IKEA Hack, Part 3: It's in the bag

No, you didn't miss anything.  I published my Part 1 IKEA Hack a few days ago and Part 2 is waiting on some specialized hardware to be delivered.  In the meantime, I feel compelled to pay homage to our unprecedented polar vortex weather, so I've decided to put the varukorg before the horse here and publish Part 3 preemptively.

What's remarkable is not the fact that over an inch of rain fell in Houston today, because that kind of rain represents a subtropical normalcy for us.  What's remarkable is that the entire mess fell on us in the month of March WHILE IT WAS 37 DEGREES, AAAUUUGHH!!!!

Screengrabbed from the Harris County Office of Emergency Management (HCOEM) interactive rainfall map.  

So, yes, it's been raining.  Are you heading out to work in it?? Got one of these??

Standard issue computer bag, aka "rollaboard" because of its intended use as carry-on luggage.  This is a hard-done-by Sampsonite (model similar to this one).  It has seen the inside of more airplanes than my fellow Houstonian Howard Hughes, rest his tortured soul.  

Well, if you've got one of those, then you need to get yourself one of these:

An IKEA Frakta shopping bag.  Yes - you are correct - nobody actually buys these things willingly.  We buy them over and over after we've forgotten again and again to bring our own shopping bags to the store. 

How are these two related?  I gave you a hint at the beginning of this post.  Think "inch of rain".  

Standing upright, it doesn't look all that impressive.  But wait for it...

Ahhhh, now you get to experience the absolute beauty of this pairing, which doesn't make itself apparent until you actually start dragging the bag around as it was designed.  The Frakta just happens to be the exact right size, shape, and stiffness to cover a standard 17-inch lateral rollaboard.  (It would probably fit a bigger one, too, but mine is 17 inches.)

Fifty-nine cents??  Are you kidding me?!  There is nothing else I've ever found for sale at any price that does this particular job this well.  I work as an industrial contractor, dragging very expensive electronic equipment around from manufacturing plant to manufacturing plant.  It often means traversing a site, going from building to building, unit to unit, hauling my bag of tricks behind me.  The rolling bag of tricks that absolutely cannot get wet under any circumstances.  

Today during our 37 degree deluge??  No problems at all.  The secret to this success lies in IKEA's dual action fabric handles:

There's a pair of very short fabric handles on the Frakta, and a pair of long handles that you would use if you were treating the Frakta as a shoulder bag.  If the weather isn't that bad, you can simply slip the short one over the telescoping handle of the rollaboard, pull the Frakta into position, and be done with it.  But if it's windy like it was in Houston today...

...you can use the long handles to lash it on securely.  

Now, the IKEA Hackers community has done some interesting things with Frakta...

Someone made a raincoat for their dog, but did anyone think to make a raincoat for their rollaboard??

Screengrabbed from IKEA Hackers Frakta category.  

No.  Apparently I am the first to claim the honor of this use.  And word of it must be spread because, while your dog will handily survive a good soaking, your top-of-the-line engineering computer will most certainly not.

Added bonus:  Just lift the computer bag into your vehicle with the Frakta still in place.  The nature of the contents thus remains concealed, making it a much less likely target for window-smashing thieves.  Which is very important if, like me, you want to run to Whole Foods after day-shift lets out at the manufacturing plant.  Run to Whole Foods in downtown Houston because, tragically, there isn't one within 28 miles of your own suburban dream home.  

So word must be spread, and I'm hoping that Jules will see fit to re-broadcast some or all of this content in the interest of public service.  In the meantime, fellow Houstonians, stay dry.  And warm.  

One more shot to close this post, because it's such a convincingly beautiful thing.  Rode hard, but NOT put away wet.  Hah hah!!
:-)

Houstonia's hilarious home run

Oh, please, Houstonia, please forgive me for re-posting this without even the slightest attempt at value-add.  It's just perfect the way it is, and it has to be shared!!  Bravo!!  Encore!!  Encore!!

:-)

Five hundred toward ten thousand

Nothing rational can be done with this, my five-hundredth blog post, except explain why in the hell I wrote five hundred blog posts, many of them lengthy and complex.

I got this meme from The Summa blog, but I don't know where that blog's author got it.  That's the nature of internet memes. 

I get this question a lot, usually from another Centerpointer with an uneasy look on his or her face:  Why am I spending so much time on this?  Why am I doing all this work?  We live in a profit-driven society - my effort makes no sense in any deducible context.  I'm not getting paid.  I'm not getting promoted.  I'm not getting applauded.  I'm sure as hell not getting famous.  And half the stuff I write isn't all that interesting or compelling, unless you happen to be the frustrated newbie who is trying to figure out how to pry the attic hatch back open after the cord has snapped off, the kind of newbie I hear from daily. 

Part of this I've explained previously - I really do like helping people.  We live and die by the almighty dollar, careening madly from one consumeristic transaction to the next.  Something has to be done with a primary eye toward one's fellow man, or else one's entire life perspective ends up simply going clickety-clack in a stultifying roundabout fashion. 

But there's another reason as well.  I really, really wanted to be an investigative journalist when I grew up, but I grew up poor.  Even back in the early 1980's when I graduated from high school, it was obvious to me that choosing a "soft" career such as journalism was a risky chance that I personally could not afford to take.  For reasons I don't consciously understand, I strongly sensed the impending precipitous decline of journalism even before its technological causes were invented.  So no journalism - having nothing whatsoever to fall back on in life, I had to do the safe thing and choose the "hard" career field of science instead, the choice that was all but guaranteed to yield financial security and the greatest diversity of professional options. 

My science career has achieved exactly that, and in ways I never could have predicted.  But still there is the unfinished business of the journalism thing.  I had a university professor who beseeched and begged me to abandon science in order to become a writer instead, and when I explained my poverty rationale to him, he promptly began to cry.  "Don't worry," I comforted him.  "I can do both.  I'll find another way to get there as a writer.  I promise you." 

Blogging is part of that way.  The folks who become uneasy when they can't identify my motives aren't seeing that this is part of my proverbial ten thousand hours of development time.  That's precisely what's in it for me - pure practice.  I'm still not completely sure what "get there" will prove to be, but not knowing is part of the fun of it.  And if, along the way, I get to help the attic cord people and occasionally instigate a deer-in-the-headlights moment over at City Hall, then that's the icing on my long-awaited cake.

:-)

Yup. And stay tuned for more.

 

A mole by any other name

Tag line:  How to turn a school chemistry project into an exercise in hilarity.

It's Mole Day - 10/23, where from 6:02 a.m. until 6:02 p.m., we celebrate the definition of mole, which is 6.02 x 10^23 particles (Avogadro's number). 

The geek shall inherit the Earth:  Screengrab from the National Mole Day Foundation. 

My child's bonus assignment in chemistry was to creatively represent this day using a crafted mole (as in, the mammal, which is not actually a rodent), akin to this assignment.  It's the kind of project that engages the entire family, especially a family of science nerds.  There's always room for sock puppets! 

At first, we came up with "Guaca-mole-e", which would have Avocado's number of particles.  But that just seemed so obvious that we concluded it must have been done many times before.  Checking the internet this morning as I'm writing this post, I see that we were correct.

We settled on this:

A Mole in One, because one mole has Avogolfer's number of particles.  Even while dressed in golfing plaid.

Isn't that cute??  He's got his own little mole hole in the form of a tin can, which began its life with somewhat less than Avogadro's number of garbanzo beans. 

The clerk in Lowes looked at us like we were crazy when we asked him to cut us a single linear foot of Astroturf off the ten-foot mega-role in the outdoor carpeting section.  We have nine leftover feet if anyone would like to have it.  Free to a good home!

If you know anything about moles, you'll immediately conclude that, while his star nose is mildly convincing (for a sock puppet), his button eyes are too large.  But this particular mole needs large eyes if he's to perceive the full wisdom of science, so there you have it.

Regrettably, Google did not post up a Mole Day GoogleDoodle this morning.  They managed to hit their recent Schrodinger-themed Doodle out of the park, but dropped the mole ball where Avogadro is concerned.

Remember this one? Schrodinger's birthday bash, literally. 

Screengrabbed from Slate. 

In lieu of art, you could always peruse this collection of Mole Day gift ideas.  Have a good Wednesday.
:-)

The Egyptians had their cats...

...but I myself am increasingly inclined to celebrate the humble anole.

Ancient cultures typically had the practical good sense to worship whatever saved their butts.

Screengrabbed from Google.

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned.  It has been four days since I posted my last anole picture."

Obviously it didn't end well for that critter in his lizardly jaws, but what is that??

Ummm, did this kindred spirit blogger mention the word hate?? 

Screengrabbed from An Austin Homestead blog.  (This is actually just one of numerous "stink" insect species that are found on the upper Texas coast.)

The words "stink bug" inspire in outdoorsy Houstonians a visceral reaction quite similar to "invasive South American fire ants".  Austinites too, obviously.  They are a stinking pain in the butt, and given that I garden organically, anoles are my main line of defense against them. 

This was quite the riveting transaction to witness:

Anoles don't understand English and they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer, either.  I kept telling him, "Dude, you'd be having an easier time with that if you weren't also fighting gravity in the process."  But he didn't take the hint. 

Of course the whole time this epic swallowing thing was going on, the stink bug was fighting him big time.  The scene reminded me of yet another Star Trek dialog, given that I'm into quoting Star Trek these days:

"...but it's still moving."

Screengrabbed from this site.

Gagh and stink bugs are always best when served live?  Maybe, but they both trigger the obligatory gag(h) reflexes, apparently (a little onomatopoeia never hurt anybody).  Have you ever seen a lizard gag before?  You have now! 

Finally a successful swallow, but God, that's gotta hurt.

After careful consideration, I abandoned my plans to petition the state of Texas to declare the anole to be the new state reptile.  For one thing, having a Carolina anole as the state reptile of Texas just doesn't have a nice ring to it. 

For another thing, anoles aren't compelling candidates in the distributional sense.  The official state reptile, which is the Texas horned lizard, is fairly specific to Texas.

Texas horned lizard range map above screengrabbed from this site.

So the Texas horned lizard doesn't eat stink bugs - I guess we can live with that.  I'll just have to continue putting up anole fan pages.

One species' meat is another's poison.  But today I have one less gagh in my garden, and that's a good thing. 

Quote screengrabbed from this site. 

The new Google ground views are up

Almost four months ago (June 5, 2013 to be exact), I told a Google-chasing tale which I can now substantiate, because Google has finally posted up the revised views of Centerpointe. 

Woot!!  Centerpointe Section 9 must now truly exist in the universe because, after 3.5 years of it looking like the empty field it used to be, it finally has its own ground view!  Willow Pointe looking southeast toward Walker Commons. 

Most images in this post courtesy of Google. 

It was such a pretty day for a photo op, wasn't it??  All those cottony clouds and everyone's lawn was in good shape.

Unfortunately it was also recycling day, so there's a fair amount of crap at our collective curbs. 

There's the children's fort on the vacant land near the southwest corner of Arlington Pointe. 

And there's your blurry blogger in hot pursuit of the Googlemobile as it headed northward up Calder, as I was taking the pics for my June 5 post. 

Blurryness notwithstanding, when I finally got to see myself thusly, what came to mind was John de Lancie in the Star Trek TNG episode titled "Deja Q" when he exclaims, "I'm immortal again!  Omnipotent again!"

Would you believe someone actually tabulates all these rather obscure quotes? 

Yeah, I know what you're thinking:  Having your image frozen in Google ground view doesn't exactly make you either of those things.  But in internet terms, it does - I have indeed been immortalized thusly.  That sequence of images will probably last at least five years.
:-)

So go ahead - don't let me hold you up.  Go check out your own house as it now appears in Google ground view, and make sure there wasn't anything embarrassing in your recycle bin that day while you're at it.  Because Google's photo resolution is so good now, you know, that a lot of stuff is visible that would not have been previously.  Can you imagine all the FUN we could have had if we'd known in advance that the Googlemobile was coming??  There are all kinds of interesting objects I would have inserted into my neighbors' recycle bins.  A little adult literature here, maybe a cardboard box from a relaxing therapeutic device there...  yuk!!
:-)

Unlike de Lancie's famous and fun character, my pranks are necessarily limited to just one planet.  And mostly one subdivision on that planet. 

Screengrabbed from an amateur Q tribute vid set to "My Angel Put The Devil In Me". 

Centerpointe on HGTV, Part 2

People have been asking me for DETAILS, DANG IT!!  I thought it would be enough to publish the date upon which that particular House Hunters episode first aired (September 18), but folks still couldn't find reference to it.  So here's the 411 as best I know it...

... complete with a screengrab from this HGTV page just in case it evaporates.  I can't blame people for asking - this sub-page was not easy to find. 

No, I most certainly do not know how you might program your DVR to automatically record Episode HNT-7712H when it next airs.  I don't even know how to program my own DVR.

:-)

I will tell you one thing, though:  Being on HGTV is not all fun and games.  When I went drilling for information on this episode, HGTV wasn't the first reference I found.

Uh-oh, it's the inevitable M4M Craigslist solicitation.  Whatever you do, don't click that link!!! NSFW!!!

And this amusing reference:

Well, dude, if you DO decide to ever live in League City, the first step in any successful coping strategy for dealing with "teaparty central" is to start reading this blog, eh? 

Screengrabbed from a Google search. 

Anyway, that's all I got right now.  I'll check back from time to time to see if HGTV has posted the vid on their site, and if they do, I will snag it for you then.  Unless, of course, teaparty central manages to inspire the Second Coming such that we're all summarily dispatched to our final destinations before I have a chance to embed it. 

:-)

Centerpointe on HGTV

I've said it many times to my husband:  "I watch so darned many home improvement shows that it's only a matter of time before I see someone I know featured on one of them.  It WILL happen."

And so last night it came to pass in a proverbial 'all new episode' of House Hunters (is there any such thing as a 'half new episode'??).  Except it wasn't the person that I knew, but the house. 

Does anyone still have an e-mail address for the H family?  If so, please forward them this postlink.  They might get a kick out of seeing their old house featured on HGTV. 

Screenshots courtesy of HGTV with my television on pause. 

And in this case, it was not one house that I knew, but two.

As the camera panned into the back yard of this different Centerpointe sale contender (not the H's house), I was like, "WAIT FOR IT!!!"  And right on cue, the potential buyer uttered those immortal words:  "Ugh, this is not what I wanted.  It's too small."  Welcome to the world of microscopic back yards, dude! 

But nevertheless, the wise buyer made the decision to invest here anyway:

YAY!!!  HE PICKED HOUSE #1!!!
:-)

But I suck, don't I??  I blurred out the danged house number on this screenshot.  And don't a fair number of our 438 fine homes look very similar?  Will you ever be able to figure out which one this is?  Will the suspense kill you outright or will it merely torment you psychologically?! 
:-)

HGTV keeps the identities of their guests confidential, so I decided to follow suit (I knew where this one was because I jog in Centerpointe, plus there were other clues).  If you know who this relatively new neighbor is, don't spill the beans in the comment section below.  I'll just remove any identifying info.   

Anyway, a hearty welcome to the buyer from the blogger you'll meet in the near future.  And there's a guy over here in Section 9 that I need to introduce you to as well, because he's the subdivision specialist in growing the kind of trees you are so eager to cultivate.  He lives up the street from that other house you looked at. 
:-)

How to search for similar images on the internet

Answer:  I don't know.  If you're trying to source duplicated images, you can always use Tin Eye.  But if you've got a photo and you're trying to find similar photos on the internet, the options seem pretty dismal right now. 

Case in point:  I found this insect in my front garden the other day and, never having seen it before, I wanted to find similar images so that I could learn what it is and whether it is benign or potentially harmful to my carefully-constructed landscaping.

Friend or foe?

Sitting on the ledge of our stacked stone garden. 

I uploaded that pic to Imgur so that I could run a few searches.  Here are some of the amusing results.

Tin Eye only returns identical images, so that doesn't work.  Three billion images but it can't associate similar views and apparently nobody has taken a close-enough photo of this bug before. 

Xerox has this "similar image search" site, but you can see that I was getting nowhere with this one.  Well, maybe there's the beginnings of success because is that a politician on the second line??  Politician... insect...  now we're getting somewhere. 

Google was no better.

Mostly it returned a bunch of car parts. 

I had a good laugh over this one:

Congratulations, Google!!  That's an excellent image match!!  Except one is an insect and the other is a burned-up motorcycle!!!

The logic just hasn't been developed yet.  Clearly, the matching algorithms were purely literal, pixel by pixel, and strongly color-based rather than conceptually associative.  And they weren't getting the job done.  Not even close. 

You might wonder why I'd even attempt an image-searching method for this identification task.  Why not just use an insect reference book or website?

Answer:  Because most references list bugs alphabetically (or alphabetically by general category).  But if I already knew the name of the danged bug, I wouldn't need an identification guide, would I??  Duh!! 

And there are too many species of bugs to slog through alphabetical lists of them.  I haven't got all day. 

Screengrabbed from this Amazon site.  And yes, I did purchase this volume a year or two ago, only to realize upon receipt that it would be fairly useless to me.  And it has indeed been useless. 

In the end, neither the vast information repository on the internet nor impressive search engine technology helped me to solve this puzzle.  It was the good ol' fashioned human brain with its deductive reasoning that did the trick.  Look again at this picture:

What do you know about insects?

Each is adapted to life in its respective ecological niche (not to be confused with art niche). 

What else do you know about insects?

They are near the bottom of the food chain and they get eaten.  Therefore they each evolved defense mechanisms, one of which is camouflage. 

And what does this bug most closely resemble in terms of its coloration and patterning?  Does it look like your front lawn, holly hedge, or rose bush?

No.  It looks like tree bark. 

I think it might be some species of bark beetle or tree borer.  When I began searching within those narrower parameters, I finally began to find similar images.

Ah-hah.  Starting to look a little bit similar, isn't it??  Less like a motorcycle and more like what I found in my front yard. 

Screengrabbed from this site. 

Not the same species, but looking suspiciously similar, like a first cousin.

Screengrabbed from this site. 

The evidence mounts:  My next door neighbor trimmed his front-yard live oaks this past week, resulting in a pile of cut branches stacked in his driveway.  My guess is that my unusual bug was involuntarily liberated from his tree and sought refuge in my garden.

In fact, it looks very much like a pine borer, except we don't have any pine trees in Centerpointe, save for that one large loblolly at the corner of West Walker and Centerpointe Drive (the one that I always include in this blog's frontispiece). 

Screengrabbed from this site. 

From TAMU:

Yes, we do have dying trees here in Centerpointe.  The drought of 2011 weakened many of them, especially the ones in Section 9 which were newly-planted and not well-established by the time the drought hit.  The casualty rate has been enormous, and many of those that did survive have still not recovered. 

Anyway, now that I know what I'm looking at, I'll be watching for evidence of whether or not these things are causing any damage to our builder-basic front-yard trees.  And in the process, I will continue to rely more on my mid-century modern g-g-geriatric brain than on 21st-century whiz-bang information management technology.