More Disaster

This weekend has been awful. I don't really know why except that it has been and I have made it that way. I think I should probably put it down to hormones and the stress of being by myself all the time but it's just been a horrible weekend and I don't know what to do to put myself right. Last night and this evening I don't seem to have been able to get a grip on myself.

I guess in part the particular upset this weekend is down to my knitting - but that in itself is just part of being here. The only people I see here socially are through knitting and so I guess I spend more time knitting than I do at home and so when it all goes wrong it all feels somehow more important. Yesterday morning I made a mistake on the clapotis, which I had been enjoying knitting because it was so incredibly easy and mindless. Having tried to put a lifeline in and twisted a few stitches, I took the thing into Knit One in Squirrel Hill (not Natural Stitches this time because I feel like everytime I go in I need help), the lady there was sort of helpful and said to bring it back tomorrow when they had a knitting group in and there was sure to be someone who would 'take me under their wing'. I dutifully went back with the thing today and didn't seem to get any real help but was encouraged to rip the whole thing back and start over.

I did. I really wish I hadn't, it totally didn't need that. So now I have no clapotis and I'm too stressed and teary to start the damned thing over again and not have it go wrong (I've tried twice).

I wish this wasn't so important to me, but I think I have been using knitting to keep me distracted and so now I can't do that right I just seem to be completely lost. I gave up completely after the last failed restart and just bawled on my bed for a bit. Sometimes crying helps take the edge off things - I don't think today is one of those days.

Disaster!

A good word to describe last night's dinner.

Last weekend I bought some handmade burgers from whole foods and froze them. Big, thick burgers with real meat in them. I pulled one out of the freezer on Wednesday night with the plan to have it for Thursday's dinner.

Thursday became Friday when it turned out there was a lunchtime talk on Thursday (the sandwiches I'd brought would never have been eaten otherwise - we always go out to lunch on Friday so I couldn't just carry them over). So... Friday dinner.

I have no grill, so decided to fry the burger and press it on a paper towel to remove the grease before putting it in my burger bun. I figured that just before it was done, I thought I'd drop an egg in the pan and have that too. Got to a point where it looked pretty cooked around all the outsides so I gave it another few minutes for safety then grabbed an egg and gave it another few whilst the egg cooked. All done, I assembled the burger - looking good!

Er, no. Sadly as soon as I bit into the burger it wasn't really as cooked as well as it should be in the middle. Removed the burger from the burger and threw it back in the pan. Turned the heat back on and up a few marks for good measure and then sad down and ate the fried egg sandwich.

Went back, checked on the burger, all was good. It seemed to be cooking nicely, so I picked up the knitting I had been doing earlier and progressed some on that. Turned at the end of the row, had a think about the cooking and decided that I'd go and see how cooked it was at the end of the next one...

About a third of the way through the 'next one' I thought I could smell burning. Now my knitting chair is all of two metres from the oven (max) with no doorways in between and this smell was pretty faint but being the concerned Saffy that I am, I thought I'd check it out straight away. What did I find?

My burger had indeed burnt on the bottom side. About a 2mm layer of charred meat covered the base of the burger - not so good. But that was not all! It turned out, that the spatular I had left in the ban for the purpose of turning the burger had melted a bit. Tiny bit of the handle was stuck to the edge of the pan and a somewhat larger chunk of the spatular itself covered the base of the pan. Ooops!


Having turned the heat off, I sliced off the bottom of the burger and threw it in the bin. Ate the rest in a new burger bun with the salad - a small section of it was still vaguely pink - it didn't taste of tefal but probably should have done :)

Maybe for the other burger I shall try oven cooking?

Early to Bed... Mostly

With everyone in the UK safely in bed by around 8pm Pittsburgh time, it's been really nice to just go to bed when I'm tired, without any distractions (noone to say 'Oh, but my routing algorithm nearly works, looklooklook'). And mostly, I've been in bed, ready to sleep, not later that 10:30pm. Except on two occasions - one tonight, and one some weeks ago - what was I doing on those occasions? Watching YouTube.

Why??? The last time was Legally Blonde the musical - I spotted it in someone's Facebook status and over the course of the evening sat down and watched the whole thing (in 18 parts). Was it any good? It got better as the show progressed certainly, I actually thought it was kind of sweet. And given I didn't think much to the film at all - this was definitely much better. I've actually put the CD on my Amazon wishlist (is this something I should be confessing to? I'm not sure).

So what was I watching tonight? Britain's Got Talent. Again prompted by Facebook status messages, this time lots of them, all talking about Holly Steele. Started out watching Holly's audition, and then went back to the start of the playlist her video was in and seemed to be watching a selection of highlights from the episodes. I'm up to episode six so far and will save the rest for another day. Here's my favourite:



Oh my!

All in the Balance

I spotted this cache today when looking for things local to the area in which I planned to spend the day (I visited the Cathedral of Learning - more later). Remembered it when I got back in the evening and thought I'd attempt to solve it.

The first parts were reasonably easy once I remembered what the involved. I'm pretty confident in my S, K and F.

S = 8, K = 1, F = 1

Show/Hide Answer

The next part, I continue to struggle with. I've got as far as:

2C₁₀H₁₄N₂ + 27O₂ ---> 20CO₂ + 14H₂O + 4N

Show/Hide Answer

I know that 1 mole of nicotine is 162.26g and 1 mole of O₂ is 32 grams.

I think then that:

0.178g of nicotine is 0.011 moles.

Show/Hide Answer

Update - Writing this just made me notice a mistake I made right at the end. I just solved it (@22:42)!! (Well, I have an answer that passes the verification).

I'll carry on now...

So I need to balance that with the appropriate ratio of oxygen. The number I have on a scrap of paper here is:

0.007404765 moles

Show/Hide Answer

...but I think I've now just doubled that to get the answer? Hmmm... not sure how confident I am in my final answer now :) All these numbers on my paper make for a confused Saffy.

Using the fact that 1 mole = 32g. I can calculate that the above number of moles (doubled) times 32 gives me the weight of O2 in grams. Convert that to milligrams and lose the decimal places to get a three digit number for the cache coordinates:

474

Show/Hide Answer

Anyone care to check my chemistry/maths? It's a long time since I've done anything like this! A good challenge - did I actually once know how to do this stuff?

McShadyside

This guy just sits by the sidewalk on Shady Ave. Cute :)


Found him on my way back from an evening walk in Mellon Park looking for a geocache with the same title as this post. Sadly, the log at the cache was full - nice find though.

More Hugin

Did a bit more work on my Hugin script yesterday so thought I'd take some slightly better pictures to test it. The images aren't quite taken from the same place but they're as close as I can manage by myself.


And there it is - my desk!

So, what changes did I make the the script since last time?

Well:

• It now takes n images - previously it took two
• It attempts to find the hFOV in the first photos EXIF data - previously an arbitrary value of 30 was assumed (it'll still fallback to this value if nothing is found)

Not sure about anything else, because I can't quite remember what I had put into the script last time I posted. It prunes the control points now which it probably didn't do before.

More knitting

Bit of a knit-tastic week :)

Having decided to frequent Natural Stitches as much a possible. Monday and Tuesday were my first yarn buying adventures. Over the weekend I spent some time checking out scarves on Ravelry, determined to find something sufficiently summery in the hope that I might finish it before I leave. And so, I settled upon this. Pattern chosen, and so on Monday I explored as much of the yarn at Natural Stitches as I could possibly take in and settled upon Kraemer's "Sterling Silk and Silver" (63% Superwash Merino, 20% Silk, 15% Nylon and 2% Silver) in Heavenly Blue. I was also really keen on the Imperial Blues but they seemed a little less summer. I'll have to find something else to do with this yarn before I buy some in that colourway :)

Starting the scarf was a bit painful. I think I must have cast on this project eight times before my fingers got the hang of it and I stopped making stupid mistakes. As of this morning I've completed sixteen rows.


But that's not all... nope! When browsing the 40% off section of Natural Stitches, I spotted Kollage's "Delicious", some hanks in a really nice turquoise blue and some in a turquoise/pink multiway. So, when I got home I logged into Ravelry and had a look to see what people had done with this stuff. Variety of things, but by far the most appealing was the ever-popular Clapotis. Tuesday evening came, and I found myself 7 hanks of the pink/turquoise colourway, named"Shock".


I'm still really tempted to buy the plain turquoise though... so many pretty yarns, not nearly enough time to knit them.

I think I've settled on 6mm needles for the Clapotis - so might cast that on tonight? Maybe.

Hot and Sour Soup?

Wandering 'somewhere' to find a space to eat my late lunch I came across a cafeteria I'd not seen before. I think this is probably the one people keep buying pizza from because it's not terribly far from Wean Hall and you don't have to leave the building to get there. As I had forgotten my crisps (leaving me with two sandwiches and a carrot), I thought I'd see if they had something small to improve my lunch. As well as pizza, the place had a chinese stand offering both 'large' and 'small' bites. With small bites at $1.25, it seemed like a pretty cheap way to top up my lunch. Having spotted hot and sour soup on the list I quickly made my purchase and went away with a generously size tub of what looked like pond water.


So what was it? It wasn't what I'd call hot, but probably fitted sour about as much as anyone could want it to. It did have lots of yummy Chinese mushrooms and some tofu and some water chestnuts. It wasn't as 'gloopy' as the hot and sour soups I've had before and the top seemed quite oily. If I'd had to guess I'd have said it was Chinese mushroom soup. Would I have it again? No, probably not. I'd eat it if I was given it, but next time I think I'd try something else.

Happy Socks

So, I've been knitting some more socks. Sadly, the ones I was knitting when I last talked socks have turned out to be somewhat too small now that I've reached the foot (there is absolutely no hope of me getting them over my heels) and I've put them on hold until I can find the courage to rip them all the way back and start over. In the meantime, I've started on this pattern in this rather colourful Wendy Happy (colourway is Virgo). The yarn is bamboo based, rather than wool based and so it's a great yarn for my Hobnob, who chose the colour and the pattern.


Having started with the original 80 stitches, the sock was clearly huge. Adjustment to 70 stitches still seemed a little big so having fiddled a bit I took 64 as my best guess and off I went. Two pattern repeats in, all seemed to be going well, however I've just tried the sock on to photograph it for Ravelry (as demonstrated above) and I am somewhat concerned that it may now be too small. Grrr... fingers crossed?

The Area 51 Travel Bug

The Area 51 travel bug has now finally made it into a new geocache. Dropped it into T.O.K. in Schenley Park during my lunch break. I struggled a little bit finding a cache large enough - I guess many of the urban caches are on the smaller side.

What should have been the Point State Park...

At Hobnob's suggestion I caught the bus downtown today to visit the Point State Park. Sadly, when I got there much of it looked like this:


It seems the park is largely closed. I think this is something to do with work that they're planning to do to renovate some features - on my way into the park I read a sign that suggested they were doing quite a bit of work over the coming year or so and that the most immediate work was to the walkways. Still, bit of a disappointment for potential explorers. That said, some of the park was accessible, particularly those bits at the edges. I started out by walking down the riverside, partly in the hope of finding a geocache near the Fort Duquesne Bridge (the Bridge to Nowhere). I did eventually find the cache, but only after banging my head rather hard on one of the struts - serves me right? And no, the cache wasn't under the bridge. Grrr....


Walked round the point of the Golden Triangle giving me a view of a few more bridges and the two nearby baseball stadiums (Heinz Field and PNC Park).


And round some more, to see one of the two inclines (but I can't quite tell which from Google maps) and yet more bridges!

Continued back towards the park entrance and stopped in at the Fort Pitt Museum for some postcards and then at the Blockhouse for a quick nose around (and some more postcards!). Was reminded as I browsed about the unluckiness of a rabbits foot - why exactly would I carry one of these things around with me for luck when the last individual that did got their limbs hacked off? Still, better than the whole rabbit skin you could buy at the museum :)


Having exhausted what little the mostly-closed park had to offer, I crossed the Fort Duquesne Bridge and paid a visit to the Korean War Memorial. Again seeking a geocache, this was a nice little space with an attractive water feature at which paddling was permitted. Had to get my feet wet to grab the cache but this was no hardship given the weather. Let my feet dry off in the sun as I did a bit of knitting. Just before I left the area I decided that I'd put the cache back somewhat more invisibly than I had found it so paddled a little again until I was happy with its position. Again a few rounds of knitting before putting my socks and shoes back on and walking along the riverside.


Carried on down the riverside hoping (and failing) to pick up another cache, before crossing back over the water on the Andy Warhol (Seventh Street) bridge. Wandered around confused for a while trying to find a couple of geocaches and/or the bus stop. Found my way home eventually :o)

The Problem of Self-Checkout

Well actually, self-checkouts have a number of problems - this one is unique to shopping in a country other than the usual one.

So, barcodes all scanned, time to do the veggies...

(Image from Wikipedia)

1) Press the loose items button.
2) Presented with an A-Z.
3) C for Courgette... no, wait it's not a courgette. Oh, crap what do they call it??
4) Think a bit.
5) Zucchini! That's the one. I'll have one of those.

In other shopping excitement, I have managed to track down paracetamol - turns out it's known as acetaminophen in the US. Clearly though, there's no fear of people overdosing on these things over here:


Yes, that's 100 paracetamol caplets at 500mg each. Can you imagine trying to buy that in the UK? They also come in rather larger packets - 500 paracetamol anyone?

And finally, I have bought a plantain. I've never bought a plantain before - I think I've only ever eaten plantain about twice. Still, yum yum - now what to do with it?

Natural Stitches

Visited Natural Stitches last night for their Ravelry group and to look around. Never did get round to exploring the shop but it was really nice to chat to folks and think about things that weren't work or food. Will have to make it a regular haunt for the three months I'm in Pittsburgh :o).

Anyway, I loved the shop and really appreciated the friendly welcome - if you're ever passing through Pittsburgh I highly recommend it.

Playing with Hugin

(From my QG Exploration pictures - outside Edinburgh Castle)

The Area 51 TravelBug

I said yesterday I'd put some pictures of the travel bug up so here they are. The plan is to drop this in a cache tomorrow in the park behind CMU so I figured I'd better take the pictures whilst I still had the bug.


This bug is a mystery piece of equipment rescued from Area 51. Each finder takes a look at the item and attempts to identify it before moving it to a new location for another cacher to take a shot. So... any ideas? Tech-y people to the rescue?


I think whatever it is it should play music - those tooth comby bits have a couple of wires/strings running along them and the combs themselves are nice and flexible giving me a plinky-plink kind of feel. Each of the combs is actually half of a pair with some sort of connective material (or at least I assume it's connective) between them. Not sure about the purpose of that wire coil though - it does join up to the circuit board as well.

Still, if it doesn't play music then I shall suggest that or it must be a typewriter for midgets who need shelter from the rain :o) All those solder points look like tiny little keys/hammers.

Look at all that wonderful comment space ready for your suggestion... And to encourage you some more, I'll even post a picture of the electronicsy bit (that's the bit under the rain shelter). It's not a great picture though.

Walking to the Sky

This was an obvious one to feature in my series of CMU specials so made a good no-thought-required way to start the week. Walking to the Sky is a sculpture outside Warner Hall (which I found on the first day to get my CMU ID card and then again on both Thursday and Friday to visit the Office of International Education). This is apparently a copy of a sculpture currently located at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, but originally at the Rockefeller Center.


Like most of these 'what a great idea' installations, it wasn't terribly popular with the people on campus at the time. Students supposedly described it as an eyesore and as "vaguely phallic" (but isn't everything to a student?) but I have to say that compared to the Infolab it is quite clearly stunning :)

Actually, I quite like this. It's not too modern: it has real people in it - well, real in the sense that they resemble people - and it uses a sensible colour palate. Also, the sentiment is nice and appropriate to the context. I like the title too. Can't really see what all the fuss was about.

Oh No!

My Macbook speakers seem to have gone!

Still, at least there's an Apple store around the corner. It's not all bad.

And yet... :( No music.

Highland Park & The KidScience Caches

Sounds like the name of a cheesy seventies artist :)

Anyway... today's adventure was into Highland Park. Having spent this morning trying to choose a green space to explore and then plotting the boundary of the PAT bus zone on Google maps, I grabbed some lunch in my suite before catching the 500 bus to Highland Park. Before I left I checked the park out for geocaches in the hope that this would be a good start for exploring the park.

(for Hobnob who likes Elephants and MG who likes giraffes -
just a tiny part of a big, long, animal excitement near the zoo entrance)

Arriving at the park I missed my stop because I hadn't pulled the string hard enough (so it didn't make enough of a noise) and so ended up getting off at the zoo, not a disaster - it was only a few minutes walk and at least I now know where the zoo is :) Wandered into the park from a corner not terribly far from the first of the KidScience caches I was hoping to find. Found the cache pretty easily in a really nice hiding place - I do like it when the finds themselves are straight forward, the less scrabbling in the dirt the better :)

Grabbed the cache and went to sit in a nearby tunnel to complete the log. Nothing too exciting in the cache (well, there was a travel bug but I thought I'd leave it for someone else), so left the contents as they were and replaced it in the hiding place. Saw some pretty yellow flowers so took a picture before wandering on in the direction of the next cache.
The second of the KidScience caches took me past a bunch of students having a BBQ and playing some sort of ball game. It looked like English football but it may well not have been. Then around past a memorial to Alexander Negley - presumably the same Negley from which the street on which I am currently residing takes its name - and his wife. The monument apparently marks the centre of a burial ground on Negley's former homestead.

Made it to cache two which was another obvious hide (but only if you were looking) and then to find cache three. Took a picture of the third KidScience cache because I'd never seen an ammo can before. Picked up a fair amount of litter at the place I took the photo (just above the cache site) - it had clearly been the location of someone's birthday party.

And then, on to find cache four. I never did find this one, found a few likely locations but either someone had it or I was looking in the wrong places. It was found yesterday though so should be worth another go in the future. Still, on the way to this cache I passed by what I assume to be the main entrance to the park with a nice gardeny-type section and a fountain. I seem to be quite into flowers this year having never really paid too much attention to them before. I quite liked these cool blue ones but I've no idea what they are - answers on a postcard and all that:

Also took some pictures of some fungi and the fountain:

Having given up on the last of the KidScience caches, I wandered on towards (or at least I thought so) one final cache in the Highland Park area. From here, I enjoyed a fantastic set of 'nature trail' moments spotting first a squirrel and then a rabbit and then, most excitingly a deer! (Oh, and then some ducks).

(the rabbit - no picture of the squirrel, sorry)

(the deer!!!)

(and the ducks)

It turned out that the final cache 'Wear Yellow, Live Strong' was some distance below where I had initially wandered and there seemed to be no good way down. Cut through a load of trees, the floor was slippy and caked in autumn leaves making the whole thing a bit of an adventure in the mud. Managed to avoid landing on my bottom more than once, but only just. Finally found the coordinates and it turned out to be a nice easy find. Picked up a travel bug (which I'll photograph and post separately) and a scout patch (boys, not girls) and dropped in a magnet I got as a swap at Peak 2000!

(on the left - the way I chose to approach the cache,
on the right - the way it was probably intended to be done)

So, having dropped down some distance below the bits of the park with nice paths, I spend a few minutes getting my bearings and watching these two young ladies (I guess) hitting each other with sticks (and some men shooting crossbows) - not too sure what that was about but it was fun to watch all the same. Also took a photo of another of Pittsburgh's bridges, the Brilliant Branch RR Bridge (ooh look Hobnob, trains!), I'm not putting the photo up because it's lousy.


Eventually found my way back to the park entrance (some weird statue things with naked breasts) via the reservoir (lots of blue water). Caught the bus half-way back home after some confusion trying to find a bus stop (I watched the bus I wanted drive past me having spent the preceding five minutes trying to find a stop). Not quite sure why I got off the bus where I did, but it seemed like it might be a good idea. Turns out that bus went quite a lot nearer my suite than I originally thought :)
Wow, what a picture-tastic post. Maybe every Sunday should be a green space day.

Wow!

Thanks to Strictly Guiding for her blog post about this, I'd never have spotted it otherwise.

(grabbed from this article from the Kidderminster Shuttle)

On the one hand, wow - what an acheivement. And on the other, someone has a proper obsessive thing going on there - I do hope it's the girls and not the parents. At least kids grow out of these things :)

Still, they'll have no trouble at Guides, there seem to be somewhat less badges to be done at Guides than Brownies now. I should do a count.

The Strip

It's the weekend, so no CMU quirks today. Instead, I caught the bus to the Strip District. Didn't really take pictures of the Strip itself as it wasn't the kind of thing I could capture with a camera. Lots of food-type shops and stalls. Bought some Pad-Thai noodles for lunch for $2.50 (about £1.75 at the exchange rate I got) and a marshmallow pop (a stick of white chocolate covered marshmallows) as a treat for $2 :) What I didn't do was buy any vegetables or meat or fish or anything else useful which I really should have. On my way back I dropped into Giant Eagle but the veggies there were twice the price of those on the Strip - gah!

Anyway, no photos of shopping at the Strip, but some from the Society for Contemporary Craft which I visited whilst I was there. The Society is just off from 21st and Penn and is free! Hurrah for free things to do!

A fairly smallish exhibition space but I actually quite enjoyed my visit. The current exhibition is 'Beyond Shared Language: Contemporary Art and the Latin American Experience' which features work from a number of Latin American artists. My favourite set of pieces were the ones by Courtney Smith, who does magical things with old furniture. I really like this Cabinet Chandelier (although my picture of it is pretty awful):


Looking at the collection online, the Polly Blue Pell Mell looks even better in pieces :) Other things I quite liked were the pieces by Alejandro Aguilera - I think I like things that are really tangible (although I don't suppose they'd appreciate it if I started picking up these exhibits) and clever.


Slightly less 'likeable' but rather clever were the pieces by Elia Alba (whose work I could never have got a good photo of but check out the ones on her Exhibition page) and Tamara Kostianovsky. Elia's work made me feel uncomfortable, which is a good thing for an artist to do (as long as it's only the occasional one) and I likes the 'rawness' (hehe - but really all those pinks and reds) and the texture of what Tamara had done, very clever.


So there you go, I'm no art expert but I did enjoy the exhibits in the Society for Contemporary Craft - and the staff were friendly too :)

Oh, and I also discovered the first (for me, not historically or anything clever like that) of Pittsburgh's many bridges: 16th Street Bridge.

Roboceptionist

So, today's CMU special is... Tank the Roboceptionist! Went to lunch today with Jan, Ben and Adam and we left the building by a different route to the one I've been using. Dropping below the ground level (which is at floor 5) to the fourth floor we went out through Newell-Simon Hall which contains, amongst other things, the Robotics Institute. As we left the Newell-Simon we passed Tank - a robotic receptionist. Too cool to stop as we walked by to get lunch I wandered back out that way later on when I went to the Office of International Education's Open House afternoon. Here are a couple of photos of Tank at work:



Interestingly, as I explored a bit more closely I spotted a computer screen inside Tank's booth that was displaying user interface content I wouldn't have expected to see. I didn't get a photo of that but I did take this one of what I saw next...


OK, so the girl probably doesn't hide there all the time but it did make me laugh. A robotic receptionist connected to a Windows PC connected to a human student :) Sadly the photo of the hiding girl really isn't that good - my flash went off unexpectedly which made it difficult to catch her unawares a second time.

Poor Birdies

Left my building today to be greeted by two rather dead looking baby birds. Not sure where they came from, I guess there must be a nest somewhere above the doorway. Took a picture, this is probably slightly morbid but I'd never seen such small birds before. Almost entirely featherless they look rather different. Shame about the inside bits that seem to have fallen outside, they do rather spoil the photo.

The Fence

Discovered the 'meaning' of the weird painted thing on the CMU campus this morning when browsing Wikipedia. Here's some photos of how it looked today:

"We do it in the hallway because we don't have a lounge"

Not so clear because there were things in the way and the path changed direction. "Sexy 6E", I think, plus a bunch of names: "The Lounge Girls + boy".

Today I saved a few pennies (or, in fact, dollars) by taking sandwiches. I ate them on a bench near Wean Hall (where Computer Science currently is - they're moving in August). There was a cute little bird with me for a bit so I kept feeding him sandwich crumbs and fragments of crisp.


This evening I've done not much. Got lost a little on the way home because I was trying to read and walk. Made it home and was a little miserable. Was also pretty tired, the evenings are hard work because I want to go to bed and know I need to stay awake to adjust. Am a mixture of lonely and homesick but mostly really just tired and overwhelmed. I know I always find starting a new project hard and I always panic that I won't be able to do it and I'll look stupid but somehow that doesn't reassure me now I'm thinking about how hard this one seems. Hopefully it'll all look better in the morning - and if it doesn't, well at least it's Friday.

As a method of making the three months I'm here seem sort of survivable I've worked out that I'm here 89 more days and have 44 chocolate bars. As a result I've decided not to eat one tonight to cheer me up. Next chocolate day is Saturday and then I think it's one every other day - right?