Beebe’s Bathysphere

This is from the introduction to Kraken, by Wendy Williams.

In the 1930s popular author and naturalist William Beebe cobbled together the world’s first real-life deep-sea expedition with the help of fellow explorer Otis Barton. The team’s exploration vehicle looked nothing like Jules Verne’s sleek Nautilus. Small and round and crudely engineered by modern standards, the vessel was in diameter less than the height of a man, with three-inch-thick observation portholes and a bolted-shut door that imprisoned the men inside. The steel globe leaked, and to circulate oxygen internally, the men waved palm-leaf hand fans. Without an engine, Beebe’s bathysphere dangled helplessly from the topside support ship like a ball of yarn suspended from knitting needles.

…

On one dive Beebe narrated his descent to an ardent North American and European radio audience. Listeners hung on every word, as avidly as they would decades later when American astronauts walked on the moon.

I’m sure when Beebe did this, everyone told him he was crazy. Everyone questioned the value of plumbing the depths of the ocean. There was probably not a lot of money for that sort of thing. But he did it anyway, “crudely” engineering his own success and exposing the wonders around us to the doubting world.

I wonder if there are recording of that radio broadcast.

The Mondays

This was originally drafted as an email to my good friend Grant. But I think it’s appropriate for public consumption.

Increasingly, any development I do follows this pattern:

10 ask for specs
20 wait
30 get (new) specs
40 build (more)
50 test
60 goto 30

Yes, that is an infinite loop. No, nothing is ever done. Even if it’s live, even if it’s production, it’s never done.

It’s hard to feel good about anything you do when it’s temporary. I was trained/educated to build robust systems that last.

But I am not my job. Right? There is life after programming.

Good weekend. Saturday was a lot of fun, despite being tired all day. Sunday morning I finished the book I was reading and decided not to start reading another book until at least Monday. Kathleen has been suggesting we ride our bikes to Starbucks for coffee. Which is pretty cool. I’ve been riding my new bike. It’s got some kinks that I need to work out. Braking is weird. We went to a few open houses and saw something we like but can’t afford. Kathleen went to the studio and threw two pieces. I’m really happy about that. She stopped doing pottery while her father was sick. It’s been a few years now. I’m glad she’s back at it. I always liked her work. It’s not perfect and shiny but it has a sort of honest character that I appreciate. A lot of her pottery friends can make a dozen pieces that all look the same, and while that makes you “good” at what you do, every piece Kathleen makes is unique and experimental. While she was out, I did some bike maintenance on the Bastard Son of the Disillusioned Yeti King. Rear brake was off, thought my wheel might be misaligned in the dropouts. Turned out I had a broken spoke. Probably not a good thing to be riding that around. And because I’ve been doing maintenance on a roughly weekly basis, I know that broke last week. So I’m on the new bike this week. Obviously the more I ride it, the more things I think about. The brakes are different, so my pannier will push against it if I put it where I think it ought to go on the rear rack. And, like I said, the front brake is doing some thumping thing that isn’t right. I will need a kickstand. I need to copy down the serial number.

But I digress.

You have to move on. I have to figure out how to get my busted wheel to the bike shop before they close at 6pm. That’s a bit more rushing than I like to do. Possible. I am already not as prepared as I could be to do it today, but I will probably try anyway. A little hustle. I like the word hustle. I don’t like the word hurry. I need get to pick out a new book to read. I need to get up to Stuyvesant to see about ordering the other books I want. I’ve decided that while it would be cheaper to order them from Amazon, and while Amazon would give me all kinds of reward points, I miss going to an actual bookstore. Wednesday we’re getting Brooks BBQ, which is a rare treat. And we’re trying to work something out to get together with my parents, though nobody has any idea what to do or where to do it.

Let’s focus on what’s ahead of us.

Taking the Train to Winter

Saturday morning we got up at 5:30am. We were in the car at 5:59am and we hit up Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee. I was astounded and confused by the number of cars on the highway at that ungodly hour of the morning.

We made it to the Saratoga Train Station with plenty of time to spare. Or so I thought. If the train leaves at 7am and you get there at 6:46am they are already boarding. We added the “tubing package” at the last minute, and were the last people to board the Dome car.

We got breakfast, which was very nice. Kathleen had biscuits and gravy, and more coffee, and I had tea and an omelette. Prices were reasonable and the service was good. Since the crowd in the Dome car was pretty small (and mostly older folks) things were pretty relaxed. The ride up was very nice. We followed the Hudson river, some of which was frozen in places, and saw a lot of forest and eventually snow.

We arrived in North Creek just after 9am. We decided to wander around town. Everything was closed except Café Sarah, so we got some more coffee. After chilling out / warming up there for a while, we took a free shuttle Gore Mountain. Which was nice, but it turned out that we wanted to be at the Ski Bowl. Our driver was nice enough to drop us off there. It was a little after 10am, and the tubing wasn’t open until 11am. We sat next to the fire and thought about taking a nap.

Tubing at Gore Mountain is a ton of fun. I’ve been snow tubing before and I didn’t like it at all. Hitting a kid at the bottom did not help any. They have a well designed ride at Gore. A tow line pulls you up the hill. Nice view from up there, too. There were four out of five lanes open. My favorite was the one all the way at the end- the lady gave you a good push. You sit down in the tube and they kick you down the hill. Lots and lots of fun. They have rubber mats at the bottom of the lanes to slow you down. Up and down took a bit more than 5 minutes. After an hour (and roughly 10 runs) the lanes had sped up and the mats weren’t slowing me down much, and I went way up the embankment at the bottom of the lanes. No complaints from me, though.

We took the shuttle back and had lunch at Andie’s, and did some shopping around town. Lots of girly shops. We ended up back in Café Sarah for tea and cookies, and to sit down. We were exhausted.

Back on the train a little after 4pm. We skipped most of dinner. I don’t think we knew there would be dinner, or we wouldn’t have eaten so much in town. I tried the tomato bisque, which was very good, and Kathleen had more coffee. I napped, and we watched the lights go by.

It was definitely a good day. We talked to a lot of people in North Creek, and they all had high hopes for the train and tourism. Many of them apologized for the poor winter. We both liked taking the train. It felt like a little vacation, taking an unfamiliar mode of transportation to an unknown place.

More photos here. More information about the train here.

Some Guidelines For Eating Slow

If you can, cook. You will appreciate what you put in your mouth more if you made it.

If you can, grow your own ingredients. You will appreciate what you put in your mouth more if you grew it.

If you cannot grow your own food, shop at Farmers Markets.

Do not start eating until everyone else is seated.

Do not eat in front of the television.

Do not eat while driving. Especially if you’re driving 80 mph on the highway.

Chew your food, don’t inhale it. It is not a race. If it is a race, the winner gets the Heimlich.

Taste your food. Try to describe every forkful. Try to use words more sophisticated than “good” and “nice.”

Do not put more food in your mouth until you finish chewing and swallowing what’s already in there.

Put your fork down and wipe your mouth with a napkin.

Put your fork down and drink something. These guidelines probably apply to drinking. Even if it’s just water.

You might try engaging in conversation with the other people at your table. Small talk is a good place to start.

Do not speak with food in your mouth. It’s disgusting.

Do not leave the table until everyone else is done. And when you get up, take some dirty dishes that aren’t yours to the sink.

Do the dishes. If your meal takes less time than doing the dishes, go back and try again.

The point here is to actually enjoy what you’re eating.

Speed is a False Economy

From Carl Honoré’s In Praise of Slowness. Emphasis and notes mine.

On many journeys, speeding will not save any time at all. The spread of synchronized traffic signals means that drivers who flout the speed limit come up against more red lights.¹ Weaving in and out of heavy traffic is often counterproductive, partly because lane speeds are constantly changing. Yet even knowing that speed is a false economy is unlikely to slow people down. The problem with most anti-speeding measures, from radar traps to narrowed roads², is that they rely on coercion… As soon as the coast is clear, they speed up again, sometimes even faster than before.³

1) I see this a lot when I’m biking. Cars zip passed me in a frantic, desperate race to get to the next red light. They often pass dangerously, and then I am right behind them half a block later.

2) While I think traffic calming is a good idea, the “narrowed roads” bit made me think of the proposed “road diet” they are looking into for Madison Ave. If it is successful, traffic on that street will thin out and go slower, but impatient drivers will speed through parallel streets instead.

3) Drivers pass me and gun it. As if to make up for the 5 or 10 seconds they were “stuck” behind me. And then, well, see #1.

A pedestrian hit by a car doing 20 mph stands a 5% chance of dying; at 30 mph that figure jumps to 45%; at 40 mph it is 85%. “We’re all in such a hurry nowadays that we speed in order to save a minute and a half,” [Len Grimshaw] says. “Is it really worth the risk of ruining your life or someone else’s just to arrive ninety seconds earlier?”

And an alternative…

When it comes to making urban areas more liveable, though, learning to obey the speed limit is just the start. As Citta Slow proved, you also have to give less space to the car.¹ To that end, cities everywhere are pedestrianizing roads, laying bicycle lanes, cutting parking, imposing road tolls and even banning traffic outright. Every year, many European cities hold car-free days. Some even empty the streets once a week. Every Friday night, traffic is cleared from swatches of central Paris to make way for an army of in-line skaters. Rome banner traffic for the whole of December 2002 from the fashionable shopping district known as Trident. In 2003, London began charging drivers £5 per day to enter the city centre during weekdays. Overall traffic is down by a fifth, turning the British capital into a much more welcoming place for cyclists and pedestrians. Other major cities are now studying the London charging scheme.

1) An idea that sounds almost unamerican.