Experimental post...

I'm just messing around with this post entry. I'm trying to see if I can do some embedded java/pearl inside of this blog... so nothing in particular is really planned, it's just me being bored and goofing around and this particular post and using it as a sort of a digital note/sketch pad.  The inspiration - I cracked open a book on Java Programming for Engineers... sort of a Computer Science spin on interfacing for the engineering types.  No idea of what exactly I'm going to end up with (if anything), but the raw materials going in are; a Raspberry PI, some usb cables and some home brew sensors I originally thought I'd bake into a weather station.  So pay no attention in particular to this post as it changes over time.  I'll let you all know if I come up with anything interesting, but mostly this particular post and its subsequent updates will just be a digital scrapbook of coding experiments.  -Lee

This Java thing is pretty cool...  #f3f3f3....

At this ridiculous rate... 7ft on ground by end of February!

Winter	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.	Jan.	Feb.	Mar.	Apr.	May	Total Inches
1978-79	0.7	55	118.90	88.3	39.8	43.2	9.4	0.6	355.9

The Winter of 2013-14 looks like it has a good chance to break the '79 record.  So far we are 33 inches ahead!  YAY!  - NOT.


New Years Greetings...

North Country Trail early waterfall trek...

A superb day

Before I headed out I really didn't know what to expect for trail conditions.  What I found was a combination of light snowshoe pack, some deer trail pack (on the NCT) and a few stretches of plowing through powder.  Pack is better than powder!  With the very hard winter we've had so far - weeks of below zero F temps - these falls have covered over almost completely.  I really thought that the volume and speed of this river would have kept them more open.  For your viewing pleasure...

Almost perpendicular to the fall looking downriver

A side-on view of Conglomerate Falls. That odd ant hill looking thing is a dome of spray foam... sort of a wintertime oddity.

Airy and tannin tinted... sort  of a hex shaped thing going on here!?...

 
The North Country Trail is trafficked by lots of deer...

Next fall on the river is...

Potawatomi Falls

Taken from the frozen riverbank

Next up...

Gorge Falls

Late summer...

From this fall to the next there was only deer pack, and I would remind those who trek around on snow covered bridging and planks that stepping close to the edge of the bridge (as in not paying attention...) is likely to induce a neat pirouette with arm flail... just say'in, that COULD happen...

Sandstone Falls

Late summer...

 I've got a few movies of these falls, I'll put them up later.  Finally, the last fall for today...

Rainbow Falls

Late summer...

Hope you enjoyed the pics.  It was a really nice day for the hike.

Pack and gear are ready to go for two January trips.  The pack I'm using is a retired ILBE via the USMC it fit and carried well today with the right load for January.  Two thumbs up!

Reflecting on Christmas Eve - 1968...

As I had hoped, I did manage to get the old UB-1 working!  But before we go there, we should put this in context, lets remember what 1968 was...

On Christmas Eve I watched  Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders orbit the moon on a grainy black and white RCA with mom, dad my brother and my sister.  This was fantastically huge!  Apollo 8 amazed and awed the whole world. This JFK moon thing might happen after all! Science could solve any problem, or so I naively thought that Christmas.

The coolest car ever designed by Detroit (IMHO) was now a fastback... I could pick out this car just by it's sound.  What a kooky car nut of a kid - the long pipe run gave it the mellow growl of a beautiful set of harmonics as compared to the Camaro's "good citizen" exhaust note.  Or maybe it was just displacement. You could get this thing with a 7L V-8 and a 4 speed transmission.  Lemme see, something like a tic over 400 HP stock in a 2700 lb chassis and you could squeeze 600 HP out of this mill.  That sounds like crazy fun to me, but I digress...

The 1968 Mustang... I was in love. I still think the Mach-I is the prettiest sheet metal to come off the clay in Detroit.

Richard Nixon had just won the presidential election in November...

President Johnson had earlier in '68 signed the Civil Rights Act...

Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King was slain on April 4th...

 Robert Kennedy was gunned down on June 6th... 

These tragedies were the inspiration for the song "Abraham, Martin and John," Bobby K. is in the 4th verse. God Bless the peace makers... sadly much work remains...

CKLW was blasting out 50kW from an antenna in Windsor Canada hitting 28 states and 8 provinces now in the second year of the new format. The 'Big 8' changed radio broadcasting forever... this was THEE rock station that WKRP in Cincinnati was later to spoof on TV and the model for rock and roll radio for the next 40 years and counting. Incidentally it was a CKLW DJ that programmed M-TV in the early days... Bob Seger sang a tribute to the CKLW secretary with the golden ear for on air talent - Rosalie Trombley. What a phenomenally creative era and at the same time what a painful and violent era. By the way, CKLW never spun Seger's single, it went to the top without the flame thrower playing it.

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Steppenwolf were blaring through the 'new' transistor radio speakers, and on more than a few of the old tube sets...

Need to write a letter? Well either you used this or that to do it. CC literally meant a sheet of carbon coated paper LOL... you put that in between two pieces of paper when you typed to get a "carbon copy." (for the benefit of those readers born in the last 20 years!)

Lockheed rolled out the C5A... what can't we do?  What a time to be a kid...

The first SR-71 Blackbird arrives at Okinawa... and Kelly Johnson, a yooper from Ishpeming, was Lockheed's Chief Engineer!

Irwin Allen's "Lost in Space" was in it's last year of production... gosh who didn't want to be part of Robinson family?  Pure gold... the talking carrot episode... as Greg Kihn says "they don't write 'em like that anymore!"

The Vietnam war was in the news every night, with Walter Cronkite and the Huntley/Brinkley team reporting. I remember the Huey's and the model 209 Gunships on TV... My first job as an engineer was at Bell Helicopter, gosh you never know where the next turn in the road will bring you...

Bell bottom pants were ' in ' - I absolutely refused to wear them prompting my mom the hipster to say; " you were born old! "  Yeah she had something in common with Dilbert's mom.  As explained  by Dilbert's pediatrician... sorry mom -God rest her soul!

And that Christmas this was under tree! The UM-1...

I fixed a short in a corroded cold solder lug... back in whack!

Last time I pried open this case I didn't need 'reading' glasses!

Ahh there you are... now cleaned, tinned and re-soldered.

So here now... and never before seen on the world wide web (I think, but who really knows...) the UM-1 in action! There is a lighted scrolling panorama of some astronauts on some planet with a 50's sort of take on a space station in orbit and another on the ground that loops around and around.  Oh the cosmic implications... This thing had linkages! Gears and springs that rotated... a pawl type ratchet on it's foot mounted wheels... AND the arms moved!  I had to figure all of this out, and I did so in time. I puzzled about how this all worked for months.  When that first light bulb burned out, that was it - time to very carefully open that case and see the magic for myself. What a cool Christmas that was for one little yooper kid growing up in Marquette, Michigan in December of 1968. God Bless you Jessie W, I think about you every now and then.

On this 45th anniversary of the Apollo 8 moon orbit, a fitting reflection - me thinks.

Thanks for watching.  I hope everyone has a safe and wondrous holiday!  -Lee

What's under Lee's tree 1968????

You know, just for fun I thought I'd put up a video on Christmas Eve of a gift I received in 1968.  It isn't working right now, so I'll see if I can get it working for the post.  As a child my folks were always annoyed that whatever they gave me I eventually took apart, sometimes put back together again or sometimes cannibalized for an electric motor, a gear box or a switch. I made goofy stuff with my erector set, and when it didn't have a bent steel beam, wood scraps would do - just drill and bolt!  I experimented with whatever light bulb or rheostat that ended up in my room, large charged capacitors make a heck of a noise when discharged against pie tins... I won't tell you about my chemistry set (think exothermic)! For some reason they wouldn't resupply me...  I quested for parts from old TV sets, radios or junked lawn mower engines... LOL... Well have a look on Christmas Eve and you hopefully we see a movie of something I used to stare at many many times while imagining so many far flung adventures and inspired sketches of fantastic machines I would invent in my imagination while my elementary school teachers tried to teach me good grammar and correct spelling...  LOL, hope you like it!

Christmas Wishes for All

To all my friends in the West, Merry Christmas, I wish you all good health and prosperity in the year ahead. For many of my page visitors from around the world I will try to address my greetings to you in your language.  Forgive me if I don't get it quite right!


クリスマスの挨拶
Weihnachtsgrüße
 salam natal
цхристмас поздрави
рождественские поздравления
 різдвяні привітання

I am getting ready to do a little scouting on the progression of winter ice formation on some of the waterfalls in my area.  We've had weeks of sub zero F temperatures, and I will head out in January for a two day trek along the Black River for what I hope will be some really interesting and beautiful ice fall pics... I will share some early pics from a short trek I'll take later this week and post them as soon as I get back.

Blue SWIX today!

Check back this weekend and I'll have a few early winter pics to share!

Snow and more snow...

This has been a very cold season so far, which in turn means we will get a lot of snow from Lake Superior.  It just hasn't stopped snowing... So far over 80 inches (203 cm) of snow has fell since October!

Another 30 inches has landed since this photo was taken...

If anyone is interested... here's the latest snowfall measurement.  This is cumulative, so as more snow lands it tends to compress the snow beneath it, as well as some evaporates by sublimation due to the sub zero temperatures. So the "on the ground" depth varies with terrain and drifting.  The National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration plots this here.  We have somewhere around 24 in (60 cm) on the ground at the moment. 

Have a great week everybody!

Winter has Arrived Part - 2

Cold and Snowy... I had been waiting for the temperature to drop so that I could dial in my winter camping layers.  In mid or late January I will camp out on the NCT with the goal of capturing the set of falls on the Black River as ice-falls photographed in the midst of their winter beauty.  Something that not many people get to see because of the remoteness of the falls and the harsh travels one encounters in getting to them in the middle of winter.

Always beautiful after the storm...

This area gets a lot of snow.  The culprit is a giant heat sink called Lake Superior... The pic below shows the amazing phenomenon of "lake effect" snow.  These clouds can be hundreds of miles long, originate at a usual node point on Lake Superior, and notice how the clouds are banded!  One can actually drive through blinding snow, sunshine and then blinding snow in the distance of 30 or 40 miles. 

Here's the classic satellite image of "lake effect."

A pic of the trucks that move the snow off of the roads...

A common site now until March or April! Notice the hard packed snow on the road. We drive on this for months!

On with the layering experiment!

My son helped me set up the "shelter." 4F and getting colder...

The January temps range from daytime highs in the 30's to night time lows in the teens.  So if I could set up my sleeping bag and clothing layers for comfort in this weather I should be dialed in for the January bivouac.

Looks like it's time to do some testing in the "shelter."

My sleep system is the US Army MSS purchased as surplus, a Thermarest pad and the layers of clothing.

I spent 4 hours in the MSS wearing one base layer of Under-Armour, a second layer consisting of  micro-wool, heavy felt boot liners on my feet with base layer micro wool socks, a poly balaclava (to minimize the effect of frozen breath) and a wool cap.

The result... toasty warm from start to finish.  One important note though, any twisting in the MSS that leaves the bags stretched tightly against your shoulder will result in a cold spot.  That makes sense as whenever you compress the insulation it will reduce the R-value.  It got down to -2F.

A good experiment. I recommend the MSS. If anybody wonders if it is really a good cold weather system, -it worked well for me in some pretty harsh conditions.  But layering is as important as the MSS.  The MSS by itself wouldn't have been very comfortable. 

Until next time!

Winter has arrived Part -1

NORTHERN HOUGHTON-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...HOUGHTON...HANCOCK
339 PM EST THU DEC 5 2013

...LAKE EFFECT SNOW WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 PM EST
THIS EVENING...
...LAKE EFFECT SNOW ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 10 PM THIS
EVENING TO 7 AM EST SUNDAY...

HAZARDOUS WEATHER...

 * A HEAVY BAND OF LAKE EFFECT SNOW WILL AFFECT CENTRAL PORTIONS OF
   HOUGHTON COUNTY EARLY THIS EVENING...INCLUDING CALUMET...HANCOCK..AND
   HOUGHTON. EXPECT THE HEAVIER SNOW SHOWERS TO FOCUS TO THE SOUTH OF
   HOUGHTON LATER TONIGHT.

 * SNOWFALL RATES OVER 1 INCH PER HOUR ARE EXPECTED THIS EVENING
   ALONG WITH VISIBILITY LESS THAN ONE-QUARTER MILE AT TIMES IN HEAVY
   SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW.

 * ADDITIONAL SNOWFALL TONIGHT OF 3 TO 6 INCHES IS EXPECTED. ADDITIONAL
   MODERATE SNOW ACCUMULATIONS WILL CONTINUE FRIDAY INTO THE UPCOMING
   WEEKEND.

 * WINDS GUSTING OVER 30 MPH LATER TONIGHT WILL PRODUCE WIND CHILLS NEAR
   15 BELOW ZERO.

IMPACTS...

 * THROUGH EARLY EVENING...EXPECT TRAVEL CONDITIONS AFFECTED BY THE
   HEAVIER SNOW BAND TO BE DIFFICULT DUE TO BLOWING SNOW AND POOR
   VISIBILITY. AWAY FROM THE AREAS OF HEAVIER SNOW...ROADS WILL BE
   SNOW COVERED AND THERE WILL BE PATCHY BLOWING SNOW...BUT TRAVEL
   SHOULD REMAIN POSSIBLE.

 * BEYOND THIS EVENING...ROADS WILL REMAIN SNOW COVERED THROUGH
   SUNDAY MORNING. TRAVEL MAY BECOME DIFFICULT AT TIMES...BUT SHOULD
   REMAIN POSSIBLE. VISIBILITY MAY BE POOR AT TIMES DUE TO AREAS OF
   BLOWING SNOW.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

 * A LAKE EFFECT SNOW WARNING MEANS SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF LAKE
   EFFECT SNOW ARE FORECAST THAT WILL MAKE TRAVEL VERY HAZARDOUS
   OR IMPOSSIBLE.

 * PREPARE...PLAN...AND STAY INFORMED.

A powerful Thanksgiving Akathist

Greetings to all, this link is to a very moving Akathist, it moved me to tears especially when you consider Fr Petrov's dire situation and Metropolitan Tryphon's motives - a reflection on life at the very end of his own life.  I wish good health, and God's blessings this Thanksgiving for you and all of your loved ones.  The Hymn is titled "Glory to God for all Things," a reference to St. John Chrysostom's last uttered words. This hymn was written by Metropolitan Tryphon shortly before he died, and popularized when found in Fr  Gregory Petrov effects after his death in a prison camp (Gulag). It is a most extraordinary expression of love and thanksgiving reflected upon by Fr Petrov amidst his great suffering.  A touching and fitting reflection on all of the challenges we face in our lives and how even in dire circumstances we can find so many blessings to be thankful for - even if some of them may be hidden to us but live well in the recollections of our past.  I know it's long, but it is an extraordinary Thanksgiving Hymn and I hope you enjoy it.  Also, here's a YouTube Antiochian version complete with a choir. - Lee (Thanks Fr I)

On the Road to Bitche

Sorry for not keeping up with my posts, but I had to do some business travel. I hope you don't mind some non-UP pics!

I had a free weekend and made the most of it by traveling about 20 miles to see a very historic citadel in the French city of Bitche.

Yup, Bitche straight ahead...

The Citadel was built in the 1600's and improved in the 1700's. The town and the Citadel are near the Maginot Line and held off attackers until the 1900's.  Even the Prussians gave up on their siege of it!

Here's a view from the road as we approach the town.

A formidable edifice

Imagine climbing up these hills on your way to knock on the door...

Looking down from the Citadel grounds

Having climbed the hill, you would next have to climb the wall...

and of course skip over the moat...

Then there might be a problem with arrows and stuff being tossed down from the top of the wall

Yeah, it's a pretty good system

Just to keep the tourists from getting carried away with a medieval flashback I found this reminder...

Need I say more?

I had some time on Sunday so I got in a short hike.  I headed out to Landstuhl and the Burg Nanstein.

The Castle Nanstein

Along the trail to the castle I encountered these guys...

What a neat idea to take a tree stump along a trail and turn it into art!

A little grown in, but still pretty creative!

One last pic.  I know this will bore everybody to engineering tears, but take a peak...

I'm tell'in ya - engineered steps!

Observe a water channel on the right side.  a subtle tilt of the landing towards the channel and a grate that spans the width of the stairs at every other flight of steps (the grate empties into the channel) and you have a system that no matter how much snow melts or rain falls... that building and these steps are going to dry out and the water is going to run straight out onto the plaza below.  And heck if you get tired, check out the great semi-circlular seats at every other non-grated landing... engineered steps I tell you!

Well that's all for now.  Winter camping is coming up, and hopefully some ice fall pics.
Take care everybody!

Another visit to see BART

This is from an early summer trek of the Shoreline Trail North of Marquette.  The Shoreline intersects the NCT and there is a nice trail to Sugarloaf, a high rocky spur North of Marquette.

This is a short hike, but very scenic

Not too much foot traffic and well maintained

Typical NCT blaze is easy to follow

I parked off of 550 and just headed East.  There are some pretty big rocks to scale, so I wouldn't recommend that approach unless your prepared for that.

I found the remains of a young deer on a bluff near a deep ravine. Probably a winter fatality

Lots of bugs!

Nearing the top of the spur!

The trail winds around from the shore side to the West and comes out here...

The last corner on the trail, and a beautiful view of the Mulligan Plains to the West of Marquette

View to the NE from the top of  "Sugarloaf Mountain"

The main reason for the trek was to visit the BART memorial.  If you're curious about BART, just follow and download the pdf via the link.  I recommend you do, it's an inspirational story.

The BART monument

Close up of the commemoration plaques. This monument gets hit by lightning often and has been repaired many times.

 I happened upon a WW1 records database and checked for Bartlett's draft card.  Sure enough, here it is...

A Bartlett King draft registration card

I decided to find Bart's marker in the Park View Cemetery, with some help from the sexton I found the marker.

So if you've ever made the short hike up to the top of Sugarloaf and seen the obelisk now you can see Bart's other marker.

"BY THE GRACE OF GOD FAITHFUL AND APPROVED"

ALANSON BARTLETT KING MASTER ENGINEER 107TH ENGS

That's right.  Bart was an engineer with the 107th.

I looked into the deaths from the pandemic in France during WW I.  I was very surprised to see this spike in soldier fatalities.  I don't remember reading as a student, the effects of the pandemic on all of the soldiers.  Certainly, it was a significant factor.

Many soldiers developed pneumonia as a consequence of the pandemic flu. Bart died in October, the height of the scourge

Well hope you enjoyed this trip to see BART, a fellow Marquette citizen from long ago...