elainegrey

Several mornings last week i've sat on the deck after letting the fe-lions loose. Squirrels make an incredible ruckus jumping branch to branch and descending into the mulberry tree. I harrumph, figure they are shaking all the ripe berries on to the ground. (Next year, a fruit capture net will be installed). But today, despite the squirrels descending quite low in the tree, i was back to a decent harvest of mulberries. (A "decent harvest" is, i dunno over half a cup. I'm not getting out the ladder.)

Friday I circled to the blackberries, which are about done, and noticed the ground cover of strawberries still blooming. I haven't checked the ones in the garden for a while but i quickly found three strawberries and figured i could given them a really good wash and add them to some berry thing. The blue berries are beginning to come in heavily, and there were lots of mulberries! A sudden wave of ripening? A bird didn't beat me to them?

Weekend was hot and i spent the time learning how to write better python as i began processing my weather sensor data. I moved slowly, but with ChatGPT acting as an opinionated and sometimes wrong tutor, i moved faster. It offered significant help in answering questions when i knew what i should do but couldn't quite remember how to express it, and it helped me through setting up functions i can use across Jupyter notebooks, a big step for me. When i could i read the docs instead of chatting, but i know my code is better for its tutoring.   All of this is fairly junior skills, but i hope it can advance other skills.

I am impressed how data analysis has become more accessible. I remember struggling to deal with time series data some years ago. Now the tools and the information about using them is so much more available.

Nephew work day was sweet and very productive. Christine was in good spirits so she lopped down some massive autumn olive and we chipped enough to mulch the north fence line of the orchard. W and i planted three trees, including the linden for my Swedish garden. When we went back to R--'s Rock (found by my Dad and brother before i'd even been to the property) to plant the linden, we saw a beech to the NE of the rock. I am delighted that there is one natively in the woods. Not surprised, exactly, but wondering where the mature beech tree is or was. This one ... i don't know how old it is but it's a good bit further along than the yearling tree i planted this year or the one planted last year.

Bad me did not call Grandmámá. Still on to do list.

Sunday C brought me breakfast in bed. Meeting went well. Achy all day. Christine's sister wants to watch all Oscar nominees so she and C watched Joker (which C thinks is brilliant and i don't think i will watch). D was blown away by it. The day was sparkling, and i tried sitting in the porch, but the breeze was a bit much.

Yesterday woke to cat piss on bed. Both C and i tired, exhausted, no spoons, moody.

We're watching the Nova planets episodes from season 36 in reverse order and watched Mars last night. Beautiful presentation, enthusiastic and diverse scientists, but much personification of everything. The language to describe how Mars' oceans evaporated - "stripped away" being the least loaded phrasing - surely it engages nonscientific viewers by creating emotional drama, but it irks me that the drama is told as if Mars was some poor victim (and Earth held up as the fortunate one). One CAN come up with emotional stories told from a satisfied Mars point of view.

It may be harder to emotionally see Different as something Satisfying for the party that is different -- but let's practice that for crying out loud.

I am thinking about data analysis using the nifty Jupyter Notebooks. Have done a tutorial and tiny work experiment. Tempted to do sentiment analysis on the corporate president's monthly emails. Thinking about data practices for my day to day life that would lead to interesting analysis. Have fired up IFTTT and Airtable to gather some digital footprint records. I imagine parsing exported journal entries and some of my health records, my rain measurements and temperature gauges. Smart power meter -- which surely saw some leap in use Thursday and yesterday as we washed and dried so much bedding.

Crazy warm weather has me frustrated i am behind in yard work and seed prep. Please let there be a little winter this month.

I feel tedious. I itch. Itch itch itch.

My nose doesn't itch and my ear doesn't itch. My big toes don't itch either.

I have been barely able to get four hours of work in each day. That sucks.

Yesterday afternoon i did dive into a little obsessive research about how i'm being tracked online. Most entertaining is Ghostery, http://www.ghostery.com/faq, which displays a little box in the corner of your browser with a list of all the tracking going on when you browse. I also played with some of the tools at http://www.privacychoice.org/. In my curious Grey Cat blog i posted my FTC response regarding the Google Buzz. There's a movement to balance the utility of collected data with the interests of the person whose data is being collected. There really are cool optimizations that could be put in place for me if i could aggregate my own data -- the current term is in a personal data bank.

For example, i know my grocery store must have a list of everything i buy when i use my loyalty card. They encourage my sharing of that data with discounts and i currently accept that as fair, but i know others don't. But what if you could export your grocery shopping data to a databank and then use it for your own purposes? Visualizing how much money is spent on what sort of foods, getting a gross caloric or nutritional analysis... Since it's in your own data bank, you can aggregate it with other information you grocery store couldn't: why did your purchased calories drop so dramatically in May? Oh, right, you'd gone on vacation. Did the fact that the amount of carbs purchased dropped over three months make a difference in your health? Compare with your health data. You might find it useful, or you might not, but someone else might. I can think of lots of interesting things that i'd love to datamine out of my own data, and i wouldn't mind trading that information for the insight.

I think the creepy factor is that these corporations that collect data are drawing conclusions without sharing those conclusions and without mitigation. It would be creepy if my grocery store noticed an uptick in calories purchased and started "helpfully" letting me know i was buying more calories than i "needed" -- when i might be supporting an additional person in the house or buying food for others. Just what i'm buying from one grocery store is NOT a full picture of what's going on with me, and we do, with good reason, resent when conclusions are drawn on a narrow aspect of our behavior.

I'm avoiding work. Ought to go.