Pottery Fall 2012

For many (14?) years I have been taking pottery classes at Britannia community centre in East Vancouver. I still learn things from the instructor, Helen Spaxman, but it is also just helpful to have a definite time to go and a group to chat with while I am doing it. It was a great group this time around, I hope those guys sign up again in the Spring.

I have a default object that I make, which is a hand built (pinch pot) bowl, like the one below. This was one that I glazed with commercial glazes I have at home. Coloured underglazes are put on under a clear glaze. The light brown is the colour of the clay. I have made dozens of these little bowls. They don't all turn out and the good ones make good host gifts, but the real reason I have made so many is that I find it very relaxing.

You can see another such bowl in the left picture below, also decorated with the commercial glazes I have at home. There is also a larger coil-built bowl and a salt shaker (there is a cork in the bottom you remove to fill it). These are done with the glazes at the community centre. On the right is the piece I was happiest with this session. It's a sugar bowl for us at home, slab-built. The design on the side started out as an error as wax resist put on the base got away from me and ran over the side. "It's a feature" as Helen says (OK, she's quoting me when she says it). 

Remembering Bruce Kirkpatrick Hill

I learned a few months ago that my high school friend, Bruce Hill, had died. I sent a short e-mail of consolation to his wife, who I have met but did not know well, but that does not seem to be enough to do to remember such an extraordinary person. He was quite important in my life. We were not best friends but there were certain things we did together that I think fundamentally changed the way I looked at the world. Let me tell a couple of short anecdotes about him that may give you a sense of him.

We went to a private school, St. Michaels, in Victoria together for grades 8-10 (maybe only 8-9?). After this he went on to Oak Bay High and I stayed on. Anyway, at St. Michaels we had daily PE ("gym" in private school speak). One day a week was enforced cross-country running and other days there were various options. When it was time to sign up for the Spring term, Bruce found our little group (including Stephen Dancy, Paul Modos, possibly Sean Neely although I am not sure if he was still there at that time and maybe some others I am forgetting - apologies) in the library and said, "hey, let's sign up for cross-country running on Tuesdays". I should say that Tuesdays were not the mandatory cross-country running day, that all of us tended to the nerdy rather than the athletic side of things, and that therefore cross-country running was viewed by all of us as a rather gruelling affair. However, Bruce talked us into it. He hinted at a secret plan, and anyway, if you have ever met Bruce you know he has a real charm and charisma. This charisma didn't work on everyone, for example my parents didn't think much of him, but he certainly had our number. It turns out that Tuesday gym for our grade was right before lunch. The few jocks that had signed up for cross country to actually run loped off happily. When we realized we were basically unsupervised for the hour before lunch with "permission" to be off school property, Bruce's brilliance became apparent. You might imagine that we went off and did drugs or got into some other sort of trouble, or tried to do this same scam every gym period. Actually, it was just Tuesdays and we took our lunch up the local hill, "Mount" Tolmie, and ate our lunch outside and talked. I don't remember much of what we talked about, but it was kind of intellectual I guess. I look back now with the insight of having my own teenage children who try out various scams and I am sure that some of the school staff must have known of our clever scheme. I think they looked and saw that it was harmless and that we really had fun (partly with the thrill of breaking the rules), smiled and looked the other way.

My father had a rustic cabin in northern British Columbia on Babine Lake. This is a long, glacier formed lake stretching north of the road from Price George to Prince Rupert. My parents were divorced and I visited my dad there basically every year from when I was 10 or so. This continued into my university years at the University of Victoria, when I would try to have the last week of August free to visit there before the term started. For several of these years, Bruce joined me on these trips. My "other" parents also didn't think much of him, but I sure enjoyed having a buddy there. Bruce was also studying at UVIC and I believe his major was Political Science, with some thought that he might go on to Law. However, he had an increasing interest in music at that time, that later became his passion and his career. He learned to play the organ, began composing, and found some placements as church organist and choir director. I have read some of the other postings about Bruce after his death and it is clear that he made a real contribution to the religious music scene in Toronto where he lived for most of his adult life. Anyway, back in the early 80s he was just beginning this path. For several years, Bruce and I took the ferry to Vancouver, then the bus up to Kamloops (about four hours) where my father lived. The next day we would all go up to Babine in their RV (about ten hours). One year, Bruce missed the beginning of the trip (I don't remember why) and so missed on the ride for the longest part of the journey. We assumed he just wouldn't make it up that year and settled in without him. However, starting a day late he took the bus all the way to Prince George from Vancouver, then the train to Burns Lake, the closest town to where my parents' cabin is. There, he hit a bit of a snag. It is a 45 minute drive from town out to the lake on a logging road. Undeterred, he went to the local United Church and knocked on the minister's door. It turns out that the church shared an organist with another church (in Terrace I believe) too far away to allow him to make services on the same Sunday so he alternated between them. It turned out that the coming Sunday would be musically silent and so Bruce bargained his playing for a ride out to Pendelton Bay. It was not an empty promise. He worked on my father to drive him out that Sunday and dutifully played for the service. His playing improved steadily over these years. At that time, he was not a great player, but certainly enthusiastic.

I saw from the other postings about Bruce that many people knew him as full of energy and enthusiasm, always willing to participate and help out. I will remember him fondly. He will be missed.

Wetton Numbers

When modelling physical processes (that is, writing down mathematical equations that describe a physical system, at least approximately), many parameters can enter the model. If you consider idealized fluid flow, the parameters are the density, viscosity and speed of the fluid, and the size of the object it is flowing around. Actually, the behaviour of the fluid does not depend on all four of these parameters separately, but just a single combination of them called the Reynolds number (usually abbreviated Re). A situation changed to a fluid twice the viscosity of the original and with flow speed also twice as fast will behave exactly the same (at least, the same to the level that the Navier Stokes equations can accurately describe the flow). The Reynolds number is dimensionless and in words represents the ratio of inertial to viscous forces in the fluid. Flows with a high enough Reynolds number are turbulent. Small Reynolds number flows are laminar.

Around 10 years ago, as I was approaching my fortieth birthday, I was working on a project modelling fuel cell behaviour. Specifically, I was looking at models of how unit fuel cells in a stack affected each other due to electrical coupling through currents in shared current collecting plates (bipolar plates, which sounds kind of funny now that I look at it years later).  I identified a dimensionless parameter in this stetting that is the ratio of bipolar plate electrical resistance to equivalent resistance in the local electrochemical reaction. It could be used to estimate the number of adjacent cells that would be affected by an anomalous cell in the stack through this electrical coupling. In the paper I wrote up, I labelled this parameter W. I hoped that people would refer to it as the Wetton number. This was a bit egotistical, I admit, but it was an important birthday coming up for me. However, while the paper was in draft, I discovered that a very related idea was known in the literature since the 1940s as the Wagner number. Not only did that bastard Wagner steal my number (well OK, he did get there first by quite a large margin), but his number was the inverse of mine, and I had to do the work to change this everywhere that it occurred in my draft.

While working with Jean St Pierre at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute earlier this year, I identified another candidate for the Wetton number, W1. It is the solubility of a trace gas component (possibly a contaminant) in air, scaled to the fuel cell setting. A high W1 means that the trace component will be almost completely scavenged by the water by fuel cell outlet. You see the "1" on the W1, so you can guess that there is a W2. The second parameter describes a possible, generic first order ionization of the dissolved component. The formation of these ions effectively allows more of the component to enter the water. It is more significant at low concentration levels. Not all gases will ionize significantly in water but there are some interesting ones that do, like sulphur dioxide. The ionization lowers the pH of the water (this effect is one of the contributors to acid rain). Maybe these new candidates will actually be known as Wetton numbers. This would be a nice fiftieth birthday present!

More (semi) Scrap Wood Carpentry

I returned to my scrap wood carpentry hobby the last few weeks. I have looked online at various web sites about carpentry, trying to actually learn something. As I expected, it starts to get pretty complicated as soon as you get past the idea of screwing two boards together. Beyond the construction and finishing techniques, you have to take into account the properties of solid wood, which will expand and contract significantly with temperature and humidity. There seem to be limitless (expensive) tools you need to do any serious carpentry. I am going to try and make do with my circular saw, router, drill and sander (nice ones that my father got me over the years), and the odd hand tool I have already. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had hoped to build up enough skill playing around with scrap wood to be able to do some kitchen renovations we have in mind on my own. I just don't think that will happen now, we'll have to get a professional in. I do have a few things I'd like to make on my own still, for fun - and the higher content of scrap wood the better (you'll see below that I have had to actually buy some wood for my latest projects). I want to at least get to the minimal stage where I can build a few custom things to fit specific spots in our house that don't have nails, screws, or gaps between the boards showing. This seems to be one of the minimal goals of furniture making. I haven't been following plans, a lot of the fun is coming up with the design. 

The two things I made recently are a computer desk that fits in a particular, narrow gap, shown on the left below. On the right is a workbench. I made it with the gap in the middle for long rip cuts and the same height as a commercial bench my parents in law gave me a few years ago, so I can use both for bigger pieces. I may have to tinker with the arrangement of the top boards to allow room for clamps as I start to use it, I just don't have enough experience yet to know where they will be needed while arranging pieces for cutting, routing and assembly. Notice the off centre middle support on the bench. I used ideas from advanced geometry to determine the most aesthetically pleasing location. The tops of both pieces were made of new boards I had to buy for about $30. 

Food Shopping near the Makiki District of Honolulu

I know everyone is waiting for the food shopping entry in the blog for Honolulu (not), and I won't disappoint you. This mathematical army of one definitely marches on its stomach. I had an apartment in the Makiki district of Honolulu, at the corner of Pikoii and Wilder. Honolulu is divided up into relatively small districts (Waikiki is the most well known to tourists). Locals tell me that there is a real local flavour to life on the Islands. It is true that they are not large and traffic is heavy enough that getting around is slow even if you wanted to travel outside your area. So, in my area I shopped for food at three main places:

1. Safeway at the corner of Pikoii and Beretania. This seems pretty dull and in some ways it was. I could use my Safeway card from BC for discounts. What was interesting was that overall food prices were double that in Vancouver. It makes sense when you think that everything has to be shipped out there, and Hawaii is not close. It is interesting that locals praise stores like Safeway and Costco for coming to the Island and making prices "reasonable" to what they were before. If you can't stand patronizing Safeway there is a more local Foodland next door on Beretania with almost identical selection and pricing. 
2. Makiki Farmers Market at the corner of Wilder and Mikiki, Thursday evenings. This was just a few blocks away, on my bus route back from the University. Small market but all kinds of local fresh fruit and vegetables. I tried fresh pineapple, apple bananas, mangoes, long squash, Thai basil, all kinds of lettuce and tomatoes from this market - all great. Prices were not low, but competitive with Safeway and all local and fresh. 
3. Hawaii Farmers Market at the corner of King and Ward (in the parking lot of the Blaisdell centre), Wednesday evenings. This was a bit father away, but on my way home from the fuel cell test facility on the Hawaii Energy Corporation site. This is a larger market, with local coffees and fresh fish (except the week I was planning to get fish there). 

Another place you might want to check out for specialty liquors is Tamuras on Waialae (which seems to be the main street in Honolulu for locals). This is a bit of a trip outside the Makiki district. I stopped there on the way back from the Kahala Mall (which I went to on the city bus) where there is a Whole Foods, which I also recommend as a good place to shop for food.   

Golden Geek Awards 2011

I have wanted to make an annual awards page for a number of years, highlighting fantasy, science fiction and other nerdy or geeky media. I should make a couple of things clear from the start:

1. There is no committee behind the decisions here, it is all my opinion. Feel free to disagree with my choices. In some cases, you are probably right. 
2. The awards for a given year are for things I first found in that year, not necessarily when they first appeared.
3. Hall of Fame entries are mostly things that I would enjoy gain this very minute if I had the chance and buddies to join me. However, certain things were so great and innovative for their time that they cannot be ignored. I have marked these as [dated]. We should give them their due, even if we don't want to spend a lot of time on them now. 
4. Some Hall of Fame entries have a [B+] designation. These are things I really liked, even if I probably shouldn't have. 
5. As a general comment, the Hall of Fame sections are preliminary. I am sure there are deserving entries I just haven't remembered yet. As the years roll by I'll fill these in, and also add more description of the entries. 

[New March 31 2012: Classical Geek Section]

Video Section

Big Screen

• 2011 Winner: X-Men First Class
• 2011 Winner totally B category: Immortals
• Hall of Fame: Blade Runner; Soylent Green [dated]; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; Highlander [B+]; Star Trek II, the Wrath of Khan; Diva; Mirror Mask; Princess Bride; Unbreakable; X-Men I; Omega Man [dated]; Willow; Rocky Horror Picture Show

Small Screen

• 2011 Winner: Sherlock
• 2011 Honorable Mention: Misfits; Walking Dead; Game of Thrones; Doctor Who
• Hall of Fame: Doctor Who; Classic Doctor Who; Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Babylon 5; Farscape; Star Trek (original series) [dated]; Xena [B+]; Highlander [B+]; Lexx [B+]

Shows they Cancelled

• Firefly; Babylon 5; Farscape; Strange Luck; Pushing Daisies; Wonderfalls; Freaks and Geeks

Anime and Cartoons

• 2011 Winner: Durarara. 
• 2011 Honorable Mention: Tiger and Bunny. 
• Hall of Fame: Baccano; Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood; Bleach; the Tick (animated); Naruto; Death Note; Cowboy Bebop; Cyber6; Princess Mononoke; Bacanno; Mushishi

Book Section

Novels

• 2011 Winner: Martin, A Song of Fire and Ice series
• Hall of Fame: Tolkien, Lord of the Rings [dated]; Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia [dated]; Clarke, The City and the Stars; Zelazny, The Lord of Light [B+]; Van Vogt, The World of Null-A [B+]; Moorcock, Dancers at the End of Time series; Moorcock, Elric series [B+]; Moorcock, Castle Brass series; Moorcock, Chronicles of Corum [B+]; Moorcock, Cornelius Chronicles; Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky; Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep; Tolkien, The Hobbit; William Gibson, Sprawl trilogy; Gaimon and Pratchett, Good Omens; Adams, A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series
• Hall of Fame Authors: Michael Moorcock; Vernor Vinge; William Gibson; Neil Gaimon 

Graphic Novels (Comics)

• 2011 Winner: Scott Pilgrim
• Hall of Fame: Sandman; Uncanny X-men (Claremont years); Excalibur (Claremont years); the Watchmen; Buddha; Megatokyo

Game Section

Computer Games 

• No Award 2011
• Hall of Fame: Classic Empire [dated]; Adventure [dated]; Rogue; Warlords II; Diablo I; the SIMS; Civilization  [dated]; Warcraft II [dated]; Starcraft I; Homeworld I

Multi-player Online Games 

• 2011 Winner: World of Warcraft
• Hall of Fame: A turn-based online classic empire-like game whose name I can't remember [dated]; Asheron's Call 

Roleplaying Games

• No Award 2011
• Hall of Fame: Dungeons and Dragons, 2nd Edition [dated]; Champions; GURPS

Board Games

• No Award 2011
• Hall of Fame: Risk; Diplomacy; Wagram; Panzergruppe Guderian; Kingmaker; Settlers of Catan; Barbarian Kings

Handheld Device (iPod) Games

• 2011 Winner: Fieldrunners
• 2011 Honorable Mention: Plants vs Zombies
• Hall of Fame: Orion; Lux DLX 2

Music Section

Albums

• 2011 Winner: NoMeansNo, The People's Choice (hits compilation)
• Hall of Fame: Beatles, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band;  Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour; Interpol, Our Love to Admire; Black Sabbath, Paranoid; The Cars, the Cars; Concrete Blond, Bloodletting; Concrete Blond, Walking in London; Cream, Disraeli Gears; Cream, Wheels of Fire; the Decemberists, the Hazards of Love; Decemberists, the Tain; Doors, LA Woman; Evanescence, the Open Door; Franz Ferdinand, Tonight; Hoodoo Gurus, Mars Needs Guitars; Hoodoo Gurus, Stoneage Romeos; Iron Butterfly, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida; Jean Michel Jarre, Oxygene; Jethro Tull, Aqualung; Kate Bush, the Dreaming; King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King; Led Zeppelin I, II, III and IV; Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti; Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon; Pink Floyd, Relics; Prince, Purple Rain; Queen, A Night at the Opera; Queen, A Kind of Magic; Rasputina, Cabin Fever!;  Rasputina, Frustration Plantation; Rasputina, Thanks for the Ether; Santana, Abraxas; Soundgarden, Superunknown; Styx, the Serpent is Rising [B+]; White Stripes, Icky Thump; Yes, Drama; Yes, Fragile; Yes, Magnification; Yes, Relayer; Yes, The Yes Album
• Hall of Fame Bands: Beatles; Led Zeppelin; Queen; Yes

Soundtracks

• No Award 2011
• Hall of Fame: Shrek; the Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Once More with Feeling (Buffy Musical); Cowboy Bebop OST; Homeworld I game OST; 

Classical Geek

Classical music can have a definite geek theme and/or evoke a mood appropriate for gaming or other geek pastimes. I stretch the term classical to include all orchestral pieces that you could not really put in the categories above. 

No award 2011

Hall of Fame:

• Wagner, Das Ring des Nibelungen: hours and hours of thick and rich opera, telling the tale of the Ring that gives domination over the world and the destruction of the Norse gods. The story shares some of the same roots as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The theme, Ride of the Valkyries, is one quite recognizable piece of this epic. 
• Tchaikovsky, 1812 Overture: the music follows Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 ending with cannon fire. In some performances, real cannons are used as the musical instrument for this part and you have to love that!
• Prokofiev, Lieutenant Kije Suite: very fun piece with an amusing background story. It is apparently a movie score from 1933 so perhaps it should be in the soundtrack section.
• Sibelius, Lemminkäinen Suite: music related to legends from the Kalevala which has stories from Finnish mythology (it is like a Beowulf for Finland). 
• Grieg, Peer Gynt Suite: featuring the piece, In the Hall of the Mountain King.
• Orff, Carmina Burana: the opening theme has been used in many totally B movies such as Excalibur (1981). 
• Bach, Tocata and Fugue in D Minor: you will recognize this organ piece when you hear it even if you don't know it by name. It has been featured in many different kinds of media. 
• Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade: music inspired by the Arabian Nights. I think Scheherazade's theme is quite beautiful. 
• Strauss, Also Sprach Zarathusra: You'll recognize the prelude as the opening piece of 2001, a Space Odyssey. 
• Holst, The Planets: The Mars theme from this suite is also quite recognizable. 
• Mussorgsky, St. John's Night on Bald Mountain: made popular by the Disney movie, Fantasia. 

Other Section 

Last week in Hawaii

I am in my last week here. While it is great to be in the sun in this beautiful place and the work has been interesting, I am getting homesick and will be happy to head home. I hope to have the chance to come back again and next time it would be great to have the family with me at least part of the time.

Last Saturday I went with Jean on a food tour, the hole in the wall tour. This was quite an enjoyable guided tour to some of the best local places that are off the main tourist trail. I had baked manapua, a Chinese-Hawaiian version of a steamed pork bun; coco puff pastry; hand made rice noodles; longan and rambutan fruit; 5 layers of heaven roast pork (heart attack on a stick, but what a way to go!); and finally malasadas, a kind of portuguese doughnut. The middle of the tour was in chinatown where we had a bunch of things served in succession in what our guides called a "food parade". That has a nice ring to it :) The guides also give helpful advice about what restaurants to go to and other tourist tips. The tour also takes you around the city and gives you a sense of where things are. I would recommend doing this the first day you come to Honolulu to get your bearings geographically as well as culinarily. Some of the places we visited are shown below.

Last Wednesday I took the day off (I really have been working here - honest!) and went to the Polynesian Cultural Centre on the north of the island. I couldn't get tickets for the weekend. It turns out that the centre is run by the Mormon church and is a non-profit outfit that supports students attending the local Brigam Young University. I don't really see the Mormon and Polynesian cultural connection but it seems to work. I had a tour package that took me around the island to get there, getting a chance to see some of the natural sights and also the Dole pineapple plantation (a tourist trap).

The Cultural Centre itself was really worth the trip. It is a kind of theme park with a bunch of villages representing the culture on various island groups. These guys really got around at sea. The replica canoe below (built with traditional techniques - no metal parts) made a recent trip from Hawaii to Tahiti, some 4000 km or so, in 28 days without using any modern navigational equipment. The villages had staggered performances of about 20 minutes - all quite different but all enjoyable. I flagged in photography at this point. I began the day with mild stomach flu and was beginning to fade at this point.

The package included dinner, a luau or traditional Hawaiian meal. The meal was fine, what I could eat of it. People who had visited Hawaii had told me that they had tried Poi, a traditional dish of pulverized tarot root, but that is was not interesting. I figured I should try it but can now confirm what they were saying. It was described as "wallpaper paste without the flavour" by one of my table mates. The entertainment at the dinner was really the low point of the trip. A vegas-style host (who did have a good singing voice) "entertained" us with faux banter while attractive young adult and cute kid dancers did their thing to amuse the audience of mostly old, white people. It was very forced. After dinner there was a much better show in a large theatre, again featuring elements from the different Polynesian groups. Although I had the cheapest tour package I somehow ended up in the second row near centre - it was a great seat. Overall, definitely worth taking this trip for the day, although I would try one of the other dinner options to avoid the luau show I had.

I am touristed out at this stage. Some things I would do next trip are:

• Go to Alan Wong's restaurant for dinner. He is a well-known and well-regarded local restauranteur who is also a proponent of the local food movement here.
• Go to the swap-meet at the Aloha Stadium. I was thinking of going today but it is raining off and on and anyway I am feeling lazy.
• Hike in the Waimea Valley.
• Take a side trip to the Big Island to see the volcanos.
• Go snorkeling to see the coral and tropical fish. I am not a natural for this (don't swim well and sunburn very easily) but it looks really worthwhile.
• Do the tour of Pearl Harbour. I have been told it is interesting even for non-Americans.
• Visit some local farms and get to know a bit more about the local food movement. I think it would take some time to get into this scene. 
• Take one of the "booze cruises", catamaran cruises to see the sunset.