Mom, Grandma and Mom’s Grandfather Coates. I did not get to scanning various letters and such in the box. Sometime, maybe.
More old pictures from the scanner
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Click to see the picturesHow to calculate the truth
Through Fark I saw this article: The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.
The sum of the article is that there have apparently been lots of media stories saying that 90% of the drug war guns in Mexico come from the U.S. But the article claims that the 90% number is bogus and should be 17%.
Let’s run with that.
You can calculate the 17% pretty accurately by noting that if there’s a repeated, repeated, repeated number under-pinning a story, story, story that matches the media’s core beliefs, then you must multiply the number by the 80% chance that the number is BS, that is, a 20% chance the number is accurate.
90% * .20 = 18%
Which is pretty close to 17%, is it not?
This method of calculating the truth says that Madoff swindled not 60 billion, but 12 billion.
QED.
When kids weren’t driven from one adult-controlled activity to another
When I play morning volleyball with the fogies at Mercer Island the other half of the gym is used by tiny tots, 2-5 years, with their nannies watching and with play directed by young, athletic guys. Rubber balls and cones fill the floor. The kids are shepherded from one thing to the next, learning to follow orders. The toys and tubes look like a whale of fun. And the little boys do spend as much time as they can sliding to the floor. Good for them.
But it gives me the creeps.
With that in mind, I scanned the rest of the “rb” box of old pictures.
Since the page is arranged alphabetically, the new scans are interspersed among the previous scans.
Here’s an example:
Click to see pictures.The pictures include a shot of the really cold winter of ’57 in Astoria – the winter the river froze – back before global warming.
And this one illustrates perfectly the hopefulness of youth:
Viet Nam and Europe Slide Show
Scanned the rest of the slides from the 120 slide show I did back in the early 70’s. The best ones were scanned for the photo CD years ago and are already on line.
Click here for slides.I remember that toy boat and gravel truck
An evening that included seeing some of Mom’s old slides got me in the scanning mood. It took a long time to get successful scans of slides and I ended up with only a couple of test cases.
Gosh, I never thought the Topcon was that bad. But slides don’t lie. It is truly amazing how much improved photographic equipment is from the past.
As if to prove that point, I found a box of old pictures that Mom had said years ago, “I’m going to throw these away.” “No! Wait!”, I said. “I’ll keep them.” She was in a house-cleaning mode and perhaps they were dupes or dregs.
Ok. Well, they are almost certainly dupes and rejects. But, they are what I have, so I scanned about half the box.
Click for “rb” PicturesHere are lessons learned.
- Figure on scanning 30 to 40 pictures an hour, tops.
- You can save them as 24-bit, 2400dpi, lossless TIF files, taking about a nickel a piece to redundantly store at todays prices. (2.75×2.75 inch pictures)
- Or you can store them at a 10th of that price or less in JPEG form.
- On the monitor, you won’t be able to see the difference.
- So, any way you count it, the “cost” of digitizing old pictures is in the labor. And it’s high.
You won’t be able to do anything but brainless, clerical work while you’re scanning. I ripped an audio book. The python rip script automates all but feeding CDs every few minutes. I played Sudoku, but goofed up 3 or 4 times on the same puzzle – so apparently, an easy Sudoku required too much care.
If the pictures mean anything to you, you’ll spend all your time and thought daydreaming – perhaps remembering things long out of mind.
We take pictures for memories. But what do you want to remember?
I wish there were a couple of better pictures of Socko. I wish there were more landscape pictures of the Tillamook house and “yard”. For instance, put the sand box (which I hadn’t thought of in at least 50 years) in context. There’s a picture of Eric with a hammer. Where’s the white handled hatchet whose wielding is a key part of the folks’ memories? I sure remember the hatchet. And to me, and me alone, probably, the title of this post says a lot, though I’d not know what without the picture.
These pictures mostly come from Tillamook. A couple pre-date Eric and me. One is probably the earliest picture of me, if you don’t count that to actually see me, you’d need to be a bat or dolphin. Most have me in them, with a lot of Eric thrown in. (This box appeared filtered, as it contains some specific, Alex, stuff that is not scanned yet. Air Force stuff, for instance.) To me, anyway, the pictures are very evocative of the life we had at the time. The house was out in the woods and Eric and I had an idyllic life, running around in our coats and boots in the woods and the dirt. The folks were very young.
I’ve only one idea of what antique thing was going through my head at 9 years, xmas time. Some Davie Crockett thing? Fur!?! Beats me.
Answering Machine Greetings
Speaking of oral tradition, there may be no written record of a couple of answering machine greetings I thought up on a long commute or two from San Dimas back to Compton.
Ring, ring.
Hello.
How many times have you said to yourself, “I wish I could talk to the Robinsons.“, but have not had the chance?
Well, now, for a limited time only, in this special telephone offer, you, yes, that’s right, you, can leave your message after the tone.
Act now. You can’t afford to pass up this amazing opportunity!
And, remember, this offer is not available in stores.
Beep…
Ring, ring.
Hello.
How many times have you said to yourself, “Why did I dial this number? What made me do this sinful thang?”
Well, God has the answer for each and every one of us. Let me quote to you from the scriptures, Geronimo two, verse five.
“And, behold, when he called, the Lord did answer unto him, ‘Leave your message after the tone.‘”
Beep…
They need a good reader. Who, in the van roaring south on 605 through the sleepy, 2AM darkness, was me.
I’m Your Vehicle, Baby
Summer called. “Dad, have you run the van?” Her van has been sitting in the driveway van-spot for some time now, waiting for better days.
“Uh. Do I have the keys?”
“Yeah! On the hook.”
“OK,” I lied, “I’ll try to start it later. Busy now.”, I lied.
Later came. The danged key was on the ring. So I trudged out to a mild, winter day and played find-a-way-in-to-the-van.
First try:
Well, the door looked locked. The key fit. The key did not turn.
OK. Other side. Not locked. Doh. … But, remember that, reader. It will come up later.
Sit in the driver’s seat. Look down:
Blast from the past!
A floor button to kick on the hi-beams. Cool.
Then I looked around. All of the controls were out of a time warp. Sure, this van is from the, what? 70’s, early 80’s? But it could have been from the 50’s, by the look of the controls.
It screamed, “Road trip.” Of the lowest budget kind.
It was time to fire this baby up.
Battery? Check. Starter motor? Check. Ignition? Uh.
Wrrrr. Wrrrr. Wrrrr.
Well, the beast had been sitting for some months. What can you expect?
I popped the hood. Yep. Another blast from the past. Black cavern. Oil? OK. (Worried, I was, that the gas had water in it, and now the engine did. Rust city, going forward.)
Thinking, “Well, that’s about all I can do. I am not going to go mechanic on this thing.”
“Hmmm. This big thing ‘tween the front seats looks like an old-van engine cover. … Wait! This is an old van!”
Struggle. Jimmy. Struggle. Jimmy.
Air cleaner? Hmmmm. Not exactly pristine. But there’s a carburetor. The little pushy, buttony, cably, add-on thingee appears to ineffectually attempt to be a choke as I had guessed and tried. Let’s apply some real manual choking action, here.
Mess with the butterfly.
‘Nother crank: Cough.
‘Nother crank: Cough.
Diddle with butterfly.
‘Nother crank: Fooom. Rumble, bumble, rumble, bumble. Yep. That’s the sound of good, old, missing-1-spark, Deeetroit iron, my friend.
Let it smoke for a while. Wait for the roughness to mellow out.
Look around.
They don’t make sound systems like this any more!
Put the cover back on the engine. Make the engine stuttering less dramatic.
Drive it in and out of the driveway a couple of times to wind the gears and wheels.
What a boat.
You’d wanna hold this barge under about 15 MPH on curvy mountain roads. Jeez, it’s so easy to forget how bad power steering was in those days.
OK. Shut ‘er down. Time to go back inside the house.
Ooops. Memo to self: Don’t drive this thing in to a lake. The other front door – the one you can open from the outside – doesn’t open from the inside.
Yep. Now this is your vehicle, baby.
Geek day
Google Maps based graphic of oil imports to the US
This is kinda fun to watch.
http://move.rmi.org/features/oilmap.html
It would be even cooler to show the whole world’s oil flow.
Population Pyramids
One of the most informative sites on the web is:
US Census Bureau’s International Data Base (IDB)
For we graph junkies the dynamic population pyramids on the site are candy.
For example:
I’ve found several fun things at this site:
- Median ages climb to astounding heights in most of the “advanced” nations by 2050.
We’re talking median ages in the low 50’s. Heck, the US median age was in the high 20’s in 1975. Look at Nigeria today. 18 or 19. In 2050, Nigeria looks like the US anywhere in the last half-century.
Keep in mind that for most of human history, the median age was well under 20.
When you think about swords and sorcerers, middle ages times, think kids. That’s what people of the day were.
- Certain countries’ pyramids’ 80+ female bars go mondo by 2050.
Both Japan and Italy were striking before the web site’s pyramid graphics added age ranges up to 100+ years.
You really notice when a bar for the age of 80+ years is dramatically longer than any of the other bars.
The median age may be in the low 50’s, but, in a way, the most common person in the country is a woman over 80. I’m thinking that such a country will not be noted for its dynamicism.
- The US baby boom dies out in favor of the echo generation.
The turnover year is 2015 (kinda). That’s when the biggest 5-year birth group in the US switches from one in the 1955-1965 range to 1985-1990.
Keep that in mind when you read opinion pieces about how the US has been on such a thoughtless spending spree and, golly, we have bad times coming to us, if there is a God in heaven.
A slightly less negative view might be: the US has moved in to a period of child raising that’s at the highest expense level. Anyone who has gone through that period can understand how perhaps a wee bit of spending, painful as it might be for the frugal, is not unexpected.
My take is the higher education bubble is gonna burst in the next few years.
- Speaking of dynamicism, look where the centers of the universe go by 2050:
Countries and Areas Ranked by Population: 1950 -------------------------------------------------------- Rank Country or Area Population -------------------------------------------------------- 1 China 562,579,779 2 India 369,880,000 3 United States 152,271,000 4 Russia 101,936,816 5 Japan 83,805,000 6 Indonesia 82,978,392 7 Germany 68,374,572 8 Brazil 53,443,075 9 United Kingdom 50,127,000 10 Italy 47,105,000 -------------------------------------------------------- Note: Data updated 12-15-2008 (Release notes).Source: U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base. Countries and Areas Ranked by Population: 2050 -------------------------------------------------------- Rank Country or Area Population -------------------------------------------------------- 1 India 1,807,878,574 2 China 1,424,161,948 3 United States 439,010,253 4 Indonesia 313,020,847 5 Pakistan 295,224,598 6 Ethiopia 278,283,137 7 Nigeria 264,262,405 8 Brazil 260,692,493 9 Bangladesh 233,587,279 10 Congo (Kinshasa) 189,310,849 -------------------------------------------------------- Note: Data updated 12-15-2008 (Release notes).Source: U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base.There’s a trend to two places: The Indian sub-continent and a kinda central-to-northeast Africa area. That Africa area is bigger than it looks because so many of the countries in that area are little. They don’t make it to the top 10.
- Down the road, which country looks best, demographically?
Easy answer: The US.
The US continues to be an immigrant’s dream. So the demographics stays well balanced ‘tween old and young. The other “advanced” countries end up being hyper-Japans, old folks homes. The big kahuna of the other countries, China, falls off a demographic cliff in a couple decades. China’s median age skyrockets then. Think “greying, 1-child-per-family, spoiled brats”.
Fun stuff.
Techie details:
Apparently, the whole data set is in the WinDOS self-extracting zip file,
This file contains binary data and an ancient DOS program to view the data. XP under VMware is not amused. And you won’t be either.
Textually formatted numbers for the web site’s pyramids are hidden behind HTTP POSTs containing a gob of <input type=”hidden”> values. I’ve not done an automated extraction from the site. I did try a simple tzserver send of the Firefox HTTP headers to get numbers, but had no server response. Must have done something wrong.
The numbers behind the pyramid graphs may be had from pages such as (link is to the US):
Better, simpler numbers may be had from data pages such as (link is to the US):
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/country/%%%%%COUNTRY_CODE%%%%%portal.html
Here is the US table as retrieved from the population pyramid POST.