Washington State Gas Tax Revolt!

Wow! The ferocity of the voters to repeal the 14.5 cent gas taxes that were added in the last two years is explosive!

I'm very interested to see what the referendum looks like when it is drawn up. I'm afraid the proponents are going to take advanate of the interest and add extra stuff we don't want.

The referendum should be this simple. "There will be no new gas tax and the increase of the legislature on gas taxes in 2003 and 2005 will be immediately repealed."

It won't say that of course, the KVI dudes will stick some feldercarb in there that doesn't belong. I don't trust them any more than I trust any other politicians.

Firebolts in May

The lights in this image are reflecting the flash of the camera, same for the reflective patch on the back of my helmet. The refractive lines are a photoshoped effect with a good result. 

U2, How to Dismantle and Atomic Bomb

Just got a copy of U2//How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb.
I love these guys, they have so much passion about their music.

Not to quible, but the problem is not dismantleing the bombs the problem is that governments keep building more of them. The bombs are all made of perisable materials and after a few years they dismantle themselves. They would all be gone already if governments would just stop maintaining them and building new ones.

Firebolts in Seattle in May

Only a couple of months a year can you get such a gorgeous backdrop for a motorcycle shot in Seattle. May is one of those months. This is Firebolts in Seattle in May. 

The Washington State Gas Tax Revolt!

Can you believe that after we voted against it our representatives took it to the floor and increased our gas taxes anyway ... TWICE!!!

What a bunch of losers our state legislature are. Don't they know they are just going to upset everyone to pass an initiative. I can't find a single person who won't vote to lower gas prices.

They should just leave 520 and the Alaska Way Viaduct alone with normal repair and when the next earthquake comes the damned things will fall down on their own and save us all a lot of money in destruction costs. The next earthquake would destroy a new set of bridges anyway.

Guess what? THERE IS A WEB SITE
www.NoNewGasTax.com When does NO mean NO ??

Sunshine

Sunshine was happy to see me when I got home. 

Chicago 3D Image pair April 2005

The 3D anaglyph version of April 2005 Chicago ws not very easy to see with Red-Blue glasses so I've put together a couple of stereo pair images. One showing most of the center of the city and another zoomed in to just the center of the city. 


To view these two stereo pair images you can cross you eyes slightly and try to get the Sears tower images to merge together. Then you will see Chicago in 3D as seen from a northward approach to Midway airport. (Note: Many people can't cross their eyes very well and you should not do it if it hurts. It is eaiser to merge the images if they are further away from you.) 

Chicago

One of the original images I used to make the 3d anaglyph of Chicago below. This is during landing at Midway on SouthWest Airlines. 

Chicago 3D

Something else I've never seen, a 3D anaglyph of Chicago. I took the images to build this during landing so the red image is actually taken several hundred feet lower than the green/blue. 


The 3D of Mt. Rainer below is much eaiser to look at and the paralaxed images matched up better because the altitude of the aircraft was relatively constant. I believe that Mt. Rainer is also further away in it's image than Chicago. The horizontal image difference is about the same. (which is to say the apperant preceived realative size of Chicago to Mt. Rainer is approximately correct.)

Class of 4 for training Business Integrator in Chicago

And the crew in BI training Chicago. 

Firebolts

The blue one is washed and pretty too! 

Firebolts

Been riding my bike regularly for a month or so. Need her to commute. 

Firebolts

All washed and pretty in Marymore Park. 

Agile

I've been thinking about agile recently and have found a few good books and links. In particular Alistair Cockburns site is very useful. He includes most of his original papers as links.

It's interesting that DeMarko is very much on board with the Agile development processes. It's really an extension of work he began decades ago.

3D Mt. Rainer

On the way to Chicago from Seattle last week I took this 3D anaglyph of Mt. Rainer. I've never seen an Anaglyph of Mt. Rainer from a comercial air liner (in this case Southwest). 

National Cynicism day

It is tax day, and gas prices are insane, government waste is at outrageous new highs, and airport security is off the hook absurd.

I swear the whole American dream has gone to hell.

So I officially declare April 15, National Cynicism Day!

Have a nice day! (tm)

PA-160 cockpit from last week

PA-160 cockpit from last week. 

PA-160, Flying 50W!

I flew PA28-160 Nxx50W today. A nice surprise was that it is a PA-160, not a 140 so more power and payload. Filled her up to tabs put Marsha in the back seat flight instructor in the right seat. Left PAE to Useless Bay for some maneuvers. It was an aircraft checkout ride, 3 landings 1 full stop. Approach and takeoff stall practice, steep turns, radio practice, and pattern work.

It was fun. The most fun I've had in over 11 years, the last time I flew an airplane. I need to get my medical renewed and pilot license address corrected.

Things I did well;

• Power on and takeoff


• Heading rollouts


• Stall recovery


• Steep turns

Things that need work;

• Instrument fixation


• Airspeed maintenance on final


• Takeoff heading drift


• Cockpit paperwork managment

I'll get my paperwork organized and then do my bienial flight review (BFR). Then I'll have my wings again.

PS. I didn't get any pictures, I was otherwise occupied :)

Simple Music Theory

 

I thought you might be interested in a little history. This is the original worksheet where I designed my first pentographic music relationship. This very simple diagram embodies all of the relationships of music theory.

This isn't the first diagram I ever made but it is close. I experimented with this and my guitar and had a lot of fun composing melodies. This was around February of 2003 so I guess I developed this music diagram method in summer and fall of 2004 though I had tried to find a way to represent music theory relationships since the 1970's. It just took a while.

A side note the compass here I inherited from my dad. It's a nice instrument that he used in his math and science courses at Clemson University in the 1950's and 60's.

This is a different original music theory diagram. This may be the third digram created around the middle of 2002. 

Simple Music Theory

I've never posted this version. It shows an 12 note octave, a 7 note scale and their relationship.

I did not yet point out the relationship between the first and second circles. You could draw them as two sine waves of the same frequency one half sine wave out of phase. So the intersections of the vertical circles (blue) intersect between the horizontal circles (red). I think I've colored the little outside row of dots inversed i.e. the blue should be red and red blue.

Further talking I think might spoil the symetry of the drawing and I'm getting anxious to create a few real scales using this. It may take me a few days to do this since I'm kind of busy this weekend. I am thinking about it and will post a diagram with real note labels soon. Before then you can create a C scale very eaisly (CDEFG) by writing a C next to 1, B next to 2, etc.

To create a scale in A put an unwriten form over the C scale and rotate the page until the root scale note 1 on the top form is over the A on the C scale. Copy the notes through the paper and that would be your A scale. Why? To preserve the note phase relationships to each other.

I'll do this example and post both C and A scale diagrams next.