MAY-KING CHANGES: This morning I was reflecting on the fact that it's the first day of the month of May, and out of the blue it made me think it would be fun to use that opportunity to use this month to "May-ke" some changes to our daily routine. We've all been sick for almost a month now, and we're sick and tired of being sick and tired. We can't control the viruses we encounter as we're out and about, but we can try to get healthier, so we are better able to combat them. So, to that end, we're going to make sure we exercise every day. We've actually been pretty good about this, but we're going to make a Must Do daily in May (and hopefully beyond). So that's once change. Second, I thought it would be fun if every day this month, we brought some kind of produce into the house that we've not had at home before. And third, we're going to try to mix up our routine - not going to our normal haunts all the time. We need to explore more! Today, we went for a nice long walk (check mark number one), we tried a new-to-us Japanese place for dinner, and our produce of the day was a coconut, which comes with a challenge, of course! How do you get that thing open, especially without wasting any of the delicious coconut milk inside? Annabelle set to researching the problem, which was great. I hadn't even thought about the educational component of introducing new produce daily! She watched a number of YouTube videos with different ideas for getting the hard shell open. One that looked fast and easy involved a drill, however, we thought using power tools would be cheating. Instead, we settled on a corkscrew approach.
The video instructed viewers to find one of the "eyes" or circles on a coconut. Apparently that's a more vulnerable spot. We found one, and the kids twisted away at it. Christian pulled the plug out, and voila! Coconut milk!
The kids drank every last drop.
Then, we moved to the alley to take a hammer to the thing.
The kids were quite pleased with their hammer work.
Annabelle also found a fun coconut quiz, which we took together. One of the things we learned is that the coconut is actually a seed, not a nut, per se.
In other news, the Japanese restaurant we tried had an intriguing menu item: goldfish ice cream. According to a South Korean food blog I found, the treat is a rice wafers in the shape of a goldfish, with vanilla ice cream and sweet red bean paste in between. Apparently it's a riff on a popular Korean street food, boong uh bbang. You can see a photo of what goldfish ice cream looks like in the package here: http://southkoreanfood.tumblr.com/post/24694278554/samanco-ice-cream-south-korean-ice-cream-a Here's what ours looked like out of the package (and cut up). The kids report it was one tasty fish!
All in all, I think our May-ke a Change campaign has potential for lots of positive. Stay tuned - tomorrow is kumquats! :)
WHALE TALE: A few days back we got notice of an opportunity to pre-screen a new IMAX 3D movie at Pacific Science Center, "Humpback Whales 3D" for free. Of course, I jumped on it!
What a treat it was.
First and foremost, it's worth noting the movie was wonderful. It gives an extraordinary glimpse into the world of these amazing, mammoth marine animals. Though they were driven to the edge of extinction 50 years ago, today, these 50-foot long, 48-ton animals are holding their own.
Here are the things CJ remembered most about the movie:
In 1978, the king of the South Pacific island of Tonga banned whaling, slowly starting an increase of the whale population in that area. Japan, Norway, and Iceland all still practice commercial and scientific whaling. Around age 1, a Humpback Whale starts exploring the world on it's own, away from it's mother. Centuries ago, men in boats used to (and sadly, still do today) be the most common cause of death of Humpback Whales. Now, many scientists in boats are working to save Humpback whales. Humpback whales that live in the South Pacific ocean, at one point in their lives, may migrate to Antarctica, for food. Humpback Whales in the North Pacific ocean, however, often migrate to Alaska for food.
And Annabelle's memories:
Humpback whales can travel thousands of miles while migrating. Humpback
whales also populate all of the world's oceans. Humpback mothers are
pregnant with their calves for a year and stay with them for the same
amount of time. Some groups of whales use a method of feeding called
"bubble netting" to catch tons of food at the same time. Humpbacks also
have fish called Remora fish glide along with them sometimes.
As an added bonus, today wasn't just a sneak preview for the movie, it was also an introduction to one of the best IMAX movie theaters in the nation! In fact, it was on the front page of the Seattle subreddit today. MISSION COMPLETE: Guess who got a new crater today? Our neighbor Mercury! About 12:26 p.m. our time, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft crashed into Mercury's surface, after delivering 10 stellar years of scientific service. Finally out of propellant, the force of solar gravity caused MESSENGER's demise today.
When MESSENGER met the end, it was traveling around 8,700 miles per hour. It's estimated its memorial crater will be 52 feet in diameter. You can see the impact area of MESSENGER in the NASA graphic immediately below. It's in a basin named Shakespeare, color coded by topography, with the red areas around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) higher than the low lying blue areas. To give you an idea for scale, the large crater on the left border is Janacek, 30 miles (48 kilometers) in diameter. According to NASA, the impact basin in the photo is "filled with smooth plains material, likely due to extensive lava flooding in the past." Interesting.
Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
MESSENGER was the first spacecraft to ever orbit Mercury. During its four years circling the planet closest to our shared sun, MESSENGER acquired over a quarter million images.
Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
MESSENGER was a workhorse. Check out its numbers!
I asked the kids to read about the MESSENGER mission on NASA's Web site and write down five things we've learned about the planet closest the sun. Here's what CJ shared. ...
In 2004, the MESSENGER probe, sent to planet Mercury, is, unfortunately, going to crash today on the surface of Mercury. Here are five facts we learned about Mercury from MESSENGER:
First, according to NASA's website, NASA scientists believe that Mercury may be suggesting that it is hit by a constant meteor shower, with the clues pointing to Mercury’s shower being discovered in the very thin halo of gases that make up the planet’s exosphere. MESSENGER's Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer (MASCS) has detected spectra on Mercury's surface that, when mapped on to different wavelengths, appear very colorful. In 2012, MESSENGER was reported to have possibly discovered frozen water harboured in some craters on the cold side of Mercury. According to NASA's website, A dark layer covering most of the water ice deposits supports the theory that organic compounds, as well as water, were delivered from the outer solar system to the inner planets and may have led to prebiotic chemical synthesis and, thusly, life on Earth. Prior to the MESSENGER mission examining Mercury, Mercury's surface was often compared to the surface of Earth's moon, when, in fact, they are not too similar. In 2014, MESSENGER was reported to have discovered a hot flow anomaly, or HFA, which, according to NASA's website, has previously been spotted at Earth, Venus, Saturn and Mars. According to NASA's website, planets have bow shocks, the same way that supersonic jets have them, and that HFAs are when hot solar wind is deflected off the bow shock of the planet.
Overall, MESSENGER taught us some very interesting things.
Annabelle went for a list format to share facts she found out.
5 things we learned about Mercury from MESSENGER: 1. Mercury appears to be hit by a periodic meteor shower (possibly from the trail of comet Encke) 2. Mercury's north and south poles are asymmetrical. 3. The ice in Mercury's polar regions, if spread over an area the size of Washington, would be more than two miles thick. 4. 115 craters have been named since MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury. 5.
A hot flow anomaly (HFA) was detected on Mercury in 2014. According to
NASA, a hot flow anomaly is made of very hot solar wind deflected off a
bow shock, much like one on a supersonic jet. Hot flow anomalies have
been seen on Earth, Venus, Saturn and Mars.
We watched a short (silent) movie about MESSENGER, featuring many of its images.
INCOMING: Nothing like waking up to a headline in the Daily Telegraph that reads "Russian spacecraft Progress M-27M hurtling towards Earth" and promising coverage via a live blog.
That pretty much let us know that Roscosmos's attempts to get the Russian cargo ship launched yesterday under control had not succeeded as we slept last night.
Multiple articles I read online quoted the head of Roscosmos, Igo Komarov , as saying they were working 'water landing' options this morning. Yeah, sure they are. Sorry, but I'm super skeptical they have any control over the spacecraft any more based on what I've read online from multiple sources.
Meanwhile, European Space Agency director Thomas Reiter said the ESA is tracking the spacecraft so that teams can predict when and where the spacecraft will come down if it cannot be rescued. Re-entry of Progress is normally done over the south Pacific Ocean in order to avoid any debris falling on land. However, not everything will necessarily burn up and if it’s an uncontrolled entry, that could mean fragments falling on land, and whatever's on said land.
I am old enough to remember when Skylab came raining down. That was the kind of stuff that would keep me awake as a kid.
Right now, Progress is 160 miles high and travelling at more than 16,000 mph. That altitude is enough below the International Space Station that it won't have to take evasive maneuvers, but some satellites might need to get a move on.
This was Progress mission 59. Three or four Progress cargo ships have been launched every year for several years, on supply missions to the ISS. The success record is good, with just one other complete loss, which came in 2011 when one failed right after launch and crashed near the Mongolia/China border.
SUNNY STROLL: This morning we took the dogs for a walk and delivered a thank you note to a neighbor who gifted us some brand new Mariners-game-giveaway swag in the form of some Kyle Seager jersey shirts.
We met the woman via a great Facebook group/phenomenon we participate in called "Buy Nothing ..." with the ... being whatever your local community is. You can read about it on their Web site: http://buynothingproject.org/
FLOATING: This afternoon, we headed north and knocked an item of our 'must see' list by stopping at The Root Beer Store in Lynnwood, WA.
There, they have over 100 different kinds of root beer in bottles, as well as a couple of kinds on tap. They also have dozens of other 'exotic' flavored sodas, from chocolate to cucumber, bacon to Buffalo hot wings (ewwww). Here's a tiny sampling. Altogether, it's really quite a sight to behold.
We came home with a six pack of some of the ones the piqued the kids' curiosity most. I'll let them share one a day. That will prolong the sugary joyride.
ON THE GROW: Yesterday's weather was so delightful, the kids were inspired to plant some more seeds. Here, some Carolina Reaper and Bhut Jolokia Ghost Chile are sown. They're germinating away on our kitchen counter now, right next to the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion plants we started a few weeks back. ARTS AND CRAFTS: Annabelle and I had a half hour to kill this morning before her art class started at the Queen Anne center we attend several times a week. We took that opportunity to participate in a group art project using CDs or DVDs and yarn to create a pretty little piece that will be displayed as part of a collection, along with others' creations. You start with a blank disc, and yard is woven from its outside to its inner hole (the green seen below). Next, you take a few lengths of other colors of yarn and weave it over and under the initial pattern, in circles.
After a few minutes, you have something that looks like this. ...
It's a pretty, dynamic sculpture when hung somewhere light can reflect off it. After she finished decorating her disc, Annabelle showed me some of the things she's been working on in her art class. One page was all about value, or "the relative amount of light on a plane," per her paper.
And she shared this self portrait. ...
Cute. :) She explained the shapes in the upper right corner were different ear experiments. THE BEAT GOES ON: Today I introduced something very vexing during the kids' guitar practice: a metronome. It was easy to find one online (I chose this one http://www.metronomeonline.com/). They're working on an acoustic duet that is so simple, that there really isn't anything to 'hide' behind, and timing is everything. It has been a bit of a struggle for them. I thought a metronome would help. Of course, initially, it just made things LOTS harder, because they're not used to, well, staying on precise time. At one point CJ said, "I'm going to be hearing that (metronome) in my sleep tonight!" My response? "Good! And when you do, sing along with it, in time!" SCORE: Yesterday we hit Value Village because club members could get 50 percent off all short sleeved shirts (yes, they have a club, and yes, we're that cool that we belong, ha ha). Anyway, of course we came out with all sorts of things that had nothing to do with the sale, like this gem!
Not a single page had been touched in it, which is good for us, but it makes me sad for the kid who was its first owner. NOT GOOD: Rather not good news from Roscosmos today. A cargo supply craft headed for the International Space Station is spinning out of control in orbit. Here's a short video of its launch, which happened a little after midnight our time, last night. The launch looked nominal, but when they turned the camera on the Progress craft, the trouble was obvious. The video below includes footage from the launch and of the trouble, as well as some NASA TV commentary. (Frankly, the spinning ship video makes me a little dizzy.) <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7Hw9j-1pj6I" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> https://youtu.be/7Hw9j-1pj6I Russian ground control is continuing to try to make contact with and corrections on the craft, of course. Per a NASA press release, on board the Progress is more than three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the space station crew, including 1,940 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 926 pounds of water, and 3,128 pounds of spare parts, supplies and scientific experiment hardware. Among the U.S. supplies on board are spare parts for the station’s environmental control and life support system, backup spacewalk hardware, and crew clothing, all of which are replaceable."
THEY'RE ALIVE: We're finally getting around to posting some reflections from our visit to the Living Computer Museum last Thursday afternoon. Located in Sodo, just south of the stadiums, LCM is abuzz with dozens of vintage computers which are on and operating, rather than just sitting as static relics of the past.
In a section featuring desktop models, visitors have a chance to test drive the machines, and play classic computer games from decades ago.
And, of course, you can't talk about vintage computer games without mentioning The Oregon Trail. Naturally, one of our party died of measles within two minutes. Here, Annabelle plays it on an Apple IIe.
There were also machines designed for applications beyond the desktop. I thought this one's styling was superb. That's important in a computer, you know. ;)
This set up was pretty fabulous looking, as well.
And check out this old card reader. ...
A real relic, it dates back to the 1940s.
And it turns out it was used at Oregon Health Science University, in Portland.
The super computers were hard to get good photos of the machines themselves, but check out this sign regarding the installation of a CDC 6600 at Purdue University back in the day. ...
And look at this colorful spaghetti in the super computer room. ...
I'll let CJ and Annabelle tell you a little bit more about our visit. Annabelle's up first. ...
On April 23, I went to the Living Computer Museum. The museum features a
lot of cool computers and machines, most of which are actually on. The
computers are really fun to look at and use. Some of the computers allow
you to type your name, and others run games on them. One of my favorite
computers was one that played the game King's Quest. One of the main
attractions is a big room called the 'cool room' with a really big
'super' computer (it was super by the standards at which it was made,
but it's less powerful than an iPhone). The museum is really interesting
and I would recommend it.
And here's CJ's report. ....
On April 23rd, I visited the Living Computer Museum, a museum with different classic, operational computers on display, including computers such as the Commodore 64 and Amiga. Although some of the computers in the Living Computer Musuem are already bulky and giant enough, such as the IBM 360 Model 91, the bulkiest and most giant of their collection of computers have to go in a cold room, where they won't immediately overheat and create extremely hot tempertures in the main rooms. The amazing thing is, your smartphone is more powerful than all of the computers in that room combined!
Different computers I played on in the Living Computer Museum include the Commodore VIC-20, on which you can play Galaxian and other, more obscure titles, the Commodore 64, which I played Maniac Mansion, and the IBM PCjr, on which I failed terribly on King's Quest. There were several other computers in the museum, all of which are listed on the Living Computer Museum's website at www.livingcomputermuseum.org.
Overall, I found the Living Computer Museum a very fascinating museum, and certainly a needed stop if you are visiting SoDo anytime soon.
DOWN UNDER: An email from the National Science Foundation certainly got our attention last Friday morning. The message let us know that a team of University of Utah seismologists have discovered "a reservoir
of hot, partly molten rock hidden 12 to 28 miles beneath Yellowstone's
supervolcano--enough to fill the 1000 cubic-mile-Grand Canyon more than
11 times." Well, well, well, that's something to think about, isn't it? Here's a short video they're released about the news.
http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=134923&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click HAPPY HUBBLE ANNIVERSARY: It has now been 25 years (April 24, 1991) since the Hubble Space Telescope launched. One day later, it was deployed, as seen in this NASA photograph taken by the crew of the STS-31. You can see shuttle Discovery's cargo doors open, and Hubble being of Hubble staring its incredible mission
