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| Oma with one of her dogs |
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Oma Ruth Heidecker, 1917-2014
Stacy's Oma (grandmother) passed away last week at age 96.
You can read the eulogy Stacy said at the funeral here.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Loud Bicycle in the news again
Last week was pretty exciting, Loud Bicycle my project making bike horns made it into the news. Below is a picture of the start of my name in the New York Time Gadgets to Boost Bike Safety.
Even more exciting though was the Boston Globe which actually had a picture of me and the horn in their article called That Loud Car Horn May be a Biker's. This is a picture of my eye from the paper.
Even more exciting though was the Boston Globe which actually had a picture of me and the horn in their article called That Loud Car Horn May be a Biker's. This is a picture of my eye from the paper.
And in case you are wondering what the deal is with the super tiny pictures - I recently turned my phone into a microscope so basically all my pictures become way more awesome :)
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Sunday, March 09, 2014
Fun with a microscope
I converted my smartphone into a microscope several weeks ago, and I've been microscoping everything in sight ever since... I might actually have a problem. Out of the hundreds there are a few I'd like to share with you.
Snowflakes in Boston are usually crummy looking. Every once in a while though, a complete snowflake will get all the way down to the ground without partially melting and refreezing, or smooshing into other flakes. Because of this, snowflakes are a mystery to many people. I encourage you to look closely freshly fallen snow, on your jacket or some other dark surface and you may be surprised; patterns like this are rare but plainly visible to the naked eye.
Spiders have tons of eyes. In front, in back, on the side. I think this one is some kind of a wolf spider. It wasn't all that big, remember I'm using a microscope.
This is some raw spaghetti.
This is a piece of retro reflective tape from my friend Bike Safe Boston. You can see the individual glass spheres that it is made of.
Snowflakes in Boston are usually crummy looking. Every once in a while though, a complete snowflake will get all the way down to the ground without partially melting and refreezing, or smooshing into other flakes. Because of this, snowflakes are a mystery to many people. I encourage you to look closely freshly fallen snow, on your jacket or some other dark surface and you may be surprised; patterns like this are rare but plainly visible to the naked eye.
Spiders have tons of eyes. In front, in back, on the side. I think this one is some kind of a wolf spider. It wasn't all that big, remember I'm using a microscope.
This is some raw spaghetti.
This is a piece of retro reflective tape from my friend Bike Safe Boston. You can see the individual glass spheres that it is made of.
If you have something you want microscoped then leave a suggestion in the comments!
Thursday, March 06, 2014
More Hebrew in New York
The other week I saw this sign up in the 14th St. A train station:
Aside from the bizarre, slightly creepy (and yet excellent parody of MTA signage) elements of this sign, I was confused by the choice of languages. English, what-I-think-is-Chinese, and Hebrew. This isn't the first time I've reported on Hebrew being a language choice in the NYC area. But I don't understand it. If you check out this chart of languages spoken in NYC, after English, the top three most common languages spoken in NYC are Spanish, Chinese and Russian. So, they got the what-I-think-is-Chinese right, but Hebrew is in the 15th place, under Polish, Tagalog and Arabic. So the choice of Hebrew is pretty weird.
Then, there's the strange conjugation of "Pay attention" in Hebrew. It is a female singular conjugation, as if "New York" were an individual female person. Personally, I think "שימו לב" makes more sense, as in: "Pay attention [you plural people of] New York." I checked Google (they say 'שים לב', male singular, with 'שימו לב' as an alternate) and Bing gives my translation. So no clue where they got that translation from.
Then, there's the strange conjugation of "Pay attention" in Hebrew. It is a female singular conjugation, as if "New York" were an individual female person. Personally, I think "שימו לב" makes more sense, as in: "Pay attention [you plural people of] New York." I checked Google (they say 'שים לב', male singular, with 'שימו לב' as an alternate) and Bing gives my translation. So no clue where they got that translation from.