Kayaking the Missouri River As part of my adventure through Kansas City Dave had organized a super badass trip to kayak down the Missouri River with me and our mutual friend Dawn He had actually done a shorter version of the trip before on a canoe with his brother and niece but this particular trip was a three and a half hour tour in kayaks While I wouldn t have thought it would be super difficult I know that my arms and shoulders were sore for two days following and it definitely puts a toll on your back too so it was a lot harder than I d have thought photo 629662 631623 0 center From left to right Dawn Dave me photo br style clear both The Missouri River is enormous for one at certain places it has to be a few hundred yards wide The trip started with the river moving pretty slow but it would certainly pick up at various places There are never really rapids in it per se but there are parts where it turns pretty hard and creates powerful eddies on the surface One of those would eventually get me While the river itself is enough to contend with there is also boat traffic as well as barge traffic There are old graineries strip mines and power plants along the way so it s very much setup to accommodate enormous commercial and industrial traffic When we were about two hours into the float I decided to tackle one of the rapids Getting through the water itself was fine but as I merged back towards the steady flow of the current I wound up getting swept into a giant eddy I didn t have any problem with it spinning me backwards and then twirling me around a little bit but the force of it turned me so quickly that it threw off the balance of the kayak and eventually turned me over into the water Both Dave and Dawn were too far downstream to immediately do anything about it Of course I was also the only of us not to be wearing his life jacket it was extremely uncomfortable wearing it while also squeezed into the tiny compartment of the kayak photo 629534 631623 0 center Shortly after having tipped over twice in the kayak and now soaking wet which felt pretty wonderful in the hot Missouri sun photo br style clear both Given that I had our wallets keys and other valuables in my dry bag my first priority was to make sure that didn t sink It didn t but I ve never owned a dry bag before and so I wasn t sure if it would or not Once I had that in my hand I donned my life jacket from within the water as I was being pulled downstream and started working to flip my kayak back over I quickly succeeded and started to climb back into it Unaware of just how much water it had taken on when it flipped it immediately flipped over again given how unstable it was It wasn t until that moment that I realized I had a real problem I was stuck about 100 yards from the shore in a river swirling with eddies and unable to gain any control of my kayak I finally managed to flip it over again place all of my belongings inside of it and very carefully balance myself on top of it while I slowly paddled orthogonal to the current towards the muddy shoreline It wasn t over once I got there The shoreline was an almost immediate drop off and so it was not particularly easy to pull the boat onto the shore though I was lucky this particular part of the river even had a shoreline at all Once I eventually got it up there I had to flip it upside down and then lift it from side to side in order to evacuate all of the water from it When I finally accomplished that I fixed myself snugly inside of it from the shore and then started throwing my body weight forward to slowly push it back into the water noting again that even a few feet from the shore was way over my head since it s a dredged river Thankfully Dawn had come back to ensure that I was okay while Dave was just too far downstream to fight the current It was actually a lot more comfortable in the boat once I was soaking wet and when I eventually caught back up and re formed our little kayak trio we had a good laugh At me not with me

Mountain view from a tree lined hillside with a partly cloudy sky with the sun shining through the clouds onto the mountain range. Mountain view from a tree lined hillside with a partly cloudy sky with the sun shining through the clouds onto the mountain range. Mountain view from a tree lined hillside with a partly cloudy sky with the sun shining through the clouds onto the mountain range.

woman and man smiling and posing for the photo The handsome man with stubble on his beard and sunglasses on his head takes a picture with a woman who has pretty white smile and bangs as a hairstyle. Raw, crisscrossing, wooden beams show, exposed overhead, while a Caucasian couple; specifically,a woman with light-colored long hair, bangs and crows feet and a man with darker hair, a scraggly beard and mustache, a collared shirt, and black glasses, perched on his head, smile, their heads tilted together, for the camera. Happiness is all around in this black and white photo of this man and woman who seem to be really happy. A young man with a brown scraggly beard wearing sunglasses posing for a selfie with a beautiful light haired woman. Smiling couples posing for photo. Woman is straight haired. Man is having thin beard and wearing shirt. Standing inside a room. The man and woman giving excellent smile and posing to the other people at the event at the day time. The two are Caucasian. They are smiling and seem v

A blond woman sits in a red chair near a bearded man with his mouth open. A young bearded white man with sun glasses on his head and a young white blond woman take a selfie while sitting in some red reclining chairs at a spa. The woman is wearing a strapless dress and the man is wearing a short sleeved button down shirt. It looks like a couple is seating at a place that looks like a salon. They are happy and smiling while taking this picture. They are well dress. A woman is seated on a relaxing chair and smiling, while there is a man in another chair seated beside her. A young man with sunglasses and a young woman with blonde hair and a dress are relaxing in red massage chairs. He is opening his mouth and she is smiling. A short hair blonde women and a men with beard are sitting on recliner chairs relaxing, smiling and posing for the camera. looks like they are having fun time together. one male and a female sitting in a big hall and waiting for someone or talking with each others they wear white colours shir

A dark haired, bearded man and a blond haired woman are taking a selfy in front of a yellow and blue tent. A young white blond woman and a young white bearded man smile and take selfies in front of a blue and yellow striped tent outdoors. a man and a woman with brown hair and a man with beard looking in smiling face for a picture or watching some entertaining. The man and woman smiling and looking at the other people with man wearing white t-shirt and both enjoying the party at the event. The man wears a shirt that matches the tent that is behind him. He has a beard and long hair. The girl that is next to him is smiling and so is him. The tent behind them has a light attached to it with cables going all around. The picture seems to be good quality because taken in a good lighting area. A handsome white couple are at the circus on a sunny day. They are delighted to be together as a great picture's snapped of them. A man with beard is standing with a blonde woman and are smiling in front of a tent. Smile Tent

The Engine Failure The plan was for a solo XC from AUS gt AQO gt LZZ gt BMQ gt AUS Total time planned was 3 5 hrs including FSTB gassing up and eating lunch I think the flight was about 160nm round robin Preflight was completely normal oil was just a tick below 5qt gas looked fine instruments were okay and the mags checked out The left one dropped just slightly below normal so I leaned out the plane for about a minute per our procedure and rechecked it It tested within the norm the second time I departed Austin at 17 51Z a bit behind schedule but I was okay with this Very smooth departure and climb I even got routed over my property and then Mueller so I was really enjoying my views I probably reached my planned altitude of 6 500 just after the towers on Hwy 360 I leaned the mixture out as always waited for the brief drop in RPM and then a few ticks back to the right Around this time I was switched over to Houston Center for flight following on 134 20 photo 21130 521 520 left Climbing past 5 000 feet on my way to a planned 6 500 photo Around 18 35Z just getting over the intersection of HWY 281 in Marble Falls and still at 6 500 feet I noticed the engine was starting to lose power I couldn t hear it or feel it but I saw it on the tach It was dropping about 100 RPM for 1 2 second every 15 20 seconds or so I just began monitoring it and after a minute or so alerted Houston Center to my finding They asked if I wanted to declare any emergency and I said no I just wanted to say it in case the problem got worse and I needed more attention They asked me to keep them updated and business was as usual The problem persisted About 2 5 minutes later the problem got worse and I started noticing the engine dropping about 300 RPM for 1 2 seconds every 15 20 seconds with the 100 RPM drops interspersed between those I immediately alerted Houston Center to the problem with something to the effect of Houston Center Cessna 67796 My engine is definitely having problems now probably going to have to land They quickly started giving me very close attention and asking if I had power and such I replied yes but that the engine was suffering power losses At this time we established that I was a student pilot on a solo XC I had already located a bunch of fields by this time and as HC noted Horseshoe Bay was just a few miles off to my west about my 10 o clock according to Houston Though I tried to remain calm I m sure they could sense some panic in my voice by this time Still I kept doing things as needed and now treated the situation as an emergency assuming that the engine would die at any moment I went through the emergency checklist though it didn t seem to fix the 300 RPM drops I was still communicating with Houston treating the situation as an emergency and the problem was still persisting I definitely had Horseshoe Bay in my sights just a few miles off to the west and was just a little below my previous altitude I informed them that the problem was still continuing and that I would be heading for Horseshoe Bay Though I had them handy I requested the runway configuration airport elevation and the CTAF All three were given to me Just as I started my left turn and about 1 second before my heart would momentarily stop the engine lost almost compete power I can t be sure but it dropped down to about 1000 1200 RPM basically just above idle and held there for a moment before jumping back up At this point I told Houston that I had a more severe problem and that the engine was probably about to die They passed me over to Horseshoe Bay and those guys started bringing me in They cleared out all other traffic and told me either runway was mine for the taking I was still around 5 800 feet at this time PA is 2 100 about 3 miles west of the field and more or less on a perfect left line for a left downwind to runway 35 the preferred runway was for 17 but surface wind was only about 3 kts so I stuck with 35 I told Horseshoe Bay that I would be making a long extension of my downwind in order to lose my excess altitude I probably went about twice as far as normal before turning base doing the best I could to calculate all of the differences quickly in my head The engine seemed to be working with me at this point but I was also making a lot of adjustments to it so hard to know for sure I turned base still a bit too high but plenty far out On final I quickly got down to a good altitude slowed enough for flaps and added a notch The other two notches came in at my discretion as I basically was landing by feeling it out I put it down on 35 and it was actually a really nice smooth and otherwise uneventful landing Taxiing didn t seem to be much of an issue either The guy waved me to a spot and was happy to see me We called Houston Center immediately to let them know and also Flight Service to alter and close my flight plan photo 21110 521 520 left N47796 on the ground at Horseshoe Bay after my failed engine photo

The Das Avonni photo 978 22 300 right The wooden frame of the Das Avonni photo To anyone not familiar with disc golf it is more or less the hippie form of playing golf Basically you go to a disc golf park with some friends start at the tee and throw your disc towards the basket The discs are not exactly Frisbees as they tend to be made out of thicker plastics and are consequently always much heavier than regular Frisbees Just like golf you see where your disc lands go to it and throw it again There are about 18 disc golf parks in the greater Austin area and I have played around 7 of them To date I have no hole in ones but I have been pretty close and have made a few birdies As you can probably tell the game is scored just like golf and scores are typically in the same range as a normal golf game strong Building the Das Avonni strong The only drawback to disc golf is that it s pretty hard to practice it without actually going out to a course At least in golf you can purchase a small hole for your backyard for practice putting and chipping Disc golfing companies have offered a similar product for the sport though it is obviously much larger and expensive Because of that I decided to build my own All it took was a metal pole some ply wood a bunch of wooden dowel rods and some spray paint and waterproof cloths for the aesthetic The first part of the project simply consisted of cutting a circular top on the band saw This was probably the hardest part of the whole thing though it turned out just fine After this I created the box bottom and used the drill press to make a few dozen holes around the base in which to fit the wooden dowel rods Atop the dowel rods were narrow strips of plywood simply to hold the dowel rods together The entire apparatus had 1 5 holes drilled through it s center pieces in order to fit the metal pipe into it strong Finishing Touches strong photo 817 22 0 right The finished Das Avonni sitting outside in front of my Explorer photo Once the initial design was completed and as you can see by the pictures I hung chains from the top which ultimately ran together to form a three dimensional parabolic shape to the basket as is pretty standard with the disc golf baskets In addition 4 extra chains were strung along the Z Axis of the paraboloid to aid in slowing down the disc once it hit the chains All in all the chains still proved a bit too thin for the project but it was not that often that a disc would fly through them without stopping Once these chains were attached I bored a 1 4 hole through both the top and bottom portions of the metal pole which allowed me to add lock bolts to the apparatus thus securing the basket to the pole With that in place I decided to add a bit of feel to the basket and with cans of red and yellow spray paint available in the garage I painted the bottom portion of the basket red and the top part of the Das Avonni yellow Finally the cloths that were added were actually disposable rain slickers The material was perfect for this project as it easily stretched to my liking and was very easy to staple gun it to the painted plywood strong Naming the Das Avonni strong Anyone who is rather keen with the small disc golf world may have already picked up on where this thing got its name from One of the leading manufacturers of disc golf products is a company named Innova I believe pronounced in uh va Avonni is simply Innova spelled backwards Perhaps this helps innovA The Das part just came from my usual game of adding such the word to a noun and pawning it off as a German influenced design strong What happened to Das Avonni strong After I had the Das Avonni in my front yard for a couple of days I decided that I would give it to a few of my good friends then roommates of one another a href tags Mike Crockett Mike Crockett a and a href tags Dreux LaViolette Dreux LaViolette a I brought it over to their house and we dug a hole in the ground in which to mount it From what I understand the Avonni was used from time to time in the backyard until they both moved into seperate homes and then I think it was either left there or ultimately dismantled and thrown away a sad fate indeed strong Can I get my own Das Avonni strong Yes The units sell for 2000 each or 25 000 for an 18 hole course and can be hand crafted and delivered to you within 7 business days We require that the monies be transferred into an escrow account before any construction begins If you d like one contact me

The Mechanical Turk Project photo 36003 740 0 right photo In early 2008 I came across an interesting idea that Amazon had started working on called Mechanical Turk The idea was pretty simple rather than writing software that was capable of artificially intelligent tasks it was instead plausible simply to pay people very small sums of money to perform very small tasks This is what the Turk program did The Amazon system allowed developers like myself to create small programs that would integrate with their Turk API In my case I wrote a very simple program that would display a random photo from my collection and request that the user describe the photo in the text box I provided to them All of this was spelled out on within my user space but provided that the person described the photo in at least 10 words they would be paid a sum of 0 01 1 penny I suspect that this type of thing is mostly aimed at people in English speaking emerging markets around the world India for example but proved to be invaluable to me On the initial 3 month run I wound up having over 8 000 photos described strong Update March 3rd 2012 strong I ve done some additional exploring of this system and in the few years since I first started experimenting with it Amazon has made huge strides In 2008 their developer API was pretty cumbersome to figure out but they ve really managed to solve this by simplifying the submission process The downside is that it requires a few extra steps on the developer s end but the upside is the simplicity to understand how it all works and to begin a campaign The dataset importation used to be automated but now one just uploads a CSV file of the data Again it s an extra step but is so simple to do that I can t really complain All that being said I ve recently launched another several thousand photos and had 100 of them described within just a few days For the most part the entries submitted were very good I will likely do a full scale launch within the next few weeks and have Amazon Turk workers detail ALL of my photo collection This is a pretty mammoth amount of data processing that people will be doing for me and I m excited to think how it will change my search criteria strong Update October 28th 2015 strong em small political rant within em After many many years of wonderful successes with the Mechanical Turk project I decided that it was time to once again overhaul some of my older code I spent several days rewriting a bunch of the internal mechanics of u openFace u the software I designed that powers this entire website Given the importance of this piece to me I focused heavily on the Mechanical Turk processing From a code point of view everything went great As it happens though there is now a community of Mechanical Turk watchdogs they have no affiliation with Amazon by the way This was an interesting experience for me The new scripts I wrote to compliment the detailed classes I ve already written were probably a few thousand photos in when a small group of people Californians as it happened started sending me angry emails In a nutshell they told me that the price of each photo should be more like 0 30 0 40 Keep in mind it takes about 15 seconds to look at a picture and type a 10 word sentence about it Always one to engage conflict I tried reasoning with them I explained that this was just a personal project and that I couldn t possibly spend that kind of money on it At 0 01 0 02 per photo it costs me about 40 00 for 1 000 photos the fees are over 100 at such a low rate Still when I process 8 000 photos it can add up So while the fees would be a lot less at 0 30 per photo 1 000 photos would wind up costing me nearly 400 00 It then follows that 8 000 photos would cost me about 3 200 I explained to this group that if it did cost that much I simply wouldn t be able to use the service and then nobody would get my money It s a hobby of mine to catalog my life and the time I share with those people important to me it s not a business It s all at a financial loss They weren t having it They were angry and not shy about letting me know But then I took a step back from their complaints and I realized that like most marketplaces the people who are doing the work are extremely delighted to have a steady source of income coming in Many of those people might live on just a few dollars per month and so the opportunity to make even 20 00 from me is huge to them For some of them it can entirely change their quality of life and open new doors Of course their lives are nothing like my own I m sad for that and would do most anything to change that I d sure as shit rather help a group of people from emerging countries like Brazil India China etc than have a bunch of people from California complain that I m not doing enough to help THEM while they sit in an air conditioned Starbucks sipping lattes and yelling at me from behind their MacBook Pro So like so many things in life once you tune out the background noise the Mechanical Turk project continues to be pretty amazing I m delighted to give money to these people all around the world they do a wonderful job for me

The Belicean Border Incident When Dayna came to visit me in Akumal Mexico we thought it would be fun to take a weekend trip to Belize Akumal sits about 180 miles north of the Belician border and is a pretty comfortable ride on any of their major bus services In fact the problem isn t so much getting to the southern border of Mexico it s getting onto another bus service that will take you across Keep in mind that when I was living in Mexico in 1999 it wasn t necessary to travel with a passport In fact I had traveled to Mexico many times with just my driver s license and birth certificate and this summer s trip was no exception Anyway we arrived at the border and crossed the bridge into the border checkpoint The first step of this process is to give up your Mexican visa We did this In a legal sense you re now no longer visiting Mexico but you also haven t technically been granted access to visit Belize yet either We crossed into the country and walked through a very low tech border agency They asked to see our passports and of course we presented them with our driver s license and birth certificates To make this part of the story short they effectively just laughed at us and said they weren t going to let us in I spent some time discussing and eventually arguing with them but they said we would have to go back It didn t look like we d make it past the armed guards either This was obviously very disappointing for us but we headed back towards Mexico to get back into the country Unfortunately and as you may recall reading from above we no longer had Mexican tourist visas Normally this isn t a problem when coming from Belize because you just show your Belicean visa Except we were never issued one due to the whole passport birth certificate misunderstanding So here we were essentially standing on the little Rand McNally line that graces the map s borders of Mexico and Belize and I m now having to discuss with armed Mexican soldiers why I don t have a visa either from Belize or from Mexico Fortunately my Spanish had improved pretty drastically that summer and so after just as few minutes I was able to speak with the person who had taken our visas not twenty minutes earlier He reluctantly shuffled through them and found ours in the mix I honestly can t recall if they issued us new visas or if they just un cancelled our previous one but we were allowed back into Mexico shortly thereafter Of course this is all a moot point these days since you can t get to Mexico any longer without a passport but this is what happened when I tried to go without one

Sierra Club Survey Response div class pageImage img src http www ludlow2014 com themes Default images Blog SierraClub_640 jpg alt The Sierra Club class alignright size full wp image 252 br The Sierra Club logo div Our campaign received yet another political survey this time from the Sierra Club While many people assume that my positions inherently do not align with those of the Sierra Club I would strongly disagree While I do not believe taxes should be taken to accommodate environmental concerns I feel very strongly that we are significantly damaging the environment Furthermore I am openly in favor of allowing individuals to pursue damages against companies that infringe on their most basic property rights strong 1 What has been your greatest environmental accomplishment or your most significant activity on behalf of the environment and or managing natural resources as an elected official private citizen or business owner strong As an individual and small business owner always pursuing modest and easily maintainable living and business spaces And when possible utilizing any renewable technologies available to me Within the political realm I am a vocal proponent of renewable energies and technologies and will continue to encourage my family friends and any future constituents of the benefits of self reliance with respect to energy food and even transportation strong 2 What environmental and natural resource goal s will you actively pursue in the next state legislative session if you are elected strong I would like to remove any barriers to entry regulatory taxes and individual usage fees and taxes from renewable technologies Self sustainability should be encouraged and people certainly should not be taxed for this pursuit strong 3 Most of Texas cannot import or export electricity to and from other states In other words unlike California we have to generate and consume all of our electricity within the state What should the Legislature do if anything to ensure we have enough power to meet demand strong The legislature should remove any and all regulations regarding the transmission and selling of electricity strong 4 Texas leads the country in installed wind power As a state official what would you do to improve market conditions for other renewable resources such as solar and geothermal energy strong I believe that solar wind geothermal and other forms of renewable energy are wonderful technologies As a State Representative I would ensure that the legislature removed any regulatory barriers that impeded the progress and development of these technologies Going further I would consider any legislation that prohibited local municipalities from taxing or requiring expensive development review processes for individuals or businesses seeking to install renewable forms of energy strong 5 Do you support homes and businesses generating their own power from renewable resources such as solar If so how would you reconcile the revenue loss by utilities that depend on selling kilowatt hours Would you support legislation to ensure that homes and businesses earn a fair market value for any excess solar generation strong I absolutely support homes and businesses generating their own power from renewable resources I follow the technologies closely and promote them often I would not in any way attempt to reconcile the revenue lost by utilities that depend on selling kilowatt hours I would also not support any legislation that forced a fair market value for renewable energies If people are inclined to turn their homes into renewable power plants then I am all for them selling their energy to whomever they saw fit presumably the highest bidder strong 6 What do you see as the most pressing issues on groundwater Do you favor local management of groundwater resources through groundwater conservation districts or a more centralized approach strong Generally speaking I see chemical and heavy metal contaminants as pressing issues though more recently speaking it strikes me that a lack of water is probably a much more significant issue than contaminated water Of course both are very serious issues needing to be dealt with I believe that local areas should determine the best way to monitor regulate and or distribute their groundwater I do not support a centralized mechanism for this especially in a state as large as Texas strong 7 What role do you see emerging water supply strategies such as desalination and aquifer storage and recovery playing in meeting the future water needs for the state Does anything need to be done to enhance the role of these strategies and if so what do you propose strong I think these technologies are wonderful and very interesting That said I am not familiar with the economics of desalination plants I believe we should be encouraging engineering firms to pursue these technologies but I do not believe the government should favor them over other technologies Incidentally I also do not believe any other form of energy development should have favor within the government either and this most certainly includes oil and gas exploration strong 8 Water supply is a big challenge in many parts of the state Using the water that we already have as efficiently as possible is one strategy to meeting our future water needs Would you support efforts to fund a statewide water education campaign to inform people of their sources of water and how to conserve those sources strong In general I support campaigns aimed at educating people on scientific realities At the same time I would not support taxing people to accomplish this educational goal If the scientific community felt it would have a large enough impact then I would support funding such a campaign through existing taxes thereby requiring a different program or perhaps several different programs to lose funding or have funding reduced strong 9 Do you accept the broad consensus of the scientific community that climate change is occurring and human activity such as the burning of fossil fuels is causing it What if anything would you do as an elected official to address climate change at the state level strong Yes I have a degree in mathematics and work as an engineer I believe in science At the same time I also believe that the discussion of the topic has been largely co opted by both Republicans and Democrats as a political tool to create further division between people To that extent I am very uninterested in the topic As an elected official I would aggressively pursue companies and individuals that violated the property rights of others Furthermore I would work to ensure that individuals could pursue litigation against these companies for violations of basic property rights strong 10 What is your position on the U S Environmental Protection Agency s efforts to reduce carbon dioxide pollution from stationary sources such as coal fired power plants to protect human health Please explain why you take this position strong I do not especially support it I cannot in good consciousness support the EPA in any way It is clear that they play favorites with who is allowed to pollute and who is not based upon corporate influence and lobbying efforts strong 11 Given the dramatic rise in activity and growing public concerns about its environmental impacts what is your position on fracking strong While I do support the exploration of oil and natural gas the evidence to how devastating fracking is to groundwater appears to be overwhelming I therefore do NOT support it in practice As I mentioned above I would support any efforts that provided individuals with easier mechanisms for pursuing damages against fracking offenses While I support engineering firms pursuing better and safer ways of applying fracking methods it is clear we simply do not have the technology to accomplish this safely and cleanly at this point in time and I therefore do NOT support it strong 12 Would you support additional funding for our state parks and wilderness areas including a dedicated fund for the acquisition and development of additional parkland and wilderness areas strong No strong 13 There is much debate and discussion about how to meet the current and future transportation needs of Texans What do you see as the best ways to address the transportation needs of the state especially given constraints on funding strong Like so many of my responses I think the best thing to do is remove excess regulations placed on individuals and businesses trying to provide transportation needs Beyond that I believe this question is best left to local governments It need not be thoroughly defined at the state level