It's Drive your Tractor to School week here in rural America!
Tractors large and small. They all have flags on them.
Here, blowing in what I suspect are winds of change....Old Glory and the flag of Mexico.
Wandering unsupervised in various real and imaginary places. Detritus reflects my interests in robotics, travel, history and the odder aspects of the world around me.
It's Drive your Tractor to School week here in rural America!
Well, smart might not be a fair comparison between dogs and humans. Our canine pals are keen observers and do notice a lot. Putting things together is a bit beyond the contents of their little dog craniums. For instance:
Hank knows that Walks generally occur in the mornings. There are certain cues, factors he needs to check off the list before going to full obnoxious dog pleading. Sun must be up. Alpha Human not shuffling around in pajamas. The cup of mysterious dark liquid that does not smell like food must be filled, emptied, filled one or two more times, then set on the counter. Only then is it time to spring into action.
Next step for the dog is getting a pair of socks and dropping them next to the front door, ideally on the toes of the walking boots. He's learned to grab a pair from upstairs then sprint down and drop them. Sometimes he collects several pairs just to be sure:
So does that make him smart? Well, here's another bit of evidence. Hank expectantly holding a pair of socks. Notice that the fur on his butt is a weird color? That's because he had a day with too darn much fun and exercise, then fell asleep in front of the wood stove, giving his coat a good singe. And the next opportunity to do the same thing? He plopped right in the same spot again.
Idle Hands....you know what they say about 'em.
In this interval where robotics is ramping down but England is still a ways off my attention wanders here and there.
Recently one of my geocaches was found by someone whose note indicated he was in town to watch his son play for the Eau Claire Orcs Rugby Team. I had no inkling that there was such a thing. It brought back memories.
When my boys were in the high school/middle school age bracket I took a couple of them over to England for a visit. The oldest came back and decided to start an informal rugby league. In his role as Commissioner of Rugby he did get a couple of teams together, and they played with enthusiasm and a loose understanding of the rules. The fad ended when one of his pals broke both wrists.
Fast forward a couple of decades....
Here's The Orcs, or as they sometimes style themselves, The Horde.
Their facebook page does have a form you can fill out if you are interested in playing. That would be.......well, all sorts of adjectives could serve. Fun, Brief, and Ill Considered are the first few that occur to me.
So I'll probably settle for just getting a shirt. This one is pretty cool:
But I opted for the simpler T shirt version. They are being printed locally and I can save delivery costs if I pick it up from a guy whose name is unfamiliar to me but is presumably The Head Orc. Perhaps that's him in the team photo wearing a jersey with a gigantic White Hand of Saruman on it?!
Looking around for a photo of one of these "White Hand" orcs from Lord of the Rings I ran across what looks to be a photo of a cast member on break. Art imitates Life I suspect....
An odd progression of seasons in 2024. Usually spring arrives right about when I'm heading overseas on the annual archaeology jaunt. The most dramatic consequence of this is that for the past fifteen years (other than the ##%%## Covid Times) I've missed our rhododendron bush in its roughly 72 hours of floral glory. But this year:
In discussing the matter it came to light that I was confused regards the name. I was pretty sure that it had to do with the Greek letter Rho. Or....wasn't Cecil Rhodes - 19th century adventurer/scoundrel - associated with something wholesome?
Actually, Rhododendron means "rose tree", which is a fair description. I'm calling this one little because we've seen examples down in Cornwall that were nearly 100 feet tall. Little Rhody is also of course a nick name for Rhode Island.
Now, there is also a Greek island called Rhodes. Once the location of the famous Colossus. And where did it get its name? Some try to link it with the Greek rhodon which does mean rose. After all roses still grow on Rhodes. But actually, as with many Greek things there was a randy Greek god and a nymph involved, the latter named Rhode. Guess it mostly worked out as she and Helios stayed together long enough to have her bear him seven sons.
I went looking for pictures of the large Rhodys we saw back in 2014 but instead came across this example that put ours to shame....
I've mentioned it a while back, but this year's spring digging jaunt will again be to England, but to a different site along Hadrian's Wall.
In other years I've been at Vindolanda, a Roman fort side run by the Trust of the same name. Well, the Vindolanda Trust has a second site called Magna. About 6 miles away, it had a preliminary dig last year and gets a full season/full teams excavation for 2024.
Anyway, just a couple of weeks now. Almost within the long range - albeit inaccurate - weather forecasts that allow for final packing decisions. A few views of Magna 2024....
The site before excavations. It's mostly top layers on down this year. Lots of cobbles.
I don't know if the world in general thinks much about words, their origins and their meanings. I do, but must admit that it is a dangerous pursuit. In our puzzling times - both knowledge and ignorance increasing apace - a word can mean radically different things to different people. That alone makes the pursuit of etymology more than a minor hobby.
There are a bunch of words that end with "-rel". Most of them seem to have negative connotations.
A wastrel wastes things (I suppose typing on a keyboard for the internet counts as wasting time).
A scoundrel is not to be trusted.
Doggerel is bad poetry.
Scoundrel is a word of uncertain origins, possible from the Vulgar Latin (my favorite variant of same) "excondere" meaning to "hide, put away, store". I'm seeing my ongoing workshop clean up project in a new light now.
Wastrel is easier, combining Waste with what is referred to as the "pejorative suffix" -rel. Now we are getting somewhere.
Doggerel is simply poetry bad enough that only dogs would appreciate it, or alternatively of a quality suggesting it was written by clumsy puppies. It would have been a serious zero stars review for a wandering bard when it was first recorded in the 1630's. Oddly it seems to have been a surname prior to that. No doubt a good story there, lost to history.
And while we are on matters loyal and furry.....Mongrel. It comes from the Proto Germanic word "mangjan" meaning to mix things together. The suffix was tacked on like the tail of a dubious mutt sometime in the 1500's.
I had expected to encounter more words with this suffix. But about the only other one that seems to still be in circulation is Pickerel. It had the implication of a small fish in earlier times, but now it designates two delightful piscenes related to the Northern Pike. I'd like to catch a Chain or American Pickerel someday. Additions to my Life Species Caught list are getting harder.
Perhaps in a time when we speak negatively about so many things the sting of a "-rel" designation is fading. We all appreciate a proper scoundrel, so long as we are not the victims of his or her behaviour. Wastrelry is in the eye of the beholder. I devote time, energy and pocket change to my grandchildren in ways that are frankly a bit ridiculous.
And regards mongrels....big fan. I don't specifically read poetry to mine but I talk to him on a regular basis and he's a great audience.
He has been known to express impatience/disapproval, usually with a shake of his head and a loud sneeze. But I'm thinking any poetry I recite that contains the words "Walk, Food, and Out" would be well received indeed.
The FIRST Robotics competition season is over, but the work goes on. We are starting to recruit for what will be a major training effort. Graduating nine seniors tends to do that. And we have lots of things to ponder regards team organization, which areas to concentrate our prototyping on, etc. But first, and FIRST, lets tidy up some random things that have been sitting around....
No, not some strange new robot mechanism. The pit crew was very excited when we got them a vacuum cleaner that runs off the same Milwaukee tool battery packs as our drills and other power tools. It helps keep things clean in our build space and in our competition pit. The excitement over a vacuum cleaner? Well, these are small town kids who get excited by the escalators in one of our competition venues....
I try to be apolitical in what I write. Most Screeds on the internet serve no purpose and are penned by folks who are simply looking to validate things they already believe. Their time would be better spent studying how their beliefs actually work in the real world.
But I will say that the ability of our political leaders to actually get things done seems to have dropped precipitously in recent decades. I'm old enough to remember when goals like "get to the moon in the next ten years" were taken seriously. And accomplished.
No, what we have at present are feckless leaders.
Feckless is an odd, little used word. I'm sure that is in part because it is to the careless ear a bit too much like a profanity that is so freely employed by the vocabulary challenged.
Like so many of our guttural yet pithy words "feck" is of Scottish origin. It dates back to the 15th century and means "value or vigor" being as it is a Caledonian shortening of "effect".
And like so many of our refined and elegant words "Effect" goes back to Latin by way of French. "Effectus" meaning "Accomplishment or Performance". Feckless is simply a haggis flavored variation on ineffectual.
So much goes back to the Romans. We still have populism versus elitism, still have corruption and nepotism.
To show how little new there is under the sun I put forward the term nepotism. It comes from the Italian for "nephew" (originally of course the Latin "nepote") and reflects the practice of steering lucrative jobs to family members. The subtext being that it was often the Pope's "nephew" , and that this was a universally acknowledged term for an unacknowledged child of said Pope!
Sigh. Sweetheart deals going to sons, uncles and brothers. Unacknowledged children. How little things have changed.
I'm occasionally advised that turning a Dixie Cup upside down is Wrong, yet another example of the Error of my Ways.
To which I'd respond that the odds of a Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (YUCK! ) crawling in there, while not high, cannot be regarded as zero.....
Sometimes there is a logical progression from one "season" to another. As the robotics storage closet got cleared out I, as usual, got a bunch of stuff that had to come home with me. I refer to my basement as Area 51. And some things actually proved useful for geocache construction.
I take my geocaches seriously. Oh, lots of folks just cram a piece of paper into a film container, maybe add a little camo tape and call it good. I regard that as unambitious. I want my containers to look cool and to remain water and damage proof for years. Trying to keep up roughly 30 caches when I'm busy with other things is a pain.
One series I've had fun with is Strange Fish. I try to catch some weird denizen of the muddy depths, then commemorate them with a geocache on the spot. When possible, in the shape of a fish.
One of these was Channel Cat, Strange Fish number 6.
It was getting a bit weathered and beat up after a couple of winters "in the wild". Time for a new one.
Lets start with a section of PVC pipe.
Like everything else so far, the tail is made of old robot supplies, in this case thin polycarbonate plastic, later covered with black duct tape.
I look forward to refining the technique further to approximate other Strange Fish. Good thing I don't live near an ocean, a flounder would be a tough mod!
My brother was off chasing the eclipse recently and ran across some impressive Tree Shaped Tombstones in very rural Indiana. Civil War vets, obviously.
Here's a long row in Cornettsville, IN. The one in front has either a generic shroud or perhaps a soldier's cloak hanging off the upper limb. And a very nice ruck sack and bed roll down at the base. Ready one supposes to be taken up again in The Next Life. There's also a musket but you can't see it well in this view.
When you think of Ghost Towns you usually imagine somewhere out west. Maybe a prospector struck gold and the town sprang up overnight....only to wither and die when the lode ran out. A life cycle that starts with nothing, booms into full life, then rapidly fades leaving only some tumbledown buildings to remember that it was ever there.
But there are other life cycles for Ghosts, and Chippewa City has had three or four stages of existence.
Technically it got going in 1825. That's when a treaty was signed in which the Ojibwa natives gave up rights to some of Wisconsin. And as a provision of this treaty a combination farm, trading post and blacksmith shop was to be established at a convenient point on the Chippewa River. After some delays it seems this was actually done in 1838.
There is little information on what was at the site later to become Chippewa City in these early days. A Lyman Warren had a log dwelling and presumably was in charge of things. He had an Ojibwa wife and remarkably, a library. This was also the site of the American Fur Company post.
In 1856 there was a rumor that the railroad would come to this spot and build a bridge. The economic impact of this would be gigantic, probably putting Chippewa City on a path to eclipse its rival, the later established town of Chippewa Falls five miles down stream. A bank was established, at least on paper. There land was surveyed and platted. Homes and of course saloons appeared.
It was an illusion. Or yet another real estate scam. After this brief second phase as a true boom town Chippewa City began its long decline. Here's a plat of the area in the early 1870's.
The world has passed Chippewa City by. No railroad. The lumbering industry sent all the logs right on past to the larger and more powerful sawmill at Chippewa Falls. But there were still people living here. The farmland around it was filling up and there was a need for a few basics. School for the kids. Salvation for everybody. I'd be surprised if there was not a store.
But with the advent of automobiles it became less important to have these things in walking distance. And the third phase of Chippewa City's life was related to the new mobility.
People wanted recreation. They wanted to stay in a cabin for a week or two. Go fishing. Maybe have a beer or two. So a resort appeared. This post card is in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society. It is thought to be from the 1920's.
Here's the spot today.
If such things are of interest I do have a geocache here..... Ghost Town on the Chippewa
The 2024 competition season is over. It had its odd moments. Our first tournament was in very early March. We went up to Duluth Minnesota, about half way to the Arctic Circle, and had shirt sleeve weather. Our second event was in early April and was a couple hundred miles to the south. We set out in a blizzard.
There was a lot of hard work in the intervening weeks. The robot was simplified and where possible strengthened. And unsurprisingly we did much better. A 6-4 record and a ranking of 16th out of 54 teams. Perhaps the highlight was a match where we were tasked to play defense against the number one ranked robot at the event. We handed them their only loss of the weekend.
Ah, but constant pounding took its toll. By our final matches it was obvious we had stressed the robot past its design limitations. In retrospect an open eyed look at this year's game should have noted that in an era of powerful new brushless motors, and in a game with no "speed bumps" that survivability needed to take precedence over sophistication.
Finishing 16th one might reasonably expect to be selected as an alliance partner - after all, who does not need a defensive goon? - but it was not to be. And despite some of our team being disappointed this was a proper call. When we return to the upper tiers of robots next year it is a principle worth remembering.
But, it was still a good event. Interestingly we got three bits of recognition from other teams. Maybe this is a new thing, but I don't recall this happening in prior events...
I'll have some further robot event pictures and thoughts in a bit. Perhaps best to close with an official award the team was also given. Gracious Professionalism. And yes, that's a mangled part on the table behind the award.
Very nice, and I think a suitable recognition for a team that never gave up, never got discouraged and never stopped having fun.
And so the process of building the 2025 team begins, and with a solid base to start from.
Anyway, here's probably our best match of the event. Ignore the part where we launched a game piece "up into the stands for a lucky fan".
After our sub par performance at our first event we had a plan going into the rebuild phase and on into our second event. Make the robot be more durable. Focus on the things we can do well -in some instances very well - and showcase these. Drive smart. Don't break it. Be ready to fix it if you do. Towards that latter goal we have a back up intake/shooter device built and ready for a swap....hopefully not needed.
The driving and pit crew maintenance has been excellent and we finished the long Friday session with a 4-3 mark and ranked 15 out of 54. A stunning reversal from....well, best not mention our ranking in the last event.
Sometimes you get an unexpected chance to show off. In this game you are only allowed to control one "game piece" at a time. If one of those bright orange donuts get stuck in your robot you are not allowed to pick up another one. Hey, it happens. And when it happened to us our very skilled driver switched over to playing pure defense. I guess it is not up on Youtube quite yet, but she was able to push the opponent robots around like they were baby buggies. She enjoys this sort of thing a great deal.
Anyway, good times. Our Friday matches should be viewable at this link: Seven Rivers
I specify Seven Rivers because I don't want to watch our Duluth matches again and suggest you don't either. We were having a bad weekend back then. Better now, no matter what the outcome of tomorrow's three matches may be. Redemption does not come often in life, and when it does it only comes with hard work and deep thought. It is a pleasant thing to experience.
Our customary Pit Cartoons.
Practice matches. The robot ran quite well but did take a little damage...and with less rough housing than we'll see tomorrow.
The goats are here.
And here we go again. The FIRST robotics competition season runs for six weeks. This year we had the longest possible gap between two events, doing a Week One and now a Week Six event. And boy howdy, we needed every day of the interval to pull off a complete rebuild of the robot.
Yes, this is one of the odder things that I put in front of you on occasion. Another feature length installment in the Nimrod story.
It makes more sense - but still not total sense - if you've seen the first Nimrod movie.....