Feedly and Pulse

I've been a bit busy this week. I've talked about various RSS aggregators before, and rather than reproduce my latest post on the topic, I'm just going to link to it. If you're a newshound like I am, go have a look.

On Jimi Heselden

I'm pretty sure that everyone has heard of the Segway Personal Transporter. Even noted Internet comedian Maddox has poked fun at it. I'd heard a few years ago that Segway inventor Dean Kamen had died while riding his Segway, but subsequent attempts to confirm it proved it to be inaccurate. However, while looking it up for some reason on Sunday, I discovered the truth (and, most likely, the source of my own confusion): it wasn't Kamen who died, but the owner of the Segway Company. What makes it noteworthy for me is that the deceased, Jimi Heselden, was also the owner of HESCO Bastion, a company that makes blast barriers used around the world, notably in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Shortwave Radio: Links

Here are some shortwave radio links. I'm serious, folks, it's really cool.

Wikipedia: Shortwave

Wikipedia: Numbers stations

Clandestine Radio

Passport to World Band Radio

Build a Crystal Shortwave Radio

Build Your Own Crystal Shortwave Receiver

Shortwave Crystal Receiver

Build a Multiband Shortwave Antenna

John Batchelor vs. Jiminy Glick

Fair warning: this post is going to be ungraciously jocular in nature.

A few years ago, elsewhere, I opined that renowned actress Julia Roberts may have been a descendant of Akhenaton, the legendary Egyptian pharoah who is suspected to have suffered from Marfan's syndrome. Various friends claimed that I was being unkind, and I answered their protests by making jokes about Julia Roberts walking into a bar, only for the bartender to ask her, "Why the long face?" At any rate, I think I may have stumbled upon another relationship that nobody seems to be talking about, in part because the individuals in question are so obscure.

On some occasions, I find myself listening to the John Batchelor Show in the car. I've come to the conclusion that John Batchelor looks and sounds remarkably similar to Jiminy Glick. Here's a clip of John Batchelor...



And you can watch one of Jiminy Glick.



One of the comparisons that I find most entertaining is that John Batchelor tends to ask his guests about things that he seems to have very little knowledge of, but which seem sensational when he interjects them into conversation. Jiminy Glick does the same thing, although the comedy comes from the fact that Glick asks ridiculous questions and interjects interesting "facts" that aren't remotely accurate. Could they be secret relatives... ?

Of course, Jiminy Glick is a fictional character played by Martin Short, while John Batchelor is a real person. And, while I find John Batchelor to be a bit ham-fisted as a radio personality, he does seem to care deeply about national security, and he's obviously fairly well informed on the topic. Still, the resemblance is hard to shake once you've considered it.

The Hampton Roads To-Do List

I spent more than three years living in Hampton Roads, Virginia. (They call it the "Seven Cities of Hampton Roads", but I sort of call shenanigans on that - it's one big city.) In 2010, I had resigned myself to the idea that I was going to be stuck there until at least the end of 2011, so I started putting together a list of stuff that I wanted to do in order to keep myself occupied. These are things I should have been doing all along, but hadn't.

Most activities were based in Norfolk. There was the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Hermitage Museum and Gardens, the Douglas MacArthur Memorial, Nauticus and USS Wisconsin, the Norfolk Botanical Garden, Old Dominion University, the Virginia Zoo, and Norfolk Tides and Admirals baseball and hockey games. (One of my biggest regrets was not attending a movie on the fantail of USS Wisconsin in 2010, but it was Friday, I was beat like a drum, and it was so hot.)

In Portsmouth, there was the Elizabeth River Ferry, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum and United States Lightship Portsmouth, and the prospect of taking some artistic photos of Olde Towne Portsmouth photography - not to be confused with the rest of Portsmouth, which is pretty dodgy. While I lived in Hampton Roads, I actually really enjoyed Olde Towne Portsmouth, and have fond memories of the Bier Garden; I even saw Star Trek at the Commodore Theatre in 2009 with my buddy M@.

Virginia Beach boasted the Military Aviation Museum, and I also wanted to take some classes at the Virginia Beach Rock Gym. (One thing I'm glad I did was to go to a bunch of concerts down at the beach with my buddy Ken, and I'm also glad that I took Captain John and Household 6 to Joint Expeditionary Base East, formerly known as Fort Story, to see the site of the first landing of the Jamestown settlers in 1607.) Hampton had the U.S. Army Transportation Museum and the Virginia Air and Space Center. Newport News had the Mariner's Museum and the Virginia Living Museum.

I also thought I might check out Colonial Williamsburg and the Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Victory Center. There was an inlet in the Outer Banks called Oregon Inlet, and I thought I might head down there to check it out. I also wanted to practice my land navigation skills and do some geocaching, and I wanted to try my hand at assembling both shortwave (1, 2) and AM (1, 2, 3) radio kits. Oh, and I had accidentally germinated garlic in my refrigerator, so I thought maybe I'd try to actually grow garlic deliberately.

I actually accomplished very few of these goals, as my time in Virginia was cut short by the cancellation of the project to which I'd been assigned. I visited the Mariner's Museum with Big Brother Caleb on the 5th of September 2010 (pictured), and rode the Elizabeth River Ferry on 25th September 2010 on a first date with a young lady. I attended a bunch of baseball and hockey games, most of them before that particular list came into play. I'd visited Nauticus and USS Wisconsin in March of 2009 with Captain John and HH6. That's about it.

So, why am I bringing all of this up? Well, at some point in the foreseeable future, I'll be leaving "home" and heading somewhere new. Once I get there, I want to put together a list of similar local attractions, and try to visit at least one per month during my tenure in my next temporary digs. At some point, I'd also like to visit some or all of these Hampton Roads attractions, but unless I wind up in Hampton Roads again, that will have to wait. I sort of feel like I tend to squander my time in the various interesting places to which I gravitate, and I'd like to be a bit more proactive in the future.

I also had a handful of professional development goals, but that's another story...

Topic: Physical Training

I've never been a big fan of physical exercise. During my brief stint with the Navy, I had physical training forced upon me, and I unquestionably achieved the best physical condition of my life. Once I was out, I never got back to that condition, but have always hoped to do so. In all honesty, I'm healthy, I'm just not in very good shape. Aside from a vague feeling that I ought to improve my diet and start exercising for the sake of my long-term health, I haven't really needed to worry about it.

As I've been working to secure post-graduation employment, several of the positions I've received feedback on have required physical fitness tests that weren't listed in the initial job description. Having worked in similar positions before, I'm not confident that the job tasks actually require the level of physical fitness they're calling for, but that's immaterial because in order to qualify, I need to be able to meet the standard. So, for a variety of reasons, I need to start making a better effort to get myself in shape.

Around 2009, I developed a workout plan that's a variation of the classic BUD/S Warning Order workout that's meant to bring candidates up to the minimum level of physical fitness required to attend the Navy's Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL school. Having been in the Navy myself, this workout always appealed to me, except I hate running. I modified it so that during the first phase of the workout, I'd be yomping - hiking in utility trousers with a rucksack - instead of running. The theory was that this would build my legs up, while the aggressive swim workouts would build my endurance, so that I could eventually transition into running during the second phase.

For a variety of reasons, I've never actually followed through with the workout. I remember making a little bit of progress at establishing some patterns while I was living in Virginia, but I encountered two major obstacles while living in Virginia. The first was daily electrical storms during the Summer months, and there were multiple occasions in 2009 in which I reached the pool or even swam half a lap, only to be told that a single thunderclap had been heard and that the pool needed to be evacuated because it "wasn't grounded" - all of these being indoor pools, mind you. The other major obstacle was high school swim teams, which dominated the pool during the hours when I was free to swim. I eventually gave up. I had high hopes of going to it when I was in the Middle East, but seventy-plus hour work weeks (plus a minimum six hours of weekly commute time) put that notion to rest very quickly. I suppose I have no excuse for not making a better effort while I was in Scotland, but one obstacle or another sapped my opportunities or motivations to do so.

In the intervening years, I've collected a variety of additional materials. The Navy, for example, has published the Naval Special Warfare Physical Training Guide, the Naval Special Warfare Injury Prevention Guide, the Special Operations Nutrition Guide, and other resources; from the Army, there's the Ranger School Prep guide. I have a copy of The Complete Guide to Navy SEAL Fitness by Stew Smith and Power to the People! Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American by Pavel Tsatsouline. All of these are good and well, and maybe I'll get to them someday... But in the mean time, I think I need to start smaller. I need to start establishing little fitness habits that I can build into bigger ones.

On Sunday, I put on my combat boots and my Camelbak and went hiking in the woods. It sucked, but I'm going to try to do it again later this week, and hopefully go at least a few feet further in the same amount of time as I did Sunday. Monday (when I wrote this), my goal was to try to get to one of the local pools and do twenty minutes of lap swimming. Today, I'm going to try to go for a walk and mix in a few minutes of running. For me, this is extremely ambitious, but I've gotten to the point where something's gotta give. I'm going to try to keep a log of it all, and post my progress. Hopefully, backing down on my ambitious goals and starting off easy, but doing a little bit each day, will pay off over the course of a couple of months.

More to come.

Photoshop Trolling Goodness

Looking for a good laugh? Check out these two pictorial comedies: This Lady's Cat Went Missing. But When She Asked For Help...This Happened., and a classic, Photoshop Troll: Jungle. It may be a good idea to perform a Class One Download before you click the second one.

Remembering Aunt Tique

I received word this morning that my beloved Aunt "Tique" has gone to her eternal reward, and I wanted to write a few words about her.

Aunt Tique was my great-great aunt, which is to say that she was my great-grandmother's sister. She was born in the northern Midwest in 1911, and died just a few days shy of her 103rd birthday.

That entire branch of the family moved to the West Coast in 1912 for the sake of my great-great-great grandmother's ill health. They established a furniture store and undertaking business in which many members of the family were employed over the course of the ensuing decades. She attended the local high school, and subsequently the local college. She was an avid dramatist in her younger years, and a popular performer due in no small part to her furniture dealer father's provision of properties for the school's productions. During her secondary education, she studied Latin and Anglo-Saxon.

Aunt Tique attended the nearby university, and was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. The university was smaller in those days, and she took courses from the professor who would become my great-grandfather. She also held the distinction of having been the university's homecoming queen. She graduated and became a social worker before being sent to Colorado to get her master's degree under the auspices of establishing a new chapter of her sorority.

She was courted by and eventually married a man named John, and they had a son and daughter. John worked as an undertaker, but died very young from stomach cancer. My Aunt Tique didn't remarry until she was in her late eighties. Her second husband, also named John, died a couple of years later, leaving her twice-widowed. She spoke fondly of both men, and unquestionably treasured her time with them.

Aunt Tique raised two children, and also lived with her mother, my great-great grandmother Hazel, who died in 1983. I'm sad to say that I don't know much about what she did in those intervening years. I think she may have worked a bit as a substitute teacher or something of the sort, but I can't say for sure.

I sort of discovered Aunt Tique by accident in my late teens or early twenties, having barely known her or who she was for most of my life. I decided to do an independent study project for my history degree about the family and the family business, and she was my primary source. Over the course of the Summer of 2002, we met once per week over the course of a month or two, and we sat and talked about her life growing up, the various members of the family, and how the family business had operated. This became a very special relationship, and we became very fond friends despite our seventy-two year age difference. One of my fondest memories of this friendship was taking my Aunt Tique, then in her nineties, to see a performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest at the university she and I had both attended.

Aunt Tique took good care of her health, and she was very careful with her money. In her nineties, she was still living alone in her own home. In her early nineties, she received a knee replacement and a rod in one of her legs, and her physician was convinced to authorize the surgery once he admitted that she had the constitution of a woman twenty years her junior. It wasn't until her late nineties that she moved into a residential-style assisted living home. I visited her several times, and each time the staff made a point of saying what a sweet woman she was. Additionally, she remained particularly mentally sharp until very late in her life.

My great-great grandparents and my great-great-great aunt had six children between them: two and three daughters of comparable ages, and a son who came later to my great-grandparents. The siblings and cousins were extremely close. After the last of the three cousins died in 2003, her brother around 2003 (I can't find an obituary online, but it was while I was in college), and her older sister in 2005, she was the last one left. She was upset by this, and despite the love and admiration of the family, I know that she felt lonely as the last surviving member of her generation.

Aunt Tique was a lifelong Presbyterian, having been raised in the beautiful church that originally drew my great-grandfather's attention when scouting for a new home on the West Coast. She attended that church until she couldn't (although she quietly admitted to feeling bad for missing church on Sundays when she decided to sleep in). Until late in her life, she was still walking the two or three blocks to get there. I remember a conversation she and I had about how many modern funeral services are billed as "celebrations of life", and she was distressed at such an idea; instead, she preferred that when she died, that the funeral would be a service reminding those in attendance of "the promise of the cross."

My Aunt Tique was one of my favorite people, and I've never heard a disparaging word said about her - perhaps my only relative who holds that distinction. Whereas her sister, my great-grandmother, was a pillar of the community but somewhat aristocratic in her demeanor, Aunt Tique was always kind, humble, and hospitable to everyone she met. She was the picture of Christian grace, a testament to the dividends of lifelong education and prudent living, and the sort of person with whom every second spent was of great value.

The last time I saw Aunt Tique was in April of 2012. By the time I reached Scotland, she was unable to correspond by post, and upon my return I was told that she would be very different from what I remembered, that her health was failing, and that I should be prepared for this. I decided that it would probably be best not to visit her, as I didn't expect that doing so would be of much benefit to either of us. I'll miss Aunt Tique, as I've essentially missed her for the last several years. Even so, I count myself unequivocally fortunate to have developed such a special friendship with such a special woman under such peculiar circumstances.

Goodbye, Aunt Tique. Your eternal reward is richly deserved, and I look forward to the day when we meet again.

Books and Reading: Amazon Wish List

I recently discovered this thing on Amazon called a "wish list", which is distinct from your "cart". I've begun using it to keep track of books I want to get or need to replace. There are a few different categories.

First, there are books that I read for grad school, but left behind in Aberdeen. I think that CN Constable got my copies of both Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare by Colin S. Gray and The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy by Lawrence Freedman. Second, there are books that I either bought, or intended to buy, but never read (and subsequently left behind if I'd bought them. These include Intelligence in an Insecure World by Peter Gill and Mark Phythian, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy by Mark M. Lowenthal, and Secret Intelligence: A Reader by Richard J. Aldrich, Christopher Andrew, and Wesley Wark. Finally, there are a few that I've learned about fairly recently that I want to read: Churchill's First War: Young Winston at War with the Afghans by Con Coughlin, Bleeding Talent: How the US Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why It's Time for a Revolution by Tim Kane, and Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force by Robert M. Farley.

A bunch of these are available on Kindle, and although I'd like to get hard copies, the process of clearing the books necessitates that if I invest in them, I do my best to minimize their physical footprint. Most will wait until I'm settled... Somewhere.