Uncle Tom

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We got some horrible news today. Uncle Tom died in his sleep last night.

Tom with oak stump

It was quite a shock — Tom always seemed both indefatigable and invincible. When he “retired” to the Cape, it was only a retirement from employment; he was always working hard around the two Cape houses.

Tom was my Dad’s youngest brother, the youngest of nine children. Their own father died while he was quite young, and so he got quite close with his older brothers. Family was very important to him.

He and my mother were very close, dating back to the time when Dad was working nights, Mum was a newlywed, and he’d drop by their apartment on the way home from hockey. He always gave her a preferred spot in the Cape House schedule, valued her opinion, and during her last decline, made a point of making the two hour trip off-Cape to see her.

He took an interest in me. He’s probably the person most responsible for my interest in photography; while he was in Vietnam, he sent back a complete darkroom set. When we were fourteen, he decided to take his two nephews, my cousin Bill and me, with him on a trip to Maryland and DC to visit his fiancee, Susan. Not many guys would have bothered, especially on a trip to see their girlfriend, but Tom did, and we had a great couple of days. We did a whirlwind tour of the capital, taking in the Smithsonian, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol. This was the time of the Watergate hearings, and I distinctly remember Senator Sam Ervin mugging to the gallery.

Tom could be intense, sometimes uncomfortably so. I got the impression he didn’t care for my Elementary Education major (he was right) and wanted me to go for a masters degree. For a while, due to the intensity, I avoided him, but after a while, he either mellowed, or he gave up, or I learned to not to take it personally.

Just as well, because he was a lot of fun to be around. Tom had a great sense of humor, and while we didn’t agree politically, he was always fun to talk to. He was also fun to work with– Tom liked to work and he was good company while doing so. He never talked down or made you feel stupid for not being as adept as he was; he took you as you were and accepted any help you could give.

When Tom had to remove a tree, he didn’t just cut it down. No. That would be too easy. Instead, he would undercut the roots with his beloved Kubota, then drag it out of the ground via main force. As recently as last week, my brother and I were making plans to go down and help him take down a tree.

And that’s one of the things that stings the most about this. All summer, I’ve been wanting and meaning to get down there to say hello. Mum’s illness has left me aware of how fragile health can be, and I’ve been wanting to see Tom while he was still fully himself, but the move took up nearly all my time for several months, and now it’s too late. If there’s a consolation, it’s that he died in his sleep, and didn’t go through a long period of decline. My cousin Mary sent us a picture of him taken just last week, walking his grounds with his dog, and joking about the high astronomical tide giving him “waterfront property”.

Family was important to Tom. He was close to his brother George, helped take care of Grandma, and always spoke highly of my Dad. He and Susan always seemed like a tight couple, and they raised three great children, all three of whom went through the service academies. He and his family were staples at Mum’s Christmas Eve parties, and he will be very sorely missed.

Tom and squirrelTom and MumSusan, Tom, Mum and Anne at Christmas EveMum and Tom at Mum's 80th birthdayTom and granddaughter Aria50 years of the Cape HouseTom and Susan at Chrissy's weddingTom skatingom pushing John Francis around the iceTom and KubotaTom last week

11/11

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Tomorrow is November 11. Mum’s birthday. The first birthday without her.

Mum was very proud of her birth date. When asked for her birthdate, she would just rattle it off. She loved that it was a holiday — for her, growing up, it was Armistice Day, the anniversary of the day fighting stopped in World War I. I’ve read stories of the end of the war, how at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the shooting stopped and troops on both sides, cautiously at first, and then joyously, came out of their trenches and embraced their former enemies.

The holiday became Veteran’s Day in 1954, and for a while, it was one of those moveable Monday holidays, but eventually, it returned to November 11th.

As for me, I’ll still be thinking of Mum. We met at the house today to try to figure out what to keep and what to leave for the liquidators. I’d never quite realized what a pack rat she’d become in her later years until I was responsible for dusting all her teapots, and today, going through all her old papers to figure out what to keep and what we could get rid of. She still had old bills from the 1960s in her files.

Birthdays and anniversaries are times for celebrations — until the person you’re celebrating isn’t around anymore. Then they become times to remember. Seems like I’m celebrating less and remembering more as time goes on. Tomorrow, I’ll be remembering Mum.

Peak Foliage

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The fall foliage has just been spectacular this year. Golden yellows, bright oranges, and deep reds, with mostly sunny conditions to bring out the most color. This past weekend was the first one in a long time where I didn’t feel like I needed to take care of moving tasks, so I spent it on myself.

Saturday, I’d decided to go to King Richard’s Faire, so I took the motorcycle down to Carver. Just as I was approaching the Faire, I saw an electronic sign that they were sold out, so I turned around and took Route 58 most of the way home, enjoying the glorious fall foliage. Then, I decided I hadn’t been on the bicycle in a while, so I chucked it in the back of the car and got directions to the nearest bike path, which turned out to be the Neponset Greenway.

I’d never done the Greenway before, but it was quite nice. I parked near a playground in Dorchester, took the path outbound just past the Red Line bridge, and then turned around and took to a point just past Mattapan station. The trail actually goes further, to Paul’s Bridge in Readville, but it was getting late and I had some errands to run. I definitely plan to do the whole trail sometime.

Sunday, I took the kayak out onto the Charles in Dedham. I was uncertain where I wanted to start from, but eventually decided to put in at the parking space along Great Plain Avenue, paddled past the put in at the Dolan Center, through Motley Pond, past the Bridge Street bridge to Route 109 and back — a round trip of around six miles.

It was just gorgeous. I had the Nikon with me, and did the downstream leg in very leisurely fashion, spending a lot of time taking pictures. I like bright saturated colors, with deep blue skies, so I used a polarizer filter on the lens. A polarizer suppresses white surface glare from objects, leaving colors more saturated. There is also a band of the sky that is also polarized; a polarizer filter with the proper orientation will deepen the blues and increase the contrast with the clouds. My sunglasses, like most, are also polarized, so I was experiencing the bright colors as I paddled.

The first bend in the riverOverhanging branches with backlit yellow and red leaves reflected in the waterGold and deep redRed tree and deep blue skyStarkly yellow tree beyond a sandbarTree with flushes of goldFall foliageYellow tree and its reflectionFoliage along the CharlesOverhanging TreesMr. MallardThe far side of Motley PondCirrus clouds over Motley pondGolden trees from the passage beyond Motley PondSmall shack along the river near Bridge Street

Photography on the river is surprisingly difficult. In the sun, it’s a contrasty environment, as one side of the river is likely in shade and the other sunlit, and the dark water tends to fool the camera’s light meter, leading to pictures that are too light. The camera also tends to record the yellows of trees taken with the polarizer as more green than they appear to the eye; I’ve used a selective color correction to adjust the yellows closer to what I was experiencing.

Because of the drought we’ve been experiencing, the water level was quite low; there were visible sandbars in several places; in others there was just barely enough water to float the kayak, and I ran aground a few times.

The river meanders back and forth throughout Dedham. A little ways past the Dolan Recreation Center, it widens out to a broad area called Motley Pond; this is a great place to see birds. The river splits in two, going around a central island in two very shallow streams. I saw a couple of swans at the far end of the shallower branch. Motley Pond is not a great place to run aground; while it’s shallow, and you can run aground, the bottom is muck, not sand, and it’s not a place where you can get out and tow the boat to deeper ground.

Past Motley Pond, in the passage leading to the Bridge Street bridge, I saw a Great Blue Heron perched on a dead tree. The best way to deal with herons is not to make any sudden moves. I stopped paddling, and let the current take me closer, and used the zoom lens get some pictures. Herons, especially their eyes, always remind me that birds are dinosaurs.

Great Blue HeronGreat Blue HeronGreat Blue Heron

Speaking of dead trees, there were a lot of them along the river. A tree growing along the river strikes me as a classic Faustian bargain.

Turtles basking on a dead tree.

The tree gets plenty of water and nutrients, but eventually the river will undercut the roots, until it starts leaning into the river. Finally, the tree is completely undercut, and will fall into the river, where it dies.

The goal was to reach the Route 109 bridge. Like most of the bridges on the river, the current bridge is an expansion of a much older, single lane stone bridge. The upstream side is concrete, with cast arches matching the arches of the original bridge. The current deck is much wider than the original bridge, and spans both the concrete expansion plus additional width cantilevered over the side of the original bridge with additional concrete supports outboard of the original bridge.

Today's destination, the Route 109 Bridge. Upstream, concrete sideDownstream side of Route 109 bridge, showing original stonework and later concrete piers

By the time I reached the Route 109 bridge it was starting to get very late, and the sun was starting to get low in the sky. It was still warm in the sun, but the sun was low enough now that a lot of the river was shady. So I mostly put the camera away, and started paddling at the fastest rate I could comfortably sustain. Back in the Dedham loops, I saw a doe and its fawn lunching on leaves.

Heading back upstream towards MotleyTrees along the riverbankFawn and Doe

I got back to the put in shortly before sunset.

Fall foliage lit by the setting sun, seen from the put in

It had been a great afternoon, though I was pretty stiff and sore — but in a good way. Mid October in the middle of foliage season is a great time to go kayaking.

New Home

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For the first time in my life, I’ve moved to a new home.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived in the same house, the house I grew up in, which was also the house my mother grew up in. I have a picture of it from 1940, in the same set as one with my grandparents with their children, including my mother at three.

We kept Mum at the house for as long as we could, but eventually she needed more attention than we could give her, even with hired aides. So I’ve been rattling around the house by myself for the past couple of years. It just wasn’t the same.

It took a while to figure out what I wanted to do with myself. A year ago, I was leaning towards moving on. But I wasn’t ready to make the move, and when Christmas came around, I liked maintaining the traditions of having everyone at the house.

I was also not thrilled with the idea of moving. I have a lot of crap, most of it all over the place, and I didn’t want to deal with uprooting myself. I’ve also felt very strongly that I wanted to keep the house in the family.

But the house is owned jointly by myself and my siblings, and it wasn’t fair to them to just coast on as I had been. And Brian, in particular, was pressing for a decision.

So I started looking at apartments. I was looking for two bedrooms, so that I could have a dedicated place to work. I was also looking for a place that had space for my toys — I have both a kayak and a motorcycle. I wasn’t finding much in the price range I was looking at.

So I kind of oozed into the decision to buy the house for myself. The trouble is, the house needs a lot of repairs. The kitchen is old, and the floor is coming up, The bathroom tiles are cracked. I figured I’d need to get a roommate to help defray expenses, but I was kind of OK with that — I’d go days without having anyone to speak to.

But, I found I wasn’t thrilled with that. So, trying to come to a decision,I started looking at open houses, and the very first place I saw, a condo on the Stoughton/Canton line, I could see myself living in. Nice space, bright, modern appliances. It threw me a little as there was very little outside space. I looked at a couple others that weekend, but nothing seemed to fit as well.

The following week, I started the process of looking in earnest. I got in touch with a buyers agent, Kristen Sylvia, and made arrangements to see the condo again — I wasn’t sure of my first reaction, and I wanted another look. I also talked to my financial advisor — could I even be thinking of buying a place? He reassured me. I also started talking to lenders, and got my pre-approvals lined up.

Unfortunately, the condo sold before I could take another look. So I started the process of looking at listing and visiting places. I saw a couple of real pits, and one place that was almost adequate, but seemed to be compromised in a lot of ways.

A week or so afterwards, a couple more units in the same complex opened up. This was hopeful… and also a little suspicious. One of the lenders I’d spoken to had cautioned me that there could be problems with some condo complexes, and when I asked about that one, indeed, there was a litigation cloud hanging over it. So I scratched that from the list.

The lead I was looking for came from my brother in California, of all places. He found a listing on Zillow for a condo that seemed to check all my boxes — room for an offfice, room for my toys, modern appliances, and a condo — I realized over the summer, I was getting tired of spending my weekends on maintenance,.

So I took a look at it, and it was really promising. Two story townhouse, in really good shape, with half of a two car garage. Two bedrooms, a half bath on the ground floor and a bathroom complex on the second floor with laundry. We made an offer, for a little over the asking price… and heard nothing.

Next, I noticed that they were having a second open house the following weekend. Not good. I mentally started backing down from this place. Over the weekend, the listing was updated to read “Multiple offer situation”, but nothing had been said to us. Come Monday, still no news, Kristin was getting very frustrated with the seller’s agent’s lack of communication.

Finally, on Tuesday evening, the sellers agent sent out a general email to everyone who had made an offer (there were 10) that they had accepted another offer. So much for that.

Except the next morning, as I was eating breakfast, Kristen texted me back — the winning offer had fallen through. The sellers were going to choose between the next two offers, one of which was mine. We sweetened it just a little, and they went with it.

Kristen was great to deal with. She arranged for a home inspector to check out the place — he found a lot of minor homeowner “honey-do” type items, but nothing serious — and also connected me with a real estate attorney to deal with getting the contracts in order. I kept waiting for Murphy’s Law to rear its head, but it never did.

I spent the next few weeks finalizing the paperwork, and starting to pack, and closed September 18th.

The old house has been the center if the family for ages — Mum liked to entertain, and it had been the family place for Christmas Eve for decades. So Karen and I both wanted to have one last party for the extended family there. Complicating matters, Brian was also moving, and had limited availability to help me move. So we had the family party on Saturday, September 21 and a U-Haul rented for the furniture the next day. I spent the couple of days before hand getting the kitchen set up and moving some books and photos over. I was officially in residence at the end of the day on Sunday. Sort of.

I’d bought a new desk for the office, and it took longer to put together than anticipated — the office was a disaster zone for the first week, as was the bedroom, with a couple of wardrobes to unpack. There was also a ton of stuff left over at the old place that I needed to bring over, bit by bit– I did a poor job of packing up my personal stuff, and there was a fair amount of stuff in the cellar that needed to come over. I took the seats out of the back of the car several weeks ago (I love my Element) and I still haven’t been able to put them back. I finally feel, though, that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. This weekend was the first one in a long time that I felt like I could take time off; I ended up going for a long trip on the Charles this afternoon. I have some remaining Christmas stuff, and possibly a stereo, and then my car can become a four-seater again.

So, how am I feeling about it? Surprisingly OK, considering I’d spent my whole life in the old place. There was definitely a time a couple of years back when I would have been a lot more upset, and I suspect there may be waterworks when we actually sell it. I’d hoped one of the younger relatives could have taken it and kept it in the family. But I’ve spent the past couple of years kind of backing away from the old place. And I really like this place, and I love that it’s mine.

Sixty Years of the MBTA

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Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of the day that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) took over the Boston transit system from the previous Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). The previous MTA had covered 14 cities and towns, and it was recognized that Greater Boston’s transportation needs were more regional; the MBTA district originally covered 78 cities and towns and now includes over 100.

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Quechee Balloon Festival 2024

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I decided once again to book a flight at the Quechee Ballooon festival. I had high hopes after last year’s washout, especially considering that the weather had been great in 2012, 2013 and and 2018.

I’d originally planned to take the motorcycle up. I’d booked my flight for Friday evening, figuring that if there was a weather problem, there was more of a chance of picking up a standby flight. As the weekend got closer though, it became apparent that there were thunderstorms due to roll through.

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Six Months

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Today marks six months since Mum died. I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Day to day, I’m mostly OK; just working or hanging around. I seem to be wasting most of my time off just playing game or watching YouTube. I do feel like I’m rattling around in this empty house.

Other times, I find myself really missing her. I went to see Vienna Teng for the first time in years a couple weeks back, and I was afraid I was going to lose it if she sang “The Tower”, because Mum was very much The Tower, “the one who survives by making the lives of others worthwhile”.

Sure enough, she did sing it, and I did get a catch in my throat, when she sang the part “I need not to need/I’ve always been the tower” and remembered how much she hated needing me to help her, after her strokes, but I was able to hold it together and enjoy the rest of the show.

When a sailing ship has to sail against the wind, it can’t do so directly. It has to approach the wind diagonally zig-zag fashion; this is called tacking. Occasionally, if the ship isn’t trimmed right, or if the ship is turned onto the next tack before it has gathered enough speed, it will be “caught in irons,” stuck, with its sails shivering uselessly. The only thing the crew can do is back the sails, get back on the previous tack, gather way, and try again.

I feel like I’ve been caught in irons, and am just starting to make way.

Waterfire, June 1, 2024

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I first went to Waterfire shortly after starting to work in Providence. My coworkers were talking about it, so when there was a Friday Waterfire scheduled, I decided to stick around for it.

I often went while I was working in Providence, but less so once I stopped. At some point, I asked Mum if she’d like to go; she was always good for tagging along, and it turned out she enjoyed it too.

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More Tinkering with Concentration

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I’ve been tinkering again with my Concentration game.

It started the day after Thanksgiving. I was stuck at the car dealership, waiting while they fixed my car, and decided to scratch a couple of long standing itches, and then, as I’ve been playing with it, I’ve been noticing things and fixing them.

There are now styles for larger screens. On my laptop, the default puzzle size was starting to feel small. When I created the Angular version, I added responsive styles directed at mobile devices; I’ve now added another size class for bigger devices — the puzzle is larger, while the prizes stay the same size.

I had a dickens of a time adding this, partly because there are a lot of off-by-one (or two) issues due to the gaps between trilons, and partly because I’d forgotten how the trick of laying out trilons worked. I got it working, and then a couple of days later, reworked it again, setting up a couple of Sass mixins to handle it.

Next, I improved the game end transitions. One sore point — it’s even been pointed out to my by an end user (Hi Glenn!) — was that when the board was resetting itself from the puzzle state to the number state, it passed through the prize state. This was a consequence of the way the trick worked.

The number face has a rotation of 0°, the prizes a rotation of -120°, and the prizes are -240°. The turning of the trilons is accomplished via a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) transition — you specify the property that will be changing, and tell the browser how long you want the transition to last. The browser then animates the change, gradually changing the value of the property over the specified time from the starting value to the ending value.

This works fine when moving in normal game order; when a number is clicked, it animates changing the rotation from zero to -120°, making it look like the trilon is rotating clockwise. And in the case of a non-match, there is no intermediate state as it rotates counterclockwise back.

Unfortunately, at the end of the game, we would prefer to continue going clockwise from the prize state to the puzzle state, but the transition from -240° to 0° is a counterclockwise one, taking us through the prize state.

I tried fixing this before, by temporarily making the number state -360°, which is visually the same as 0°. Unfortunately, the transitions made the trilons spin like whirling dervishes.

This time, it occurred to me that what I needed to do, in addition, was turn off the transitions first, pause for part of a second, and then make the number state be -360°. I then pause for another fraction of a second, re-enable the transitions, and then set the trilon state to number. The transition from -240° to -360° is the desired clockwise motion. I then wait for the transition to complete, turn off transitions again, restore the number state to 0°, wait a fraction of a second and re-enable transitions. This gives a smooth reset to start the new game.

I’ve been tinkering with puzzles and prizes. I’ve added a couple more puzzles — there are now 12 — and added more prizes, both good prizes and bad prizes. I’ve been playing the game a lot myself lately, and the same prizes do repeat. There’s not much to be done about that except to add more.

I’ve been tinkering with the innards of the style system — repetitive code has been replaced by Sass mixins. I’ve also been playing with the speed of the rotation. Previously, the animation was linear, running at a constant speed. I’ve added “easing”, so that the rotation starts slow(ish), speeds up, then slows down again; this better reproduces how the physical trilons worked. This necessitated changes to the overall trilon speed — for a while, it was too fast, then it was too slow. Now it feels about right… just about the speed of the Jack Narz board.

Speaking of the Jack Narz board, I’ve more closely matched the colors. It’s hard to match the colors exactly, since I’ve been picking up the colors from YouTube videos that are full of compression artifacts, but it is closer, It will never be an exact match since the font is different, but it’s closer.

Finally, I noticed that there had been a regression between the jQuery and Angular versions of the board. I was idly playing with the old version, and noticed a pronounced perspective effect on the turning trilons that wasn’t present in the Angular version. It was supposed to be there; I’d copied the perspective and transform-style properties over. But it wasn’t.

It turned out that the problem was an artifact of how Angular renders components. Unlike React, which only renders the HTML elements within the React Component, an Angular component will render a custom HTML element representing itself. So, the rendered Angular source for a trilon looks something like this:

<ca-trilon _ngcontent-ndj-c21="" _nghost-ndj-c19="" class="ng-tns-c21-0 ng-star-inserted" style="">
   <div _ngcontent-ndj-c19="" class="trilon state-number row1 col2">
      <div _ngcontent-ndj-c19="" class="face num">
         <div _ngcontent-ndj-c19="" class="inner">
            8
         </div>
      </div>
      <div _ngcontent-ndj-c19="" class="face prize"><!---->
       <!----><div _ngcontent-ndj-c19="" class="inner ng-star-inserted">
        Green House
             </div><!----><!---->
       </div>
       <div _ngcontent-ndj-c19="" class="face pzl" style="background-image: url(&quot;/assets/puzzles/pzzl-005-2x.gif&quot;); background-position: -302px -98.5px;">
      </div>
   </div>
</ca-trilon>

What this means in terms of the style system was that there was an intervening element — the <ca-trilon> element — between the element that had the perspective on it, and the <div class="trilon> that had the preserve-3d style on it.

This required massive changes to fix. I had to apply styles to the <ca-trilon> element — height, width, and the preserve-3d property, as well as make it display: block. This threw the layout of the board totally out of whack. Previously, each trilon had been placed absolutely with a fixed top and left position; I removed this, and changed it to a simpler flex-box arrangement. I then had to fudge all the measurements until there was the proper amount of space around each trilon, and the puzzle as a whole… and then repeat that for the other two sizes. Happily, in the end, I think I’ve wound up with simpler code in the end.

Although I did successfully get perspective working, I found that the effect as implemented in the jQuery version was too strong. It was especially noticeable at number 30 — the corners of the rotating trilon appeared to be moving through its neighbors. You control the perspective effect by specifying a number — think of it as specifying how far away the vanishing point of a perspective drawing is. The smaller the number, the stronger the effect. The jQuery original used 700px; I’m using 2800px for this. Number 30 doesn’t seem to clip, but there is still a bit of a perspective effect as the trilon rotates, making it look more like the back edge is receding.

Finally, a couple of housekeeping items. I used ng new to create the original shell of the Angular application, giving me an Angular favicon. I’d also set the document title to “Concentration/Angular” as my original intention was to also create a React version. I’m not so sure anymore that I want to do that. So it’s now just “Concentration”, with the classic “Mystery Logo” as the favicon.