Stan’s Obligatory Blog

It’s officially winter here in Pasadena. The egret is back hanging around the ponds at Caltech. I see this bird every year here. The ponds are stocked with mosquito fish and frogs, so the bird likes to eat the tasty little fish and tadpoles.

Yum.

I just noticed this link on the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program site today:

New USGS Website and Earthquake Notification Service Simplify Ways to Get Information You Need

“The new Earthquake Notification Service will replace the old system. Now with a user-friendly interface, users will be able to define their own multiple regions of interest, enter various notification addresses, set magnitude thresholds for day and night, and opt for “Aftershock Exclusion,” among many other options. The system can be found on the “Earthquake Center” section of the site.”

So it’s official now. It’s been public for a little over a week. About 1,000 people have signed up for accounts on it so far. We moved about 5,000 more over from the old ‘Bigquake’ mailing list. So far it’s been working like a champ. And today I found and squashed one little bug that’s been bothering me for months. So I’m pretty happy with it, even as I’ve been so obsessed with it that I’ve actually had dreams about PHP and Perl this week.

So check it out.

This was on the obituary page of the Los Angeles Times today:

Rebecca Webb Carranza, 98; Pioneered Creation, Manufacture of Tortilla Chip

“It was 1950, and the El Zarape Tortilla Factory, among the first to automate the production of tortillas, had used a tortilla-making machine for three years.

Corn and flour disks poured off the conveyor belt more than 12 times faster than they could be made by hand. At first many came out “bent” or misshapen, as company President Rebecca Webb Carranza recalled decades later, and were thrown away.

For a family party in the late 1940s, Carranza cut some of the discarded tortillas into triangles and fried them.”

And the world changed.

Sadly, she apparently never realized the full financial success that ought to come as a result of changing the world:

” After Carranza and her husband divorced in 1951, she signed the business over to him.

He soon opened a tortilla chip factory in Long Beach but closed it in 1967, partly because of competition from national companies that had discovered the sales potential of the salty chip.

Rebecca Carranza returned to East Los Angeles and worked into her 80s, first as a meat wrapper at grocery stores and then as a U.S. Census taker.”

Still, it’s a great story.

Around our house, Superbowl Sunday usually involves completely ignoring the Big Game. Cathy and I have a long-running contest to see who can go the longest knowing absolutely nothing about it. This year I accidentally found out who one of the teams playing was, so I was behind from the start. But aside from that, we managed to ignore it pretty well. Lucinda had a sleepover at her friend’s house on Saturday, and she was playing over there all day. Cathy went to the gym and then went out to do some errands. And I went and got tattooed. So we all managed to have no contact with The Game.

It was good.

Today’s ride was yet another tour of Hollywood and the Sunset Strip, and then a little jaunt up into the hills.

I met Gene at the park at 8:00 and we set out. We took Orange Grove west and then went down through the arroyo, past the stables in South Pasadena. The road there is kind of rough, and I always seem to end up losing my water bottle on the bumps there. But after I went back and picked it up, we went up the little hill and got on York Ave for the trip across Highland Park.

Heading south on Eagle Rock Blvd, we took a right on Fletcher and took that across the L.A. River and into Silver Lake. Then we crossed the Shakespeare Bridge and then turned south to Prospect Ave, which merges into Hollywood Blvd. Riding down Hollywood Blvd in the morning is always a somewhat surreal experience. The street crazies are all still asleep in the doorways, so it’s quite a bit different from how it is later in the day.

A bit west of La Brea, we turned south and took Hawthorn Ave to where it ended, and then went down to Sunset Blvd for the last bit out to the Strip. We passed a car lot that specialized in old Cadillacs. We also passed the Laugh Factory. Back in 1990, I took a class at UCLA Extension called “How to perform stand-up comedy”, and we had our ‘mid-term exam’ at the Laugh Factory. That was an interesting experience.

Continuing on, we got to the famous Sunset Strip. We rode for just a bit there and then decided to try an experiment on one of the side streets. We took a right on Miller Drive. But it was not ‘Miller Time’. It was 15% grade time. Yikes. We took that up for a while until it wound down to Queens Road, where we took a left. Then the road got steep. I had to say ‘uncle’ and shift there. It felt like close to 20%. But it brought us up to Hollywood Blvd, where we took a left.

Continuing on up Hollywood Blvd, we passed a house that had a waterfall over the driveway. Then we merged into Sunset Plaza and took that the rest of the way to the top of the hill. We stopped for a bit to take in the view, but there wasn’t much of a view today, since it was still kind of foggy. Then we went over the crest and down the other side into Laurel Canyon.

At Wonderland, we took a left and then headed up Laurel Pass Road and then Allenwood. On the way up I picked up a real-estate flyer for a ‘Dramatic private gated mini-estate’. $1,995,000. Yow. The house was pretty, though.

We came out on Mulholland Drive at the top of Fryman Canyon at the little park. We stopped for water and then headed back east down the spine of the Hollywood Hills. At the bottom in Cahuenga Pass we took some little side streets to come out on Barham Blvd. A right turn there took us down the hill to Burbank.

At the bottom of the hill, we headed east into Griffith Park. We rode all the way through the park and out the other side, passing the Mulholland Fountain at Los Feliz. Then we kept going back to Fletcher.

Turning left on Fletcher, we headed back across the river and into Atwater Village. Then on up into Highland Park. We took a little side trip to ride along the Gold Line tracks where they go down the middle of the street. Then we took Ave 60 across the arroyo and got on Monterey Road for the trip across South Pasadena and San Marino.

The last part of the ride was up Sierra Madre Blvd back into Pasadena and back to the park where we had started.

It was a nice ride, even with the 20% grade part.

53 miles.
cycling

I saw this in the L.A. Weekly today, and it’s just too good to not mention:

The Mr. Fish cartoon about the State of the Union Address

I don’t usually write much about work here, but today was a momentous day. It was the most excitement I’ve had since the last M6 earthquake.

My project is the Earthquake Notification System. This is a system for automatic email notification of worldwide earthquakes. We’ve had public mailing lists for earthquake notification since about 2000, but they were ‘one size fits all’ in that people could choose only to get either M4 or M3 events, and they had a choice of Southern California, Northern California, or the whole world. This new system is the first time subscribers can pick their own custom geographic boundaries and notification thresholds.

This all started a bit over two years ago as my pet project. People have been asking for something like this for years, but it’s only recently that I figured out how to do it. So for the past two years, it’s been my little office pet. Every so often, I would trot it out and show it to people. They would suggest some more features they’d like to see, and then I’d put it away.

But about a year ago, the people at the National Earthquake Information Center took an interest in it. And it went from being a pet project to being a real project. They even got some web designers to help it look pretty. And today it went public. Yikes. There’s even a link to it off the front page of the Earthquake Hazards Program web site.

It’s kind of fun seeing something I invented being used by lots of people. At the same time, it’s kind of scary, since if it fails, I’m the one who will look stupid.

Have I mentioned recently that I really like my job?

Today’s adventure was one that Cathy found. An afternoon with the Jumbo Shrimp Circus Academy. This was a three-hour session for the whole family, to teach basic circus skills.

At the start, they had us to a few group exercises for basic human interaction skills. Then we started out. The first was balancing a peacock feather. It’s not all that hard to do, but it does require a bit of focus. The people who got good at it were encouraged to try balancing it on their nose, or to try tossing and catching it while keeping it balanced.

Next was the spinning plate. They passed out plates and sticks for everyone, and we all had a go at it. The trick was to get it started. Once it was spinning, it was easy. But the people who mastered getting it spinning then had to try to balance the stick on their finger, palm, or nose, which wasn’t so easy. The room was filled with the sound of falling plates hitting the floor.

After a short snack break, we tried some new things. There was a tightwire, juggling balls, the diabolo and devil sticks. Cathy and Lucinda both did the tightwire, and I tried to learn basic juggling. Sadly, it’s not the sort of thing one can pick up in five minutes, or even a half-hour. I made some progress, but I’ll have to practice more. Lucinda did some more plate-spinning, and Cathy tried her hand at the diabolo and devil sticks.

The last part of the class involved some balancing and building a basic human pyramid. Cathy and Lucinda did some of the two-person balancing, and I got picked for the base of the first pyramid.

At the end, they opened up all the activities for anyone who wanted to try something again. I had to try the tightwire, since my father had made a tightwire when I was a kid. He strung it up between two trees and we used to practice walking on it. But the last time I walked on it was 1971, when I was 11 years old. So I was a bit rusty. The wire this time was a bit more wobbly than I remember, but that may be because I’m a bit bigger and heavier. Still, it was interesting to try it again.

This was a fun afternoon activity and Lucinda liked it a lot. We had been planning on having a circus theme for her birthday party this year, so this fit in well. We also bought some clown noses, plates, and juggling balls while we were there, so now we have activities for her party. So overall, it was a fun afternoon.

Also, we have this year’s obligatory ‘cute couple’ picture. Cathy and I were wearing sort-of-matching shirts today, so we had to get a picture.

Route map and photo locations

Today’s club ride was up Big Tujunga Canyon in the Angeles National Forest. Most people don’t realize just how close Los Angeles is to actual wilderness, and it’s a nice place to ride.

The ride started from Descanso Gardens in La Cañada, but I started out meeting Gene, Philippe and Rick at Victory Park. We headed west and up the hill to get to the ride start.

When we got there, we got our route slips and and we all headed out up Foothill Blvd through La Crescenta. I tried to take another picture of the “Poo Ping” restaurant sign, but the sun was at the wrong angle, so it didn’t come out.

We took a right on Tujunga Canyon Blvd and headed up the hill. At Hillrose, Gene and I took a little side trip up a steep hill to see Elliott’s house from “E.T.”. The view from up there was pretty spectacular.

Coming back down, we got back on the route and took Mt. Gleason Road north a bit and then got onto Big Tujunga Canyon Road. This was where we left the Los Angeles city limits and headed up into the mountains.

We couldn’t do this ride last year because a section of the road had washed out during the winter rains. So today we got to see the washed-out road and the little temporary detour they’d built around it.

Because of our little side trip, the rest of the group was now ahead of us. The group was pretty strung-out from riding up an 11-mile hill, and we caught up to several of them on the way up.

At one point, the road went across the canyon on a high bridge, which was quite spectacular. A bit above that, I stopped at an overlook to see the dam that was built in 1931 for flood control.

Continuing on up the canyon, we finally came out on the Angeles Forest Highway, where we turned right. The route slip said that this was ‘the top’, but it sure felt like we were still going uphill for the next four miles to the Angeles Crest Highway and Clear Creek Ranger Station.

When we got to the Ranger Station, we stopped for water. Then we headed down the Crest Highway, back to civilization. The road down was 10 miles, all downhill. Ordinarily, this would be cause for great rejoicing, but it was cold. So it was not an unalloyed pleasure.

At the bottom of the hill, Gene and I took a left on Foothill and headed back to Pasadena. We passed JPL and then took Woodbury east and then some small streets back to the park.

It was a fun ride. And when I got home, I realized that I had done the whole thing without shifting even once. It was 39×17 the whole way.

52 miles.
cycling

Last night we had some intense Santa Ana winds here. The house was creaking, the dogs were whimpering, and the power went out. So Cathy had to spend the night with our scared six-year-old, and I got to spend the night with two shivering dogs.

This morning, I went outside to survey the damage. Our street is a mess, but it was mostly just branches. Only one complete tree fell down on our block. The power came on at about 7:30 this morning. And I still rode my bike to work today. It was actually pretty amazing how fast I got there, riding with a 50-mph tailwind.