Above Average

Treked to Woodstock for the Johnny Average Tribute. It was great to see friends and be reminded of Woodstock in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Missing Mick.

Breakfast Chat

Awful Audio from my camera, but captures some vibe

Casto's Pals

More Dogs of Fall

We get deeper into October. The Red Sox are still in the ALCS. Peak color has reached the hilltop. And the dogs must go out on patrol.

Liona on Patrol

Pages Turn

My nostalgia for the circus of Phish festivals was revived this week as I heard the lyrics "If life we easy and not so fast, I wouldn't think about the past." As it turned out there was a circus in town the night Susan, Brooke, Matt and I went out to see Doug Stanhope - regrettably not Phish... Ringling Bros. Doug's humor is honest and insightful. It certainly does the job of momentarily disengaging yourself from your own, possibly stagnant, perspective. Great stuff. Right to the top of the list of people you might want to party with. Like P.J. O'Rourke twenty years ago.

Greg does his thing at MVPT (2007)

The Explorer Canoe Trips

For two consecutive Augusts starting in 1974, Explorer Post #63 would set out on a "Canoe Trip". In `74 there where 13 explorers; the next year just 9. Did it go commercial? Nahh, it was just a roll of the dice. I captured some shaky Super-8 that stayed in heavy-rotation among Pig Pen favorites. Catch the (silent) vibe here:

A non time-compressed version of the above is available on Blip.TV Here. It will take a minute or two for the download, or you can click below...

Click To Play

Dogs of Fall

The leaves cling to the trees, the ones that weren't dried off as the result of a harsh, punishing summer. Susan is on pet patrol for the greater good. I'm comfortable, at least for the moment, as the sox work their way through the first ALCS game.

Linus (spring 2007)

Zoe

Zoe brought together friends and family for her Bat Mitzvah, which coincidentally, fell on the third day of Sukkot. I had the honor of opening and closing the Ark. This was a joyous and memorable day!

Schmozing with Ted and Jamie

Whine Fest

Regrettably I'll miss Lori's always-excellent SML shindig this year. The event has morphed into more of a party and less of a reunion. New gossip emerges each year and I doubt WhineFest will be an exception.

Onteora Montage (1973)

Bachelor Mode 07

I'm in "bachelor mode" as Susan and Eileen head off to the wilderness of Baxter State Park. What will I do? For starters I'll try to hack my iPod touch. It arrived yestereday and I enjoyed borrowing UNH's wireless while chatting with Duane and Tina at Cotton. Is it a media player? Maybe - Although I've sorted my music by color for CoverFlow, I haven't plugged my headphones in yet. But it is an insanely thin and sexy Safari web browser. Time will tell what I can do with the thing.

Hint of Fall

The exceptionally dry August, in part because most every summer t-storm "missed", has triggered an early hint of fall. It isn't that the leaves have changed; it's that some of them have just fallen dead off the trees.

Happy Dogs I

Happy Dogs II

Happy Frog

Summer of Tragedy

In my life, I haven't processed as much tragedy as I have this summer. There are no words, magic or otherwise, that I can muster to help make it better. Only time.

Hilary at the Dubes Pond Classic (2004)

Knee Bored

Today marks the eleven-week aniversary of when I dinged my knee rounding four-ball at Dubes. This is a long recovery; and it's a drag. The last seven weeks have offered only a slow improvement. But soon the snow will fly.

Welcome Wagon at KTEX

Amsterblog

The three days at FPL went by in an instant. There is very little information content in saying “Amsterdam is a fun city”. But by circumstance, I eschewed the hackneyed red lights and red eyes for some deep dialog on reconfigurable computing. Dinner on Sunday night was at a fine Indian restaurant adjacent to a sex shop. Dinner Monday night was at a French affair called “Luden”. Finally the grand conference dinner at Jamie Oliver’s, “Fifteen”. Compared to Madrid, it was pretty tame. But maybe it just was that we were collectively missing Kati and Lesley. Sat with Seda on the plane from AMS to BOS; she was on the second leg of a slightly longer journey.

The Conference Hotel

Along the Canals

Mondo Bloggo

So long since posting: I brought "Steve French" home from the dealership. I can't think of a better name. Royce and Craig came to visit. Susan and I saw "Zappa Plays Zappa" in Boston, which was fantastic. The best live performance I've seen since, um, the two days at Tweezer Center just before Coventry. Then there was `vibes 07. My funked up bipartite patella and the still-unresolved mystery of why it so slow to heal. Then HotChips. And here we are. Whew! It sure seemed like more. I guess there is the jobby thing mixed in there too.

Preparing for HotChips (Menlo Park, CA)

Jeff is Happy (Vibes07, Bridgeport, CT)

My Bipartite Patella?

I like math. And graphs. So the word bipartite tends to fire more feel-good neuro-chemical transactions than bad. Until today. A trained professional looked at images of my knee taken just after my trauma. Tweaky-Tweaky with the gain and offset (er, window and level) and there exists this very uncool segmentation between the otherwise homogeneous density. MRI to follow soon.

Iontophoresis with Dexamethasone

In college, I thought dipping your finger in DMSO to "taste" the molecule would be a bad idea. Today there is a whole industry around pushing drugs through your skin, and look, one seems to be stuck to my knee. With Iontophoresis, we go beyond simple diffusion to let a potential drive the molecule in. In my case, a potent steroid. It seems very non-green that it is OK to just chuck this in the trash. Does it help? Not sure.

My iPatch

Bummer

Four weeks to the day since I dinged my knee, I've certainly plateaued and perhaps been set back a little. Things were getting better. I was walking. I skied an easy set. Now today I'm dorkus-maximus again. I think that Naproxen works well; but has a relatively slow pharmacokinetic time-constant. Susan found the Rangpur, so at least we have health drinks on board. I'm optimistic.

• Pharmacokinetics of Naproxen Sodium
  Naproxen itself is rapidly and completely absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract with an in vivo bioavailability of 95%. The elimination half-life of naproxen ranges from 12 to 17 hours. Steady-state levels of naproxen are reached in 4 to 5 days and the degree of naproxen accumulation is consistent with this half-life.

Translation: "Steady as she goes"!

Bitter Lemon

Tanqueray has capitalized on the disappearance of Schweppes Bitter Lemon with the widespread availability of their Rangpur gin. For those of us who just have to have our quinine salt with gin, this stuff is the shit. Just go with Rangpur and "indian" tonic and you are good to go with your anti-malarial health drink.

The Frogs Return

It has been an unusual year weather-wise. The frog population of the pond in our yard dropped from 20 down to about two. Maybe they were killed off by a warm January thaw; or a snake. Anyhow, after Susan did a little eco-shock and returned the water to a less swampy state, at least two frogs are back and we witnessed this telltale emulsion, which we think is a good thing.


Frog eggs on emulsion-like tape

Missing Chris

A decade goes by in an instant. January 13, 1998 tragically separated me from my touchstone, for this life anyhow. And in my dimensionless "one life per life" aphorism, this one goes on. And that's a good thing.

No sound, but Ramones or Nick Lowe will do

Leona and Guitars

We aren't sure why, but Leona, one of our rescued bull terriers goes crazy vicious when she is shown an acoustic guitar. Perhaps she was traumatized by an acoustic daft noodler at an early age? Not sure. In the clip below I simply pick one up and show it to her. Linus, himself, couldn't care less.