Merry Christmas everyone! Yesterday Hil admitted that she had forgotten to get any stocking stuffers, so I stopped by a grocery store and bought a bunch of candy plus a few fruits to assuage my guilt at all the candy.

This morning, though, Hil baked up a fabulously complicated french toast and cheese confection, so we didn't even get to the stockings until early afternoon. That made me feel old.

We were going to do a Christmas dinner at Hil's parents' place, but there was a problem with the turkey, so we went to the casino's buffet instead. Hil's sister carpooled along with us. Getting to and from the buffet required passing through the gaming floor thrice. People under 18 are not allowed in those sections, so there are guards at every entrance. All three times, the guard nodded at me, then told the two ladies I was with to produce ID. That made me feel very old.

After our supper at the quite decent buffet, the family trouped back to Hil's house, where we did a mighty gift exchange, sipped tea, and ate homemade cookies and fudge.

Hil's parents left, but Hil's sister stayed for a few more hours. I tried to stay out of the way while the two of them caught up. While casually glancing in a mirror, I noticed my first gray hair. That made me feel really old.

Then, once everyone had finally left, I asked Hilary to marry me. She said "Yes."

Posted by: Boviate at 11:43 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 255 words, total size 2 kb.

Driving home from a holiday party, I tuned the car radio to the local classical station. They were playing Benjamin Britten's A Ceremony of Carols, followed by Francis Poulenc's Gloria. I swear I am not exaggerating when I say that those two works were my two favorites out of the four Christmas concerts I did back in high school.

Ah, nostalgia.

Posted by: Boviate at 09:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 65 words, total size 1 kb.

When my siblings and I were young, a favorite game this time of year was "guess the present". I think we were inspired by my father doing it. Peeking inside the box or damaging the wrapping paper was strictly forbidden, but one could shake the gift, weigh it, determine its center of mass, etc, all in hopes of figuring out what was inside.

Today I got a package from Amazon with a wrapped gift inside. Curiously, the shipping package had a big ORM-D sticker on the outside. For those that have never worked in shipping, the ORM-D label means that the package contains a hazardous material that is exempt from most of the rules governing the carriage of hazmat, because it is packed for sale to an individual consumer. These are usually things like perfumes, cleaning chemicals, and lighters. Now I'm really curious as to what's in there.

UPDATE: It was a bottle of bicycle chain lube. Specifically, "dry" style, meaning it's a volatile oil with suspended waxes and some teflon bits for good measure.

Posted by: Boviate at 09:10 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 175 words, total size 1 kb.

Here's something interesting. All previous NASA radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) were based on plutonium cores and generated electricity by using thermocouples combined to form a thermoelectric generator. But NASA's got two problems with the current generation of RTGs: the Department of Energy is getting stingy about handing out plutonium; and thermocouples are only 5-10% efficient, making the units heavier than they'd like.

Enter the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator. That prior Wikipedia link shows the ground-based prototype, while this news article has pretty pictures and video of the final design. It uses uranium, which is more easily available and also not as dangerous in case of a problem.[1] Intriguingly, it generates the electricity with Stirling engines, which are piston and cylinder technology invented in the early 1800s as an offshoot of steam engines. The great thing about the old RTGs was the total lack of moving parts, making them very durable; the new ASRG has a moving control rod in the center of the uranium, and the Stirling generators have pistons and flywheels and whatnot chugging back and forth, meaning lots of moving parts to get stuck or broken. I guess NASA is confident they will keep working as long as necessary.

Anyway, I just think the whole thing is very cool, and I wanted to let my nerd flag fly.

Video of the whole thing, copied from the news link above:



[1] Environmentalists have been complaining for years about the potential hazards of plutonium being released into the atmosphere by an old-style RTG if it exploded during launch. With uranium, there is already a huge quantity of it in the atmosphere, because uranium is found in trace quantities in coal and thus goes up the smokestack in every factory and power plant that burns coal. Note that I don't expect this to calm down certain environmental groups, specifically those that don't realize that a typical large coal plant releases more atmospheric radiation than did the Three Mile Island power plant during its accident.

Posted by: Boviate at 03:31 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 326 words, total size 2 kb.

Last weekend, I mowed Hil's lawn and declared that mowing season was over. The 10 gallon portable can was still half-full, so feeling virtuous, I poured the leftovers into Hil's car.

Then she reminded me buried in the depths of the garage is apparently a portable electric generator. Power does go out every so often in this part of the world, so it would be a good idea to have that thing ready to go. The house has forced air heat, so if need be I am confident I could use the generator to power the furnace to keep the place from freezing.

Which is to say, guess who gets to fill that stupid gas can up again? *sigh*

Posted by: Boviate at 02:59 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 120 words, total size 1 kb.

This is terribly clever. And also quite respectful of the intended audience. Congrats to the Australian agency that commissioned this little bit of joy:

Posted by: Boviate at 10:34 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.

In this election, we've got an "Barack" versus a "Mitt". How long has it been since there was a presidential election where neither major candidate had a WASPy forename?

Perhaps 1964, with Lyndon vs. Barry. "Barry" is somewhat WASPy, though. 1952 and 1956 were Dwight vs. Adlai, again, "Dwight" seems like it wouldn't be noticeable at Eton. 1852 had a Franklin vs. Winfield, but "Franklin" is a very traditional English word, so I'm going to call it a WASP name. That also disqualifies 1936, Franklin vs. Alf, and 1940, Franklin vs. Wendell.

1872 was Horace vs. Ulysses, and 1868 was Horatio vs. Ulysses. So I'm going to declare those as being the only prior elections where neither major candidate has a WASP forename. Amusingly, neither Horace Greeley, Horatio Seymour, nor Ulysses Grant had any substantial Greek ancestry.

Posted by: Boviate at 12:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 141 words, total size 1 kb.

Well this is really something. I recognized over 3/4 of the clips.

Posted by: Boviate at 11:56 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 21 words, total size 1 kb.

Who said D&D is just a time-wasting hobby? I've just read an interesting summary of a new study. A cognitive scientist mentioned in casual dinner conversation that one of the open questions in his field is whether people fix their gaze on people's eyes, or on the center of their faces, where the eyes just happen to be.

The researcher's high-schooler son pointed out that many D&D monsters have eyes in places other than the center of their faces. (So do a fair number of horror movie monsters, but I guess the kid wasn't into that.) So they did an experiment: they hooked up a bunch of victims undergrads into gaze-monitoring kit, and showed them a variety of pictures from the D&D Monster Manual. It turns out that while gazes initially went to the center of the head, viewer focus shifted to the eyes as soon as they figured out where those eyes were.

The press release/news article is here. I am amused.

Posted by: Boviate at 01:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 163 words, total size 1 kb.

Posted by: Boviate at 10:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 5 words, total size 1 kb.