Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Really?????

 Sigh.

I'm peeved, but for their sake, at least this chat GPT didn't smash the bottle and stab the researchers...

https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-open-ai-balancing-task-convinced-microsoft-agi-closer-2023-5?amp

"ChatGPT's clever way of balancing 9 eggs with other objects convinced some Microsoft researchers that AI is becoming more like humans"

Sunday, April 10, 2022

2022 spot price of gold around $2000/oz!!!

 April 2022 -- the third World War rages on, the fighting still confined to Ukraine.  Amidst the global economic uncertainty, on April 10th, the spot price of gold is at USD $1,957.01 per troy ounce.  While this seems shockingly high to some people, particularly Libertarians (some of whom continue to side with Russia, politically), I redirect you to this blog post on the same subject of gold as a store of value or hedge against uncertainty, war, inflation or as an investment  -- a blog post made by the prescient past self of this same blogger:  

https://eltristan.blogspot.com/2010/10/october-23-2010tristan-morrow-these-are.html

Many things said then are still true today, "You buy gold, and it performs at the spot price for gold, and it will never outperform that."  Others need updating, AAPL went from $9.40 to $174.31, or +1850% over these 11 and a half years.  Not obscene returns, but still very decent (the hot stock would've been TSLA, of course) -- especially compared to gold's 147% run or 03.4% annual rate of return (which is barely more than the Fed's figure of 01.8% average annual inflation...)

Anyway, just thought to revisit this fwiw.

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Slightly illogical logic puzzles

 ↑ A source of much peeving, especially as I interface with more standardized tests these days. Why?  Here's a hypothetically random yet oddly specific example:  stack a nail, a bottle, a laptop computer, nine eggs, and a book all on top of each other...  Sounds hard?  Logical difficulty-wise, it's as 3rd grade as the Aesopian small river ferry boat and the puzzle of get the bag of grain to the other side — along with the goat who will eat the grain, the duck, and the fox who'll eat the duck, etc...  Most people quickly realize that they can place all nine eggs on the surface of the book, the laptop on top of that, then the bottle and nail — not hard any way (although you could make it it harder: a more "advanced" solution might involve nailing the book and opening the laptop or cracking the eggs into the bottle).  Why am I seething with peeving?  Because this is supposed to use both the real life knowledge and the 3D spatial manipulation parts of your brain, yet as an outside-of-the-box thinker I feel insulted by the artificial limitations: what are we stacking this ON? Do you assume it's a table? ...more importantly, WHY THE FUCK are we making an abominable stack out of all this? HOW the hell did I end up with these items in the first place?  WHERE did my laptop charger cord go?  WHO took those eggs out of the refrigerator (are they chicken eggs or ostrich eggs?) and why aren't they still in the carton?  The absurdity of it all!  So much in the "real world" has to go wrong before I'd end up in this silly stacking situation, that I'm sure I'd have bigger problems.  As a puzzle, it really shows nothing, other than to what extent you're willing to accept rigid and artificial situations at face value — you're "definitely not" being held hostage by some sadistic puzzle making researcher in this scenario, and throwing the eggs at the researcher and smashing the bottle into an improvised weapon in an attempt to escape from this research facility would be futile, now wouldn't it?  Good... Now, have I got a puzzle for you... Muawhahaha!

(Don't think too hard about this.  But testing artificial scenarios like this bespeaks a kind of artificial intelligence rather than quantifiably measuring anything useful — if they won't stop foisting this kind of artificial logic on the school kids, at least stop using this shit in job interviews! Sigh.  How did I get so peeved about this?  I do feel better now [/peevedrant]

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

I thought that taking a close-up would help me to identify this butterfly...  Perhaps not.  It is possibly a Black Swallowtail Butterfly.  Their caterpillars will eat Queen Anne's Lace which grows nearby.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

 Great Horned Owl.  Sittin' in a tree.  Takin' a nap.  In an ol' Cottonwood tree.  Yup.

Bye now.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Cake.

It's really just an excuse to try out my sister's awesome chocolate frosting!

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

 Just trying to take pictures of a beautiful full moon shining down on the river. It's harder to get good pictures than it looks!
This is why I like image stabilization and optical zoom.  This is just a point-and-shoot camera!  

Monday, November 28, 2011

Why do I think this is funny?



...actual screenshot from Wikipedia today.

Creative Commons attribution and all that, I think that humor and criticism justify invoking "fair-use".   Re-blog or make your own!


EDIT: 2012/04/06: I am also posting this on ThingsAboutComputers.blogspot.com where screenshots will appear from now on. 

Friday, November 4, 2011

Amtrak is old.

I saw the Amtrak 40th Anniversary Exhibit Train at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento today. The train will be actually open on Saturday and Sunday.



Fall is here--finally!

I am glad to see the leaves changing colors :-)

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Size Suprise!

The Southern Pacific Railroad owned 339 hard-working GP9 diesel locomotives.  They were ubiquitous right up until the UP merger, and, to me, symbolize the SP like no other.  Of course I had to have them for my model railroad!  

But nothing is ever that simple. 
I started with an HO scale model (the small one in the picture) which was not really a GP9 at all: it was a GP18 kit made by Proto2000.  Still, close enough for my purposes ...until I got the great idea to build an accurately super-detailed GP9 locomotive ...in O scale, which is larger--larger enough to see the painstaking details, I hoped!

Well, it definitely is, and this is what I wasn't prepared for: I knew O scale was twice as long as HO, but it turns out that it's also twice as tall and twice as wide.  My new model GP9 is eight-times bigger!!  Yes, O scale models have volume and mass that would make Archimedes proud.  

The problem is that instead of the expected twice-as-much amount of detail, the locomotive project is soaking up orders-of-magnitude more.

Don't even ask how much more time is going into this either.

(If you want to know what to get me for Christmas, Athearn make a beautifully detailed HO scale GP9 now)

(PS--the O scale GP9 is a discontinued Red Caboose kit.  And don't get me started on rebuilding the drive-train or if I am going to build it to Proto48 standards) 

Monday, August 22, 2011

Monday, August 8, 2011

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Land of coffee

...And all they have is "instant"
Bogotá, Colombia; Aeropuerto El Dorado. Look closely at the picture--I don't see any gold either ;-)
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Sunday, June 26, 2011

Lima, night.

En el Parque de la Reserva.
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Miraflores, Lima, Peru

Perpetually foggy.
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Friday, June 24, 2011

Machu Picchu today!

Picture of picture I took (other camera) of looking down on Machu Picchu citadel from Huayna Picchu.
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Thursday, June 23, 2011

Back in Cusco, an Incan storm drain cover.

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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Town of Pisac

The ruins are high on the side of the valley, looking down on the town. Big hike back down!
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Inca ruins!

In Pisac.
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Plaza de Armas, Cusco

...was deserted when we ate dessert for breakfast this morning. Should be. The festivities, parades, and fireworks continued until 3am local time.
The catedral is on the left, [out of shot] the tent in the middle covers the fountain which is being repaired (ha!) And the other church is the "La Compania de Jesús" ...vantage point is the "Plus Grill" which is above our hostel.
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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Cusco:

Today is the Desfile General--Saludo Al Cusco ...a parade that celebrates it's namesake city--but it's not just any parade, these people take things very, very seriously! The main square is packed and the parade is still going as strong as it was this morning! It's 7:10pm local time and it's been dark and chilly already for a couple hours!
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Because it used to be a monastery

...there is a 300 year-old tree in the courtyard of El Monistario. It had several birds-nests in it, including a pair of doves. Apparently the Quechua name is "Ur-picha" which comes from their word for heart. Hmmm, I learned something.
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Lima, leaving for Cusco

What look like mountains on the horizon is actually an island off the coast.
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Monday, June 20, 2011

Pay Pirux Hostel in Callao, Lima, Peru

Rooftop garden patio next to our rooms :-)
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Costa Rica!!!!!!!!!!!

This is what I'm looking at :-)
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Friday, April 22, 2011

Woodland, California: 
...a very interesting maintenance-of-way train: a truck/crane on a flatcar. Straps, chain binders, blocks of wood everywhere.  Love how the truck's outriggers are blocked up on the deck of the flatcar.  The flatcar itself it is interesting--I think it had (originally) a bulkhead on each end that would have been the same height as the locomotive, SERA 134--which itself is an ex-Santa Fe GP7 loco that was rebuilt by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe at the locomotive shops in Topeka, Kansas and now has its own distinctive characteristics.  Plenty to geek out on. They were replacing crossties on the old Sacramento Northern trestle over the Yolo bypass.  
...also a neat Southern Pacific-style high-level switch stand.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Alien plants & beaver poop

What look like long, brown alien leaves are actually matted algae that are drying out.
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Alien plants & beaver poop

The beavers have been as busy as, um, beavers--chopping down trees and eating bark. This one looks like it was too big to be dragged away to the dam (damnit!) and was eaten en situ.
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Alien plants & beaver poop

...and this, with all the woodchips in it, may be beaver poop.
Excuse me, beaver scat.
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<Edit: rearranged these last three posts into order. Obviously, it would be better if they threaded into the same post all by themselves, but no. Be sure to check out my blog where I do nothing but complain about Blogger...>

Friday, April 15, 2011

Wide-view of wider river

I just want to share the sweepingness of it all.
Any suggestions on how best to share odd pics like this? It's easy to stitch images from my phone together (like this 180-degree shot), but much harder to display...  

Neither am I pleased with the upload--as the original consisted of several 3MP shots, the resolution was quite high. Not anymore :-/ ...what happened?

hmmmm...

EDIT: here is the link for the original-size picture.  you can right-click "Save Link As..."
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSzAozCQKnynxNL-Kb6J6Y0CB8eQ8RS8ZYgZAK2gYlYPpzJbPZ8qwVQcL0Z5gxGmsltE1d3YbtnWqsPmEZay7VX1wot7Hwq7OvkGjF3Aq7fO8Qb4JhhaHsG00JhkspKeAxEE6WxQE1Ip0/s0/IMG00337-20110325-1820%252520Stitch%252520-%252520Copy.jpg

Thursday, April 14, 2011


I like my phone--even if I hardly ever use it as an actual phone.

Honestly, it's amazing that this level of technology is finally mainstream.  I can already tell that I'm a technological throwback because I still like having a qwerty interface with buttons (no matter how small)--but buttons are, like,  so 2008.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Retroactive post!

hmmmm... I haven't posted for a little while.  Quick!--make it look like I've been persistently prolific!

(Blogger>Post Options+Scheduled at retroactive date = better than time travel!)

Saturday, March 12, 2011

This goes without saying.

These signs are posted all over the coast of  Northern California, even in Crescent City.

Crescent City?

Yeah.  What happened there after the Japan quake was nothing, really.A couple years ago, in the concrete-bunker hallways of the Humboldt State University Marine Laboratory at Trinidad Head, I came across this nifty poster: Tsunamis and Crescent City.  Not being detail-oriented and having ADD, I didn't actually read it, just clicked and saved it for later... just kidding!  Actually, reading it helped me to understand why all the tsunami warning signs were everywhere.  You can read it too--full size, go here: *picture link*

Far be it from me to say that anyone should know better, but, really: how many people knew about the tsunami hazards before this recent Japanese earthquake?

It is sad that it seemingly takes tragedy to bring such anywhere near the forefront of our consciousnesses.  May we learn from it and do better.

EDIT: updated picture link

Monday, March 7, 2011

Turntable (rail)

I think that turntables are neat. They were once quite common on railroads, back when steam engines that needed to be turned to point the right direction were also common. Now, they are much more rare--rarer still to find one working. 

As a work of engineering, they are quite interesting: on the central pivot they have a bridge which must easily support the weight of a locomotive but be able to turn smoothly in the pit.   

This is a nifty style of turntable, either called an A-frame or a "gallows" turntable. A recently-constructed reproduction stands on the site of an 1867 turntable of the Sacramento Valley Railroad in downtown Folsom, California. In January, I visited the 5-inch scale, 15-inch gauge Redwood Valley Railway, in Tilden Park, Berkeley. They have a nice A-frame turntable, which exudes character with a mossy patina. It features an incomplete perimeter circle rail and pit wall--possible because the locomotive is balanced on the center while being spun. Also note the square "roundhouse". They actually use it, which is neat in-and-of-itself.

Simple, yet well-engineered, turntables are to me proof that not all railroad engineers just drive trains :-)

Monday, February 28, 2011

Y0utub3: Embedded

Gratuitous self-promotion--sort of; actually just testing pasting the 3v1l "Embed" code into my regular blog post.

Lesson: do it in "Edit HTML" and don't lean over the railing when the whale dives under the boat--get smacked in the kisser!

Friday, February 25, 2011

When apples go bad

Last halloween, in addition to carving a ferocious flaming skull out of a pumpkin, I got out my Sharpie and created a cheerful smile (for an ogre) on a small green apple.  It was really too cute to be scary for halloween.

That was four months ago.

Now he's scary.
...and just think what he'll be looking like by next halloween!

LOL Chickens

Write your own caption...

I CAN HAZ DONUT?

Personally, since I didn't see any dogs, I think that they've been replaced.  The "DO NOT PET" still applies though.

Seen outside the Folsom zoo in Folsom, CA. Photo by Jess.

They have a zoo in Folsom?  That's funny too!

Monday, February 21, 2011

Aerobile: "Arrowplane"

http://www.impactlab.net/2010/08/25/history-of-the-flying-car-part-3-the-waterman-aerobile/

I think it didn't do well because with a name like Waterman people were expecting a boat--or at least a flying boat!

Registered as a motorcycle in CA?

I'm impressed with the tail-less design. It looks like a hangglider, although that technology was developed later, and hanggliders are controlled by shifting the weight of the pilot... does the arrowplane's fuselage hang from the wing and tilt? It wasn't clear to me how stable the thing was without a tail or canard...

There are public-domain plans out there for a similarly-sized fixed-wing glider, simply called the "Goat" ...of which there are powered variations too, but the Arrowplane is way cooler! Makes me wonder if there are public-domain airframe blueprints out there--did Waterman release the blueprints to the public at some point in time, or has his copyright expired? ...his plane is in the Smithsonian and he showed a version to the "Bureau of Air Commerce"--blueprints in public records?

...I want one too, but the only way to get one may be to make your own!
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Waterman liked puns, he variously called his creations Aerobile, Arrowbile, and Arrowplane.

Someone else wants one too! Their post is here: http://www.crowndot.com/arrowbile-test-flight

Friday, February 18, 2011

Chips! (Or "crisps" ...but actually dried fruit!)

I've seen Jackfruit, and not knowing what it was, called it, "big-green-lumpy fruit"...!
These chips come from the local Korean supermarket. It's packed in LA, and I'm going to guess that's Vietnamese ("mít sâ'y khô") ...but where did the fruit come from?--no sé! It is dried fruit, but apparently it is fried in vegetable oil too--not greasy and kind of like banana chips. Mmmmmm!

As an aside: I'm still trying to get the blog-thingys to work right. This should be on ElTristan on both posterous and blogger.
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Monday, February 14, 2011

Like Fireworks

...the tree's blossoming petals are.

This is the same tulip tree with flowers as: http://eltristan.posterous.com/warming-up ...just a couple days later, for comparison.

I think I will be using posterous infrequently from now on.
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Happy Valentine's!!!

...I remember when I used to be single and bitter. Now I'm all stressed with reservations, flowers, gifts, the card, etc--what happened?!

Saturday, October 30, 2010

...this is the awesomest jack-o-lantern ever! (I carved it myself)  Have a haunting halloween!

Saturday, October 23, 2010

October 23, 2010—Tristan Morrow

These are interesting times for the stock market and investors. One thing to watch is gold. Gold? Sold by the ounce, gold, on this day in October of 1990, was $371.65—the London p.m. fix price. Today, two decades later, gold is $1322.50—again, the London p.m. fix price. To sum up, that’s $47.5425 per year per ounce(17% annual return)—but only a 355% return over 20 years! From the same time in October 1990 to now—October 23, 2010—the S&P 500 went from $304.71 to $1183.08. That’s a meager 278% return on investment. (13.9% annual) Gold is clearly a better investment, right? The marketing literature on gold will often claim that gold is the “one thing” that will always beat the markets. Actually, you could have sold your S&P 500 investment in 2000 for a 378% return after only 10 years, or in 2007 for 400%—for clearly higher annual returns of 37% and 23%. Gold, conversely, hasn’t peaked in the past anywhere near where it is now, until recently. Also, the “gold versus the S&P500” scenario is just that: one scenario. The S&P500 index being a sort of aggregated average of stocks, there is the implication that 50% of the stock returns are higher than that average—although most will be within one standard deviation of that; my point is that it is not possible for gold to outperform itself the way that an individual stock can beat the index. You buy gold, and it performs at the spot price for gold, and it will never outperform that. Gold marketing literature will often claim that gold is the “one thing” that will outperform the markets, or that gold is again that “one thing” that will—or has historically—been a top performer. And, indeed yes, you could have purchased gold in 1990 for $371.65 per ounce. Or, in October 1990, you could have purchased Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and, 63 cents in dividends and two 2:1 stock splits later, gone from $9.09 per share to 4x $307.47 …a mere 13536%—yes, 13,536%—return over twenty years. Your call. Good luck in your search for what that “one thing” will be, from today moving forward. However, it seems to me that it is unlikely to be gold. (Historic gold price data from https://www.kitco.com/charts/historicalgold.html...cross checked for validity.) October 23, 2010—Tristan Morrow

Sunday, June 1, 2008

People like people like you, fwiw

Ran into a kid riding Amtrak this weekend, kicking off the Spring break, and somehow he opened up about a conundrum he had with a "romantic interest" -- the boy was smitten but paralyzed!  ( btw, Hi :-) Not going to share personal details but let me know how it went, or didn't!)

The details don't matter but it was like looking in a mirror for me and here's why: chasing anything -- a job you really want, a college application, or someone to reciprocate unconditional love and admiration with -- chasing anything that you think you desire always feels nerve-wracking and paralyzing!  And the more you care, the bigger the stakes become!  

You're anxious BECAUSE you care a lot about the outcome.  This doesn't make you weak, it's a sign of your strength of character. We're only able to give a fuck in the first place if we do care.  Don't stop caring; in fact acknowledging that you care deeply and that this is important to you (it doesn't matter what other people think)

You care; now as you try to make it happen, be excited for the future and curious about the outcomes -- you'll still have the butterflies in the stomach and feel sweaty and clammy but think for a second: what is the difference between "anxiety" and "EXCITEMENT"?  How about "dread" and "CURIOSITY"?  This is where it's easier to stop caring about what you think other people think than it is to confront what YOU think about what you think... 

Pulling a lever one more time on a slot machine that's been paying out is the extreme of you feeling curiosity and excitement versus feeling dread and anxiety -- so, yes, it is possible to go too far the other way if it becomes a problem like gambling addiction but RIGHT NOW that's not where you're at, so overcoming any self-paralysis that's keeping you from "pulling the lever" is just the last but most important thing, taking the easiest possible action just to see what will happen.

People like people like you and your crush wants to be asked just like the lever wants to be pulled.  

(I don't think you can go wrong to start with, "May I ask you something?" And, if yes, follow up with a compliment-share-ask like, "You always do your hair really nice!  Believe it or not, I've noticed you for weeks now and have been wanting to get to know you better -- you free now or this afternoon to share a nachos at the Mexican restaurant?"

You get a reality check if she says, "No" to the first one but also it's important that you're establishing that you respect her consent -- don't be creepy!  And the ask is framed where she can say no, and you can respect that and now you know, but she if she changes her mind the balls in her court to approach you and say, "how about those nachos?" -- the door's still open if it's meant to be.)

I tutor highschoolers in various academic subjects: Spanish, Algebras and Geometry, Business and SAT prep -- but getting into a good college and trying to find out what you want to do with your life is only half the challenges of life being faced when people are that age (tbh highschool academics is the EASY half)... across all domains and even as you get older, it's the same attitude and skill set (your "soft skills" they call it).  Kids in 2008 are over diagnosed with anxiety as a mental health disorder, it seems, but paralyzing anxiety is real and you have to assume that people will like you (my #1 here).  "Not giving a fuck" is popular nowadays but just lying to yourself that it's NOT important to you actually makes you more anxious X-) ...it's better to instead acknowledge that you care deeply about the outcome, that caring is a sign that you're a great human being and not give a flying fuck if other people judge you for it because if they do they're wrong -- then move forward by checking if you're excited and curious -- it doesn't matter how anxious or depressed you feel, take the easiest possible action that makes you feel excited and curious about the outcome.