Spirit Lake

Today we attempted to go to Spirit Lake . The plan was to take photos on the way to the lake and at the lake. It didn't quite work out that way.  The trip there for the most part went well. It was overcast, drizzling rain (very light) and the weather was cool but comfortable.  There was very little traffic on Salmon Creek road. Generally during the summer months there is a lot of traffic on that road due to campers, hikers and mountain bikers. It was nice to be able to drive and check out the scenery without having to deal with tourist traffic.

The road leading to Spirit Lake was mostly clear. There were a few trees that had fallen across the road, but they had been cut and the pieces removed. There were also a few largish rocks on the road in some places.  There were also some trees that looked like they were going to end up in the road sometime in the near future, but looked stable for the time being.  Along the way, there were several small waterfalls. There was also some small patches of snow visible.

We passed one large pickup truck coming down from the direction that we going in. I didn't think much of it at the time. The drive was uneventful. I would stop and park the car whenever I saw something that I wanted to take pictures of. Then the trip came to a stop. The road was block by snow. A lot of snow. And it was deep enough that it would have been foolish to try to drive through or over it. That brought the trip to Spirit Lake to a halt.

 

Th e above photo is the road. It was taken near where the road turned.  The snow was deep enough that getting my car over it would have been risky. And it was densely packed. I was able to walk on the snow without sinking into it or getting snow in my hiking sandals.

Anyway, here are some of the photos that I took in this short day trip. I took over 100 photos on this particular trip.

This photo was taken where one of the trees that fell splintered apart. Plants were already growing up through the fractures. The rain was not too bad at this point. I didn't need to put a gallon Ziploc bag over my camera. The log was soaked. When I leaned up against the log to get a better shot, my jeans were soaked where they came in contact with the log.

One of the several waterfalls on the way to Spirit Lake.  I think most of the waterfalls were from either spring melt runoff or springs that run during the rainy weather.  This waterfall was right next to the road.

This particular photo is of a waterfall that I think may flow year round.

There were many rhododendrons in various stages of blooming up there. Most of them were of this shade of light pink, though there were some that appeared to be a much darker pink.

A view of the overcast or misty sky through the trees. This was taken at around the 3000 feet elevation level.

 

Scotch broom, my nemesis. This plant's pollen has caused more allergy flareups for me. 

Another shot of the sky seen through the trees.

This is a photo of a white Douglas Iris. This one was taken on the way back down to main road. The rain was tapering back to a fine mist , for awhile.

I am hoping to be able to make it up to Spirit Lake after the snow melts and before the mosquitoes are bad.

It has been a awhile since I have posted anything. School and life in general has been hectic. Since I have a small break in between terms, I am taking the time to post some more photos.

 This photo was taken somewhere outside Oakridge, Oregon. It was taken the day the Tumblebug Fire started. The sky was overcast and there had been thunder with some visible lightening. In fact, the storm was the reason we left Mule Mountain. I have no idea of where this lake is located at. I was following a friend and was totally turned around when she stopped here so we could take photos.

This photo was taken during on of the last times it snowed here. I took this standing on my front porch. It is one of my first attempts of taking photos of snow. (We aren't discussing the Scout snow trip photos. )

I took this photo on the campus of Lane Community College . The water on the leaves is from a rain that fell earlier in the day.

This is another photo taken from my front porch. It was a drizzly type of day. I wasn't able to get out in the woods and take photos. Homework demands kept me home. But I did manage to get this shot.

Last summer, we went for what was supposed to be a short drive to Indigo Springs. We ended up at Summit Lake in Klamath county. Wonderful drive even with the washboard roads. This photo was taken on the shore in the late afternoon. If you are planning on making a trip to Summit Lake, make sure tht your vehicle has a lot of clearance. The road that goes around the lake has very deep irregular ruts in it. More than once, I thought that I was going to break something on my mini van.

This photo was taken at Salmon Creek campground. I have taken quite a few photos of Salmon Creek waterfall. I didn't focus on the complete waterfall in this shot. Instead, I focused on just a small portion of it in an attempt to catch the water as it fell. I was standing across the river from the falls and I was using a zoom lens to get the closer shot. Nice place to go camping by the way.

Last but not least this photo. This one was taken at Greenwaters Park alongside one of the trails that run behind the park across the river. There is a bridge that leads to the trails.

Salmon Creek

Last weekend, I went to Salmon Creek campground, located outside Oakridge, Oregon,  to take photos. It was late afternoon and very sunny when I got there. The Willamette river runs along the outside edge of the campground, which also has a day use area. The campground isn't opened yet, so we parked and walked in to take the photos.

The weather was beautiful; clear, sunny and shining right down the river.  The walk along the trail was fairly easy as was the climb down to the river to get photos of the falls.

This was taken en route to the falls from up above. Yes, the water really is that color.

This flower was along the trail. We were still walking towards the falls. Does anyone know what flower it is?

Here is the falls. I have been told that this falls does not run full all year. That it slows down to a trickle in the summer months. This year it should run even less considering that so far the snow and rain levels are well below normal.

Next trip out, I will have to do either early in the morning or when it is overcast. And I am going to do some more exploring in the area. There is supposedly a bridge somewhere near by.

Web 2.0 Assignment 9

For assignment 9, in the Web 2.0 class we had to read about the DMCA on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website and then post a blog about it.

DMCA is limiting and restricting free expression and scientific research. It has been used to control and beat down professionals in various fields.

It is jeopardizes fair use. It has made it so that owners of DVDs can’t make legitimate and personal use use copies of the DVDs that they have purchased.

It hinders or impeded competition and innovation. Some have used DMCA to hinder or slow down their competitors such as after market competition in laser printer toner cartridges, garage door openers, etc.
Apple has also used DMCA to limit its iPhone and iPod devices to Apple’s own software and services.

It interferes with computer intrusions laws. It has been misused as a weapon of retaliation. For example, a disgruntled employer has used DMCA against a former employee. The violation, the former contractor connected to the company’s computer system via a virtual private network (VPN)[www.eff.org Unintended Consequences : Twelve Years under the DMCA)


The DMCA needs to be changed. I am unsure as to how. A good start would be to make those who use it to bully or threaten accountable for their actions. SO far, it appears that they have not been held accountable at all.

Perhaps a DMCA should be rewritten and tightened up. Research needs to be able to be freely conducted. More importantly, the results need to be able to be published without fear of being punished or retaliated against.

Fair use needs to be allowed. What has been going on is not acceptable. If I want to burn a copy of a DVD or CD that I purchased so that my original remains in new condition, I should be able to do. I should also be able to burn copies for my son to use. I should also be able to do so. If I want to use music and various clips to produce videos for sites such as YouTube, I should be able to do so.

Mashup Assignment

Web 2.0 Assignement 5

For Web 2.0, we had to answer the questions below using Google and Wolfram to find the answers. 

1.       All English words containing the letters "eue"

I like Google better. Wolfram was a pita to use. I had to rephrase my question way too many times for me to even consider this to be a valid search tool for this type of information.

Using Google, I found the website http://www.morewords.com. The following words were listed there: feued, queue, queued, queueing, queuer, queuer, queuers, and queues.

On Wolfram, I found three words that contain the letters “eue” in sequence; queue, queued and
queues.

2. How much potassium in 4.7 oz of banana?

Wolfram returned the information immediately. It is 475 milligrams. Google required too much digging to get the information.

3. How old was Barack Obama on the day you were born?

Wolfram returned the result immediately. He was 3 years, 6 month and 23 days.

Google turned up many results for a Barrack Obama senior, not the president. Too much digging and or rephrasing required to get the answer.

4. Date and time of the next total solar eclipse in Eugene?

Google turned up this answer for the next total solar eclipse: August 21 2017 (found on http://www.hermit.org/eclipse/2017-08-21/) further digging in the article turned up a time: 17:21 (24 hour time), 5:21 pm.  (Based on a graphic showing the path of the eclipse and the approximate time it would pass over a specific location).

Wolfram:  12:25 MDT August 21, 2017 (What is MDT?)

5. What is the minimum and maximum price of Google stock since it went public?

Google: minimum price was $85 the day it was first listed; the maximum was $747.24 on November 7, 2007.  I found this information on two different websites. (Google was faster for me)

Wolfram showed graphs for the stock prices. I had to ask the question several different ways.  Minimum price was less than $100. Maximum price I was unable to find because I couldn’t think of a way that Wolfram could understand what I was looking for.

6. Link an image of the barcode for UPC 01234567890

 Wolfram found the following: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=barcode+01234567890   This page shows three different versions of the barcode.

Google found several sites that had the barcode, include other students’ blogs. One place to find it is http://www.activebarcode.com/codes/images/upce.gif .

7. How many vertices does an icosahedron have?

Twelve. Both Wolfram and Google turned up an answer quickly.

8. Distance from Eugene to Tokyo?

Wolfram gave an answer of 4886 miles. Google said it was 13882 flight miles. Actual distance Wolfram gave the answer, but for actual travel miles, Google gave the answer.

9. Average Oregon income per capita?

Wolfram gave the answer of $31930/year (2007 estimate). Google gave more recent information: $35,956/year (2008) source: http://www.qualityinfo.org/pubs/single/pcpi.pdf

10. What is the Morse code for your first name?

_._ |.. | _ _ | _ ... | .| ._. | . _ . . | _ . _ _ 

 K      I       M      B       E    R       L             Y

Both Wolfram and Google found the answer quickly. Wolfram provided that answer only, while Google provided additional information that could be used or discarded as needed. 

http://www.pokemyname.com/firstname_2265_kimberly.htm is one of the sites I found on Google. It showed my name in Morse code and Braille among others. It also provided other interesting information about the name Kimberly.

Internet censorship

For the web 2.0 class I am taking, we had to do some research on internet censorship. We were given specific terms to research on the following search engines: google.com, bing.com and from China, baidu.com (CHina's search engine) and google.cn (Google's china website). The terms and what I found out are listed below.

1. uss yorktown nt
The results for each search engine were very similar. I suspect that this is because the subject was not offensive to the current Chinese government.

2. google china censorship
With google.com and bing.com, I managed to find stories about the censorship that  covered it in depth and about the impact on people. While I was able to find stories on china censorship on the other two search engine, the summaries were not in depth and were tended to be slanted towards the Chinese government rather than what was actually happening.

3. Tiananmen Square
Both google.com and bing.com had results that covered the Tiananmen massacre/protest as well as general information about the location. There was also basic tourist information available as well as a virtual tour. Videos were also listed. History information was available.

Baidu.com listed the following results: results for the Olympics that were held there, tourist information and general information that residents would use. There was also some tourist information listed. There was no mention of the student protests or any results that would show the Chinese government in a bad light.

Google.cn showed similar results and images. Once again there was nothing controversial and nothing that could be considered offensive to the Chinese government. If it can't be seen by the residents of that country, then nothing of that nature has ever happened. With enough time and brainwashing, history can be rewritten for the residents of China. I find this to be disturbing. It is difficult enough to find factual and truthful information online without having to worry about access to information being limited and the information sanitized ; and even worse being rewritten with no regard to what the truth actually is.

4. Taiwan Independence
To a point, all four search engine showed similar results. The search engine that are china based showed less detailed summaries or synopsis. Once again, it appears that the results are sanitized and limited on those search engines.

While I can see the appeal of censoring hate groups to prevent them from spreading their poison and infecting others, censorship is a dangerous practice. Great harm can be done by changing the truth into lies. There is a fine line to walk.  Certain things should be censored or controlled. What is going on in world events should be told in a factual and truthful manner, not censored because it might make your government look bad or make said government's population think and question what is going on.