Day: January 26, 2010

Every once in a while, when a girl gets a little nostalgic, her thoughts turn to the green valleys of Oregon. I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic lately, thus my thoughts have been close to my home state. And since I think lists are the number one best way to relieve stress, I made a couple of them concerning Oregon.

Sadly enough, I’m not an Oregon native. I actually only lived there for around 12 years. Since I left when I was 13, I don’t know Oregon culture as deeply as Oregonians like my Dad, and since I’ve been gone for two years I tend to generalize things. But I do know some basics.

Oregon, in my mind, is divided into two main camps: Loggers and hippies. I think the rest of the country thinks ‘hippie/environmentalist’ when they think Oregon, but most of the people I know are loggers. I’m told there’s also a hybrid called a logger-hippie, but you can’t be both. If you claim to be both, then you’re definitely a hippie. Each camp has many subdivisions and many traits. Here are a few examples.

You may be an Oregon ‘logger’ if:
You’re a farm kid
You’re in Portland/Eugene/Corvallis but not of it
You’re a transplant from some state in the Bible belt
You live in Klamath Falls
You live anywhere in Eastern Oregon besides Bend
You’re a rabid member of the NRA
You’ve ever cut down a tree

You maybe an Oregon ‘hippie’ if
You’re a rabid environmentalist
You’re in Portland/Eugene/Corvallis and proud of it
You’re a vegan
You’re a non-mainstream-sports junky
You’re a California transplant
You sport a gray man-ponytail or astrologically themed jewelery
You’ve ever hugged a tree

Of course this is highly stratified and generalized. I’d like to call myself a logger but I’ve never cut down a tree or shot a gun or lived in Klamath Falls (although that would be way cool). I’m a bit of a hypocrite actually. Gun rights are awesome! But I would never kill an animal for fun. In Oregon we recycled all the time. And I think I hugged a tree once. Actually our family is more of a small town family than anything. Not pure enough for either camp, we’re stuck in a muddy little purgatory.

Thank goodness we’re in North Carolina now though! I don’t have to figure out what camp we’re in here because I still don’t get it.

What are you?

When the kids got text messaging this December, Christian decided he wanted to write a C++ program on his Linux computer to send and receive messages from his cellphone.  His initial idea was to text a Linux command from his cellphone to his computer and then receive the computers response back to his cellphone as a series of text messages.  He is very close to having that working, but we have been looking for something for the computer to do that is a little more exciting the listing the files in a directory or sending out its IP address.  In my work on the KamVu and GaugeCam projects, I write programs that control a little digital/analog I/O micro-controller card called an Arduino Duemilnova from a Linux computer.   That is the card that allows our computer to control lights, motors, pumps, read switches and temperature sensors, and a plethora of other things.  We have decided it might be a cool thing to be able to send a text message to the computer that controls a few things in the house via the Arduino card.  We have not quite figured out what we want to do yet, but it might be something like turning a light on taking a picture and emailing it someplace.  Then, if we get ambitious, we could move the camera around with a motor to take pictures of the entire room via the cellphone.

Christian has already started the conversion of the BleAx (Betty Blonde Accumulator of Comix) program from Python to C++, but he wanted to hone his skills a little on another program before he did that.  We figure he should be able to publish his cellphone to Linux computer program in the next month or so on NerdHow.  He might even do a video on how he hooks up the Arduino card.  We will keep you posted.

Kelly and Christian:  Here is your homeschool economics lesson for the day.  (h.t. Hugh Hewitt)