Sunday, February 25, 2018

Opening Day at Darien Lake

May will be cold and rainy, but that has never stopped us from going to the park opening day. May 5th, 10:30-8 will be the hours. 69 days from today.

The water park opens a few weeks later. We have our season passes and this year we picked the food option. Last year, we spent over 22 days in the park and it seemed to make sense to add in a meal plan. I figured five people dining 22 times a year vs. the $69.99 price tag, that works out be less than 20 bucks a visit. I can't feed a family of five for $20 at McDonalds. We'll see how it goes. 

Today, I am posting some of the nicer images I took over the years. I should create an album for this sort of thing. 

Giant Wheel

The Predator

Tornado

Boomerang

Friday, November 24, 2017

Fractal Logic

This image was rendered for a class on Writing. The red text reads: 

Language holds the logic of 
Why a raven is like a writing desk
Like a piano with 81 keys
Recursion saves the signal
From the lapse of memories


To read the smaller text, I suggest looking at the Google Drawing.

Within each box, is the same text with errors injected. Sometimes on purpose, other times by accident. The first error was that the whole thing was broken down by syllables. However, this is not an accurate rendition of the syllables as the software used was designed for singing, which is wildly different than the more technical definition of a syllable.

Lan-guage holds the log-ic of
Why a ra-ven is like a writ-ing desk
Like a pi-a-no with 81 keys
Re-cur-sion saves the sig-nal
From the lapse of mem-o-ries

I also put in typos and misspellings by going as fast as I could when typing. It was painful not to go back and correct it. I did allow myself to go back and delete incorrect letters, but not actually change them. I mean for this to look frustrating. 

The grid-like fractal pattern was generated on graph paper by the following method: 

Draw a line along one edge of a box on the graph paper.
Toss a coin, heads turn left, tails turn right. 
Repeat.
A lot.

To speed this process, I alternated between cupping a dime in my drawing hand and allowing it move as I drew lines and grabbing a bunch of pennies out of a cup and lining them up dozens at at time. When I reached the boundary of the paper, I would move over into the next blank space with little care as to how it was positioned. 

It was a slow process. Additionally, when I took the pattern to digital, I made more errors. That was something the graph paper was mean to prevent. Oops. 

Monday, August 14, 2017

Writing History - Wilhelm Albrecht Oeltzen - The Lost Astronomer

Wilhelm Albrecht Oeltzen was German astronomer and author of several books. He is known for the processing of a part of Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander's Zones from 1849-1852 in Bonn Germany. Often these are labeled "A. Oe." or "AOe" in catalogs. This was a two step process, I am uncertain if the abbreviations differentiate the two projects. In 1875, he disappeared. I have been unable to find any reference to what he was doing at that time.

Since the 1870s are an interesting time period, it would be no surprise that the man simply passed away of natural causes, far from home.

Notes compiled:

  • Born on Oct 2nd, 1824.
  • Studied at University of Göttingen in 1846.
  • First Assistant at Vienna Observatory 1849-1859, before moving to The Paris Observatory.
  • The Oeltzen's catalogue of Argelander's Southern Zones. 1857-58.
  • The Oeltzen's catalogue of Argelander's Northern Zones. 1851-52.
  • Schwerd's Beobachtungen von Circumpolarsternen in mittleren Positionen published in 1856, with Friedrich Magnus Schwerd.
  • Disappeared in 1875.


Saturday, August 5, 2017

5 Minute Map - Southern Temple

This is a rough map of a temple dedicated to a creature of the deep. 


5 Minute Maps - Keep of Glass

This is a quick, 5 minute map of a strange series of buildings collectively known as The Keep of Glass. The buildings are made of white marble and glass. The interiors are completely bare. Bring an artifact known as the Black Arrow, allows the characters to teleport without error to a distant location.