surf’s up… way up

This is the surf forecast:

forecast

Purple seems big to me.

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paddling in the isles

The first half of the week we were out on a sea bound adventure. Next up is surfing and we haven’t much time to make the swap so here are a few teaser photos…

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Boat for sale: VCO 39

Eric and Tom are visiting for the week. Out for a walk today we found a boat that is priced to sell. No reasonable offers refused. Decking needs some work. Come at high tide.

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skyward eyes

Have you heard of the B612 foundation?

It is a group dedicated to providing an advance warning system for earth-asteroid collisions. They are working to build a telescope specifically for mapping the debris coming in and out of earth orbit. The technology required to do this task has only been experimentally demonstrated and the prototype infrared detectors are now in the testing phase. I chip in at least $5 a year to the project.

The institute’s board of directors includes Ed Lu (lived on the ISS for six months and was part of the leadership that developed google earth), Rusty Schweikart (Apollo 9 lunar module pilot), as well as other astronauts, scientists, and tech leaders from SpaceX, NASA, Google, Redit and other giants. Serious stuff.

Their commentary today is about an asteroid 48 m across. As I type this, it is passing within 28,000 km of us at 8 km/s. For reference, that is well under our geosynchronous communication satellites (they are at 35,786 km).

Read more about it here.

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where are my horizons?

Recently, while standing at the beach on a calm day, I was asked how far away the horizon is. How far can we see? How far away is a ship on the horizon and is the earth curved enough that we would see the top of it first as it came up around this ball we call Earth?

I didn’t know the answer. But I was pretty sure math did.

To get a quick idea of the answer we need one number with a simplifying assumption: the earth is a sphere with a radius of 6378.1 km.

I will show my work for those who are interested. Those who are not interested can scroll down to the bottom.

Nerds love diagrams. Here is mine.

viewable diagram

r is the radius of the earth
h is the height of the person looking out over the smooth ocean
L is arc of the earth’s surface over which the person looks
\theta is the angle subtended by the arc

geometry gives us a relationship between the sides of our triangle

\cos{\theta} = \frac{r}{r+h}

the length of an arc is proportional to the radius of its curve and the angle it subtends

L = r\theta

substitute!

{L} = {r}\cos ^{ - 1} \frac{r}{{r + h }}

For math this gnarly you will need to set your calculator to rad (aka “radians”).

I am 183 cm tall, so my horizon is about 4832 m away. Less than 5 km, wow.

If you don’t want to pull out your calculator, you can just look your height up here.

Viewable vs height

And if you build a lookout post or climb to the crow’s nest on the mast of your very tall ship…

Viewable vs altitude

Now that the math is done, you are equipped to answer those questions at the start. Let me know what you decide.

Double your fun: you could probably also use this approach to talk about how far away a tractor is in Saskatchewan.

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mossome

This is so much tree moss all in one place that I had a mind explosim.

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dinognarus ostiology

I am pretty sure this is the skull of a baby pterodactyl.

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The jaw hinge point is on the bottom left and the beak break point is clearly visible on the left-most edge. Too bad that it is broken off. But super gnarly that the back-of-head-knife-attack-mode-spinity is totally intact.

Any foes I have should probably be worried. Friends need not worry though. I wouldn’t use its powers against friends.

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dock of the bay

This afternoon Tess and I went fishing off the government wharf in Queen Charlotte. Her dad generously outfitted us with a casting rod and a trolling rod before we left Vancouver. He also supplied a tackle box with myriad gear.

The wharf is a good place for casting so we had planned to trade off with that rod. Shortly after we arrived a fisherman named Pat wandered over to say hello. When he saw we were sharing a rod he quickly went and fetched his and lent it to Tess. After a short lesson he walked off to do other things.

Tess was soon casting far further than I. Her marksmanship took a little longer to refine. The end landing spot was typically within 90 degrees of her target. 90 degrees either side. Only once did the lure end up inside Pat’s boat.

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Tess casting with Pat's big fishing boat in behind

In the end she nailed it and her casts were distant and true.

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medley of the subconcious

Last night I had a wacky mash-up of a dream. Parts of it are a bit sketchy and it is rife with incongruity. I will write the bits I remember and add commentary in [brackitalics].

The dream begins with me walking down the street near Masset [on the north end of Haida Gwaii]. I am walking near the house of Amanda. [She was a performer at an event I attended last night; she did some stand-up comedy and singing. I have no idea where in the area she lives.] As I walk by, a man arrives and knocks on her door. He wants to buy fire wood. She is not surprised by this but is busy with her kids. [I learned last night she has three kids.] She asks me if I can help her get this man the firewood he wants to buy. I happily oblige. We head behind the house to the wood pile. The wood there is too dirty for the man buying it. It turns out he wants very clean firewood because it is not really for burning. It will substantially be used in a display near a fireplace in a show home and needs to look pretty. There was something about a wine tasting that was going to happen as well. He is willing to pay extra for the clean, nice looking firewood. Amanda’s nice clean firewood is handled by NRI Distribution. [NRI is warehousing and distribution company I where I worked for many years. Probably the best place I have ever worked. However they distribute mostly sports gear, not firewood.] Fortunately, this NRI warehouse was right off the back of her property. [They have warehouses in Kamloops, Surrey, Brampton, and San Diego, not Masset.] We navigate our way through the warehouse to where the nice looking firewood is but the access is blocked by a boat on a trailer. It is a very worn and used looking fishing boat. [One of the owners of NRI used to sometimes put his wakeboarding boat in the warehouse for the winter so maybe that is the connection.] This old fishing boat belongs to may dad. I call him over to move the boat. I shout for him to come move it. [Somehow he is within earshot. Also, he died over a year ago.] My dad shows up to move the boat with an old style Volkswagen beetle. The boat trailer is the type with a fifth-wheel type connection though, not a trailer hitch connection. Dad parks the car under the fifth-wheel connection and drops it on the roof of the car. This results in no room for him in the car, but he is ready to improvise. He ties fishing lines to the steering wheel and rigs up something with the accelerator and brake pedals and then climbs into the boat. Somehow this all works flawlessly. The boat is moved, the firewood is accessed, the transaction is completed, everyone leaves satisfied, and the dream concludes gracefully.

I now open the floor to interpretations.

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Colder than a bastard

This morning Clark and I decided to give surfing a try.

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I wore protection. I got tossed. I got wet. But I couldn’t get it up.

It turns out we came about two hours too soon and weren’t working the right spot.

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