North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey congratulations on your 100th clog post! I really like your clog.Good that Rich and Chris visited and took you shopping. Good that your tree has a skirt.

All is well here.

Love, Dad.
November 29, 2007 6:24 AM

Janet had discovered that her vitamins contained caffeine.

North_Fork_Trails said...
What kind of pill has caffeine? NoDoz?

Maybe you should try coffee. After all, you are a writer.

Interesting clouds this morning. I am working on a new polar zonohedron algorithm for POV-Ray. I have got two versions of POV, one is UNIX and runs under X11, the other is Mac. I've got the UNIX version rendering 1200 640X480 frames for an animation, each frame takes about 15 or 20 minutes. It will take many days. Two and a half days so far, frame 216 is rendering right now.

But that leaves my Mac version of POV free for other work.

I had a funny programming experience. I decided to make a polar zonohedron as a "solid of translation" in POV. I would take the n vectors v[n], and first translate a sphere along 0*v[1], 1*v[1], ..., 9*v[1]. So, a line of ten spheres.

Then I would translate this line of spheres along 0*v[2], 1*v[2], etc.

Then I would translate this rhomb of 100 spheres along 0*v[3], etc. etc.

And so on.

But I neglected one thing: the number of spheres grows large very quickly.

I got the basic procedure up and running and said, OK, time for n=8.POV crashed almost immediately. I re-opened and examined my code. Tried again. Crash. Again. Crash. Again. Crash.

Then it finally occurred to me: I was asking POV to render 10*10*10*10*10*10*10*10 spheres! Or one hundred million. And that was too much.

However it works fine for n=4. I will send you an animation of a rhombic dodecahedron made from 1000 spheres.

Love,

Dad
November 30, 2007 10:26 AM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Jan, you should know that geometers have senses of humor. My hero Professor Coxeter used the quotation below to introduce one of his chapters, in his book "Geometry Revisited."

"Since you are now studying geometry and trigonometry, I will give you a problem. A ship sails the ocean. It left Boston with a cargo of wool. It grosses 200 tons. It is bound for Le Havre ... . There are 12 passengers aboard. The wind is blowing East-North-East. The clock points to a quarter past three in the afternoon. It is the month of May. How old is the captain?"
--Gustave Flaubert.

I had to share it with you.

Adieu,Dad
December 3, 2007 10:46 AM

Janet had a computer problem

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey,

I much doubt that it was changing to "Endure" that allowed Google to find your Parkour page. I tried Googling "davis parkour" and only three pages were returned. Your blog post was from October. Before any change to "Endure."

It is possible that you can set your blog to *not* be indexed by Google but I don't know. Some sites are that way. For instance, Google searches do not link to content within certain history sites. It's some kind of agreement Google makes with various web sites. These sites prefer that people can only access site content by passing through the site portal itself as it were ...Beautiful sunny day here. Just finished a new (to me) Terry Pratchett, "Interesting Times." Ah it should be made into a movie.

Luvya,

Dad
December 10, 2007 1:05 PM

Janet wrote re hopes for getting a good grade in Latin

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Dude the Latin sounds great!

Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus!

See you soon,

Dad
December 11, 2007 10:26 PM

Janet was considering taking a course on spiders

North_Fork_Trails said...
The thing of it is, with spiders, it goes beyond mere cultural importance: they are culturally self-important, too! So there is an added layer of complexity.

We finally have electricity again as of this (Wednesday) morning.

The Tempest by Shakespeare one presumes? One of my favorites.

Hope the cell phone arrives soon,

Love,Dad
January 9, 2008 9:15 AM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Dude is the iPod under warranty? It's not that old. Dreadful it's broken.

Betcha it' foggy there. For once in a long while it is sunny here.

Your classes sound good. Ah the Tempest. What could be better. And you have the luck to make a presentation.

Luvya,Dad
January 11, 2008 8:43 AM

Janet got a new cell phone

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Dude great news, you have one of those new-fangled telephones I've been hearing about! What, there's no cord at all? C'est impossible!

I understand they make great stepping-stones, too, like during a party, if someone needs to cross the room, and people are stretched out on the floor, profligately, in every direction, you just step from cell phone to cell phone.

Hmm, a beautiful sunny morning here. If we were out at Lovers Leap we'd be looking down on a vast ocean of white, to the west. The Sierra and the Coast Range would be seen rising in long islands above that ruffled white sea, rising, I say, sunny, benevolent, even warm. But down within that argent ocean ... it is grey upon grey and cold upon cold and damp upon damp.

Luvya,Dad
January 15, 2008 7:53 AM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Dude, MouseBrute,

I had no idea Clinton was at Davis. Sorry you missed him.

Good news about your apartment! We all love you very much and miss you, thank goodness we have your blog! Glad your iPod is back up and running!

Luvya,Dad
January 16, 2008 8:59 AM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Dude,Cool rugs!

Great you found the elusive iPod!

Hi Crystal!

It's been cloudy and cold and stormy forever up here. We're not buried in snow anyway. Just a few inches, maybe a foot up in the meadow.

So anyway, in Latin, ad deus, in French adieu, in Spanish adiós, in Portuguese adeus,

Dad
January 25, 2008 1:50 PM

Janet wrote about a party her roommates were having that disrupted her sleep.

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Dude,

I've got your absentee ballot right here! I should have sent it down to you with Gay the other day but it was in a pile of mail and I didn't even think of it.

Today is breezy, sometimes a little sunny. I made hot water for the first time in a week or whatever.

Fooling around in your dorm room! The teenagers these days! Why, when I was young, we were all well-behaved, endowed with manners rather than mannerisms, and, such pointless hijinks as running around dorm rooms without a shirt--why, we were too busy walking to school in the snow for any of that, let me tell you!

Dad
January 26, 2008 3:16 PM

Janet was looking forward to the new season of "Lost".

North_Fork_Trails said...
Dudeling,I hear tell NBC will air an "enhanced" final-episode-of-last-season Wednesday night. Or whatever the night is before the night of the season premiere.

Be Forewarned,and,Avoid Facebook At All Costs,

Dad
January 29, 2008 11:45 AM

Janet had died her hair.

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey I hoped it would be a nice light powder blue!

Luvya, Dad

p.s. you can drop off your absentee ballot at any polling place, you don't have to mail it.

February 4, 2008 7:00 AM

Naet wrote about a Lost episode and had posted pictures that showed the results of the strangest hair styles.

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Dude,Great hairstyles!

Shall I just tell you what happened in Lost? How WildMouse found, to his surprise, that he was scarcely more than a tool of the Evil Empire, and then the Wicked Witch of the West by Southwest raised her Instrument of Destruction, and she pointed that Instrument directly at the honest mouse, and she ...

But, no, I should not give it away.

Luvya,Dad
February 15, 2008 12:59 PM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Dude,You'd be lost without Lost! Heh heh heh.

Good job on the Chinese! That'll teach'em to go and have civilizations and dynasties and things!

Did you know the gangster tongs of old Dutch Flat were also to some extent patriotic, anti-Manchu organizations? "Down with the Manchu, restore the Ming!" Like the Chee Kong Tong for instance? Which sheltered Sun Yat Sen himself from the Imperial assassins, in San Francisco, in the 1880s? But Dutch Flat had its own branch of the Chee Kong Tong. One of the nicest buildings in Chinatown. Not far form the McClungs', other side of the dirt road going down Squires Canyon and down the hill a few yards.

Maybe if you went for platinum blonde, it would average out to a nice light blue?

We've still got a ton of snow here. Slowly it melts. Not a speck of bare ground by the cabins and the road is a mess.

OK luvya and way to go on the midterm, except, by all means don't neglect your Latin! When Caesar said, "Et tu, Brute," the 'Brute' is in the vocative!

I'm still puzzled by how Portuguese works. You know, in Spanish the masculine for 'the' is 'el." Clearly from Latin illo etc. In Portuguese it's shortened to merely 'o'. What's confusing is to add the article all the time where I think it doesn't belong: "my love" becomes "o meu amor." It seems to me that in Spanish we'd never say "el mio amor" but I may be all wrong.

Dad
February 7, 2008 3:32 PM

Janet had been climbing trees with Eli.

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Janet,Sounds like a great weekend! But I'm worried about your tree-climbing. Eli may be a master climber but you are not. Of course practice makes perfect but caution, extreme caution, is called for! Just yesterday Greg was up in a little tree here by the cabins, a little Douglas Fir maybe thirty feet tall. I sent him up there to see if we coudl throw a rope around another tree nearby; it turned out we couldn't; so from a height of fiteen feet he began to descend. He thinks of himself as an expert climber--and maybe that was the problem; for he trusted his weight to the wrong branch, it broke, and in an instasnt he was falling, breaking other branches on his way down, and he landed neatly in the snow, after a fall of ten feet. And if it had not been for that foot or so of soft snow--we don't even want to think about it. That fall was over before either of us really knew it had begun.

So please be very very cautious!

I love you so much and admire you, keep up the great blog and the good work at college!--

Dad
February 11, 2008 7:51 AM

Janet wrote that her Muse had inspired her to do some writing.

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey Janet,

Your Muse is very amusing, good thing she escaped the Museum, under the influence of Music, har de har har,

bemusedly yours,Dad
February 20, 2008 7:44 AM

Janet wrote about wanting to find yogurt that did not have high fructose corn syrup in it.

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey how about natural food stores? gotta be a great one in Davis! Or ... buy plain yogurt, add real strawberries, mash it around, voila!

They say, you know, that WildMouse's Muse lived in a museum, and played the cithara very well ... while eating strawberry yogurt! So it's a small universe, I guess.

Hey, fantastic job on the Latin! I am so pleased! As WildMouse's Muse was wont to say, or sing, to tell the absolute truth, "concrescunt subitae currenti in flumine crustae, undaque iam tergo ferratos sustinet orbis," etc. etc.

Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus, hinc illae lacrimae,

Dad
February 20, 2008 4:46 PM

Janet wrote about her skill having improved with the game Rockband.

North_Fork_Trails said...
I really liked your description of the bike ride in the rain. And good job, on mastering the guitar and drums! Here we anxiously awaited the Giant Storm and, as they say, parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

February 24, 2008 6:48 AM

Janet was looking forward to two TV shows.

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey, I can understand "Lost," but "America's Next Top Model"? Unless, of course, it were models of polyhedra, or of tessellations. Yes, that must be it. Now I understand.

What is better, on the other hand, than flowering cherry trees?

Answer: nothing is better. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, some obscure passage of the Bible reveals that God Himself made a mistake; for He intended the flowering cherry tree to be Heavenly, alone; yet, in an odd moment of confusion, He put it here on Earth.

Hence the phrase, "Heaven on Earth."

Just a little scholarship.

Luvya,Dad
March 1, 2008 1:07 PM

North_Fork_Trails said...
Is "alright" really a word?

Janet wrote about her assorted classes for the third quarter

Whatever happened to using Caesar's "War Commentaries" as a first-year Latin text? "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.

"Why, Shakespeare himself mentions the Belgae, for whom modern Belgium is named.

The Styles class sounds interesting. Clothing is much about tribal membership. Have you ever wondered about the "tie" which professional men are supposed to wear? What does it tie? It is some kind of ritualized scarf, but it has lost all purpose, except ornament, and most of all, above all, it expresses membership in the tribe of "professionals." A tie is all about class. It screams out, "I am one of those lucky ones who never dirties his hands, never shoulders a load, never pounds, never digs, never saws."
April 2, 2008 7:03 AM

Janet was ailing and also upset re ruining a hat by putting it in the dryer.

North_Fork_Trails said...
Eek it sounds like the dread influenza ...

Maybe if your hat is soaked thoroughly you can stretch it back and make it dry in the stretched position?

Hope you are feeling better today and have a nice musical experience ... all is well here, it feels like Spring, primavera.

Dad
March 4, 2008 6:23 AM

Janet was working out at the gym - and concerned that she was running out of blog titles


North_Fork_Trails said...
Seriously, you are that out of shape! But running is too hard on the joints. What you need is hiking in and out of deep canyons to become lithe and svelte. Toss in some lopping to keep the good old trails open and voila, you are fit! Then you can have two lunches in one day, every day!

I found a little piece of a 100-year-old-plus glass plate right on the trail by the Second Spring yesterday! Must be from the miners who made the tunnels. Or perhaps from the railroad-wood-cutters.

BTW you have by no means run out of clever titles!

I've found even more errors in Le Vaisseau Magique. I begin to wonder if the translator took as a point of beginning a machine translation, and then edited it. Mais non, c'est impossible!

Adieu,

Dad
April 3, 2008 7:01 AM

Termites had invaded Janet's dorm

North_Fork_Trails said...
Termites! I wonder if Jackie even recognizes a termite when she sees one. Termites would thrive on wet wood, so if there were a leak in the plumbing in the bathroom, that could do it. But they would have to either fumigate massively or else tear everything out and keep on tearing out until no more infested wood was found and *then* fumigate for good measure ...What a nuisance!

Maybe you should request a spot in the Honors dorm.

April 4, 2008 7:08 AM

Janet had reached a state of "inner zen" about the termites

North_Fork_Trails said...
Wow, how exciting, how beyond exciting, meta-exciting! It is Saturday, hence, it will soon be Saturday night, and you will have the pleasure of doing your homework!

Zen. Zen. I love Zen. "What is the sound of one hand, clapping?" And thus, by this seemingly simple koan, was satori achieved. But ... wait ... what is the sound of one termite, clapping?"

Before satori I chopped wood and carried water. After satori, I did my homework and refused to worry about termites." [a paraphrase of the famous old Zen saying, as reported by Daisetz Suzuki]

April 5, 2008 2:12 PM

Janet was still dealing with termites

North_Fork_Trails said...
Great job on the naps!

Ah the mid-numbing routine of daily life: wash the termites down the drain, ...

Laserhawk sounds great! Wish I could watch it with you!

Yes the only actor to come out of Star Wars alive, more or less, was Harrison Ford. Oh yeah, I guess the guy who did Darth's voice (good old Darth!), didn't crash and burn either.

April 8, 2008 4:40 PM

Janet had a problem re writing a paper because the locks to her dorm had been changed

North_Fork_Trails said...
Good job on watching the long boring movie!

Wow what a hassle with the lock! And yet you managed to write the essay anyway! Cool!

I'm writing an article about the Generalized Dual Method (you know, my "arrangements of lines" which lead to tilings) and I'm getting bogged down, a couple thousand words into the thing. On the one hand I want brevity, on the other hand, I want to develop the proper context, the proper introduction to the subject. But I am two thousand words in and the GDM has scarcely raised its head. So I am thinking, maybe I should just launch the reader into the thick of things right at the start, and then retreat to the context, and then return to the GDM. Anyway, you know what I mean. It's part of what makes writing well difficult.


April 11, 2008 7:34 AM

Janet wrote about ridiculous textbooks

North_Fork_Trails said...
This reminds me strongly of some remarks I made to a friend, recently:

"Uh, well, the Sphere: the Sphere is influenced, deeply influenced, by the Tao. In consequence, and of course, from all its time in the Hidden Caves of Tibet, the Sphere can levitate, rather freely ... its principal concern is to follow, and, if at all possible, overtake the Cone.

Unfortunately, absolutely everything to do with the Cone is a secret."

April 13, 2008 2:53 PM

Eli gave Janet a cactus for their 5 Mo. anniversary

North_Fork_Trails said...
Hey that cactus sounds really great! Maybe it will Invade the World, though. Genetically engineered, ahem, well, when I was a kid we listened to real music, not this punky rock or whatever they call it with their teenage slang ... and we had no genetically engineered cacti whatsoever. Except those cacti honestly engineered, through millenia of millenia of millenia of evolution.

So far as jobs, look for something really good, in writing, or something which excites and inspires you yourself. Please?

Today I am having trouble with programming and geometry, and I leave one comma out f some code, and then nothing works, and I could just scream! In fact, I do scream. Today nothing comes easy.

Luvya,

Dad
April 15, 2008 3:52 PM