Our Cats

We are currently living with five felines that have domesticated us.  In addition, we are fostering three kittens until August 7th.  Since Yeongmi and I married we've had two other cats that are no longer with us.  We've also fostered eight cats (counting the kittens), all since we moved back to Utah in September of 2023.

Teddy, Moki, and Midna  2024

A Roman Denarius

I received a gift today from my son of a Roman Denarius coin. It is purported to be a silver coin issued in Rome between 211 and 238 BC.  The silver denarius was first issued in 211 BC as part of a coinage reform.  It contained approximately 4.5 grams of silver and was worth 10 asses, hence the name meaning "ten".

The inscriptions on the coin lead me to believe this coin is from a later date during the imperial era.

You Need to Know about the Hundredth Meridian

The Hundredth Meridian was identified by John Wesley Powell (a fascinating character in his own right) as a geographic tipping point separating the wet Eastern US from the dry West.  This has all sorts of implications for ecology and social structure.  Here is a fascinating YouTube video on the subject.

Basically, the dry West is due to the rain shadow from the Rocky Mountains (very broadly defined).  East of the 100th meridian, the land was wet and dominated by forests that were not dissimilar to those with which most European immigrants were familiar.  To the west of this line the land was dominated by grasslands and desert, to which the settlement patterns adopted in the East were not well suited.

"At the Hundredth Meridian" is also a great song by The Tragically Hip.

Domesticated Foxes

Apparently foxes were domesticated thousands of years ago. I guess it never stuck like it did with cats and dogs. Gizmodo has an article that a site in Spain had foxes buried with humans.

"Researchers from several institutes and universities analyzed bones collected at the burial site. They studied the isotopes found in the collagen preserved in the bones, which can provide insights into the diets of individuals. In human bones, we can learn about the diet of an adult in the last five to 10 years of life. In young adult dogs, the diet data spans from six months to three years."

During the 1950s in the USSR, there was a successful systematic attempt to domesticate the silver fox.  The researchers also successfully bred silver foxes for "violence"; a sort of anti-domestication.

The 점심 - Dim Sum Connection

The Korean word for lunch (점심) comes from the same Chinese characters as Dim Sum (點心 or 点心). In Cantonese it is pronounced dim sam, and in Mandarin it is pronounced dian xin. In Japanese they pronounce it as tenshin and it means "snack" . In Vietnamese it is diem tam and means "breakfast". Apparently the lunch meaning came through Eastern Chinese dialects, as in the Shanghai dialect ti xin, is often used for "lunch". In most dialects of Chinese it means "snack", "light refreshment" or "pastry". The word dates back to the Tang Dynasty (618 - 906 A.D.).

Artistic Styles in Craiyon / DALL-E mini

An old man holding a dachshund

George Washington

Gandalf

Big Bird

All of the images above were created by an AI known as Craiyon or DALL-E mini.  This is a simplified version of DALL-E, a neural net that converts text into images.

I am impressed with how the program manages to imitate various art styles, so I am going to show a series of generated images that use the same prompts as above, but also add an artist or artistic style.  Some of the images are quite impressive, while others are odd or silly.  Click on any of the images below to view a larger version.

I picked the subjects because "An old man holding a dachshund" is fairly specific, but open to a lot of artistic interpretation.  "George Washington" is a historical figure with a well-known image, so much less open to interpretation.  "Gandalf" is a fictional character, but the image from the movies played by Ian McKellen is, by far, the most widely known.  Finally, "Big Bird" just looked really awesome when painted by Caravaggio.

You Think You Have Translation Problems?

In his book, Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose notes the following translation sequence occurred when Lewis and Clark met the Wallawalla Indians in April 1806. Lewis speaks in English George Drouillard or Francis Labiche, French Canadian soldiers in the expedition, translate this into French. Toussaint Charbonneau, a 45-year-old French Canadian trapper who speaks no English, translates this into Hidatsa, a language he has picked up in the course of trading with the Indians. Sacagawea, Charbonneau’s fifteen-year-old Shoshone wife who had been captured by the Hidatsa four years earlier, translates this into Shoshone. A Shoshone woman held captive by the Wallawallas translates this into Wallawalla, a language related to Nez Perce. This was considered an improvement over the sign-language they had been using with the Indians further west.

Computer Case Mod for "Gondor"

 

I assembled my first custom-made desktop computer several years ago when I was still living in Utah. My youngest son, Alan, had actually put it together a year or two before that, but he was upgrading and I wanted something better than the MacBook BYU had issued me as a work computer.

A DALL-E Short Story

 

This story starts with the simple inquiry to DALL-E mini, shown above.

Imagining Feelings with DALL-E Mini

 

DALL-E mini is a app that converts text into images.  It's based on a larger neural net called (not surprisingly) DALL-E.  The main public usage of DALL-E mini seems to be the generating of silly memes like those linked in this article.

One really interesting use, however, is to see the kind of images it generates when you type in feelings and emotions that are rarely associated with a specific image.  The images above are from "existential angst."

Building Westmarch, my Home NAS

 

A couple of months ago my main desk top computer, which I built two years ago at the begining of the COVID pandemic quit working.  Diagnosing the problem took me down a real rabbit-hole of possible parts problems and I ended up with some extra working parts at the end of that journey.  (The problem turned out to be a bad HDD.)  As a result I decided to see if I could cobble together a working home NAS.

There's something about ...rungus!

 

Not long ago a comedian named Guy Kelly typed in the nonsense name, Crungus, into DALL-E mini and got the horrifying result above.  DALL-E mini is a app that converts text into images.  It's based on a larger neural net called (not surprisingly) DALL-E.

What is a Mergopus?

 

Is this a mergopus?

What exactly is a mergopus?  Try searching on your favorite internet search engine and you will find no information on the word.  This is because it is a nonsense word I made up a few days ago.

Family Cars

Looking through old slides and other photos, I saw several automobiles that I vividly remember from my childhood.  Also some others that just look really cool, but which predate my arrival on this planet.

Ford F-Series Pickup 1st Generation owned by Russell and LaVon Phillips

Cleaning Old Slides

I have spent the past several months scanning old slides that were taken by my father and grandfather.  Some of the loose older slides were very dirty and smudged.  I originally scanned these "as is", but after some reading online decided to try cleaning them up.  I used a spray bottle with 99.5% pure alcohol and some microfiber cloths.  The images below show the before and after photos.

  

Click on any image to view a larger version.  Left and right arrows allow you to quckly tab through the images and compare the before and after versions.

Repairing a Colt 1861 Navy Revolver

I was visiting my mother in February this year and chanced across the above revolver in an old chest full of things from my great grandfather, George Francis (Frank) Crawforth.  I posted this photo to Facebook asking if anyone could identify it and two of my mission companions, Gary Mackelprang and Glen Leewright informed me that it is an 1861 Colt Navy cap and ball revolver.  This one has a serial number of 12101, which the Colt serial number website says was manufactured in 1863.

I contacted several gunsmiths about restoring it and they all informed me that the gun is too far gone for full restoration and would not be worth the cost.  The cylinder is rust welded to the cylinder pin and will not rotate.  I tried several methods of loosening the weld, but none worked.  In the end, I have decided to clean it up and put a trigger guard and grip back on the gun.  The plunger is also missing, and that will need to be replaced and the trigger is broken and needs replacement as well.  Since the cylinder does not turn, I can't fully repair the action, but I can get the trigger and hammer to work.

I'm documenting the repair process below.

Two Methods of Converting 8mm Film to Digital

A couple of decades ago I got a copy of some of my grandfather's old 8mm home movies he filmed in the 1960s.  These films were played on an 8mm film projecter onto a screen and recorded again using a VHS camcorder.  I got a copy of this tape.  About a decade ago, I digitalized all my VHS tapes using a VHD to DVD converter deck.  This included the tape with my grandfather's movies.  Then a few years later, I converted the DVD files to mp4 format to share with family more easily.

Favorite Albums since 2000

These are my favorite albums since 2000 - (in progress)

Sailing to Philadelphia (2000) - Mark Knopfler

Favorite Albums of the 80s and 90s

These are the albums I regularly played over and over again in the 1980s and 1990s.

Eye in the Sky (1982) - Alan Parsons Project

My Favorite Science Fiction

These are my favorite science fiction (not fantasy) books of all time.

The City and the Stars (1956) - Arthur C. Clarke