Beach Club -
May 2005
This Month (May 2005) is almost over - so we're a 'little late' here on
our reporting...
Ms. May invents a new desert treat...
(Pillsbury "Devil's Food" cup-cake split with (just a (teeny-tiny) bit)
of Redi-Whip in-between!) Believe it or not it's
DELICIOUS, and it's even better with a few rasberries on it - Ummmmm.
and because they're SOOOOooooooo..... tasty - here's a second taste:
Ms. Tigger discovers yet one more methodology to drink 'RO' water
(Reverse Osmosis) water...
AND Certainly another 'cat-picture' - Ms. Siew Mei 'contemplating' life
at our domicle and her share of the spoils - such as tuna,
sushimi, and other such cat-fancied things...
And YES - we 'tried' (but failed) to compete in the 52nd annual "Mug
Race" _ this dinghy-sailing 'drag-race' from Palatka to
Jacksonville
(in north Florida) - we've raced-in before - one year in the "14" and
one year in the Europes.. THIS YEAR, THOUGH we were
convinced we could do this again in the "14", our twin-trapeze /
asymmetrical spinnaker (read this a fast, exciting, athletic, and other
such things that keep old-folk like us 'interested' ...
We took the boat to Mom's in Jacksonville, on the Trailex trailer (bought from
Canfield, Ohio, when I lived in Hong Kong 11
years ago), and practiced, then 24 hours before race start (on Saturday
morning 7 May) we looked at the weather forecasts on the 'web' (on
several pay-for and free web-sites) and on the Friday morning (6th May)
we made the decision to NOT GO RACING - and it was the RIGHT decision -
the wind was consistently less than 5 knots and only 3 of 175 boats
finished in the 12 hour time limit - NONE of them was a monohull... -
Right Decision - we'd taken 9 hours racing (about 10 hours in the boat)
in 2001 when we raced the '14' the last time...
ON the above picture you'll notice Ms. May's new "Necky Manitou" kayak she bought in
Jacksonville, on the morning of 2 May at "Black Creek
Outfitters" in Jacksonville. -
We had some problems on the way-home to Stuart (on Friday afternoon,
5th of May), along I-95 with the
above-pictured
trailer. Were stopped by State-Police who insisted we have a
co-pilot in the car while driving such a double-decker - trailer-rig...
Mr. Bill's now bought a
brandy-new kayak too, at "Kayaks Etc"
in Vero Beach, not too far from his office at Fish & Wildlife
there. His is a 'Perception'
brand; Carolina model...
So - here's a picture of us going-off kayaking with Ms. May and the
Mercedes Benz Kayak Wagen. and other such accoutrements as we go
kayaking with... - Ms. Yoko & Mr. Jim from the Armory Art Center
joined us on Saturday, 21st of May for an excellent trip.
Here's a map and a couple of 'composite' air-photos and other such
stuff as Mr. Bill (the ever-present-engineer and computer-geek) is
doing for our kayak-trips:
This is our 'voyage' for Saturday 21 May, 2005 - when Ms. Yoko &
Mr. Jim joined us - this is a 'map' ((VERY VERY rough version) by Mr.
Bill, via Garmin GPS (to collect points in the Kayak) and then
Arc-View/Arc-Map software to create the map with 'layers' (mostly) from
Martin County's Property Appraiser's office - (this
is 212 Kbyte file that is 816 x 1056 pixels)
Our (eastern) end of Cove Road (At the Intracoastal Waterway) (VERY
near the house (no lights and only about 2.3 miles)):
this image is about 0.63 MEGAbytes
(650 x 970 pixels) - we have not (yet) paddled this entire route,
we are HOPING we can 'get-through'...
News-Flash-Update - Tuesday morning, - 24th May - we paddled all the
way around - 1 hr / 20 mins - not a bad go at all, met a fisherman 1/2
way around - not a problem at all - some pictures:
May in the 'cut'
Bill in the 'cut'
the 'cut'
May under the 'bridge' (of
the St. Lucie State Park)
May in the 'path' where we
thought it might be too shallow or closed-in
OTHER END (west-end) of Cove Road at /
near the I-95 / SR-76 junction 'South Fork of the St. Lucie River -
We paddled here for the first time on Sunday morning 29th May (day
before Memorial Day holiday)...- it was great, we put-in at the park,
near SR-76 (which is quite near the I-95 exit for SR-76) - and we
paddled round trip about 5 miles in about an hour and 40 minutes.
We found a couple of islands that we paddled around.
Mr. Bill took some GPS points and
found an air-photo (this is only of 'part' of
the route...) - now the GIS challenge is to 'register & re-size
& re-position) the ...jpeg file underneath the 'GPS-points' file so
that you can see something "of value"??? - more on this later.
Here's a couple of pictures:
New Wood-Laminate Floor is COMING SOON!
(This Thursday, 2 June, 2005!!!!)
AND _ something we've been wanting to do for MONTHS - is replace our
extra-ookie carpet with
'wood-floor' - and so now we've hauled-home some 29
boxes of wood-flooring, we'll go get the other 14 boxes (and some
miscellaneous trim & transistions) next Sunday (29th May (YES - we
got all the rest of the "STUFF" today (Sunday, 29th)) and then
it'll be installed on 2-3 June (so we're
told?)
here's a picture of just a few of the 29 boxes we drove home with today
(Sunday, 22 May).
Mr. Bill pulls five more stumps (in one morning) - and this is the last
of them, I think, for quite some time. I found a
buried telephone cable in an oak-tree-stump - along with a hatchet head
(when I hit that with the shovel-point it was certainly a noticeable
'ring'....) anyway - total stumps is something like 11 4 sizeable BIG
ones and 7 littler ones. It's been a very rewarding and
educational experience - though I think I'll pass on more of the
same... - Pictures in previous monthly web-site-updates.
AND_ as a 'final-note' from our last-fall-hurricanes, we had one tree
that was pronounced 'dead' in January / early February by the Florida
Division of Forestry local 'expert' - and we kept thinking, "It will
fall down 'soon'" - well 'soon' never came so we paid to have it
removed, and the stump-ground down about 12" below grade. The guy
that came to quote was a fairly senior level policeman
(off-duty-obviously) and his buddy (pictured below running the grinder)
is also policeman. We got their phone-number from the people
two-doors to the east of us - they are 'climbers' (as opposed to
bucket-truck-types) and they had done quite a lot of work two doors to
the east of us... - anyway - they came highly recommended, and priced
right $150 to remove an 80 foot tree, cut it up and put it by the
curb. Then I spent a couple of hours over a couple of days and
put it all in trash-cans and the trash-guys took it all on one
morning!... -
Here's a picture of our last-pine-tree-stump being ground-down...
Work at "Fish and Wildlife Service - Pelican Island / Archie Carr
National Wildlife Refuges - Vero Beach continues - I'm now doing
field-work - third day out in the field will be this Wednesday (25th
May) - using a Trimble handheld
unit ( GeoXM ) and
ESRI's ArcPad software as
well as Trimble's TerraSync
software to develop maps of part of their 'restoration' area (20 years
ago these were citrus groves, but now they're trying to recover the
land to the 'native' way and there are ditches to fill, and Australian
pine trees to remove and irrigation wells / piping to repair, and other
irrigation pipe to remove, etc. etc. etc. - lots of work -
Which says, YES - I got-back my trusty Toshiba Laptop back from repair
with it's new CD-ROM drive (compliments of Toshiba's 3-year extended
warranty...
Here's a 'section' of the
web-site that I started a couple of months ago, this is a "(mostly)
useful
Web-Links" section. It will be, as you might guess, 'mostly' a
collection to computer-related and / or technology / tool related
sites, but you might benefit from just a 'brief run-through' of them,
see what you think!
These are 'weather' related:
These links are GIS-GPS related.
- http://www.trimble.com
< === Trimble is one of the leading - GIS-GPS hardware manufacturers
- http://www.esri.com
<=== ESRI is probably the leader in the GIS-GPS software business
- http://www.raven.com
<=== Raven makes a lot of GIS-GPS hardware, - mostly for the farming
business
- http://www.golfps.com
<=== these guys write a bunch of different industry-specific
software tools & sell hardware
- http://www.terrabrowser.com
<=== this is a Macintosh-OS "X" tool designed to access the "TerraServer" and you don't
need any other software to use it - it allows you to access a USA-wide
databank of excellent black & white images
- http://www.pasco.com/myworld
<=== "MyWorld GIS" - another Mac OS "X" application (in Java)
primarily for educators and students - it doesn't give you all the
'power' in an ESRI product but it is EXCELLENT for what it does
These links are mostly computer-related - Operating Systems and other
such things, etc.
- http://www.apple.com
<= Apple has upgraded their PowerBook offering(s) - my existing
powerbook is now six-years-old (well, this June) and almost three years
beyond it's AppleCare end-of-life, - perhaps it's time for a new one!
- http://www.sun.com <= the
new
version of Solaris is out - amazing what they've done!
- http://www.windowsxpcentral.net
<= EXCELLENT support for WindowsXP geeks (like me)
- http://www.macosx.com
<= same as above but for the Macintosh folk
- http://www.knoppix.net
<=
as noted above, the 'All About Knoppix' site
- http://www.microsoft.com
<= as much as I hate to admit it - when I have a blue-screen problem
(and I've had a LOT of Windows problems lately) Microsoft does not do a
'bad job' of technical-articles...???
IF any of these links you try don't work - please let me
know. E-mail to Bill
last updated: Sunday 29
May, 2005 at 17:25 USA-EDT; by: Bill Schell
