The long weekend

[altivo]

A weekend that seemed like it was a week long, and not very nice for the most part. At least today we didn't have to shovel snow. But the temperature is now way below normal for February, and everything is frozen like iron. The ground water is alive and running, so the sump pump under the house is triggering every few minutes. That's normal starting about now and through May or so. But it just dumps the water on the ground outside, where it immediately freezes. We have to watch to make sure the ice at the outlet doesn't overwhelm the exit pipe or the pressure will back up and shut the system down. Then the crawl space under the house will flood. Not fun.

Because that has happened once or twice, Gary got a moisture detector and put it down there under our bedroom. If the water rises to where it rests on a bed of gravel, it starts piping out a distress signal. (Literally, "S O S" in morse code, though rather sloppily.) That's supposed to warn us to check on the sump pump, etc.

Well, last night right after we went to bed it started peeping. I could hear the sump pump running regularly and was sure it was just condensation or something, but Gary insisted on crawling down there to check. Fortunately there's a trap door in our closet floor, so it isn't necessary to go outdoors. He found no standing water, but the gravel was damp. Condensation, I said. He moved the alarm and it stopped. A couple of hours later it started again, and he insisted again on going down to check. Still nothing wrong. He shifted the alarm again and it stopped. Neither of us was well rested today.

All the walkways and canals we had left in the snow were smoothed by running water yesterday, and then froze solid. You could move between buildings here on ice skates. In fact, that would be better than trying to walk it. But at least the barn doors still open and close. The boys seem to have an instinct for it, and they are funny to watch as they move about with tiny little baby steps.

I did finish that book review as I'd intended. And we counted birds on three days for the "Great Backyard Bird Count." Nothing extraordinary, except that I saw a sharp shinned hawk on Saturday. About 16 species each day.

Warping instructions for the weaving workshop on double weave in May arrived in Saturday's mail. The instructor wants the loom threaded with 5/2 perle cotton, of which I have none on hand, so I need to order some. Two contrasting colors, she says. So I've been looking at yarn catalogs wondering what the difference is between "deep turquoise" and "dark turquoise" or just what color "safari" and "Tahiti" actually are. Perle cotton comes in a huge array of colors, and it's like dreaming up names for all the crayons in one of those big boxes. The designers get a bit too imaginative.

Back to work tomorrow, and daytime wind chills for the next couple of days are supposed to be in the -25 to -35 F. range. That's about -32 to -37 for you Celsians. Did you know that the two scales agree on one temperature? -40 is the same in both. It's the temperature at which mercury becomes a solid, oddly enough.

Comments

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

Wew're getting weird temperatures as well. -9 C last night. Even in February those temperatures are low for the UK, a country which rarely even gets down to freezing point.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

I'd expect "safari" to be some sort of khaki, but I have no idea about "Tahiti"... and I don't know the difference between deep and dark turquoise, either, although I'd expect the latter to be the darker of the two.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Of course the head in the sand folks are saying this proves there is no global warming, when in fact it is contributory evidence for climate shift. The ocean currents are changing.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You're doing well. "Tahiti" is a shade of blue, at least according to the marketeer who named these things.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Mmm... makes sense, I suppose, although other things (like a very light sand colour) would also have made sense. :)

A quick Google search also finds this website - http://www.colourlovers.com/color/B3FFF4/Tahiti . Hmm, not quite the colour I had in mind after all now; in fact, I probably wouldn't describe it as a shade blue myself at all. But then, I'm partially colourblind...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That's a light blue with a tinge of green. I might call it "aqua" actually. Sun on shallow water, or the shade of blue you see in the sky near the horizon on a clear, sunny day around noontime.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Mmm... for me, it's a bluish green, but definitely still a green. Of course, it's entirely different from grass green, and the like, but still...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I believe the choice between "blue" and "green" to describe the dominant hue of colors in that intermediate range is problematic. People often disagree over the classification of "turquoise" with blues or greens, for instance. It doesn't help that the stone for which the color is named varies a lot in color either.

So I can't disagree with you. It might be green. Especially if you put it next to an intense shade of blue, it will look green. But if you put it next to a deep green it will look blue. XD

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*smiles* Or bluer, at least - to me, it'd still look like green, just a different kind of green. ^^ But I don't claim that this is the single correct way of describing it; other people will disagree, and their perception is just as valid as mine. There simply is no objective truth in either the statement "this colour is a shade of green" or "this colour is a shade of blue".

Hmm, maybe we should just consider turquoise to be a "basic" hue the same way we do with blue and green. ^^ I have a nagging feeling that we might just end up with twice the problems then (we'd have people debating whether a given hue is turquoise or green, AND we'd have them debate whether a given, different hue is turquoise or blue), but that could probably be avoided if we said "it's turquoise iff people cannot, for the most part, form a consensus on whether it's blue or green; if they can, it's that colour".

But maybe I'm investing too much time and thought into this now, too. :) *hugs the big horse and nuzzles*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*hugs back*

No, I don't think it's a waste of time at all. As a fiber artist, I take color seriously, and the ways in which people see it is a big part of that.

There are, of course, scientific, objective ways to measure color. Pantone is one system, HSV is another, RGB and CMYK are two more. A tool called a colorimeter can measure the wavelengths of reflected or transmitted light to give precise figures on the spectral content. We still have to pick certain points on the color wheel and say "this is perfect blue" and "this is perfect red" etc. in order to even argue about nomenclature.

Now I'm curious about your color vision though. What you say suggests that you don't perceive blue in the "normal" way, whatever that might be. That's a fairly rare aberration, isn't it? I'm pretty sure I remember that red-green blindness or "Daltonism" is the most common form of male color blindness. I was tested for color blindness when I entered religious seminary, but red-green was all they checked for. The test was just handing me a box filled with bits of colored yarn and asking me to pick out the red ones.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Oh, yeah, colour's definitely interesting, no doubt about that. I haven't really grokked it all yet - colourspaces can be confusing, at least when you've got several that you'd naively assume are the same, such as different RGB colourspaces etc. -, but it's an interesting topic.

Mmm, and I'm red/green blind, I think. Wikipedia has a number of test images which are quite interesting: for example, I can't see anything in this or this; I can make out the number in this one, but it's difficult, and in this one, I can see that there's some green dots, but I can't tell what numbers they form (judging from the text accompanying that image, BTW, if someone told me it was a 21, I'd probably be inclined to agree - it looks like it could be. I cannot possibly see anything that comes close to a 74, though).

Taking this test, I only get two of the test images right, too - my answers were 21 (correct), 35 (correct: 6, but I pretty much couldn't see anything), 5 (correct: 8; dto.), 56 (correct), 20 (correct: 29), nothing at all (correct: 45).

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yes, you seem to have some degree of red-green difficulty. I should point out though that those examples in Wikipedia are horrible. My color vision is good, but even I have difficulty making anything of the first three. The fourth is tricky in that it can be read as two different numbers, either a 71 or a 74, depending on the degree of fine distinction you can make between off shades of green and orange. I believe that is intentional in the design of the figure.

I pass the second test, but the second figure with the 6 in it is very difficult to see. These figures are often difficult to interpret just if the colors on your monitor are slightly out of kilter. They really should be either projected from slides that are carefully protected from color shifting or fading over time, or displayed as printed cards protected from exposure to light except while in use. I've been tested with the quality printed cards and they are much easier to see.

I know a couple of artists who are color blind, and even when they use color in their work, I rarely see anything that seems "off" to me. Theoretically they might switch colors that look similar to them, but it doesn't seem to happen, so they still pick up on subtleties that keep things on target.

It's interesting to me though that you'd have difficulty distinguishing blue from green. I'm sure there's an explanation but it escapes me.

This is all complicated further by "learned" color perception. Different cultures and linguistic groups divide the spectrum up differently, so that sometimes green and yellow are all considered just shades of one color, or sometimes green and blue are treated that way. Likewise, orange and red can be combined in a single nomenclature, or blue and purple. This doesn't mean that people who learned color names in such a system don't see the distinction, but it may mean that they have difficulty describing what they see in terms that a Western thinker can grasp.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*noddles* Yeah, these kinds of tests are difficult to do on a screen, of course - but I also recall I looked at the test images on Wikipedia with kalogrenant a while ago, and he was able to see them all.

Don't ask me about why I actually see the way I see, though - I can't say. :) I certainly don't feel like I'm "missing" any colours, either, or that there's colours I can't tell apart in normal situation.

Mmm, and yeah, culture can complicate things, too. IIRC, this is a big problem when you try to learn German (if you're a native English speaker, or English if you speak German), since colours like mauve, lilac, purple and so on don't always directly correspond to colours in German - or vice versa. I'm not sure about the details anymore, but I read about it in the past.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The technical explanation for color vision variations has to do with the biochemistry in the cones, the color receptors in your eyes. Tiny genetic variations affect the light sensitivities of the chemicals that the cones use to detect different wavelengths of light. The largest variations produce obvious symptoms that we call "color blindness" but there are smaller variations that cause everyone to see colors in different ways. These differences are subtle and very hard to quantify and describe, I think.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

I'd expect them to be, yes... as long as people can still distinguish colours (equally) well, how can you measure whether they perceive them differently, anyway?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, we don't all distinguish fine gradations and intensities equally well, even when we have little difficulty with the larger differences, as between say yellow and blue. I know there have been scientific studies done that tried to determine just how variable this sort of thing is, but I don't remember how successful they were. I imagine they would consist of showing brief flashes of colored light and asking the subject whether they were the same or different, or some sort of thing like that.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*noddles* MMmm... that's interesting, yes.

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

I ordered these from Campmor so I don't fall on my ass again just coming home from the train. Same thing here, lots of frozen snowmelt around.

I'll let you know how they work out, if you like.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've seen Yaktrax discussed before and threatened to get a set for Gary. He has a lot more trouble dealing with the ice than I usually do. Of course, he walks on it a lot more than I do, too.

Yes, please let me know how they work out for you. Still enough winter left to justify ordering them for him. Or if not, maybe having them on hand will put an end to this nonsense. Sort of like carrying an umbrella to keep it from raining?