Shortly after Suzi was born, her parents spent the summer at Red Mountain Lookout to watch for fires– and they took Suzi with them, no running water and miles away from civilization. I don’t know whether to admire their bravery or question their sanity.
This past summer,1Yeah, it’s taken a while to post this, but I’ll just backdate it soon to Aug 22, 2022,and not worrying about it. Be forewarned: I have more backdated posts coming… her dad arranged for us to be able to visit the lookout and talk with a ranger about its history. It’s not currently operational, but there are plans to convert it to an overnight “lodge” for those willing to brave the trek.
What a view!
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Yeah, it’s taken a while to post this, but I’ll just backdate it soon to Aug 22, 2022,and not worrying about it. Be forewarned: I have more backdated posts coming…
I had some more fun playing around with DALL-E. It feels like the first time I used a word processor: it’s so easy to create something new. All I’m missing is the imagination.
Orchids
Prompt: orchids with purple background
Lighthouses
Prompt: isolated lighthouse with waves crashing at dusk
Golden Poppies
Prompt: low wide angle view of golden poppies against blue sky
I wanted to see what DALL-E could create, so I registered an account and provided a simple prompt: “a watercolor painting of sunset over haystack rock at edge of ocean.” These six pictures are the result.
This last Sunday, Ashley invited us over to see Sebastian and visit her favorite nursery.1 We’ve been there before.
While Suzi and Ashley picked plants to buy, I wandered with my camera, finding flowers2 Clearly, I needed to take pictures of the tags so I could create more descriptive captions. to capture.
This last Saturday,1 Yeah, a week ago… we decided to head to Manzanita. We figured that with the nice weather, Cannon Beach was going to be crowded.2 At least, crowded according to Cannon Beach standards. Also, Jamison and I wanted to take some photos and Manzanita seemed as likely a place for that as anywhere. Suzi and I had been there recently, and I wanted to take another look.
So, off we3 Jamison, Suzi, and me in one car, Ashley, Kevin, Sebastian, and Mousse in another. They’d also decided it was a good beach day. headed to Manzanita. When we got there, it was windy and cold. While the others hunkered down behind a grassy dune with a great view of the ocean, Jamison and I headed north on the beach. I wanted to get closer to the hole in the cliff that I’d photographed before.
On the way, we had to navigate around three different streams across the beach. Because the beach isn’t that wide, at least, compared with Cannon Beach, it was simple to go to the upstream end and cross. When we got to the end of the sand, Jamison and I started making pictures.
On the way back to the group, we tried crossing the streams and their ocean ends, with varying amounts of success. In other words, one of my shoes got soaked. Oops!
We stuck around until the sun went down, taking more pictures as it did.
Another great day at the Oregon coast!
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Yeah, a week ago…
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At least, crowded according to Cannon Beach standards.
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Jamison, Suzi, and me in one car, Ashley, Kevin, Sebastian, and Mousse in another. They’d also decided it was a good beach day.
Inspired by recent events in Texas, I decided to create an SVG-format image of the lone star state flag. Compared with the US flag, it’s a fairly simple design, being:
A rectangle that: (1) has a width to length ratio of two to three; and (2) contains: (A) one blue vertical stripe that has a width equal to one-third the length of the flag; (B) two equal horizontal stripes, the upper stripe white, the lower stripe red, each having a length equal to two-thirds the length of the flag; and (C) one white, regular five-pointed star: (i) located in the center of the blue stripe; (ii) oriented so that one point faces upward; and (iii) sized so that the diameter of a circle passing through the five points of the star is equal to three-fourths the width of the blue stripe.
Once again, I needed to make a star in SVG. Having forgotten how I did it last time and realizing I’d likely have scaling issues if I just cut and pasted, I decided I’d reinvent the wheel, and maybe make it better this time. Searching online, I found the ratio between the radii of the circles for the inner and outer vertices1Pentagram at Wolfram MathWorld. is 0.381965 and the formulas for them in polar coordinates using radians are fairly elegant.2Drawing radial shapes in D3.js.
I created a spreadsheet for calculating the vertices and converting them into cartesian coordinates. This simplified adding offsets later on when I decided to put the star into a <symbol>. Fortunately, I made all the calculations dependent on a single scale factor, simplifying reducing the number of significant digits from four to three when I realized I didn’t need all that precision.
Once I had the flag working, I decided to hand-optimize, converting the colored rectangles into smaller <path>s. I did the same with the star, but after running the resulting file through SVGOMG, I realized that its optimizer is still smarter than me, using relative coordinates when it resulted in a smaller dataset.
SVGOMG also provided a shorter designation for the color gold and removed all whitespace. Filesize comparisons are below. Only 165 bytes uncompressed is quite small!4By way of comparison, the png format Ukraine flag on Wikipedia is 2KB. My US flag SVG file is 738 bytes, compressed.
Format
Orginal
Optimized
Text
264
137
gzipped
165
126
Download
Although most of brentlogan.com is licensed under a Creative Commons license, I release my Ukraine flag SVG file to the public domain to use as you wish, no attribution required.
This past Monday afternoon, Suzi and I made a quick escape to Cannon Beach to watch the sunset. We arrived with less than an hour to spare and parked at the beach end of Second Ave. Barely on the sand, I noted we wouldn’t want to walk very far. After all, those clouds over the ocean indicated rain. Almost immediately, it started showering on us. That is, it was just like we were standing in a shower, small drops coming down hard, at an angle. We were going to be soaked and soon.
After retreating to the car, we decided to drive south to Tolovana Beach. Worst case, we could sit in the car and watch the sun go down. When we arrived, there was only a light mist. So we walked out to the beach, took a few pictures, then headed back to the car because of the mist and the cold. We warmed up in the car and rinsed and repeated a few times.
Finally, once again warming up in the car, we decided to drive back north a bit to find a different view of the Rock and the sun. This time, we stuck it out until the sun went down.
Melissa recently bought a dual leash so one of us could take both Oakley and Gilligan on a walk. We have been amazed at how well it works.
Now, because reasons, we have all three granddogs at our house for a short time. I decided to try taking all three dogs on a walk by myself.
For the last couple of days, I’ve had great success.1I even have a hand free to take a picture or pick up messes. I don’t know whether passers-by are thinking, “I didn’t know we had a dog-walking service in our neighborhood,” “I guess that’s better than being a greeter at Walmart,” or “What a lucky guy to have three beautiful, well-behaved doggies.”
I’m going with that last one.
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I even have a hand free to take a picture or pick up messes.
