Month: December 2020

The original ‘Scat Pack’ cars were named after scat’s also original slang meaning: to leave quickly. This was common in fifties and sixties movies: someone yelling scat at someone else, or a cat, to induce the other to leave. So the scat pack cars were there to leave quickly, ie go fast, which is pretty much what sports cars do.

I think that meaning is almost entirely gone, but the name remains. Meh. Linguistic evolution.

I think splitting infinitives is better than avoiding it.

…aim simply to shrink…

No good

…aim to simply shrink…

Better

The latter is more readable. Longer verbs may require general rules, but the short form is easier to read.

To Boldly Go!

The Great American Outdoors Act passed earlier this year. It passed the House on April 9th, 2019 by voice-vote, the Senate June 17th, 2020, the revised bill passed the House on July 22nd, and was signed by Pres. Trump August 4th. Initially put forward by John Lewis, yes, that John Lewis, the particularly famous one, and Cory Gardner, it attracted dozens of cosponsors and passed with large bipartisan majorities. Those were real bipartisan majorities too, not one Rep/Senator splitting to join the other side.

The bill itself does two things, both funding related. It supports the National Park System financially with $9.5 billion for maintenance, and $900 million per year for ten years to the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The national parks need some maintenance. This was a good bill. It did have some shenannigans involved, but the bill is still useful on the whole.

There’s good work being done in the world, in the US, and in Washington, and it’s hard to find it, read about it, or hear about it.

I sold a book, and it made my day.

So I figured out what was going on with my aloe plant.

It started wilting and drooping a month or so ago, maybe a month and a half. I was sticking to the same watering frequency, it got about the same amount of light, the temperature was mostly unchanged. It sits by a window, so while it was a little colder and the light was a little less due to autumn and now winter, the changes weren’t much. I’ve had other aloes through winter, and they did just fine. This one was dropping, the fronds (stalks, tendrils?) lay against the pot, and it wasn’t reaching towards the light. Some parts had turned white. The soil was dry between waterings on the surface, and wiggling my finger about two knuckles down, the dirt was damp, not really wet, and certainly not saturated.

It lives in a pot with a saucer. I picked the pot up, maybe three or four days after watering, and dirty water just flowed out the bottom. The top of the soil was dry. More than half a watering’s worth of water dumped out the bottom.

The bottom of the pot looks like a wine bottle. It’s got a raised center around a low ring. The drainage holes are on that low ring, pointing down. When the pot sits in its saucer, the ring presses the drainage holes down, and the soil can’t drain.

Okay. Maybe mold. Maybe root rot. Definitely too much moisture.

I chopped a 2×2 into two six-inch lengths and put those under the pot as spacers. The drainage holes now open to free air. Then I threw a fan on it to really dry the dirt out. I didn’t water at all for a couple weeks, and when I started up again, I only gave it a little. Maybe half a cup.

Most of that immediately poured into the saucer on the first watering, but less on the second, and by the third, none came out. I aim for a few drops. Ideally just enough to show the soil is thoroughly moistened, but not excessive. I water about a cup, but really just enough to see a few drops hit the saucer a few minutes later.

The thing is growing again. The central stalks are reaching for the window, one of the limp stalks is up off the pot, and the other is a darker shade of green.

The next garlic bulb is also going. It’s in slightly deeper soil than before, but otherwise not different from its doomed predecessors. There’s an aloe frond next to it. The frond got knocked off the revitalized aloe in moving, so I stuck it in some dirt. It seems to be doing pretty well. The faded color and thinness are common when a cutting starts putting down roots.

Reading Matlab documentation is like learning English by reading the dictionary. If you already know what you’re looking for, you can find the answer. But if you’re searching for a word or a function, the odds are against you getting it.

Classes where you need to show a lot of work don’t do well over Zoom. Classes where you mostly show the finished product do well. There’s a continuum inbetween.

I take a bunch of matrix calc, and it’s toil over Zoom. But I’ve also worked with a lot of editors I’ve never met in person and all contact is via email or chat. Those interactions are quite useful. While I’m somewhat more engaged in editing my material than general classes, it’s not a strong bias. I am a pretty big nerd.