16 August 2015
Island Life: 16 August 2015
16/08/15 15:31
A couple weeks ago we mentioned that we were looking at painting the house. We even posted a picture of the four colours we were thinking about. We got a lot of feedback and we have a winner.
Drumroll please…….
We went with the red. The colour is actually called Cherry Cola. I wanted to call it Rick, but when you say Rick Cola somebody always plays a Swiss horn.
As you can see we have one end of the house painted. It seemed like a good idea to start on that end, as the patchwork quilt effect was getting a bit old. Our plan was to paint the end, then proceed down the side under the carport and by the back door. Then the other end of the house. Finally trim, the shutters, the front steps, the deck framing and stairs, and last of all the roof peaks on each end of the house. We expect it to take a couple of months to do it. But, we’re in no hurry. So after finishing the end on Friday we got up Saturday morning expecting to start in the carport. But it was raining. Out of nowhere we got a good storm that sprinkled for most of the morning. The rain was appreciated but really, the timing was not great. Not only did it keep us from painting that morning, the wet marked the exposed end so we had to do a light “dry brush” coat over most of it to get rid of some glossy spots. We were finally able to get the second section done in the afternoon.
So why did we end up going with the red? It’s interesting that I’d ask me that. We posed the options to this list, we asked everyone we knew around here, I even put it on Tumblr. We got a lot of feedback from people literally all over the world. Overall the vote was close: 55% for #4 “Mr. Hair&Sweat blue” and 45% for the #3 red. There were a few votes for the other two colours, and one write in for tan, ugh, but overwhelmingly the consensus was 3 or 4. However this didn’t answer the question. We still had to pick one of the two. I did suggest that we just do blue and red stripes, but Marsha didn’t think that would be a good idea. We were at a deadlock and so this was a time for (fanfare) The Amazing Supermath. Faster than the speeding bullet he analyzed the responses and found an interesting relationship. Among people who had actually seen our house in person, two-thirds preferred the red. Among those that had only seen the picture on the internet or e-mail, two-thirds preferred the blue. Blue was slightly more popular only because that group was larger.
And that’s why we went with the red.
Actually, this has been a math heavy week. I was in the office while my boss was conferring with one of the machinists on how to make a particularly difficult part. Now these are middle aged machinists that have eaten their share of cutting oil and have grease permanently embedded in the skin on their hands. To my surprise they were saying things like:
“So we take a tangent from this point and rotate around 27 degrees…”
“No, we have to go normal to that point and then move the cosine of 27 degrees.”
“Remember now, this side is the hypotenuse.”
“Yes but these two notches are arcs from different circles.”
“This is a reflector for the light. Shouldn’t they be a parabolic curve?”
The conversation continued for about fifteen minutes and it sounded like a couple of high school math teachers designing a really nasty homework problem. I wish I could have recorded it, just so I could play it for any kid who says, “I’ll never use trigonometry.” or “When will I ever use algebra in real life?” Yes you will. You will use it far more that you ever imagine. From drug dosages, to what fastener to use in a machine, to the movie Frozen, to music, to money, it’s all math. You better get good at it, because it’s the tool we use to understand everything.
Now here’s Tom Lehrer singing about how great and useful mathematics is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQej8AOjEHc
Any of you with little kids; you need to play this to them often and regularly. Make it part of their familiar repertoire, along with math. They will thank you someday.
Eventually.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: Imoto doesn’t care about the beautiful sunrise
Drumroll please…….
We went with the red. The colour is actually called Cherry Cola. I wanted to call it Rick, but when you say Rick Cola somebody always plays a Swiss horn.
As you can see we have one end of the house painted. It seemed like a good idea to start on that end, as the patchwork quilt effect was getting a bit old. Our plan was to paint the end, then proceed down the side under the carport and by the back door. Then the other end of the house. Finally trim, the shutters, the front steps, the deck framing and stairs, and last of all the roof peaks on each end of the house. We expect it to take a couple of months to do it. But, we’re in no hurry. So after finishing the end on Friday we got up Saturday morning expecting to start in the carport. But it was raining. Out of nowhere we got a good storm that sprinkled for most of the morning. The rain was appreciated but really, the timing was not great. Not only did it keep us from painting that morning, the wet marked the exposed end so we had to do a light “dry brush” coat over most of it to get rid of some glossy spots. We were finally able to get the second section done in the afternoon.
So why did we end up going with the red? It’s interesting that I’d ask me that. We posed the options to this list, we asked everyone we knew around here, I even put it on Tumblr. We got a lot of feedback from people literally all over the world. Overall the vote was close: 55% for #4 “Mr. Hair&Sweat blue” and 45% for the #3 red. There were a few votes for the other two colours, and one write in for tan, ugh, but overwhelmingly the consensus was 3 or 4. However this didn’t answer the question. We still had to pick one of the two. I did suggest that we just do blue and red stripes, but Marsha didn’t think that would be a good idea. We were at a deadlock and so this was a time for (fanfare) The Amazing Supermath. Faster than the speeding bullet he analyzed the responses and found an interesting relationship. Among people who had actually seen our house in person, two-thirds preferred the red. Among those that had only seen the picture on the internet or e-mail, two-thirds preferred the blue. Blue was slightly more popular only because that group was larger.
And that’s why we went with the red.
Actually, this has been a math heavy week. I was in the office while my boss was conferring with one of the machinists on how to make a particularly difficult part. Now these are middle aged machinists that have eaten their share of cutting oil and have grease permanently embedded in the skin on their hands. To my surprise they were saying things like:
“So we take a tangent from this point and rotate around 27 degrees…”
“No, we have to go normal to that point and then move the cosine of 27 degrees.”
“Remember now, this side is the hypotenuse.”
“Yes but these two notches are arcs from different circles.”
“This is a reflector for the light. Shouldn’t they be a parabolic curve?”
The conversation continued for about fifteen minutes and it sounded like a couple of high school math teachers designing a really nasty homework problem. I wish I could have recorded it, just so I could play it for any kid who says, “I’ll never use trigonometry.” or “When will I ever use algebra in real life?” Yes you will. You will use it far more that you ever imagine. From drug dosages, to what fastener to use in a machine, to the movie Frozen, to music, to money, it’s all math. You better get good at it, because it’s the tool we use to understand everything.
Now here’s Tom Lehrer singing about how great and useful mathematics is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQej8AOjEHc
Any of you with little kids; you need to play this to them often and regularly. Make it part of their familiar repertoire, along with math. They will thank you someday.
Eventually.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: Imoto doesn’t care about the beautiful sunrise