Campanula rapunculoides, I’ve got you!
Thanks to Tricia, I have successfully identified the purple five lobed
flowers growing in our front yard as Campanula
rapunculoides, also known as creeping bellflower. According to both my
edible wild plant book, and the plants for a future database, its leaves,
young shoots and roots are edible, and the flavour of these is ‘very
palatable’. Always a plus.
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Implicit Differentiation
I sometimes find it hard to remember how implicit differentiation works
Here’s
a good explanation.
posted at: 16:40 |
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Composite Function Sale
According to Google, E-bay is having a composite function sale, with new
and used composite functions. The definition of a composite function can
be found here.
posted at: 16:32 |
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Limit Laws.
More math laws.
Here are the
limit laws.
Here
are some differentiation formulas (not including the chain rule).
posted at: 16:20 |
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The Rules of Algebra
Math is all about rules.
Here are the
rules of algebra.
posted at: 15:49 |
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More info on transactional analysis
I quite like the transactional analysis idea that we take up certain basic
roles in conversations.
Here’s
a link with a bit more detail about that, with respect to long term
communication patterns.
posted at: 10:56 |
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Transactional Analysis
I’m very interested in human interaction. I think that’s why I’m
fascinated by flame wars in online chat boards. I like to read them to see
if I can understand what sorts of messages and statements causes different
people to respond the way they do. Today I came across the
psychological/sociological theory of transactional analysis.Here’s a description
of the origin of the theory and here’s a
description of some of the current aspects of the theory.
posted at: 17:38 |
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I guess there’s no avoiding…
Statistics. I have data, and now I must use statistics. Actually, I
protest too much. I don’t have much statistics knowledge, but I like
understanding the theory behind statistics and how to apply different
statistical tests. One that I’m considering at the moment is the Kolmogrov
Smirnov Test hopefully this will tell me if my data is the same as a
certain random distribution, which is what I’m trying to prove at the
moment.
On a somewhat different note, the name Kolmogrov Smirnov Test
reminds me fondly of another statistical test: Fisher’s LSD. My friend and
I were amused by the name of this test during our statistics class, and
created a drink called the Fisher’s LSD in its honour (1 shot Bailey’s, 1
shot Kaluah, 1 shot chocolate milk, sprinkle with nutmeg). Now I find the
Kolmogrov Smirnov test crying out for a similar treatment. I’ll have to
think about it.
posted at: 18:01 |
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Back to pipes
This
page has some information about typical diameters of water service pipes,
which other web pages corroborate.
posted at: 15:01 |
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Nice Scents
I was looking for some almond flour recipes on SCA pages, when I came
across
this interesting
article on how scents were used in the middle ages. I am aware that
the popularity of scents at the time was due to the prevalence of many
unpleasant smells, but the scents themselves sound lovely.
posted at: 13:38 |
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Alternative flours
I was the lucky recipient of some homemade
vada
yesterday (many thanks to the vada maker!). I described this Indian snack
to Colin as a savoury, spicy
donut. Yummy!
Vada are made with flour made from urad dal. This renewed my interest in non-wheat flours. Previous to this, my only real experiences of non-wheat flours have been in products made for people with wheat allergies, and the textures never really seemed to translate. But, based on the vada, in the right kind of dish, this isn’t a problem. On that note, here’s a list of non-wheat flours.
I’m also interested in this from the context of cooking with local
foods, because I often read that you can make this or that plant into
flour, but I always wondered how it would acutally work for cooking. For
example, it is posssible to make acorn flour. Related to that,
here’s some
information on nut meals and flours, and
here’s
some information on how to store nuts properly.
posted at: 10:16 |
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Plant Identification Keys
Given the way that plant taxonomy works, I figured that there had to be
some kind of flowchart which would let a person start at the top of the
plant taxonomy and work their way down until they reached a positive
identification of the plant in which they were interested. Turns out there
is, but it’s called a ‘key’, not a flowchart. However, identification is
still tricky, because keys seem to exist for certain geographical areas.
Unfortunately, if you have a plant in a garden, then you don’t know which
area it actually comes from. At least the helpful USDA Plant link sites
has
a
list of links to key sites that I can check out.
posted at: 17:46 |
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Major Plant Divisions
Here’s
a nice discussion of the plant divisions (which are one categorization
level down from the Kingdom Plantae).
posted at: 12:45 |
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Plant Classification Report
This is cool. It
will “[g]enerate a hierarchical classification beginning at any taxonomic
level and moving up or down through the hierarchy.” Nice!
posted at: 12:02 |
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Classification of Plants
Some information to get
me started.
posted at: 11:59 |
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Northern Gardening
Reading about the vegetables that were bred from wild mustard plants, my
thoughts returned to the issue of growing vegetables in our northern
climate. I’ve been thinking about this recently in connection to growing
food on our property, and issues of importing food. Related to this,
here’s a website devoted
to Northern gardening.
posted at: 11:47 |
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Identifying Plants
I’m starting to get better at recognizing plants I’ve seen before, but it
is still hard to identify them, unless there happens to be a good picture
in my field guide to wildflowers. I was hoping to find a database that
would let me put in plant characteristics, and then give me some name
possibilities. Unfortunately, all of the internet databases I’ve found so
far work the other way, where you put in the name, and they give you the
characteristics.
I think one way to go is to learn more about the plant family
characteristics, and how plants are classified in the first place.
Consequently, I was pleased to find
this
page, which discusses the characteristics of several plant families.
posted at: 11:39 |
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Golden Needles
Here’s
a site that describes golden needles as daylily buds that are ‘coloured
but unopened’. I’m not quite sure what that means, but I’ll have to keep
an eye out.
posted at: 17:31 |
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Eating Daylilies
Normally I don’t eat wild plants, since I think it’s important to have a
very solid identification before eating anything like that. However, I was
quite confident that the plants growing beside our porch were
daylilies.
So I nibbled a little bit on a flower. As reported, it tastes like
slightly spicy lettuce. Nice.
I also discovered that many of us have already eaten daylilies, because
they are a key ingredient in
hot and sour soup. The blossoms are dried and
then added to thicken the soup. They are often referred to as ‘golden
needles’ in recipes. I haven’t figured out at which stage the blossoms are
dried (just before or just after blooming) but I like the idea of using
them to make yummy soup!
posted at: 17:26 |
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Data Mining Tutorial
I’ve been finding data mining techniques relevant to my data analysis.
Here’s a tutorial on
some relevant data mining topics.
posted at: 11:32 |
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The Official Quentin Blake Web Site
Quentin Blake is the person who illustrated Roald Dahl’s books, along with
the books of many others. I can still remember reading a book not written
by Roald Dahl, and yet illustrated by Quentin Blake, and being totally
confused, since I assumed the two always had to go together. You can see a
list of the other books Blake has illustrated at his official website.
posted at: 23:52 |
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Bee Behaviour
Here’s some interesting information on the behaviour of bees in
general. Bees are neat.
Or, as Bubs
might
say: Hot bees!
posted at: 18:02 |
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Honey Bee Perceptions
Since it has been proving difficult to find information on Caribou
perceptions, I may switch to doing honey bees, in order to avoid scads of
fieldwork.
Here’s some
preliminary info on honey bee perception, and some book references.
posted at: 17:47 |
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More on impact moling
Here’s
another site that discusses impact moling, with a diagram.
posted at: 15:51 |
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Lead Pipe Removal- More options
Here’s
a nice report on various lead pipe options. It mentions a technology
called pneumatic impact moling, which is discussed in further detail by
this
site. The report also mentions lining the inside of the lead pipe with
another material, which it notes has the advantage of not requiring costly
removal methods.
posted at: 15:48 |
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More Lead Pipe Extraction
Here’s
another company that uses a similar method. So far, all of these companies
have been European though… that’s a bit ominous.
posted at: 15:40 |
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Lead Pipe Extraction
I’m looking into the technologies that are available for removing lead
pipes without needing to dig a trench above the pipe.
This site lists a
number of ‘trenchless technologies’. Extraction of lead pipes is a special
problem, because many technologies rely on being able to break up the old
pipe and leave it in the soil, but this isn’t a desirable option
for lead pipes.
This
site describes a technique where cables are run through the
existing pipe, the pipe is cut up into pieces, and the cable
is then used to pull the old pipe out and pull the new pipe in.
This site
further describes the Grundopull technology (cute name!).
posted at: 15:36 |
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All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.