages of appearance the plane took, from factory to the day it was destroyed.

The presenter showed case after case in which a photographic evidence was used in combination with detailed swatch analysis to present compelling interpretations for the history of a given aircraft's livery. It was thrilling.

finally

2012-04-25T17:20:44Z

Took long enough, but after strictly following the 10% a week rule, I finally managed to get back where I was when I gave myself tedonitis in February. Today I did 2.14 miles in 20 minutes. I hope to keep that as floor.

Now it is time to think about other objectives, like increasing the tilt on the treadmill, or varying the time daily, and so forth.

As I run I have been working through our iTunes by albums, in alphabetical order, skipping the country, folk, and bluegrass, since that's what I listen to be default most of the time.

For the past several days I have been enjoying the still-ethereal strains of the Cocteau Twins, music I expected to be awful to run to but which is instead transporting.

Snow?

2012-04-23T06:03:40Z

Wait, what? Hasn't it been in the 80s east of the Rockies for two months now already?