Snowflakes and Sea Cucumber Ossicles: similar physics?

This is a snowflake.  It reminds me of a remarkable type of sea cucumber spicule, or ossicle, a "table," diagnostic of Holothuria atra, a common black sea cucumber in Micronesia.  I'm searching for a good photo of these spicules, to compare with this snowflake.  Meanwhile, John Starmer sent a pointer to a blog with a photo of tables, attributed to François Michonneau/FLMNH, licensed under the Creative Commons license. Another SEM shot from the same blog is of Stichopus sp.

The snowflake is featured is found at the site of a collection of snowflake photos.

This type of snowflake is a "Capped Column"

Draw your own conclusions.

Stichopus ossicles

Ossicles of Holothuria nigralutea, on the left, and Holothuria edulis.

Caught in the Middle: retirement regression

UP TO HERE, these posts were originally published on Sandscrawls.wordpress.com.  For reasons I have forgotten already, I want to move back to Blogger and (finger's crossed) use this blog for general posts. 

This will take awhile to organize. 

Meanwhile, the big news of today is that the CNMI Retirement checks are now much, much smaller, due to an "agreement" that includes the agreement of the CNMI Government to make payments to the retirement fund on it's amount arrears.  Strange, since it's been several years since the court judgement requiring the CNMI Government to pay the fund hundreds of millions of dollars, that was just ignored until this new agreement.  

This is an unhappy day.  One of the reasons I elected to work for several more years for the CNMI Public Schools was to improve my retirement position.  I know I am not the only one (in fact, a letter to the editor in one of the Saipan newspapers made this point). 

In the "Anywhere Else This Would Unfold Differently" department: I could not find any article in the Marianas Variety.  I verified that the amount deposited in my account accorded with the 25% reduction. 

Graphing Annual Tidal Cycles

I made a graph many years ago of one year of tide predictions for Saipan, plotted with height as a function of time of day, month by month.  Each month is represented in a distinct color.  This exercise was inspired by Roy Tsuda, my Marine Botany professor at U of Guam.  Roy made a big deal of the times of the spring low tides, in for example the life cycle of a shallow water benthic alga on coral reefs, Hydroclathrus clathratus.   .  Roy was a student of annual cycles.   I was inspired, and observed Hydroclathrus sp.  in Chuuk, and sure enough, when the tides started to expose the algae in the "spring" (there is, technically, no spring in Micronesia), this species floated away to deeper water.

I made a new graph today, which I will post.  However, Wordpress doesn't seem to allow me to upload it as a photo.  It is an svg file.  Too bad.  Back to blogger?

The point being: this graph, visualiziing the distinct tidal differences, month to month.  Particularly the spring lows.

So here is another one, for Half Moon Bay, 2013:

Lilacs are blooming

Lilacs are a phenologically interesting species.  My plant in Oakland is flush with flowers today, 2 April 2013.

This photo was taken March 10th in Oakland, California. Leaves had just started to break out from buds of this plant outside our door.

San Francisco has the oldest working tide gauge in North America

From the following link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brook-meakins/preview-sea-level-rise_b_2569613.html

San Francisco has the oldest continually operating tidal gauge in the Americas, which has recorded the varying sea levels since 1854. Over the past 100 years, it has tracked an 8-inch rise in water level. It will continue rising, scientists say, and could rise by 1.5 feet by 2050.

Hmmm...  A new magical mystery bucketlist item!

Google is my friend:  From this page

The nation’s oldest tide gauge, housed in a wooden shack on a pier at Fort Point in San Francisco, recorded something unusual over the past 30 years.

And here at SF Gate, is found a photo.  As well as a clarification:

A tiny, wooden white building with a red roof at the end of a pier near Crissy Field in the Presidio of San Francisco is ... the oldest continually operating tidal gauge in the Western Hemisphere. (emphasis my own.)

 

 

Indian Coral Bean Tree in California

At the Oakland Zoo.  These trees are important calendric markers throughout the Pacific.  I do not know what species this tree is, in the Oakland Zoo Parking Log.  See the photo in the header of this blog, from Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands.

 

Saving comments to the exif file of jpeg images

I am using GNU/Linux.  I use several image viewing, organizing, and editing tools.   Having spent hours and hours organizing my photos in one utility, for example, Gthumb, a fairly straightforward tool, with comments, these comments are stored in an invisible dot file, accessible only from that application.  For years, I've wondered "How can I save these comments in a permanent manner?"

I have just made a little progress on this issue.  So I will post a BRIEF description of what I have found.  There is more to learn, and maybe I can get around to this another time.

There are at least two metadata standards:

1. Exif:


2. IPTC: the International Press Telecommunications Council standard.

Tags saved with Gwenview is only possible within Gentoo GNU/Linux when it has been compiled with certain USE flags.  I won't get into this now.   Also, I don't know how to go about doing this, yet, with Ubuntu or other distributions.

I finally experimented with tags today.  They were apparently saved as IPTC tags, not visible in the utility "exiftags" which I think is hardwired for a standard set of tags, to allow reading and maybe manipulation of exif tags of a few types in image files, maybe to change a date, I don't know.

Another application is "jhead."   With jhead, I was able to add an exif tag, "Comment", with my own comments.  This tag is readable in jhead, at least.  And jhead also saw the IPTC tag I stored in the same image using Gwenview.

Other programs I am using are

1. shotwell -- good for importing files into a date tree from an SDCard


2. Picasa -- good at organizing, but has those sad volatile meta data.  Unfortunately Google, written originally in GNU/Linux, has not provided native GNU/Linux ports of this.  It runs on top of Wine.   Not completely acceptable yet.  Maybe good for uploading, if I get into that.


3. gthumb


4. digikam -- I will experiment, but previously had some issues.  First, will it import to the same tree as shotwell?  I saw a comment on the Inet that Digikam uses IPTC metadata.  Interesting.


5. gwenview (KDE4) -- does a lot, and because it's local (on the HDD) and is native, it is pretty attractive.  It's gymnastics with tags are so far useful.   Saves tags in IPTC format.


6. some gnome tools?

Here are some commands with jhead:

1. to add a comment:: jhead -ce <path to file>


2. to read the metadata (exif and IPTC):: jhead <filename>


3. to see other options:: jhead -h

Here are the comments from an image I worked on today:

  ~/WB/org $  jhead  ~/Pictures/2012/03/22/img_0592.jpg
File name    : /home/deckert/Pictures/2012/03/22/img_0592.jpg
File size    : 130820 bytes
File date    : 2012:03:22 08:38:06
Camera make  : Canon
Camera model : Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS
Date/Time    : 2012:03:22 08:38:06
Resolution   : 2048 x 1536
Flash used   : Yes (manual, red eye reduction mode)
Focal length : 18.6mm  (35mm equivalent: 117mm)
CCD width    : 5.72mm
Exposure time: 0.017 s  (1/60)
Aperture     : f/14.0
Focus dist.  : 0.45m
ISO equiv.   : 100
Whitebalance : Manual
Metering Mode: pattern
Comment      : Tripod used, Crab Cove
Comment      :

======= IPTC data: =======
Keywords      : tripod

 

A more complete readout of standard exif tags is found with "exiftags".  No custom or comment exif tags were seen.

~/WB/org $ exiftags ~/Pictures/2012/03/22/img_0592.jpg
Camera-Specific Properties:

Camera Model: Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS
Equipment Make: Canon
Camera Software: Picasa 3.0
Maximum Lens Aperture: f/4.9
Sensing Method: One-Chip Color Area
Lens Size: 6.20 - 18.60 mm
Firmware Version: Firmware Version 1.00
Owner Name: Alan and Fe

Image-Specific Properties:

Image Orientation: Top, Left-Hand
Horizontal Resolution: 180 dpi
Vertical Resolution: 180 dpi
Image Created: 2012:03:22 08:38:06
Exposure Time: 1/60 sec
F-Number: f/14.0
ISO Speed Rating: 100
Lens Aperture: f/14.0
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Flash, Compulsory, Red-Eye Reduce
Focal Length: 18.60 mm
Color Space Information: sRGB
Image Width: 2048
Image Height: 1536
Rendering: Normal
Exposure Mode: Auto
Scene Capture Type: Standard
Unique Image ID: 5b5bfc656e8e1824c2814e2936491976
Focus Type: Close-Up (Macro Mode)
Metering Mode: Evaluative
Sharpness: Normal
Saturation: Normal
Contrast: Normal
Shooting Mode: Manual
Image Size: Unknown
Focus Mode: Single
Drive Mode: Single
Flash Mode: Red-Eye Reduction (On)
Compression Setting: Normal
Macro Mode: Macro
Subject Distance: 0.450 m
White Balance: Custom
Exposure Compensation: 3
Sensor ISO Speed: 160
Image Number: 100-0592