gymnastics, Disney, XML security, pizza, coffee, tides, Dickens

I've not only brought the laptop to the gym, but also the referee's report on the astronomical XML security paper. While the girls practice on the apparati with a medley of Disney movie songs in the background, I've tended to the paper objections. The pizza has arrived at the gym, and the action has stopped in preparation for lunch. I'm going to bop out and get some coffee while they eat.

I think we'll go to the beach today also, for the tide will get pretty low, and it will be full sunlight. The weekend low tides will be later in the day, Sunday's even after sunset. Besides, there's morris practice Sunday, and twice a week until we show up at the Dickens Fair.

Update:
After I returned the post-prandial girls both bounced over to me, again, to demonstrate their newest abilities, but upon reaching me the elder immediately asked why I smelled like coffee. May their senses never be dulled. Right now the elder has helped the younger onto the rings, and although I'm not expecting either to perform the iron cross, I still hope I can get them to do some pullups to improve their time on the bars.

the non-archival world of lj plus

History. As various agencies do OCR of old newspapers more and more of history comes available online. For the amateur historian of science, looking for news stories can be a gold mine of when the general public became aware of various aspects of extremely technical (and in many cases, really political) scientific subjects. But the full orginal microfilms of these papers contain something else that's equally valuable -- the advertisements. It's fascinating to see what sorts of products were being used when, and with what sorts of representations about their efficacy.

In my lj plus account, sixapart.com gets to put ad impressions into my face, and the targeting of those makes for an interesting analysis of me. Of late I have been getting ebay ads for Star Trek paraphernalia (I resemble that), and cooking schools (my friends page seems to mention food a lot). The quirkier ones have the goth-clad IMVU avatars (hey, guys, you can probably tell that I'm male from the profile, but I'm only ever connecting via Linux, and you don't even support MacOS). Most recently I'm seeing the result of mentioning my daughters -- ebay ads for teen girl undergarments, and some other ebay material best suited for horny males.

Absent a breakdown of civilization, the text content of the blogs of the world will never be lost. As such they'll provide a gold mine of cultural information about the turn of the 21st century and the memories of folks back into the 20th. But the ads, will they survive, or will they be lost?

caves and crabs and chitons (oh my!)

Although tomorrow will be lower, today the tide was duly low, and the surf was minimal, and the sun was up enough to see things clearly. The girls and I wandered dry-footed into the first cave, and both explored it all the way under the beachside house that will someday be undermined. The mussels lined all the walls, with anemones below. There was a handful of starfish, and upon close look into the nooks, crabs. But the discovery of the day was the small chitons with their segmented armor clinging tightly to the rocks.

For years I've been aware that it's never possible to enter the second cave with dry feet, but before I had noticed my elder daughter had waded her way over there. She returned triumphant, knowing that she had got to a place before I had, and she led me through the knee-wetting surf. The younger daughter satisfied herself by climbing higher onto the vantage points which usually look down on a churning bowl of surf, but today were sheer drops onto the sand below.

Tomorrow at 09:00 the tide will be some 2.5 meters above where it was this afternoon. We plan to be there, for admission is free.