mike.whybark.com

https://youtu.be/liBhu8DBzEQ Celebrate May-tallica with this banjo cover.

Has Dylan ever guested on PHC? I mean, come on.

A new story from Hilary Mantel, “The School of English,” in the London Review of Books.

You know who I wish would drop little pearls like this? Susanna Clarke.

TAL is rerunning this February 2001 episode. It makes me a little nostalgic for pre 9-11. I have clear memories of it on initial airing because it was the first time I had ever heard Chris Ware’s voice.

UPDATE: This episode also features the never-directly named Zora Colakovic story. Few years after this a couple friends started telling a story about attending a friend’s wingding in Southern California and I think the friend they were visiting was Zora. I always forget to ask them if I’m right.

This week something finally shook loose in my body from the running – my ankles aren’t sore in the morning and my blood pressure finally appears to be responding. Weirdly, it dropped by 10-20 points over the weekend. I’m still puzzled by this. This week my target is about 23 miles, so next week is my first week at the hypothetical plateau. Although, I did realize that I could do three ten-mile runs a week and possibly compress my actual time budget way down over a few weeks of upping the run speed and easily meet the calorie target, so I may be thinking about increasing the plateau number. We’ll see.

Good birds this year – both birdhouses are occupied, but two different species. I think I need to move one, though – it’s all-copper and I foolishly placed it in a location that receives direct sun.

I wrote a long and pointless post on my antipathy to the literature of the extreme landscape here last night in the wee hours, prompted by my total indifference to a New Yorker piece about California’s Imperial Valley. But it was et by computer demons. I don’t think I’ll rewrite it.

This is my 21 mile week. I am at 13 after two days. I was trying to run seven miles yesterday and six today but I run barefoot on our treadmill and my left toe felt abraded after six miles, so I deferred until today.

My running companion is a DS9 rewatch (or watch) and the episodes this week have been s04, Homefront parts 1 & 2 and episodes to either side. I am glad I have been giving the show another shake.

Yesterday the weather was amazingly beautiful, but a tad hot at eighty in my yard. This is of concern to me. It’s far too early for such unconscionable heat.

UPDATE: oh, look, a Malcolm Gladwell piece.

Yesterday morning we noticed a big wave of sugar ants in the pantry, which is a huge pain the ass because to stem the tide of an ant invasion where they are targeting food you eat as well, it’s necessary to carefully disassemble the food storage area and clean the interior surfaces carefully with non-toxic substances over a period of a couple of days and as well find the access point and add borax-based ant bait to the area. If they’ve gotten into unsealed dry goods it’s best to just dump the food as well.

Knowing that we had about twelve booked hours for the day I made it clear we did not have time to deal with it until today. So this morning I chased Viv out of the house and started tracking the trails to figure out what to do.

Unfortunately, the ants had found a crack in the dry-box we use to store Logan’s huge 50-pound bags of dog food. They were mounting a full-scale assault. Happily, they were not interested in the human food at all, which was a relief – we scoured the pantry once this year already and I had hoped we were maintaining sealed-container discipline as it indeed appear we are.

So I moved the dog-food box outside and started cleaning up the ant trails with a vinegar-water-dawn solution, which works well but requires repeated application. The ants appeared to be coming from a spot toward the ceiling, which was odd. I started moving stuff out on the deck for ease of cleaning and to permit the simpler expedient of brushing the critters off of some objects that would not do so well if sprayed with a liquid.

As I did so, I noticed a few winged ants about the same size as the standard issue ant and pondered them for a moment, deciding they weren’t termites and so nothing to worry about. I noticed they were clustering near the top of the door and they they seemed to be well-integrated with the sugar ants.

Then I looked up into the skylight above our rear-entry room. There were thousands of both the winged and non-winged ants. I took a deep breath and started the process of cleaning them up, which involved the removal of about half the material we store in the mudroom, a couple hours on a ladder with goggles and a mask on, spraying the sides of the skylight with the vinegar solution and wiping the ants off, over and over.

Unfortunately, the numbers seen and the flying ants indicate that there is a likelihood of a nest having been built in the air gap of the roof that holds the skylight. I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that we may need to hire an exterminator to deal with the infestation, which means leaving our coats and miscellaneous other stuff out of the room until the situation is resolved.

Ugh.

I think back in the day I may have noted that the 1993 computer game Zeppelin – Giants of the Sky was available at at abandonia.com. I had hoped to find the the Internet Archive was implementing a PC gaming equivalent to the Internet Arcade, but no luck.

Someone has released an accurate looking, well-modeled implementation of the Zeppelin NT for the somewhat moribund Microsoft product Flight Simulator X. Also available: scenery for Cardington NAS in the UK, and the USS Macon.

The comprehensive mod – really, something akin to a complete recoding – of FSX called Wings: Over Flanders Fields has recently incorporated zeppelins. I am unclear if the zeps are pilotable by the player or if they occur as AI elements of the sim. It seems likeliest to me that they are playable.

Unfortunately, WOFF is a daunting product to buy and install, as it requires a valid copy of FSX in order to operate, and is relatively pricey itself.

In 2011 and 2013, Anders Gidenstam released several LTA models for the open source FS FlightGear. The models on his page describing them look fairly raw, but he has also modeled several interesting types including an early Great War UK Navy sub spotter with a simple open control car slung under the envelope and a free balloon, something I have never seen modeled in looking for FS LTA.