The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

This year while reading online about improving data graphics I kept coming across the name Edward Tufte. He is a professor interested in the topic and from what I gather has written 3 of the most influential books on the topic. Since I make a lot of plots and data graphics at work as a way to help understand system interactions and describe problems or system performance to others, I decided to buy two of the most well regarded:

  1. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
  2. Envisioning Information

Reading these led to me spending a few evenings (over 3 weeks!) making a modern version of one of my favorite graphics seen in the books.

Continue reading “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”

10k, Oakland Redwood Regional Park, CA

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Saturday July 20th, I competed in a 10k run in the Oakland Redwood Regional Park. The race was put on by Urban Coyote, the same organizers I ran with in January’s Pacifica 10k as part of my 2018 goal list.

At the moment I’m not in great running shape, but have been going out once or twice a week at lunch with a coworker named Scott. We usually run on the bay trails for 2-4 miles which is good training during the week. I’ve also been weight training twice a week and biking to work still, so I felt resonably prepared in terms of fitness.

Saturday morning, Megan, Jane and I made the hour drive up to Oakland on a warm but clear morning. Continue reading “10k, Oakland Redwood Regional Park, CA”

Camping, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, CA

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Jane’s first camping trip!

The three of us went on a two night trip to nearby Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz mountains for Jane’s introduction to sleeping outdoors. Overall it went great and Megan and I think Jane really was amazed by all the lush vibrant greenery we saw walking around the park over the course of our three day trip.

I selected Big Basin specifically because Continue reading “Camping, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, CA”

Catchup!

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It has been a while since I’ve published on the blog. Today I updated the CA Tick List and thought I’d post some brief comments for each new mark. SF Symphony Sea to sky hike Napa wine drinking Anchor overnight at Angel Island SF Symphony This past July we attended the SF Ballet at Stern Continue reading “Catchup!”

2019: Goals

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I’ve updated my 2018: Goals post with final results. Similar to last year, here is a list of my goals for 2019. I plan to update this post throughout the year with progress reports. Complete 1 piece of wooden furniture Complete 1 Kickstarter project Earn 1 dollar of self employment income from an online business Continue reading “2019: Goals”

Sailing Trip, San Francisco Bay, CA

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“Stab it! Stab it! Did you get it? Stab it!” *

“Ahh… I’m trying”

“Alright! Nice! Now pull it back and cleat it.”

This was the end of the scene that played out in Ayala Cove on Angel Island this Labor Day as we were hooking up to the mooring balls to spend the night on our sailboat for the first time outside of a marina. I was driving trying to get the boat into position and Megan was hanging off the bow, attempting to use our boat hook to feed the line through the loop on top of the floating mooring ball.

Just before the actual mooring, we had docked at the day use slips in order to flake out the ropes and go over the sequence of tasks needed to moor the boat. The state park service expects all boaters to connect to bow and stern balls and after a failed attempt at bow first, we made a mid operation change in order to tie off the stern first which ended up being a better sequence.

Since the motion of the boat is restricted once attached at one end, it makes sense to back up to one ball while keeping the bow pointed toward the second forward ball. Then, once the stern line is passed through, you can simply motor forward and pick up the bow connection. The currents from Raccoon Straight tend to swirl through the cove which makes this difficult for many, but we had planned ahead and arrived at slack tide when the currents would be minimal.

We managed to get both lines attached on the second try and shut off the engine. Megan did a great job with our boat hook to feed the lines and I managed to keep the boat pointed in the right direction. This was the culmination of about 6 months of solid effort to get here. Continue reading “Sailing Trip, San Francisco Bay, CA”

bzzzztt

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May 4th had the makings of a typical day. I rode my bike to work in the morning, and got a call from a coworker about 10 minutes before arriving to my building. He wanted to move a piece of equipment in order to test it in another area of the lab. He wanted a hand when I got there. “No problem.” I said.

I arrived, changed out of my riding clothes, and walked to the other end of the lab. Young, my coworker, hadn’t arrived yet, so I went over and started to unplug the equipment. It was only a single connection, albeit a big one: one hundred and fifty amps, 3 phase, 480VAC. Continue reading “bzzzztt”

Chile video

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