Robin In The 'Hood?

Yesterday, J spent several hours intently researching bird songs on the internets. She had noticed an unusually clear and melodious tune coming from somewhere in the neighborhood, a voice that seemed familiar, but yet one that she couldn't place. Off she went to the computer, and for the next four hours bird calls peeped, squawked, chirred and pippled from the speakers. This one was clearly complaining, "People never know our song tunes."

We had to leave for a drumming gig, so I busied myself loading the car. It was a day of audible contrasts. We played on the sidewalk and at the curb on a very busy street, with big diesel buses stopping beside us to board and discharge passengers. The store (10,000 Villages) had arranged for the group to celebrate Fair Trade Day, dedicated to the principle that if we're going to buy from other countries we should not take advantage of them. I bought a bamboo pan flute and J purchased a clay ocarina.

Unusually for the drummers, the noise levels out on the street were almost enough to silence them. The pedestrians had no trouble, and many paused for a while to listen. Some danced a bit, and some of the kids took over a djembe or two for a few licks. 

The band flailed away valiantly for three hours despite the physical layout. The musicians at either end could not hear their opposite companions well enough to stay crisply on the beat at times.

At dinner, J announced that she had found the bird song. It belonged to a baltimore oriole, who clearly believed in being heard and not seen. The identification of a baltimore oriole is relatively straightforward if you can see the bright orange breast and black head, but the bird is very creative when singing.

At one point, a technology company offered an in-field pair of binaural bird identifiers, the Song Sleuth, a portable device with a built-in sound matching algorithm that could identify the likely source of whatever you focused it on. According to the site, it was too expensive to manufacture for the target market ($299), but they're working on a new model and looking for a manufacturer. 

I hope they succeed, because as everyone knows, spring is the best time for birding: the birds are calling, the leaves are not fully out on the trees, and in the clear air of a fine spring day, what can be more satisfying than to know that even if you haven't seen it, you can be sure of the bird you heard. Meanwhile, pass the mnemonics, please.

Archaeology: can you dig it?

Yesterday, for something completely different, we took our portable GPS and set off for the Cincinnati Museum Center, a huge former train terminal from the 1900's when trains were the preferred intercity method of travel.

On arrival at the parking lot, we were told that all the handicapped spaces opposite the building appeared taken, so we parked in the main lot and tugged out the wheelchair. The wind chill was pretty palpable, but we survived the push up the sloping drive to the main building.  After a few attempts and some compression, we were able to get the 24-inch chair through the 24-inch doors, and proceeded to buy tickets to the Natural History Museum section.

We navigated several areas of the NH, mainly by trying to brake the chair from rolling down the interior ramps. Many exhibits display the natural history of Ohio. It gives one pause to contemplate the lower jaw of a mammoth, compare it with that of a mastodon, and realize that both stomped the Ohio landscape from the Ice Age until about 10,000 years ago.

As a learning center, this museum is not burdened by today's computerized electronics. Rather than clicking mice or breaking lightbeams, these exhibits tend to offer specimens mounted on the walls, with a bit of natural history narrative below, terminating in a question which can be answered by lifting up a cover, below which is printed the correct response. Most of these are multiple-choice. This simplistic, non-mechanical approach means, essentially, that the only thing that can go wrong is that a lightbulb may burn out inside a display case. In fact, the few displays that actually used computers didn't seem to be working.

Have you ever seen the underside of a blue jay? Perhaps. But all of the birds in the collection are mounted on their backs, so the undersides are pretty much all you see. This is interesting because it's not the usual way you see birds, except in flight, and they are too fast to study in that mode.

It took about two hours to move through to the end of the museum, which terminates in a display of the contents of a number of 19th century outdoor privies, excavated in the back yards of older houses in the earliest parts of the city. What is left of a 38-caliber revolver tossed down the hole is perhaps the most interesting of the many household articles and vast quantities of hand-blown bottles. This exhibit is artfully located just down the hall from the restrooms on the lowest level.

At 3:00 pm it would be time to watch the Omnimax film "Grand Canyon Adventure". We were led to the elevator, where we ascended to the globe-shaped theatre. While waiting for the current showing to release its audience, we bantered with a couple of older couples, who "always wanted to see the Grand Canyon/always wanted to go whitewater rafting".

The movie itself is an experience that can be, at times, disorienting. It's a bit like watching the news crawl at the bottom of a weather channel: when you look up at the main screen after watching the marquee scroll for a while, you could swear the screen was moving. But because the Omnimax is like having your head inside a globe, some scenes, such as lifting off over the edge of a mile-deep gorge, can make you feel as though you were actually on board the helicopter. It's not 3D, unless you mean disorienting, dizzying and death-defying.

So, yeah. We got our money's worth, and more. And we left promptly at 4:00 pm. Within 20 minutes, we were in a traffic snarl that came close to being a parking lot, on I75.  There had been "an accident". All it takes in the big cities is one car to depart from the norm, and we're all in trouble. I truly believe that an evacuation order from Cincinnati would be impossible to fulfil.

Some time later, after successive arguments with Jill, our GPS unit who seems always to want to bring you back to the route that you were taking when the trouble occurred, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel to fill the stomach and pass the time. On the wall were three old tools that evoked some reminiscences of my days in the cottage country of Central Ontario.

The first was a two-man crosscut saw. My Dad and my Uncle Sid (who is now about 98) are preserved on DVD cooperatively trimming the logs that underpinned our lakeside dock with one of these. 

The second was a drawknife, used to rip the bark off branches when making wooden rustic furniture.

The third was a nipper, that I had seen a couple of times used by a blacksmith to pull the old nails from horses' hoofs.

Was that a day!

A trip I didn't enjoy.

A paradox. That's what it is. 

As a library systems person, I have always had the conviction that the library's computers must be kept running at all times. When I worked at the Thunder Bay Public Library many years ago, I sometimes suddenly woke up in the early hours of the morning, usually from the rumble of distant thunder. If lightning accompanied it, I would instinctively feel around for my clothes, and before the storm hit, I would be dressed and out the door, on my way to the workplace.

In those days, electric power supplies were not as sophisticated (for the money) as are today's versions. Even though our computer room circuits were protected by a massive Uninterruptible Power Supply, they were not certain to survive everything nature could throw at them. And in any case, the batteries on that UPS could only keep things running for perhaps a half hour at best.  Today's versions have software that can phone a designated person in the event of a failure. (Ever notice that phone service rarely goes down, while power is more vulnerable?) 

Our service probably could have included that extra cost feature, but did not, but in any case, it didn't matter. My instincts served me well. I was like a wolf in an earthquake zone. 

After the storms passed, I would be there to restart any gear that was down, and assess damages if any. In those cases when the event was prolonged, I might have to restore files from a backup tape.

Today, I work in a system that has a very large UPS in a separate computer room with environmental conditioning. There are about a dozen servers, and some other computers drawing power from the room's own service panel. Power interruptions are, thankfully, rare, and when they occur, the UPS generally gives us an hour to shut things down gracefully.

So why did the entire room shut down instantly yesterday, servers, services, UPS and all?

We decided to set up a brand new server that will take over the duties of one of the ones due to retire. I crawled under the counter to remove a small power supply (also known as a "wall wart") that powered a set of computer speakers, to make room for a power strip with six receptacles on it. I plugged it in, and then plugged in the power supply. As I pushed it home, I noticed a small blue spark. Instantly the room went dark and quiet, except for the emergency lighting and the light from the windows. HUH?

This was a case of the 25-cent engine part bringing down the plane. Presumably, a faulty power strip shorted out when the plug was inserted, and the main circuit breaker tripped. It was electrifying.

It took my boss and me a few minutes to find the solution, because, unlike many breakers whose handles flip to the half-open position, everything seemed unchanged. Finally, he toggled the main switch, and the lights came back. Half an hour later, we had the servers back up.

Fortunately, the incident occurred on a day when the first heavy snowstorm of winter had rolled over the area. Not many people were making it to the library in any case, so the main complaint was that users couldn't get on the internet for a while.

I'm no electrician, but I would suspect that the UPS basically protects the circuits from incoming events. When the wall wart shorted out the circuit, it did was not a power failure or a surge from the main supply. It was a problem from the circuit itself, flying back to the main breaker, which did its job. Don't try this at home, if you can.