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Pencil and Paper – Rambles Blog at Star Chamber
https://starchamber.com/2014/05/pencil-and-paper.html
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber. This is a review of the Pencil from Studio 53. Designed for use with the Paper app. I sprang for the walnut version. It looks nice, and it feels nice. That’s the best thing I can say about it. I’ll get straight to the punchline. You should not buy this cute little doggy of a product. Doesn’t let me zoom in (in truth it has an awkward localized zoom feature that I dislike) means that I’m stuck with an extremely small page to write on. May 28, 2014. What’s Old Is New. On Alan&...
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A Sunset Clock – Rambles Blog at Star Chamber
https://starchamber.com/2013/09/a-sunset-clock.html
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber. I wanted to boost my Javascript skills, and I wanted to learn about Github, so I wrote a little program to show how fast the sunsets were ebbing noonward. Here it is: http:/ www.starchamber.com/sunset/. At your latitude, it may well be different. And I should mention that this page is possible because of Preston Hunt’s excellent SunriseSunset Javascript class. September 19, 2013. 1 thought on “A Sunset Clock”. September 29, 2013 at 9:25 am. America’s Cup 2013. On SoHo, Soho,...
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Rambles Blog at Star Chamber – Page 2
https://starchamber.com/page/2
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber. Thanks to Google we understand the power of a text search. All I have to do is search for “name of Alexander the Great’s horse” and I’ll quickly be reminded that it was Captain Crunch. I’m sorry, wait a second… I mean Bucephalus. But the success of textual searching has caused us to forget other kinds of searching. Google actually has a “search by image” feature. The new site called Terrapattern. And sewage treatment plants. June 2, 2016. Blog Booking with BlogBooker. I bega...
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LED lighting for cities – Rambles Blog at Star Chamber
https://starchamber.com/2013/10/led-lighting-for-cities.html
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber. LED lighting for cities. I’ve started to notice significant numbers of LED streetlights around my town. This makes me happy for a few reasons: the lights use less energy, they last longer, the color is more pleasant, and they dump less light overboard into the sky. I was thinking of this when I saw a picture of Berlin taken at night. After all these years, you can still see the divide between the east and west. It’s nothing like North and South Korea. October 3, 2013. Get ev...
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Happy Crepusculus! – Rambles Blog at Star Chamber
https://starchamber.com/2013/12/happy-crepusculus.html
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber. Today is the special day that I celebrate each year. At my latitude (42 degrees North), the earliest sunset of the year is December 9th. At my exact location, that sunset time is 4:12:06 PM, Eastern Standard Time. More or less. And behold, my Sunset Clock. Is showing all the sunsets for the next two weeks occurring later than today! This is the sort of thing that makes me happy. Last year I proposed to calling the day Seculus. What do you think? What name would you prefer?
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Uncategorized – Rambles Blog at Star Chamber
https://starchamber.com/category/uncategorized
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber. The Objective Function of the Good Life. Suppose you want to optimize Major League Baseball? What do you optimize? Do you want every single game to be a 50/50 toss-up? Probably not. Do you want one or two teams to dominate season after season? Probably not. Should you try to maximize revenue? It’s easy to see how any of these might have nasty consequences if sufficiently amplified. Okay, so we’re not going to make paperclips. But we’re going to make something. August 25, 2016.
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What the good drones are up to – Rambles Blog at Star Chamber
https://starchamber.com/2013/10/what-the-good-drones-are-up-to.html
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber. What the good drones are up to. We know what bad drones can do, but what about the good ones? Is a company that can map a disaster site. With a few hand-held robot planes. Their latest PR move is to map the Matterhorn with the same technology. It’s pretty remarkable. Watch the video. And while these guys map the earth, the underwater drones. Will be spanning the seven seas. Get ready for a data tsunami. October 17, 2013. LED lighting for cities. The Perils of (Brain) Porn.
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The Earliest Sunset – Rambles Blog at Star Chamber
https://starchamber.com/2010/12/the-earliest-sunset-2.html
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber. Two happy facts: today is my birthday, and this evening the sun set at 4:13 PM. Depending on your latitude, 4:13 may sound pretty dismal, but consider this. Last week the sun was setting at 4:12 PM. I call that progress. How Long is the Day? This is the length of the day, as measured from noon to noon. It’s a little ironic that the sun gave us our very definition of time, and then we turn around and call it out for its flaws in timing. But there you go. Now we are ready to t...
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On seasonal crepuscularity and pseudo-saint Seculus – Rambles Blog at Star Chamber
https://starchamber.com/2013/01/on-seasonal-crepuscularity-and-pseudo-saint-seculus.html
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber. On seasonal crepuscularity and pseudo-saint Seculus. I’ve always felt this day, being special, should have a special name, but I could never come up with anything I liked. So I was amused to see that someone else with strong feelings on the subject has proposed just such a name. A Dr. Richard Wilk, in a letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer (philly.com), proposes that we call the day Seculus. If so, you are my Secular Sibling, and December 9th is our festal day. Accordingly, l...
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Traffic waves, cars peak – Rambles Blog at Star Chamber
https://starchamber.com/2013/11/traffic-waves-cars-peak.html
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber. Traffic waves, cars peak. Here’s a little interactive graphic to show how it works. What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much? Scroll down to the circular highway diagram and press the “Hit the Brakes” button. Here is an experiment with real cars that demonstrates the same idea. 1 We own fewer cars. 2 The cars that we own are being driven less. 3 The driving that we’re doing is more fuel efficient. November 22, 2013. Newton Family Singers concert this Sunday.