It has been raining here for days and even Jack is getting fed up. He doesn’t like the drops hitting his snout and he stops often to wipe his face on my pants. How special. The water does make some things look pretty, though. So here are some leaves on a pond.
©voyager, all rights reserved
©voyager, all rights reserved
This photo is just a delight. It’s always a wonder when we can catch a glimpse of such a cautious wild creature. It came from Avalus who says,
A foxmother, that lives in an abandoned Garden just next to the house I live in. She has three cubs, but I only have this one image, as I usually meet them only when it is to dark for photos.
She has her eye on you, Avalus. Thanks for sharing.
foxmom, ©Avalus, all rights reserved
Kestrel has sent us some beautiful shots of autumn leaves in the rain. She says it has been rainy and foggy so of course she needed to get out for photographs. I hope the taking of them helped boost your spirit, kestrel. Water is so magically photogenic. Thanks so much for sharing.
©kestrel, all rights reserved
So White House has published a pamphlet about the evils of socialism. I have not read it in full and I probably won’t since I have better things to do with my life than to read drivel from Trump administration, but on casual glance it seems to insinuate that the disastrous attempt at socialism in former Soviet bloc invalidates everything with the word root “social” in it. Therefore since badly implemented socialism in Ukraine has led to famine in 1921, “socialism” in EU in 2018 is just as bad.
That is of course complete non-sequitur.
The whole document also seems to be rather American-centric and comparing apples with pineapples, or perhaps even bananas. Like this infographic:
Whitehouse infographic about Costs of Owning a truck
Now I admit I have zero personal experience with any of the countries on that infographic except with USA.
But my experience with USA is that people there own pickup trucks in about 80% of the cases just to own them, not because they actually, really need them. I mean, I have seen them used for grocery shopping in big cities, with the deck empty and the groceries being put in a bag on the passenger seat. People commuted daily to work in them. Most owners of pickup trucks in USA could do just as well with only ordinary cars and for those rare occasions where they really, really might need something bigger (like buying building materials for house repairs etc.) the options available in for example Germany (i.e. renting a truck or goods trailer at the shop for a few days) would suffice ample. Further populations in EU are much more tightly knit than they are in USA, there are not many far-off farms and isolated homesteads that really need pickup trucks. I am not sure how this is in Nordic countries, but I still suspect that a real need for big pickup truck there is smaller than in US just due to the USA’s sheer size and wast empty places.
Thus this infographic is used either ignorantly or dishonestly to scaremonger. Or both.
As far as the economic side of the pamphlet goes, I will leave the critique to an expert who says everything better than I ever can:
Are the Danes Melancholy? Are the Swedes Sad?
On the whole I get the feeling that this pamphlet starts with the assumption that everything USA=good and everything socialism=bad and tries to spin evidence to appear to validate those assumptions.
How typically American of them, to ignore all context an only seek ways to put USA at the center of the universe. Again.
I have never watched Fox News when I was in USA, and of course I have no incentive to watch it now. However the stories that I read about it on the interwebs are truly bizarre.
This one trumps them all: Fox News host: ‘Anti-Semitism from the left’ is the real cause of hateful attacks on Jews
Where exactly does this “virulent anti-Semitism from the left” happen? Where do roam these elusive creatures, these leftist antisemites? Where exactly is the land of “fringe of the progressive side.”?
How come that someone spews such a weapon’s grade bullshit on air and is not immediately challenged for providing evidence for it? Any person who says such inane claptrap should be discredited and mercilessly mocked.
… disappeared.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
First thing first – today I tested the very nearly finished knife when I was cooking shrimp for lunch.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
It handles well and cuts OK, but I really suspect it won’t hold an edge as well as it should. But the cheapo wood looks way more posh than I expected it, ammonia fuming really, really improved its looks.
And now to the boring stuff.
What I am doing here is actually a small-sized DMAIC project – an abbreviation for Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control. It is a process used in industry to bring some logic and use of scientific method into improving manufacturing processes. Although as everything in today’s corporate culture it is used wrongly and heavily abused and misunderstood all over the place, because american-trained managers …. wheef, do not get me started on american-trained managers.
Aaaaanyway, in the first phase, Define, you should either define your problem or your goal or both. In my case, I have a specific goal – to get my manufacturing time of this type of knife under five hours of manual labor.
In the second phase you should acquire all measurements that you need in order to do something about it – in my case I have measured the manufacturing time of each distinct step in the process.
And now, in this post, I am performing the Analysis of said data. Total manufacturing time: 10:46, or 646 minutes.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a picture.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
There are of course multiple approaches one might use, but in this specific case I think that this suffices ample enough – it is so-called Pareto Graph. The balks are actual times in minutes for each step, ordered from the highest to the lowest. The black line is a sum of the relative proportions of these times to the total as one progresses from left to right. As you can see, I have ten distinct manufacturing steps and from those five steps constitute 90% of manufacturing time. These are the steps where I have to concentrate on actually reducing said time, because here my efforts have the biggest payoff. That does not mean that improvements in the other five steps are not worthy pursuing at all, but they are not worth pursuing at this time.
I have done one thing that is not normally done, that is I sorted from get-go the steps into two categories – low hanging fruit, where I think I can do improvements without too much hassle and without obtaining expensive or complicated equipment, and high-hanging fruit, where I can save time only through acquiring new skill or new equipment or where I think saving time is not actually possible in a meaningful way.
Now comes the next phase, which is to improve the process. I will try to implement some of the ideas for that I have expressed and make a batch of multiple (~10) knives with improved process. We will see how it turns out.
What do you think are the odds that the shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburg was performed by someone who is (listed in descending order of probability):
Also, what odds do you think are that the response from the Godawfull Old Perverts will be nothing of use or substance?
Remember this?
It is now about four weeks later, and five shades darker:
I’ll take another photo in another couple of weeks, same time, same place.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Also I have a small confession to make: since I received my Acceptance Ring from Lofty via Caine, I haven’t removed it for any significant amount of time. Lately, though, it was getting loose on my thumb, to the point where it would slip off (into my purse, a pocket, the floor of the car), but I have always been able to find it again. Soon after taking this photo, however, it slipped from my thumb and fell onto the tracks. I can see it, every time I wait for the train, and I’m trying to get up the guts to retrieve it (believe me, train traffic is not nearly so busy for this to be a truly life-endangering activity) – my thumb feels naked, and I’ve lost a fidget toy.
On the other hand, there’s a strange appeal to knowing the ring is just down there, a little piece of the world of Affinity, a little part of my everyday morning. So I think that, eventually, I will go after it – when the evenings get dark enough for people not to see me rooting around underneath the platform. In the meantime, a small gift from friends has melded with something larger.
This way beckons, ©voyager, all rights reserved
It’s been a bit of a tough week for me. Partly it’s the weather. It’s been full of cold damp all week and that makes it harder for me to get out, but partly it’s because I had too much fun last weekend. It was my birthday and I was kept busy with visits to my mother and to friends and dinner out and to see the play Menopause The Musical! which was a 2 hour drive in each direction. It was all wonderful, but it was exhausting and once I get into that state it can take days to recover. It was worth it, though. Sometimes I do things knowing that I’ll pay a price. It’s like borrowing spoons from tomorrow. Many disabled people do because we still have interests and our minds and souls still need feeding. I love live theatre and I’m prepared to have a few down days if that means I can still participate. I don’t like to talk too much about my fibromyalgia. I learned that early on that no one really wants to hear you complain. It isn’t that people don’t care, it’s that there’s nothing anyone can do. A bit later on I also learned that it’s better to focus on what’s good in my life (a lot!) instead of what wrong. I don’t want to be defined by things I can’t do and I don’t want anyone’s pity. This voyager intends to have a full life and last weekend was certainly that. By tomorrow I should have a normal number of spoons again or as it feels for me, gravity will return to normal. I hope everyone has a good weekend. I intend to.
The other night I paused the TV to listen to the cries of migrating birds outside in the dark. There’s something very haunting about that song, so much distance and weather and effort ahead. And yet they fly, obeying a biological imperative. After all, it’s getting cold.
Moving on.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I was introduced to Jānis Ivanovs, Latvian composer, through choir, where we sang his Gājputni (“migratory birds”) one of the first years I was a member. It’s a very moody piece in minor key, and we performed it with great effect during our surprise performance in competition. Since then, his vocalizations (tone poems?) for choir appeal to me most simply due to emotional attachment, despite the fact that he has many symphonic works to his name.
Unfortunately, the migratory birds are too seldom performed to have video available online, so instead, here is my second choice, Rudens dziesma (“autumn song”). (You can always visit the National Library, they have all the vocalizations in archive!)
©voyager, all rights reserved
©voyager, all rights reserved
There’s lots of colour in my neighbourhood right now and it isn’t all in the trees. Some garden plants are still thriving, like my neighbour’s hollyhocks, marigolds and nasturtiums. They’re not even shaggy around the edges. The nasturtiums are one of my favorites. They’re like happy little alien ships waiting for word that it’s time to go home.
