DIY: Emergency toolkits

Earthquake, Nepal, The Telegraph

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You never know when a disaster will strike. Best to be prepared. Many agencies have webpages with advice on how to prepare for and withstand the conditions of an emergency. Often these pages deal specifically with natural disasters likely to occur in your area. Here in Anchorage we have the Emergency Management pages, published by the municipality.

Being prepared often means having supplies and a toolkit set aside, 'just in case'. Ready.gov's Basic Disaster Supplies lists some essentials. The site offers a wealth of information on other topics related to preparedness, as well. And you may want to take a moment to reflect on what you would sorely miss (that can be included) if disaster strikes.

DMV.org and Edmunds list emergency supplies for your car. It's surprising how long these lists are. Edmunds notes

Granted, all these items practically necessitate a Ford Excursion to haul them down the road, but a basic version with two roadside flares, a quart of oil, small first aid kit, extra fuses, flashlight, Leatherman Tool (or any other multipurpose tool commonly containing pliers, wire cutters, knife, saw, bottle opener, screwdrivers, files and an awl), tire inflator, rags, pocket knife, pen and paper and a help sign will take up a minimal amount of trunk space.

For your home there's a list at The Family Handyman that makes for interesting reading. As the article says:

A disaster can make you a victim or victor. Luck plays a part, and so does knowing what to do. But nothing matters more than preparation. And that means having the right stuff in your emergency arsenal. Here are our suggestions to help you overcome disasters big and small.

-- Marge

Nepal earthquake: how do cell signals get through?

Kathmandu Valley, UnitingNepal

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Headlines about Nepal praise Google and Facebook for their "collaborative, cellphone-based tools [deployed] over the weekend to help track victims of the earthquake (Washington Post)." My question is--how do the signals get through? The country has experienced an earthquake of magnitude of 7.8 to 8.1 (Wikipedia), so power stations, cell towers, and network infrastructure must have been badly damaged.

Reuters in one of their reports published this map:

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Nepal,earthquake map, Reuters

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Currently, there are 6 colocation data centers in Nepal, all of them are located in Kathmandu. This suggests that the cellphone signals are being processed by sites situated elsewhere or by other means.

It looks like Nepal is a magnet for adventurers wanting to trek in the Himalayas. The Mountain Company's FAQ, answering the question "Do mobile/ cell phones work while on trek?," says:

Over the last few years the mobile/ cell phone network has improved significantly in more remote areas of Nepal. There are now cell phone masts installed at Gorakshep so it is possible to get 3G connectivity throughout the entire Everest Base Camp trek.
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In more remote regions of Nepal such as on Dhaulagiri Circuit, Manaslu Circuit and Tsum Valley, Kanchenjunga Circuit, Upper Dolpo treks there will be no mobile/ cell phone coverage. On these trips we send a satellite phone with our groups for communications and our clients are welcome to use for personal calls and SMS texts if they like. 

Also Indian telecom companies are lending a hand.

Indian telecom companies have made calls to Nepal discounted or completely free. Messaging app Viber has made outgoing calls to landlines and mobiles free users of its Viber Out service.

The 2 companies most mentioned in information about cell service in the Nepal area are Nepal Telecom and N Cell (Facebook link, website unavailable).

This is what I could find; I hope you find it useful.

-- Marge

Cartoons: Losing America

Emma Lazarus wrote in 1883:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Today this is what the GOP would write.

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Chan Lowe, The Week

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Their greed has no bounds.

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Tom Toles, The Week

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Meanwhile, those struggling to support themselves struggle more.

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Mike Luckovich, The Week

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And officials' perceptions that only those with money (read power and influence) and a pale skin color matter continue to become more evident.

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Nate Beeler, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: unusual ways to charge your phone

New ways to charge your phone include a solar panel sculpture that imitates an bonzai; using a heat engine powered by a cup of coffee (or slushie); and riding your bike.  For more ways, check out Hongkiat's 30 Smartphone Chargers You Have Not Seen Before and The Week's 9 strange ways to power your cellphone.  Here are the ones most intriguing to me.

Electree "is delivered in modules which you assemble to create your own tree. This method makes it possible to produce an infinity of different shapes. You can model it according to your wishes and at the same time optimize the orientation of the photovoltaic cells and thus increase its effectiveness."

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electree

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Epiphany Labs has a kickstarter underway for the onE Puck. According to their Kickstarter page,

The idea behind the Epiphany onE Puck is to use a stirling engine powered solely by heat disparities, such as a hot or cold drink, a candle, ice, etc. These heat sources will provide enough power to the stirling engine to fully charge your cell phone battery. There's nothing new about Stirling engines - they were invented in the early 1800s - but thanks to modern materials and modern electronics, we are able to put them to use in ways that weren't previously possible.

Take time to watch the video, it has some interesting points to make.

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Epiphany Labs' oneE Puck, kickstarter

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BikeCharge Dynamo uses straightforward technology, you just use your bike to do the charging.

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BikeCharge Dynamo, Tigra Sport

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The WakaWaka Power is such a good idea, I had to include it. Their site says to "buy one = give one" in a developing country and they have a well-developed mission.

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WakaWaka Power

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Here's something we modile users should keep in mind--Pacific Northwest National Library (PNNL) has found that recharging lithium batteries leaves behind microscopic debris. Quoting the article:

An eruption of lithium at the tip of a battery's electrode, cracks in the electrode's body, and a coat forming on the electrode's surface reveal how recharging a battery many times leads to its demise.

-- Marge

Art: murals old and new

Since the time we lived in caves, we've been drawing on the walls. Sometimes Mom gets mad, sometimes the drawings are works of art. The first cave drawings were likely made using charcoal from the fire or stone tools harder than the cave wall. As humans progressed drawing became painting on the walls.

From the Minoans to Renaissance Italians to the present, frescoes have been the preferred method. In frescoes the pigment is laid down on fresh or wet plaster. As a side note, oil paintings on cave walls have been discovered in Afghanistan that date to the  mid-7th century CE (Common Era, also Current Era or Christian Era).

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Bamiyan Oil Painting, CAIS

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In more recent times Diego Rivera held the spotlight for murals, as well as a dispute with one patron that resulted in the destruction of his work "Man at the Crossroads." Here's one of his works still available for viewing.

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Rivera Mural in the National Palace, Mexico

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Often murals are considered decorative art, as stated in the article Reassessing Artworks of Ancient Rome. Pictured in the article is the fresco below. It may have been merely decorative (or commemorative) at the time, but has with the passing of time taken on more meaning.

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The Aldobrandini Marriage, NY Times

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Murals can be political statements, certainly in artist Rivera's case. In my view, street art often qualifies as murals, although they generally are more transitory. Here's a photo essay of The 50 Most Stunning Wall Murals From Around The World. Note that some of Rivera's pieces are included. The image below appears to me to be a statement some might call political.

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Berlin art at Oberbaumbrucke Bridge, The Scenic Sidewalk

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-- Marge

Cartoons: pretending to be pure

Hypocrisy is an ugly word and even uglier to see in action, but we're seeing a lot of it lately.

O.K. Cuban leaders do not have a clean record when it comes to human rights; but, thanks to America's response to 9/11, neither do we.  See Gitmo.

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John Cole, The Week

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Do you think the Republican Party will ever rejoin humanity?

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Tom Toles, The Week

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Shame on you, Atlanta teachers. What if you catch your students cheating?

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Rick McKee, The Week

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Now that April 15th, aka Tax Day in the U.S., is over, we can laugh.

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Marshall Ramsey, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: Troubleshooting the USB 3 / bluetooth interference

Kinivo Bluetooth 4 dongle, Amazon

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My apologies to you readers who have no interest in technical computer stuff.

I've spent several packets of time during the last few days trying to figure out how to set up the bluetooth headset that I want despite a known and experienced problem with USB 3.0 interfering with bluetooth transmission.

Intel defines the problem in this white paper: USB 3.0* Radio Frequency Interference Impact on 2.4 GHz Wireless Devices.  According to the blog Rocket Yard:

The unfortunate result is dropped or lost signals at distances as near as five feet, compared to the normal 20-30 foot reception range of Bluetooth devices. This interference increases the further away from the computer the Bluetooth device is located. At the same time, it was noticed that the further away from the Bluetooth antenna the USB 3.0 device is, the less severe the interference.

The Rocket Yard is talking about Mac minis, while the problem I experienced was due to plugging a Logitech Unifying receiver for a wireless mouse into a USB 3 port in the front panel of my PC. There was no way I'd be able to use the mouse with that configuration. (Finally solved that one by plugging the receiver into the front of a KVM)

While several references suggest shielding will solve the problem, how do you shield either the USB port or the bluetooth dongle? And I'm not finding any shielded bluetooth adapters. Rocket Yard suggests wrapping a special foil around the Mac mini's bluetooth module--a solution that won't work for my machine. The machine shown below isn't like mine, it's far more attractive.

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11 Super Cool Gaming PC Case Mods, GamingBolt

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Seems to me changing the USB 3.0 radio frequency would solve the problem and that's probably in the works. For now I'm going to try plugging the bluetooth adapter into an USB 2.0 port in the back panel. I'm guessing that Bluetooth 4.0 is the best thing to try. We'll see if that works.

If shielding for the purpose of privacy and security is your concern, there are products, such as Silent Pocket that will help.

Please comment if you've found a good solution to the interference puzzle.

-- Marge

Update (04-22-15): Tried my new bluetooth adapter in a USB slot on the front panel -- no go.  In the back panel it works. However... It interferes with the Logitech wireless mouse, so can't use it. Bummer.

Science: Becoming bionic

microfluidics platform, Nature

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While chips about the size of a glass microscope slide are not exactly what come to mind when talking about bionic humans (I'm thinking the Bionic Man and RoboCop), the chips described below are the real McCoy.

Reports of these chips that may augment and assist the human body and even act as functioning organs are beginning to appear with more frequency. Some of these chips are currently being used and some are years away from application. Terms for you to use when tracking development of these and similar devices are microfluidics, biochip, and organ-on-a-chip. Interesting discussions about transmuting nature to hardware that can repair or strengthen human capabilities are available at IEEE's Spectrum.

Gizmag reports on the heart-on-a-chip and other organs being chipified.

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heart-on-a-chip, gizmag

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Harvard's Wyss Institute reports that three ‘Organs-on-Chips’ are ready to serve as disease models and drug testbeds.

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ogan-on-chip, Wyss Institute

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Bionic eye implants show promise for restoring vision to the blind.  TheScientist explains how this might work in The Bionic Eye.

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Bionic Eye, TheScientist

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Great advances have been made in prosthesis. TryEngineering offers a Bionic Arm Design Challenge that can be approached as a game in which you will "virtually design and test a robotic arm, and learn how engineers create working artificial arms."

-- Marge

Cartoons: to serve and protect--whom?

Yet another police shooting and cover up; this one in North Charleston, S.C. Columnist Jay Bookman at the AJC (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) reports on this one. Here's how his article starts:

I’m not going to post the video here — it is available in multiple places for those who wish to watch it. But the screengrab above captures the tragedy of it. Fifty-year-old Walter Scott, pulled over for a broken taillight on Saturday, is shot five times in the back by a North Charleston, S.C. policeman who later claimed that he had fired only because he felt that his life was in danger. That was the police department story until the video above, taken by a passerby, was given to the media.

Police officials also initially described efforts to revive Scott through CPR. The video again tells a very different story. After the shooting, Scott’s body is handcuffed, but officers make no effort to assist or revive him. The video also captures the officer, Michael Slager, 33, apparently rearranging the crime scene by dropping an item next to Scott’s body. Both men had served in the Coast Guard.

This photo accompanies his article.

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Video by a passerby, AJC

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Here are some of the comments published by leading editorial cartoonists.

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 Adam Zyglis, The Week

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Mike Luckovich, The Week

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Steve Sack, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: Try a new game in an Improbable world

Worlds Adrift, Bossa Studios

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Currently, one of the major drawbacks in virtual worlds like Second Life, Landmark Game, and most MMOs is lag. If the program is trying to render too much in-world stuff or too many players are in one area at a time, a user experiences slower player input to game reaction times. Sometimes this is the result of the equipment the user is using, sometimes its caused by latency.

Some fellows at Cambridge University are developing a new type of engine that may change the nature of MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games). This is how they describe their work:

Improbable is developing an operating environment that makes building simulated worlds possible. Worlds which can be run in real time, simulating the behaviours and interactions of millions of entities. Spaces with their own rules and properties that a multitude of people can simultaneously change, explore and visualise in as many different ways as developers can imagine.

Simulated worlds provide unique insight to those asking questions of complex systems. As well as enabling completely new experiences in gaming, simulated worlds can solve significant problems in areas as diverse as defence, energy, city efficiency, health, and finance.

Gamemaker Bossa Studios is working on a project based on this engine called Worlds Adrift. The folks at Bossa Studios want us to be "a part of the development and let us know what you think." You can sign up by entering your email address at the site. Here's one of their latest videos.

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There is a Worlds Adrift channel on YouTube. If you like your information filtered and expanded, keep an eye out for Rock, Paper, Shotgun's always interesting reports.

News of Improbable and Worlds Adrift was first caught by me at New World Notes.

-- Marge

Art: flowing ink

ink wash, Marco Polo TV series, Mill+

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For an artist ink can be both satisfying and frustrating to work with--not to mention the inevitable ink stains and stained fingers. Then you get into ink washes, and things really get unpredictable. But when your ink project works, life is wonderful.

This video by artist Margaret Evans gives an idea of one technique for an ink wash.

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Another ink technique is this one, demonstrated by Leonardo Pereznieto.

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Which brings me to the topic being featured today--Mill+'s stunning work (Mill Channel) on the title sequence for Netflix's new series Marco Polo.

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Unfortunately the title sequence has been blocked on YouTube, but you can watch it on Vimeo, The Mill+ has an informative blog entry about this project.

-- Marge

Cartoons: spring--what is that I smell?

Ah, spring!

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Rick McKee, The Week

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In spring, 2014, a 2-year renovation of the U.S. Capitol Dome was started; it may be done by January, 2017, reports WJLA in Washington, DC. This is what cartoonist Tom Toles has to say about it.

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Tom Toles, The Week

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Here's a comment on the current U.S. budget.

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David Horsey, The Week

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And, if you're as confused about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA--"riff-ra" in common speak), be sure to read Jay Michaelson's "RFRA 101."

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Steve Benson, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: add flowers to that salad

Eating Dandelions, Indiana Public Media

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In this era of trying to control one's weight, salads are a primary feature of many meals. As with anything done too regularly, they can become tiresome.  One thing I do for variety is add bits of different types of greens to the customary lettuce, such as kale, beet greens, spinach, and even a small amount of fresh lemon balm (it's an herb, so has a stronger flavor).  Something I've wanted to try, but haven't, is adding flowers.

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Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), Texas A&M University

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While a number of flowers are edible, some are definitely not edible or should only be eaten in small amounts. This is from the Wikipedia article linked above:

Some flowers are safe to eat only in small amounts. Apple flowers (Malus spp.) contain cyanide precursors and Johnny jump-ups (Viola tricolor) contain saponins. Borage (Borago officinalis) and daylily (Hemerocallis spp.) flowers are diuretics and sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) can have blood-thinning effects. The flowers of linden trees (Tilia spp.) are reportedly safe in small amounts but heavy consumption can cause heart damage. Marigolds (Tagetes spp.) can be harmful in large amounts, and only certain species have an appealing flavor.

Toxic flowers are easily mistaken for edible varieties, and safe and unsafe species may share a common name. Various non-toxic plants can cause severe allergies in some people. Flowers commonly carry traces of pesticides and harbor organisms such as insects. Flowers cultivated as ornamental plants for garden use are not intended for use as food.

Note that some non-toxic plants can cause severe allergies, so exercise caution and know your dinner guests. It's interesting to note that among the toxic plants listed at Wikipedia are kidney beans, lemons, wild potatoes, and rhubarb.

Apparently, "Edible flowers are the new rage in haute cuisine." There's some good info on what flowers and herbs can be used in this article from What's Cooking America. Especially helpful are the descriptions of what flavor to expect. I've heard often that dandelions are very beneficial.

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Edible Flowers, What's Cooking America

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If the idea of using flowers for cooking appeals to you, here's a recipe for "Spring Bouquet Popsicles." They're pretty, but do they taste good?

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Flower Popsicles, Marla Meridith Photography

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-- Marge