I waked with something making a racket at the window screen. Wasn’t sure but what I ought to get Ol’ Betsy and check it out, but the tops of the bush outside my window were tossing wildly in the wind, and the joint-ache that had plagued me all evening was gone.
Yep, that was a front barreling through. With rain. Quite a lot of it. I am still sneezing my head off. The yellow pollen dust (it’s the first time I’ve seen dust rimming puddles on the ground, and coating lawn furniture like some alien plague fallen from space—that was yesterday morning. This morning things are rain-washed, and the day’s jobs—water the front yard plants with fertilizer and pull and clean the pond filters—are in doubt.
I really, really need to get the pond filters done, because when they back up, the emergency drain can lower the pond level and generally mess up the chemistry.
This is where a rain suit can come in handy—top and bottom. Rubber clogs, pants, coat hood of impermeable cloth: and pretty warm. That may be the order of the day, to get that filter cleaned out. Yesterday I tackled the waterfall filter and backflushed it into a hose that wasn’t clamped down enough…and it needed a flush badly: smelled of hydrogen sulfide, which is not a friendly situation. Wasn’t too bad a condition yet, just a hint of it, but I still got it right in the face and soaked my clothes. So I fixed the clamp (new drain hose) and then went for my second shower of the day.
Today—at least it’s not that filter. I just have to pull 8 filter pads that weigh a ton when full and hose them down over the ivy bed until they’re light again.
The hawthorne is in full bloom. Every branch is pink half-inch rosettes on all sides. Maxfield Parrish, I tell you.
I gripe, but if not for the garden I’d sit in my chair working all day, which is not good for a body.
And a fast check of the weather forecast shows rain as far as the forecast goes. A lot of it. So I think I’d better put on the rain suit and get that filter changed. The fertilizer-job I think will get skipped this week.
Your pond and aquarium stories make me think you could do a bang-up stroy involving sea-farming on station, or a something involving diving and undersea habitats (human or dolphins or whales, or something more alien).
Therer could be a lot more that’s interesting about the stsho and other Llyene life, for instance. Silk, pearls, teas, seafood?
But I’ll also confess I loved the old Flipper reruns, back when I was a pre-teen and teen. — However, the Gulf Coast setting was mostly familiar, so their famliy life was relatable. All that swimming looked great. And an intelligent marine mammal (Flipper, other dolphins) as a friend, alien and yet relatable too, plus the beautiful underwater scenes and science, just great.
You know, one thing about the “old days” before widespread cable TV, when even a big city had only a few network TV stations: There were some high quality nature and science programs with the National Geographic Specials; quality shows on PBS for kids’ education and for adults, both education and drama (and science fiction); and you could count on pretty good SF&F reruns on Saturday afternoons, for example, or late-afternoon and weekly evening time slots for movie-of-the-week type things, or those After School Specials. heh, Saturday cartoons and Schoolhouse Rock, too. Or the Wonderful World of Disney.
So most Americans could get a monthly or weekly dose of science and nature, such as Jacques Cousteau’s French accent or Jane Goodall or Diane Fossey or the Leakeys with apes and hominids.
These days, things are so saturated and scattered, people may not get that kind of drama and educational programming, unless they really seek it out and prefer it. (Hmm, I remember when certain cable channels focused on what their names were for subject matter, instead of reality TV, too.)
(Remembering Jacque Cousteau’s specials on National Geographic Specials, before cable and before I knew French, his wonderful footage and knowledge about saline is what sparked that, in relation to your writing anything sea-based.)
Hmm… and I’d bet you could write a fine maritime Age of Exploration / Pirates / etc. novel too.
While I zealously learned the parts and rigging of a tall ship at about age 7, I just don’t know it the way I know the ancient world. And paradoxically, when I try to write in the real ancient world, it gets to be more an archaeological treatise. 😉
I did get the filters washed. Glug. Thank goodness for rain suits. That would have been a cold, cold job with the rain falling and the wind blowing and water all about.
Heh, well, a novel set in the real ancient world might still be enjoyable. I suspect you’d be able to reign in the tendency to exposition or lecture.
On the other hand, you could write a textbook. Criminy, the prices of textbooks these days, even in ebook format! — I haven’t seen many in Kindle format. But I’ve seen examples done for Apple’s iBooks, both to showcase what can be done, and to provide actual classroom texts. Yowza. While I’m not a teacher, those are quite impressive information designs and graphic designs, and really get the message across. (When Apple first introduced these, they released several in cooperation with some major publishers and textbook authors / professors, and the pricing was good and I got a couple. Biology, various levels of Math, etc.) — I’d also love to see better language textbooks with audio and video media for practice hearing and speaking.
The greyscale Kindles still lack a lot of the potential to vewi full formatting/design, which I find very sad as a reader, potential author, and designer. I don’t know how well the color Kindle Fire tablets handle that. It’s so-so on the Kindle apps for Windows, Macintosh, and iPad; it varies a log. For that, Apple’s iBooks app (Mac and iPad) looks nicer. The Kindle is good, though, if not as visually rich, and I’ve bought my share of Kindle titles. Heh. I have this weakness for books, you see….
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A couple of recommendations: Jim C. Hines has edited Invisible and Invisible 2, of which volume 2 came out this week. US $2.99 each on Kindle. Also available elsewhere, other ebook formats.
These are two collections of essays by guest bloggers on his blog, last year and this year, on issues of diversity and representation of all kinds of minority groups (women, physical ability/disability, sexual orientation, racial and ethnic minorites, age or youth, … a very wide spectrum of issues. These are as much self-criticism as wakeup calls for all of us as readers and fans and authors, editors, publishers, agents, in the SF&F genre. — And it is meant to point up things we, any of us, may not have considered or might not be comfortable with … or might be all too aware of, having experienced it ourselves. These cover authors’ experiences trying to write characters with various traits or experiences, as well as people within a given group who were searching for someone like themselves in fiction.
I really liked the first volume last year, and had read nearly all the essays. Some are confrontational. Some are difficult to read because they ring so true, and some point out things one might not have considered before, and then wonders why not? More than one struck home for me, as fitting in a category or two there. The essays include experiences of authors’ personal lives as well as trying to write stories or trying to get their stories published, and of readers looking for something like their own experiences of life / the world in fiction.
I haven’t been following the blog as regularly this year, so the second volume will be mostly new to me. But on the strength of the first volume, I expect to like the second just as well.
Your mileage may vary, gentle reader. Each to one’s own opinions and tastes.
They’re each $2.99 US on Kindle and elsewhere, so they are cheap, er, I mean, moderately inexpensive.
(I’m off to get the 2nd volume now.)
I learned of the rigging and parts of the tall ships from C. S. Forester…..I used to have a really nice Time-Life Book Series called “The Seafarers”, but that has been in the ex’s possession for the last 14 years and I’m afraid it’ll stay there forever. There were some really nice books that described not only fighting ships (one volume was “Fighting Sail”), but also merchants, such as clippers.
Glad to hear you got the filters cleaned. That’s still a miserable job, no matter what the outside temperature happens to be.
RE: the Time-Life series, check your local library. It is a very complete rundown of the sailing tradition through the ages, and we still have our set.
I’ve looked at my local library…they don’t have it…..I want MY set!!!! Waahh!!!! but thank you for the suggestion.
The Time-Life series, The Emergence of Man, came out in the ’70’s and was one of the best archaeology book series ever. I still don’t think the ‘recreation” pictures have been beaten. My mom subscribed to the series for me and I devoured them.
http://www.amazon.com/Time-Life-Books-Seafarers-Set/dp/B000MCATUW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1431661022&sr=1-1&keywords=time+life+books+the+seafarers
They seem to be available piecemeal too, if your budget is anything like mine.
What is this…”rain”(?)…of which you speak? I kid. We’ll get it, too, tomorrow. And NorCal gets it, importantly.
I’ve got nautical terminology pretty well down, having sailed a lot and then read Patrick O’Brian–and buying almost as many nautical reference books as O’Brian books. But, Earth has at least four distinct wind naval technologies. The Egyptians used bundled papyrus and papyrus sails, with little wood. Europeans used wood frames and planking with hemp rope and sails; I think they cross-pollinated enough that few important differences arose, though the hull shape of a Viking longship was wide and shallow like a modern displacement sailboat, unlike the fish-inspired hull shape used later. Chinese built junks with internal bulkheads; their sails were bamboo, able to be manipulated something like Venetian blinds. Polynesians built very fast multi-hull boats. Whether Arabic or Indus/Indian ships were significantly different from those traditions, I’m unsure.
So, Llyene could have quite different ships. If Llyene were tidally locked without large moons, it would have very stable weather and no tides. That seems like the stsho to me. For SF or fantasy, I don’t see any reason to follow the arcane tall ship nomenclature, though physics needs to be obeyed. (Darn physics!)
One could imagine some mahendo’sat bureaucrat buying an off-the-shelf sailing yacht–a sailboat is a sailboat, after all–to ease first contact with the hani. And the hani, in their wooden ships being accosted by a carbon fiber, wing-sail catamaran…with hydrofoils. (Think of a giant AC72 America’s Cup yacht.)
“If Llyene were tidally locked without large moons, it would have very stable weather and no tides.” I’m not so sure. Certainly there would be one world-wide torroidal circulation pattern.
Air would rise at, well, can I call it “periastron”? Noon-day spot? It would flow in the upper atmosphere to the cold dark side, “midnight spot”, where it would sink to the surface. Surface winds would cross the terminator, but as they got closer to noon and began rising, are also being squeezed together. They’d also get stronger. I think, as on Earth, eddies in the circulation, we calls ’em typhoons and hurricanes, would be just as prominent.
Certainly there’d be no “trade winds” and “prevailing westerlies”. Getting back to “dawn latitudes” would involve a whole log of tacking!
I’m not so sure about it not having no trade winds or prevailing westerlies….coriolis force works on a planet that’s rotating even if there is no satellite to affect the tides.
The patterns on Earth don’t stem from the effects of the Moon, other than the tidal forces of the waters in the oceans and large lakes. The effect of the heat of the sun evaporating water from the oceans at the equator and the subsequent rise and then deposition of that water back to earth isn’t dependent on the Moon. According to my Oceanography textbook, the equatorial water that condenses in the atmosphere then falls back to earth at latitudes above 30 degrees, which seems to coincide with the major deserts of the world being mostly in the latitudes between the 30th parallels. You might argue that the Moon affects currents, and to an extent, it does, but not in the deep oceans. Cold water from Antarctica flows along the ocean floors toward the north. It takes approximately 1,200 years for that water to travel from Antarctica to where it upwells in the Arctic, bringing nutrients up from the deeps.
I believe we are talking about a planet tidally locked to its star, like Mercury with an atmosphere. Such a planet around a red dwarf star could be in the habitable zone, like “Darkover”, Cottman IV.
What you’re describing, the Hadley Cell and Ferrel Cell circulations, are driven by the Earth’s rotation.
With a tidally locked planet the circulation pattern, singular, is entirely different. It’s a torroid.
Mercury is in 3:2 resonance, though it was long thought to be 1:1 (locked). See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28planet%29#Orbit.2C_rotation.2C_and_longitude
OK then, let’s take Mercury out of the picture. The question was, would a habitable planet tidally locked (to an M-class star) have very stable weather? Certainly the torroidal atmospheric circulation pattern would be simpler. But it still seems to me the winds would be concentrated, faster, stronger, as they approached the “noon” spot. (BTW, it occurs to me that it would always be raining there in spite of the updraft. It’s own version of tornado alley?) And eddies, i.e. hurricanes, would be “just as” likely around the terminator. A water world, combined with the atmosphere, would tend to moderate temperatures fairly significantly around the terminator I’d expect.
Stable ≠ calm. Given their large eyes and fondness for white, I think of them living on the starlit side, or at least near the terminator. Of course, Llyene could have rings, too. With constant wind, plants could harvest wind energy instead of solar energy. Talk about wind farms! Stsho gossamer clothes might be a statement of affluence, “No winds disturb me.”
Good point about prevailing winds: square rigged ships would be impractical.
The Red Sea/Indian ships were generally lateen-rigged with triangular sails; the generic term was dhow, which covered a lot of stuff from little fishing vessels to the big xebecs used by pirates and raiders. As far as the sails went, they probably appeared like a hybrid between Western ketches and Polynesian crab-claw sails. I’m not sure what tech tree the Hani used, but I can easily imagine the command to ‘run out the guns!’ if something like a modern cat abruptly appeared in the shipping lanes one day, shortly to be followed by intense curiosity.
Jane and I have a couple of treasured boxes—models of a xebec and a yacht we have just never had the time to attack, and this year is not going to be it, either.
Apropos of very damn little, I finally buttonholed the doctor: the toe was in fact fractured (simple, not Jones, thankfully). Buddy tape and ibuprofen for swelling, and 4-6+ weeks of it. I do run a great blocker when Junior and Zorro decide to get snippy at each other.
I finally got hold of the doctor and checked on the x-rays; I had indeed fractured the toe (but not Jones, thankfully). 4-6 weeks of buddy tape and ibuprofen. D’oh!
Ah, me. Sandals. But ones with a large enough sole to buffer table legs.
Fortuitously, my go-to sandals are Birkenstocks: good support, rigid enough to keep the foot from flexing too much, and won’t put pressure on the bum toe. The sole sticks out far enough that it will protect my toes; this didn’t help when I was walking around the house barefoot and smacked the chair!
We’ve gotten several showers in the past few weeks, and now that my foot needs rest, the lawn is looking shaggy again. Guess whose responsibility mowing is?
About 2 hours ago, we had a good ol’ West Texas gullywasher with thunder and a spattering of hail. It was coming down in buckets, and the grassy lawn in amongst the apartment buildings is taking on many lake-like characteristics. A week or two ago, we got 1/4 of our yearly average rainfall (16 inches) in one day. Rained 4.5 inches over 24 hours. We had flooding in low-lying areas. Good thing we’re having a drought here.
Off the subject, possible answer for Hanneke:On some Android phones if you hold down on the letter for a bit of time, the accented versions of that letter will display for selection. Also works on Nokia phones with windows operating systems. I don’t know if it works with iPhones, but you might try it if that is your model
Thank you, playswithhorses! My phone is an Android, so I’ll try this next time.
iPhones, any iOS device: You can hold down a letter for a moment and a popup menu shows accented letters. This also works for some symbols, such as dashes and bullets, from basic typewriter symbol keys (old ASCII to new Unicode). Almost anything is therefore type-able.
There’s a good chance that will work on other recent phones. I’m not familiar with the Android OS, but it’s likely there too.
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Sandals: ordinary flip-flops bug me for some reason. I don’t have a latex allergy, so it’s not that. I tend to wear boat/deck shoes around the house in summer. Hmm, think I may get sandals. Though I have to “round up” to the nearest whole size, shen half sizes aren’t available. (I have smaller feet for my size/height, not a large hand spread either. This seems to be from my paternal grandmother, as best as I can figutre).
We’ve had cool spring weather, almost unseasonably cool for here, and frequent rain, the past month or so, and it looks like it’ll be that way through the end of May. I’m not going to complain, it feels good and I can’t get my A/C compressor replaced this summer. Dead as a doornail. Thankfully, I have ceiling fans, and I can use floor fans, and I’m native to the city, so I’ll be OK, just…very hot this summer again. Heh, swim shorts weather. …But I’ll still have my home, at least through the end of this year. So I’m counting it good.
The cats have decided the improved, high-class moist food menu (thanks, CJ, for the recommendation!) is a fine, fine thing. They are very pleased with themselves and with me. ;P
Side note: Yakisoba ramen, the beef taco flavor? Whoa, too spicy as-is for me, without adding a lot to tone down the hot/spicy chili peppers. So I’m likely giving the rest of that pack to a friend who likes hot/spicy. But the teriyaki beef is good stuff, better than the other brand of ramen I’ve had.
Using this to get rhrough a budget crunch until/unless I can get my income to improve. My debt load should improve after June/July a little, though. Should.
Sandals — I ordered a pair of men’s sandals that should be a good brand, and they’re due this week. My boat shoes are good, around the house or out, but a pair of canvas slip-on sneakers shrank too much in the wash and, ouch, didn’t do nice things to my feet, top or bottom, so they go elsewhere. Ordinary el cheapo flip-flops and decent sandals alike…pricing seems to have gone nuts, wide range, whatever the buyer’s willing to pay. For sandals, I could understand that, but plain old flip-flops, usually rubber or synthetics? Oh, come on! But flip-flops and my feet don’t get along, despite no latex allergy. So…I’m trying for sandals for around the house this summer. But I have to round up to the nearest whole size (I wear a half size). Should be OK. The brand’s OK and the price was moderate, not too high. We’ll see how they do.
Related: I had the strong urge to watch the old original Flipper movies. Oh, man. Been a while, dudes. (The movies and old TV series were about three or four years before I was born. Old-school! I grew up with the reruns. But that’s close enough to how plenty of kids all along the Gulf Coast grew up back then, and still do, with a little poetic license and allowance for modern times.)