Steins 2016

I apparently forgot to take photos of my steins for the past two years of Steinfest, but last year I did measure the volume of my steins, and they each comfortably held 24 ounces. That's about .7 liters--way more than my 2013 Prohibitionist steins held, of course, with ample room for a Hoibe Bier, but not quite enough room for a Maß. Someone told me they needed to be bigger, so this year my steins all hold a full liter and then some. I stuck with the zigzag design but switched from white-on-black to blue-on-white. I didn't make them with Bavaria in mind, but blue zigzags recall blue diamonds, so I'll pretend the Bayerisch flair was intentional. Prost!

Necco wafers

When I was in high school, my calculus teacher liked to talk about Necco Wafers. He described them as having a thickness of dh and showed that if you integrate the area of a Necco Wafer over a roll of height h, you get the volume of the roll. We were supposed to imagine the Necco Wafers as infinitessimally thin, and the simile helped us understand that little things add up.

I use the Necco Wafer simile when I teach pottery classes. When you make a cylinder on the wheel, you do several "pulls," thinning the wall with each pull and increasing the height of the cylinder. If you pull the clay up too quickly--before the wheel has an opportunity to spin around a sufficient number of times for each wall slice dh--the cylinder wall doesn't thin evenly, and you create thin sections that coil up the pot and make the wall and rim uneven. If students don't know what I mean by dh, I tell them about my high school calculus teacher and ask them to imagine their cylinder as a stack of Necco Wafers. Usually everyone gets the idea, although sometimes I have to explain to the young'uns what Necco Wafers are.

Last week, one of my students brought me a roll of Necco Wafers that she found in the retro-candy section of a store. Turns out the only thing Necco Wafers are really good for are similes. Tip: avoid eating them, but if you feel you must, DO NOT eat the green or purple ones.

Misty day at Hanging Rock State Park

The guy on the right biked 102 miles to go camping with us!

Findus gets a hip name

We have friends who gave their son a distinguished first name and a hip middle name. Their son went by Hipname until middle school, when he decided to create a new middle-school identity by going by Distinguished (Dist for short). Those of us who have known him since he was a wee babe have trouble remembering this, and we have to work at not calling him Hipname, but most of his current peers have only known him as Dist.

Based on this model, I have suggested to E that we gave Findus an official hip middle name. The cat can continue to use his distinguished name (Findus) when he goes to the vet or applies to college, but at least while he's still a kittenish cat, I think we should call him by his hip name. Hipname is not to be confused with assorted nicknames: E will probably still call Findus "Baby Cat," and I will probably still call him "Bitey Beau." But Findus seems to be communicating to us, through his behavior, that he wants to go by his Hipname now, and we should try to honor that. So for the next while, we'll be calling him "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

Here's a film in which Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde chases Schroeder up the stairs.

Photographs of a spotted teapot

Thanks to penguin-photographing needs, I've finally found a practical location for the Flotone graduated background. The background is taped to the living room wall, tucked away into an otherwise unused corner. It drops onto a small table that S made years ago for plants, but that we use now to semi-hide Kapla blocks and Space Chips. I leave the bottom half of the background rolled up against the wall when not in use, and I unroll it and tape the edge to the table when taking photographs. The table sits next to a large south-facing window that looks out onto the porch, so the space gets natural light but is shielded from direct sun. This set up works reasonably well for daytime shots, but sunlight from a west-facing window sometimes casts undesirable shadows. If I'm feeling energetic, I tape a big piece of cardboard over that window; otherwise I work around the shadows. Nighttime sessions are better: I set up my snazzy 55W bulb in its diffuser and have more control over the lighting.

Below are some nighttime shots of a non-penguin. As my holes addiction wreaks havoc on my wrists (and would wreak havoc on a teapot), I'm experimenting with spots. I think I showed admirable restraint in this piece.