I don't like to get political, but gat dayum does it feel good outside. We have a cat with no tail that wanters around the neighborhood, and another one with a complete tail that likes to hang out with us while we sit on the porch. Splendor, by the way, is an excellent board game if you ever try it.
The crops are coming in well, except some piece of shit rabbit ate two of my sweet corn plants already, those bastards. But, I threw a pumpkin in my planter last year and it has turned into a beautiful pumpkin plant. Almost too big.
The peonies are in bloom, check 'em out:
I've been reading a lot lately about typesetting. My only question to myself is: Why? Why this? Why now? Why not think about other things? There must be something wrong in the mind of a typesetter, because poring over the level of detail in a printed page that I've been reading about is insane...but also...I get it. I think the template page for my website got the train rolling in my head that we put too much effort into making things look so bland everywhere: corporate websites, search results, all of the internet is just text gussied up with css and javascript to make it look "good". Well what is "good" looking web design? Well, it might just be not that different from the art of typesetting that's been perfected over hundreds of years by generations of artisans, then gleefully thrown in the trash when the internet came around.
I've found myself pondering over what my favorite typeface is... ever since I used LaTeX for the first time I've loved Computer Modern. It's actually what I use for most pages of this web site. I know it's not quite the same when used as an otf but I think it's near perfect. Times is also great, along with Helvetica. Let me know in the comments below what your favorite typeface is! Yep, just keep scrolling, keep going, that's it, all the way down to the bottom there...gotcha! April fools!
So yeah, I love diving deep into stuff like this. In a few months it will probably wear off but for now it's fascinating to me. It makes me wonder what the future of the internet would have looked like if html was written in part or whole by a typesetting software engineer. How much more could be accomplished wil html and how many users would stay on it with CSS exclusively without any JS?
I usually don't write poetry but here's something I was thinking about today:
A year of song
flowered trumpets burst forth in fanfare
winged flutes lilt and trill the air
gradual crescendos of grass rise and are cut short
an old tree who's seen many movements thunders to earth in climactic release
browning crisp clarinets arpeggiate and dance for our amusement
thick white baritones drone beneath, rising in intensity
stillness takes hold
tragedy and redemption, a cycle never ending
These are the great works of life
I was able to take some time off of work this past week. It has been absolute bliss. I've planted the garden (carrots and garlic, soon to be tomatoes, sage, and green beans), started my cornhole board project, and have played copious amounts of Persona 5. There is something in the air now that puts a spring in my step.
On top of all this, it is Easter Sunday morning right now and I'm about to head off to service. Say what you will, I always think Easter day has a reverence and special aura about it that's not present on other days. This has added immensely to the enjoyment of my vacation.
Something about the Midwest always makes it hard to keep a consistent mood year-round. The weather definitely is a large part of it, since I think it feeds into the other great mood disrupter which is eating food that is sugary and/or not good for you. It's been a struggle lately with the weather teasing us like it's going to come out of being frigid and begin to warm up, only to go back to being intolerable. I want to plant things! I want to feel grass on my feet! I need to be around things that grow. Maybe when the season starts up I'll turn this into a gardening blog instead. I started some tomatoes, red onions, green onions, rosemary, and thyme indoors, however they all look pretty pitiful.
Anyways, I started taking St. John's Wort out of curiosity, as I had just finished reading Robert Sapolsky's Book Why Zebra's Don't Get Ulcers, and he had mentioned that St. John's Wort is the only known "herbal" remedy that has proven better than a placebo for depression and anxiety. Now, I'm not diagnosed with depression, but I am and anxious person, so I decided to just get some from the supplement rack to try it out. The first time I took it I definitely felt a mellowing effect. Afterwords though, the feeling was more muted and I feel like it leveled out my mood, both in good ways and in bad. Nothing major though. I may continue to take it sparingly but I don't thing I'll buy another bottle. Also if you're reading this and are thinking of getting some, just a warning it interferes with a lot of medications so if you're on something already, just don't.
That's all I really had on my mind today. I'm thinking I should probably cut out sweets for a while and see how I feel in a month.
I'm an engineer by trade, and I've had a fascinating set of problems in my lap recently where I have charged myself with reverse engineering a winch. This winch take a standard 1725 RPM motor as input and outputs about 1 RPM, delivering a large amount of torque across first a 123:1 worm drive, then a 118:11 Spur gear with a pinion coaxial to the worm gear. Quite a reduction of over 1700:1! Anyways, I'm not going to wade into the numbers, but I've been learning a lot about different gear types and trains and asked myself a lot of obvious questions like:
To the second point, turns out prime numbers are important in gearing. It means it takes may more rotations for the same two teeth to contact each other again, making the wear even across the teeth. If you've got a 60 tooth spur and a 20 tooth pinion, well that's no good because every three rotations the same teeth are hitting. but with 11 teeth and 118 teeth, the same teeth are only going to contact once every 88 revolutions, I believe.
Then lastly, the worm is brass because it improves efficiency of the worm, bumping up that 60% number to something more like 65%. Also, conveniently the worm and the spur are about the same size diameter, which means less wasted space in the housing, which means less wasted material, and less oil needed.
That is all.