I’m at home in CT for the holiday this weekend. Just having some fun taking closeups of insects and spiders in the yard.  I used the built-in flash on these shots in order to hand hold at very small apertures.  Up this close, the depth of field becomes very shallow, so the small aperture compensates.  I really need a set of extension tubes.  I’ve got +1, +2, and +4 close-up filters stacked on my Pentax FA 77/1.9 lens for most of these shots…a bit optically unsound, but I think the images came out all right.

Yellow Crab Spider Eating Fly

This spider was on the same lily the next day even though all but one of the petals had fallen off overnight:

Yellow Crab Spider Waiting For Next Meal

Tiny Spider On Daylily

Tiny Bee On Day Flower

Bumble Bee On Lysimachia clethroides

This dragonfly was hard to get close to, but kept on returning to its favorite spot on the deck:

Dragonfly On Deck

Usually, dragonflies are difficult to approach.  I think this one was sleeping. I spent a good fifteen minutes photographing it within three inches before it started to buzz its wings. Then it wiped its face and took off before I could get another shot:

Dragonfly On Yew

Look at the water droplet on its fly in the previous picture. This detail shows the droplet magnifying the eye lenses:

By the way, this was a very large dragonfly. Perhaps the largest I’ve seen around here. Very dragonly.

Dragonfly Wing

This site is just too good to keep secret! That is, if you’re a total nerd like me!

http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/

Right now, I’m doing a project with axonometric perspective paper. But I frequently need various forms of graph paper, and of course, music paper. You can customize your paper settings before generating the PDF. I love it. I wish I had the source code!

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of photographing saxophonist Kris Jensen for an upcoming project. Kris has been a friend and mentor since my days at Hartt; super talented, generous, and always a source of musical inspiration.

Please check out his music at:
http://www.myspace.com/krisjenseneklektik

This story reminded me of my first day in London in 1989:  Blair ‘caught riding without a ticket’

Actually, the situation was totally different with my friend Ed and me.  We were on a high school trip and the first day they let us loose for the afternoon with very little in the way of instruction or supervision.  Ed and I decided to go to Piccadilly Circus and the Hard Rock Cafe.  (It would be a few years before I developed a sense of shame for doing anything so typically touristy…)  We headed directly for the Underground (aka. The Tube) never having taken urban mass transit before.  It’s hard for me to grasp now, being a 12-year veteran of New York City with the subway map virtually ingrained in my mind, but that Underground map made no sense to us whatsoever!

The shocker, though, was the fact that neither of us knew you had to pay to ride the Tube!  We just walked in and out of station after station without any idea we were breaking any rules!  That would never work in NYC, where the turnstiles don’t cooperate if you don’t pay your fare.  At one point, someone in a uniform ran after us, but his accent was so heavy and British that we truly had no idea what he was saying.  We just looked at him like he was crazy, and I suppose he found it easier to grant us our assessment and wander off.

We never did find our way to Piccadilly Circus.  We just got plenty lost.  The next day on the bus, everybody had these little Underground ticket stubs.  They were cool.  We asked where they got them.  "Umm…from the Underground?"  And that’s when it started to put two and two together.

That day, we couldn’t figure out how we managed to get into the stations without paying.  There were barriers, guards, ticket booths, all of that.  There was no way we could have got on without a ticket!

In hindsight, it was nice of that guard to let us ride without tickets.  I suppose in London, you don’t have to be Tony Blair to be treated like the former prime minister!

I just wanted to share this site with everybody.  Inhabitat.com is a blog that provides a ton of fascinating content about sustainable design, architecture, and technology.  The homes and commercial structures featured are brilliant in design and function.  I originally discovered the site while browsing for articles passive solar housing.  However, far beyond building, Inhabitat showcases a whole array of design, including fashion, gadgets, transportation, household products, and lighting.

I read the feeds every day and am always amazed and heartened by the innovation happening out there these days to protect our planet for future generations.  Yet, when you look around, environmental sensibility still seems to be a fringe element.  I hope that sites like Inhabitat.com help spread the beauty and common sense of sustainable design.

Some recent favorites: 

• Electric cars can be fast
• A bizarre concept for a 2-MILE-HIGH  vertical eco city
• Beautiful prefab homes like this one
• Wind-powered swirly lights for your back yard
• The rise of solar power

Unfortunately, a lot of the innovations featured are rather expensive or targeted as high-end luxuries.  A lot of the technology is emerging and will become more affordable as it becomes more mainstream.  However, I’d like to see more cool designs and sustainable products available at prices that everybody can afford.  After all, protecting the environment only works if we can all participate, not just the few top percentiles of consumers.

To that end, I believe Inhabitat.com helps by generating interest in sustainable design.  The more people who catch on, the more demand and innovation.  Hopefully, this technology becomes ubiquitous.  It has to.

I picked up some CD’s this week at Bleecker Records.  After spending a few days listening to these, I’m happy to say I was 4-for-4.  Yeah, even in this age of downloads, I still dig on the actual plastic discs.  No iTunes for me.  Of course, I immediately rip ‘em to my hard drive, but I can use whatever settings I like.  The following are my comments on these albums.  No reviews, no stars, just what they mean to me…

I thought of this a few days ago as an interesting blog exercise.  Why not blog about the first thing I remember ever remembering?  Simply put, it’s my first memory.  Technically, I think a twist makes the first wording more accurate.  If you have a blog, why don’t you try this, too?  Write an entry about your earliest memory and leave a comment here with the link!

I remember this very clearly.  I was somewhere around one year old.  It was before I started walking.  Visually, I remember this from a crawling perspective of about nine inches off the floor.  I was in the living room of my first house.  The couch was behind me and perpendicular to the wall I was exploring.  That’s where I discovered an electrical outlet.  I knew that electrical outlets were for wires, presumably because I’d seen people plugging wires into them.  I observed the faceplate and screw and ran my fingers across the holes.  (You know, they do look sort of like happy faces…)  That wasn’t enough to satisfy my curiosity.  I was sure the magic happened when you stick a wire into the holes.

That’s when I remembered where the wires were.  Those old U-shaped wires that connected television antennas and stereo speakers.  They’re called spade lugs, and I’ve sketched one below.  I knew they were the right shape to fit into the outlet slots, and I knew where to find them.  They were in the bedroom closet in a large white chest of drawers, conveniently low enough for me to retrieve them.  So I turned to my left, crawled down the hall, turned to the right into the bedroom, and along the wall to the left into the closet by the bed.  They were in the second drawer from the bottom along with other electronic stuff.

I grabbed a set of wires.  This was the kind that had two wires joined together on a flat strip of plastic with two spade lug connectors on the end.  I crawled back out to the wall outlet in the living room, sat up straight, and promptly inserted the metal ends into the slots.  ZAP!!!

Yeah, that hurt!  I suppose I could have died or something.  I don’t remember sparks, but I remember it hurt.  I’m sure I bawled up a storm.  Next thing I know, I’m on the couch in my grandmother’s lap with my hand in ice water in one of those tall brown plastic thermal cups with the white rim.  And that was the last time I played with electrical outlets!

The interesting twist in my first memory is that I remember myself remembering where the wires were.  I pictured the U-shaped connectors in their place in the drawer.  So my first memory is really of a memory.  I suppose it’s not my first memory then, but it’s my first memory with a storyline.

I’m posting this to help out my friends who have tired of me destroying them at Scrabulous (based on Scrabble). So far in two-player games, Jen is the only person who’s beaten me. I’m 17-4 against her and 44-0 against everybody else. It’s kind of boring when nobody will play me. So if you’re interested, here’s a summary of how I approach the game. There’s nothing here that you can’t find in online or printed strategy guides. I score about 50 points less in my games versus Jen, so perhaps it will help you to know my strategies. (Jen already knows how to kick my butt, so I probably won’t be able to beat her after she reads this…)

Adjust to the game

The following tips are all useful in general, but depending on the actual game situation, you’ll find times to bend your usual strategies. Always be aware of what tiles have been played and the configuration of the board. Has an usually high number of E’s been played early in the game? If five N’s have already been played, are your I and G as valuable as if there were still four floating out there?

Know your opponent’s style of play. Do they leave the board open or closed? Do they use wise strategies or waste good tiles? 

Twenty points or more

A good rule of thumb is to try to score 20 points or more on each turn. If there’s just nothing out there but a 6 point play, you might consider swapping instead and coming out swinging next turn. Also, don’t hold out for that bingo if you can get 35 points some other way. That’s as good as half a bingo, and you might draw bingo tiles next turn anyway!

Look again

You found a great play! Wait. Before you play it, look some more. There might be a better play you hadn’t thought of. There is no time limit with Scrabulous, so use that to your advantage. Heck, go get a sandwich and play later!

Maybe you’ve been waiting for your opponent to play so you can lay down a beautiful bingo? Before you play, check to shee that they haven’t opened up a better place to play it. 

Leaves are golden

The tiles you leave on your rack are just as important as the ones you play on the board. Minimize the chances of getting stuck with all vowels or consonants by leaving an even mix of both after every play. Also, try to minimize leaving duplicate tiles on your rack.

Don’t be afraid to concede a few points on one play to leave better tiles on your rack. You might score 15 points instead of 22, but that’s better than leaving five vowels on your rack and scoring 6 points on the next turn. 

Use the magnifying glass

The authors of Scrabulous intended for this game to be an enjoyable learning experience. Therefore, they included a dictionary in the interface. Don’t be ashamed to use it! Finding words builds your vocabulary. Learn from words your opponents play. I’ve been playing since fourth grade, so I’ve got lots of conversationally useless words in my head!

Don’t like the dictionary? I can appreciate that. I’m down to play the old fashioned way. Fair warning: the last person to challenge me without the dictionary was down by 126 points after two turns. 

Two and three letter words

Familiarize yourself with the 2-letter and 3-letter words in the TWL dictionary. You can display the 2-letter words by clicking the ‘word list’ button in Scrabulous, though the more you play the less you need to.

Know which ones can be pluralized with an S or built upon in other ways. 

Find parallel plays

One of the main reasons for learning 2- and 3-letter words is to make it easy to see parallel scoring opportunities. You can score a lot with just a few tiles if you rack up points in both directions.

For example, if your opponent opens the game with BAKER for 22 points, you could play IRATE just beneath it for 25 points. BI, AR, KA, ET, and RE are all valid words. Hope your opponent doesn’t follow with STEAM below that for 46 points! BIS, ART, KAE, ETA, and REM, all nice 3-letter words. 

Look for hot spots

Hot spots are places on the board that will yield huge scores with the right tiles. These tend to be colored squares next to a vowel. Played on a triple letter score to the left of an A, the combination of ZA across and ZOO down is worth 63 points! There are similar opportunities with X, since XI, XU, EX, AX, and OX are all easy words to build in two directions. JO, KA, KI, and QI are also good.

Double word score hot spots can be great whenever you see a spot where you can double in both directions. 

Defensively, you want to be careful of opening up these spots unless you are sure you can capitalize on them first, or open up more than one hot spot. 

My favorite is the double-double hot spot. Early in the game, there’s often an opportunity to score across two double word scores. That scores as quadruple! 

Know when to swap

I know it hurts, but sometimes you just have toss your letters and get some new ones. When I swap, it’s because the board is tight and I have all vowels and consonants. Perhaps I don’t foresee playing more than one or two tiles for the next three turns. It depends on the situation whether I dump all or some of my tiles. On the bright side, swapping seven tiles increases your chances of drawing a blank if they’re still out there.

Bingo stems

When you’re shooting for bingos, there are "good" letters and "bad" letters to have. Generally, the more low-scoring tiles you have, along with a balance of vowels and consonants, the greater your chance of finding a bingo. Low-scoring tiles are easier to play, and thus, easier to play en masse. You can do pretty well managing your rack with just this in mind.

If you’re really hard core, though, you’ll learn that certain 6-letter groups yield more bingos added one random letter than others. These are known as "bingo stems". Do a little research online or in the book store and you’ll find that it’s actually quite insane the lengths that people have gone to catalog all possible combinations. 

The richest bingo stem is SATINE. It yields a bingo with practically every other letter. SATINE + D = DETAINS. SATINE + P = PANTIES. 

Then there are the words built off of SATIRE, RETINA, ARSINE, IRONES… I haven’t bothered to fill my head with all that. A lot of the top bingo stems contain letters in the word RETAINS, which is easy to remember and also descriptive! 

A general study of bingo stems shows that O is the second least useful vowel next to U, and that if you need to double up a vowel, the most useful candidate is E. 

How should this affect your strategy? Well, you should try to RETAIN these tiles as you play, in the hopes of drawing likely bingo tiles. This is not always the case, though. Don’t be afraid to drop your lovely bingo letters in favor of drawing new tiles if the game calls for it (see No fishing allowed!) 

Beginnings and endings

The best way to shuffle through your tiles for possible bingos is to set aside a common prefix or suffix and shuffle only the remaining tiles. It’s a lot easier to search all the permutations of three tiles than seven! Don’t just sit and stare at your rack. Shuffle! A word will pop out at you.

Obvious suffixes include -ING, -ED, -ERS, -TION, -IER. Common prefixes include PRE-, RE-, UN-, NON-, ANTI-. There are tons of possible beginnings and endings, though. It’s usually pretty easy to spot them in your rack. Some of my favorites are -INE, -ATE, -ITE, -IEST, -ITY, -TLY, -EST, -IST. 

No fishing allowed!

It’s tempting to play only a few tiles while waiting to draw that magic tile to go with your bingo stem. Don’t do it. It rarely ever works. You’ll sit there for four turns playing seven points at a time and end up 100 points behind.

The only time I ever fish is when I know any number of tiles I draw will yield a high scoring result. You’ll need to keep an eye on the tiles out there in order to keep mental odds on what might work. 

In all other situations, it’s better to just let refresh the tiles on your rack by playing as many letters as you can. This increases your chances of drawing blanks or big point tiles before your opponent does. 

Wonderful S

There are only four S’s. Use them wisely. I see so many players "waste" S’s on silly plays. You should use them for bingos or anything over 50 points only. They are the next most useful tiles after blanks.

Money Tiles

The hot spots strategy above shows the importance of the "Money Tiles" Z, Q, X, J, and K. You shouldn’t play these tiles unless you score them on a colored square in at least one direction. It’s fun to get the "money" tiles. Make the most of them.

The high point represent the higher difficulty of playing these tiles. The game lost a little something with the inclusion of QI, KI, ZA, etc. You used to have to cling to U for dear life, or play QAID, QAT, QOPH, or other U-less words wherever possible. Now it’s almost trivial to dump a QI in two directions. 

End game

By the time there are fewer than seven tiles left in the "bag", you should have a pretty good idea what tiles your opponent probably has. The more you play, the easier it will be to know what letters are still out there without actually counting. What you play and where you play it becomes critical toward the end of the game, especially when a last minute bingo can make or break a big lead.

Conclusion

If this seems like too much information, don’t worry. Just pick one or two items and incorporate new strategies gradually. You don’t have to be a word-list-studying tournament playing nerd to be good at this game. I certainly don’t have time for all that. Most of these tips are just common sense that become second nature as you play.

I didn’t even discuss blanks, offense vs. defense, my least favorite letters, and a slew of other tips! Oh well. Have fun!

Carmen Danenberg (c. 1999)

As some of you know, my paternal grandmother passed away Thursday, February 21st at the age of 92.  This was just days before a planned family get together, so my father and aunt were able to be at her side.  Her health had been failing for several years, so my father had moved her from Florida to a home in Cheshire a while back to take better care of her.  It was nice to be able to see her whenever I was in town for the weekend.  That’s something we didn’t really have growing up, with relatives scattered all over the world.

Except for a short while when we all lived in St. Thomas, visits to see my grandparents were infrequent trips to Florida.  In grade school, this meant a trip to Disney World every two years or so.  And while we were always excited about the Magic Kingdom, these are a few of the memories that are more important to me now:

• Their houses filled with vintage Chinese furniture and artwork, Peruvian pottery, and that giant clay lamp that looked like a meteorite.
• My grandmother’s Chinese cooking and coconut pudding with prune sauce that she made in her tiny kitchen with over 50 rooster and chicken decorations.
• Playing Rummikub and Mahjong with my grandparents.
• Their kind of pissy poodle.
• Listening to old Brazilian records in the bedroom
• The heat as soon as we got out of the airport in Tampa, and the soft chlorinated water that never seemed to get the soap off.
• Lots of old pictures, the kinds with the wavy edges, and letters from Hong Kong from the 30’s and 40’s.
• Lizards!
• Everybody speaking Portuguese in the room.
• My grandparents speaking Cantonese with each other so that nobody else would understand.
• The time they visited and my grandfather bit my grandmother’s thumb in his sleep.
• My grandfather cursing "Jackass!" in his Hong Kong British accent and waving his fist at other drivers from his blue Toyota Cressida.
• My grandmother’s sense of humor and my grandfather’s improvised war stories.

My Grandparents Roy and Carmen (c. 1941)

I flew down last Tuesday for Wednesday’s funeral.  One of her longtime friends hosted a fancy lunch.  Then we headed to the cemetary where she was laid to rest by my grandfather in a tiny service.

Some people I know grew up next door to their grandparents.  I kinda wish we had the same thing.

This is how I label my leftovers. I encourage you to do the same.

PS: This is not really vacuum-packed fried chicken.