austin_dern

My iPod is giving me troubles. The past month or so the audio plugs have been loose. I thought this was a problem of one plug wearing out, but a different one --- of different design --- has the same trouble. While walking around, or sometimes just driving in the car, the cable jiggles and this trips the iPod to pausing. Sometimes it resumes right away, but it also drains the battery. I can have the thing go from fully charged to low-battery warning, or emergency crash, in an ordinary walk. I understand some of this is that I'm walking a lot more than I did before the pandemic. But it's still annoying.

I took the thing to Capitol Macintosh, since they have a tool for cleaning out audio ports and I thought maybe it was grit in there worsening the connections. They gave it a try, but didn't see anything particularly suspicious. They recommended if this doesn't fix things, try an unauthorized retailer. (All they could do with the iPod is send it in to Apple Headquarters, in case Apple Headquarters knows something they don't.) I may give that a try depending on just how annoyed I am by all this.

I did, at Five Below while buying a new plug-in earphone, see they have bluetooth headsets. These are just $6, which isn't bad except that I don't believe they're rechargeable. I would rather avoid adding to electronic waste, but if the choice is earphones that'll be junk in a year, or replacing a whole iPod, I know what's better. ... Still, I should see what a repair estimate would be.

That's enough of that for a bit. Let's spend a little time back outside Niagara Falls, Ontario edition, and see how they look at night.

Back to the Falls for some night pictures. It turns out they 'paint' the falls with spotlights for a shifting color display.

In the transition between purple and white lights the American Falls look particularly spectral.

The boat-tour area comes out well-lit and amazingly clear from this angle.

Bit of a rainbow look to the falls here.

And here we see Niagara Falls as colored by a Commodore 64.

Sometimes the light cycles around to white so you just see the water as it looks in the sun, but against silhouettes rather than ground.

A quick look back up into town.

And a last look at purple-tinted falls.

Bendy, posable dolls we saw in a souvenir shop. As excited as we were to see Popeye and Olive Oyl, uh ... bendy posable Jesus and Mary seems like the setup for an especially blasphemous joke. Putting them on the same row as Green Lantern, Mister Bean, and Elmer Fudd seems to be compounding the matter.

Vulture animatronic doing his part calling people into the Crystal Caves mirror maze.

Rat miner animatronic similarly urging people to try the Crystal Caves.

And here's the rat plus a guy in a barrel. We did go into this mirror maze and it was really good. The mirrors were all but spotless --- patrons had to wear rubber gloves to go in --- so you did not have the usual problem of smudges showing you where it was safe to walk. We spent a good and great time in there.

Trivia: In 1974 Intel quoted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, planning to build the Altair personal computer, a price estimate of US$360 per chip for small quantities of 8080s. The chips actually came in at $75 each. Source: A History of Modern Computing, Paul E Ceruzzi. (Intel had not really studied what low-volume 8080 chip production would cost.)

Currently Reading: The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention That Changed The World, Amir D Aczel.

Darien Lake announced they're not opening this season. Great Escape, another Six Flags park in New York State, announced the same. They cite not being able to get good guidance from the state about safe opening procedures. This seems late in the season for the announcement, but Halloween is a crazy big money factory for amusement parks. Christmas can be too, though I don't know that they did anything for the Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year's sequence.

My humor blog this week was full of all kinds of ponderings, described plainly. What have you missed? This, if you haven't seen it already:

• In Which I Remember The 90s For A Change which was last week's big thing and is a bit of a nostalgic memoirish piece.
• In which I think about parenting in like 17 years and have a stray thought about disasters caused by gender-reveal parties.
• Statistics Saturday: The Most Insignificant Programming Languages and I don't care that nobody agrees; I say ``Object Oriented Ubbi Dubbi'' is a really funny idea. Also ``Visual Logo'' but I accept people disagreeing with me on that point.
• 60s Popeye: Weight for Me and a cartoon that's aged without a single flaw which is one of those cartoons that brings back the question; were the animators on Brutus's side?
• There are many small things to watch on TCM tonight but they're all in the past, so, sorry you missed it.
• What's Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? What is Rex Morgan doing for the pandemic? June – September 2020 It ends up being many small things.
• In which I admit to not having seen Discovery or Picard and I make, like, 300 words out of a style convention on a Wikia.
• In Which I Ask Not To Be Given An Eight-Million-Dollar Dinosaur Skeleton, Please in a piece ripped from the very mildly odd science news.

Now let's hop back in time, to June of 67 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the miniature golf courses! I'm very happy that this coincidentally matches the theme of this week's big humor essay.

bunnyhugger facing down a tyrannosaurus rex and her kids.

Dinosaurs and mammoths hanging around the putting greens.

That seems like a small baby for the size of that egg, doesn't it?

And here we get the dinosaur in some good evening light.

You know some stupid teen or drunk guy has tried to climb into that mouth.

Here's an alligator-y creature in front of a hole that goes inside a little cave.

bunnyhugger considering her shot and completely icing out that dinosaur behind her.

Giant spider figures, and netting, when you look directly up inside that little cave. You're not supposed to look directly at the ceiling like this.

Evening sun doing nice things for the dinosaurs' looks.

Miniature golf hole that's just the Cool S shape.

The toppled-over brontosaur here was one of the figures that bunnyhugger was pretty sure she remembered from having been here and playing dinosaur miniature golf years ago, I think with her parents? ... Check the comments (on Livejournal) for corrections if I have this wrong.

Man, what does the theft problem have to be at dinosaur mini-golf if they have to tie down the flags?

Trivia: Overseas commerce from the colony of West New Jersey started no later than 1680, when Mahlon Stacy sent a ship to Barbados. Source: New Jersey From Colony To State, 1609 - 1789, Richard P McCormick.

Currently Reading: The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention That Changed The World, Amir D Aczel.

bunnyhugger did a double-take at the noon news. Their commercial outro showed a Bally Game Show pinball. She took that in stride a moment and then remembered she wasn't looking at something on the computer where stuff is meant to appeal to or anger her.

So the story is the guy who owns Rocket Arcade, in South Haven, on the west side of the lower peninsula, wants to know when he'll be able to re-open. And he made his protest by setting up a game at the capitol and playing it. As protests go, it's far better than, you know, every right-wing nutter with guns and a sense of entitlement. Still, he complains that arcades have been grouped with amusement parks and casinos, instead of a ``small business'' like gyms or salons. It's reasonable to want support for small businesses, but (a) gyms and salons should not be open in the first place, and (b) you're either willfully ignorant or lying if you don't see arcades as tightly linked to amusement parks and casinos. Just on historic grounds, never mind being things really not essential. Also, not mentioned, but barcades should not be open either.

It was neat to discover a pinball place we'd never heard of. And one that's got Game Show, a late-solid-state game. It's an era we particularly like and don't get to play nearly enough. If we had learned of the place through the owner not asking when he can join the plague party too we'd probably stop in, at least once.

Meanwhile, in the story comics I answer the questions of What's Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? What is Rex Morgan doing for the pandemic? June - September 2020 in review.

Now let me share with you a lot of pictures of water.

Bridal Veil Falls, but mostly, a look down at a seagull in flight. I always love when I can take pictures of a bird from above.

Peering way down at people buying tickets to a boat ride.

And the boat dock for your sightseeing tours. We would not go down there. It was too chilly to add cold mist to things.

Here's that panoramic shot you've been waiting for me to drop! bunnyhugger peers way out at the other telescope.

Boat chugging its way along toward the United States side of things.

And a view of the Rainbow Bridge, which we'd used to get into and out of Ontario here.

Small little outlet of water into the Niagara River, after the Falls.

Meanwhile in the opening to Land of the Lost.

And more of the Falls, and the chance to look at the end of the world.

Again to the Bridal Veil falls. I've been to that fence, too, although on my trip with my parents and aunt back in ... 2008? 2008 sounds right.

When you forgot your Roller Coaster Tycoon ride needs a queue also and the topography is all annoying and you just have to make do.

And here I stepped down the exposure to get the American Falls and more of the rainbow.

Trivia: In his Poor Richard's Almanac for 1752, the year the British empire changed from the Julian calendar, Benjamin Franklin printed the whole text of the calendar act and the observation that, despite the calendar's improved time-keeping, it had an excess of one hour, 20 minutes, in four centuries and so would still gain a full day on the seasons in about 72 centuries. Source: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Duncan Steel. (We would today estimate it at closer to 8,000 years, although other orbital effects will become important before then.)

Currently Reading: Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Cultures, Anthony Aveni.

On my humor blog I'm looking for stuff for the next Playful Math Education Blog Carnival and for several letters in the A-to-Z for the year. Please, read nad offer thoughts. It'll really help me.

• My All 2020 Mathematics A to Z: Leibniz and some of the many projects he never quite finished.
• How August 2020 Saw People Finding Non-Comics Things Here
• Using my A to Z Archives: Linear Programming
• Using my A to Z Archives: Limit
• My All 2020 Mathematics A to Z: Möbius Strip which features more roller coaster photographs than any other of my mathematics blog entries.
• I'm looking for P, Q, and R topics for the All 2020 A-to-Z
• Using my A to Z Archives: Manifold

In the cartoons, 60s Popeye: Weight for Me and a cartoon that's aged without a single flaw since it's all about Olive Oyl being fat and Popeye trying to fix her.

Now, let me finish off the Allan Herschell museum. What's next on my photo reel? Is it an amusement park or a pinball thing? The answer may surprise you!

Our first look inside that last part of the building: the carousel testing room. You didn't think they just shipped these things out and hoped for the best, did you? And they have a vintage Herschell carousel on display and for the riding.

The instructions for setting up a carousel, in case you wanted to build one yourself. Twelve steps, with the final one being, ``Oil up, put gasoline in engine and you are ready for work.''

The carousel and the woman working the ride; the operating station's in the center of the ride and she'd just rung the bell.

Good view of one of the outer row horses in the light.

Running board icons; face plates like this were common enough even on simple fairground carousels like this.

And here's a view of most of the carousel's band organ.

Close-up look at some of the horses. There's also the spinning tub that, alas, we weren't allowed to ride.

The spinning tub. I don't remember whether it was actually spinning. If it weren't, I don't imagine they'd have prohibited the ride, just warned that it was disappointing.

And the chariot, with a pretty nice motif of a woman in a flower-y ride.

A horse with a good view in the background of Allan Herschell Company shield in back.

bunnyhugger puts up with my fiddling around trying to take a picture.

And here's some of the art on the spinning tub; I imagine this was painted to appeal to the Niagara market.

They had the mechanism for the brass ring dispenser but did not have it in operation. I don't think it would have reached near enough the ride to be playable.

A flat template of a carousel horse set up in the frame that would be used to ship a horse out.

And, heading back out again. Here's some car bodies from a kiddie car ride. Circa 1930 and, yeah, they're pretty slick, aren't they?

The Armitage-Herschell company didn't start out as carousel makers, and they have a couple of pieces reflecting that. This is an ``early silage chopper'' that the company made around 1876, so you can see how they had the background to start making rides.

Poster that I believe is a catalogue reproduction showing off the striker and the Venetian swings that the company offered, and how they looked when set up correctly.

The other half of that poster, explaining what these attractions were all about.

Trivia: The first English person known to be in Japan, the pilot Will Adams, was able to communicate with the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu through a Portuguese-speaking interpreter. Source: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, Nicholas Ostler. (This was in 1600.)

Currently Reading: Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Cultures, Anthony Aveni. It's a book I don't think I've read before, but honestly, just that title alone tells you it's definitely the sort of book I would read.

On my mathematics blog I remind everyone, Using my A to Z Archives: Manifold is a mathematics thing and it's not that hard to grasp, really.

Over here, meanwhile, we poke into the next room of the Allan Herschell museum. What do we find? First ...

They have a kiddie carousel! Along with a bunch of activity tables and little other things for when the place is rented out to, I assume, school groups or birthday parties. That kind of thing. The woman on the left was enthusiastic to talk with a carousel enthusiast like bunnyhugger while admitting she had only been working as a docent for a couple days.

Bumper car carcass that's in the kiddie carousel room.

How does a pipe organ work? Educational demonstration in the kiddie carousel room.

And some pictures of the carousel. Here's the mermaid chariot that looks warm and inviting.

Some of the horses; they all look a little worried to me. Kids, you know.

The carousel's designed to be portable, so you see the wheels for it to move as a trailer. Also my always-favorite shot of how much space there is underneath the platform and how it's supported from above.

A band organ! From the North Tonawanda Musical Instrument Works, because as the signs about Wurlitzer said, North Tonawanda ended up being a band-organ district.

And now here is Rusty's All-American Band Wagon. A street musician just put this together and spent decades playing on the street for the delight of kids and the slightly worn patience of the childless. And, he kept putting stuff on his wagon.

Rusty went through a phase of putting puffy stickers on. Note this was still from when Popeye was part of the pop culture.

Disney playset stuff too, also on Rusty's All-American Band Wagon. You remember that time when Mickey Mouse had the body of millionaire industrialist J Stuffedshirt Moneybags, don't you?

Older-looking toy stuff on Rusty's All-American Band Wagon. The merry-go-round toy design looks 1950s to me, but that could have been produced, like, into the 70s before the metal rods would be taken out.

The mechanical hurdy-gurdy toy decoration threatens to make Rusty's All-American Band Wagon self-reflexive.

Trivia: The Wright Brothers' glider of 1902 was made from disassembling and rebuilding their 1901 glider. Eleven days were needed for the main rebuilding. Source: To Conquer The Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight, James Tobin.

Currently Reading: No Poems, or Around The World Backwards and Sideways, Robert Benchley.

I have exciting mathematics for you! My All 2020 Mathematics A to Z: Möbius Strip covers a topic I honestly would have sworn I'd written an essay about before. But I hadn't, and so have fixed that now.

Lake Lansing Amusement Park closed after the 1973 season. Could there be pieces of it still alive? Trivially, yes: its merry-go-round moved first to Cedar Point, where it became the Frontier Carousel. That carousel building still exists, though it's used only for a haunted house at Halloweekends. (No idea what they're doing with it this year. We likely will not see it.) The carousel then went to Dorney Park, where it still runs. And the Superior Wheel, a fast-running Ferris wheel, moved to Crossroads Village out by Flint. We ride that every year when we visit for the holiday lights. (We hope we'll be able to go there this year.) But ... anything else?

And here bunnyhugger thought to look at the slightly disorganized collection of Water Winter Wonderland, ``The Best of Michigan, Past and Present''. It has a page of memories of lake Lansing Amusement Park, including simple photographs. It hasn't got a map of the park, unfortunately. But it has got enough pictures to let us piece together a couple parts of it. The Ferris wheels they had. The Dodgems, underneath the lift hill of the Roller Coaster. The Carousels. Tilt-a-Whirl. Kiddie boat ride. Skee-Ball. Flying scooter. And ... A-ha! The roller coaster and the Turnpike track. Using that, and the roads, and other photographs showing the carousel building ...

Yeah. That track we saw has got to have been the Turnpike ride. And an unusual one. We're accustomed to Turnpike rides where the cars run over a vertical metal rail, with bumpers so that cars can't go too far one way or another. Not so at Lake Lansing Park's. They had short wood-rail walls, and metal car bumpers that would push the car back from going off the track. But you could roam freely within the whole cement area and it looks like you might even be able to overtake another car. It must have been really exciting.

There's maybe more. Next to the Turnpike track is another small paved track. Maybe this was for the kiddie auto ride? Or some other attraction, gone nearly a half-century now, but also not vanquished.

I would rather have been able to go to an amusement park, but I am glad to learn so much about this vanished park.

With one mystery settled how about discovering something about another mysterious feature of a different and now-vanished park?

And here we see the Blue Goose ride explained. Remember, we saw one at Fantasy Island? So, here's advertisements. They geese ``actually flap their wings and move their feet as the ride rotates''; price $2250 cash FOB North Tonawanda, at least in 1937.

And pictures showing off some of their chariots; they offered more than twenty styles.

Here's one of your classics with a dragon or sea serpent, as you like painting it.

A horse and a rooster; roosters are probably the most common birds to be on merry-go-rounds.

He's ... he's going to peck my face off, right? He's planning to peck my face off?

``Over the Jumps'', offered from 1923, was a new kind of carousel. Its platform wasn't flat; the horses were on a moving platform with hills and dips. You can maybe make out that the horses are mounted to the bottom, with grasshopper attachments, rather than poles hanging from the top.

Cows! You almost never see them on American carousels and I'm not sure if these were Herschell or Spillman mounts to start with.

Spillman's logo alongside a jumper.

What the catalogue offered if you wanted to buy the two-abreast carouselle, and note how Spillman engineered another new way to spell the word.

When Herschell and Spillman merged they just threw even more letters together into 'carousselle''. Also made a pig.

And a dog, which you almost never see on carousels.

A couple of fairly plain-looking horses --- I wonder if they were made for travelling carousels that would need to take more handling --- with a banner for the company, promising that its Steam Riding Galleries gave ``profitable investment and congenial occupation''.

Trivia: The first nationwide strike in American telephone history began the 7th of April, 1947. The Long Lines department, handling long-distance telephone service, settled with strikers on the 8th of May for a $4.40 weekly pay increase. (The strikers' original demand was for $12 per week.) Source: Telephone: The First Hundred Years: THe Wondrous Invention that Changed a World and Spawned a Corporate Giant, John Brooks.

Currently Reading: No Poems, or Around The World Backwards and Sideways, Robert Benchley. A real actual book I bought at my first trip into a used bookstore since the pandemic started and that the owner admitted he'd never seen before either.

In better circumstances today would probably have been our night visit to Michigan's Adventure. Not that the park's open at night, but that at the end of the season it stays open until 9 pm, and sunset creeps early enough that you get a good half-hour of darkness in a park that has almost no general lighting. We'd probably have considered whether to stop in Grand Rapids and eat at Stella's. Whether we did would depend on whether we'd gotten there recently. We had been thinking of rejoining Grand Rapids Pinball League for their spring season, and while we'd probably have gotten Two Beards Sandwiches more than anything else, we'd have chances to go to Stella's. We might have gone to the first couple rounds of the summer season for Grand Rapids; bunnyhugger would have had to miss the last night for school, but that's still four nights out of five she could have made. In better circumstances.

The Allan Herschell Factory Museum was a really fascinating place. Although here I started getting into photographs of flyers, so if you're not interested in old promotional pieces you might not get so much out of this round of pictures. Sorry not sorry.

Carousel-style horse mounted on a rocking-horse frame. Might be a rocking horse by original design.

Something we did not expect to see: Herschell-Spillman made car engines for a while!

An example of, I believe, the Herschell-Spillman H-8 car engine.

One of the signs they have in place trying to explain the relationships between Armitage, Herschell, Spillman, and the various ways they came together and went apart.

So it turns out the Spillman Engineering Corporation had a flag? But it was hidden behind a band organ for mysterious reasons.

A panel trying to explain how the Spillman Engineering Corporation figures into all this.

An instruction sheet for owners of Caterpillar rides who want to convert it into a Lindy-Loop, a variation that I had never heard of before this. I don't know of any Lindy-Loops still operating but Caterpillars are almost gone too.

Spillman carousel animals, with the tiger a traditional non-horse mount for the merry-go-round.

Deer are also common non-horse animals. This would have been an outer row figure (see how it's posed as just standing rather than galloping).

Spillman pamphlet for an amusement ride called the Ridee-O that I know nothing about. The pictures don't really clarify just what the ride motion was, yet.

Flyer for the Lindy Loop, for those of you who want to buy one new and not just convert your old Caterpillar. The drawing gives some idea of what the ride would have been like, finally. I like ``Spillman Built Means Better Built'' as a motto.

``This ride, introduced through an experimental model in 1928 proved a favorite from the start. Thirty-one Lindy-Loops were in operation in 1929 and in 1930 you will find practically all of the better Parks and Carnivals with Lindy-Loops gracing their midways.''

Trivia: In 1921 Mitsubishi created a subsidiary for a small inexpensive car, the ``Automo-go'' 250 of these were sold by 1927 when the project was abandoned and Mitsubishi turned to trucks again. Source: Car Wars: The Untold Story, Robert Sobel.

Currently Reading: Computers Take Flight: A History of NASA's Pioneering Digital Fly-By-Wire Project, James E Tomayko.

PS: Using my A to Z Archives: Limit, some things I wrote about an important mathematics concept.

Near the start of summer we took the flowerbox off the front of the house, before it could fall off. We figured it was worth repainting the part of the house covered by that --- which had not been painted with the rest of the house --- before putting it back up. Plus the brackets we needed were on backorder. It turns out our metal window box was something like seventy pounds of metal, empty, and we needed even more brackets than we first realized. But between early-summer heat and bunnyhugger's chronotherapy, which had her trying to sleep through so many daylight hours, it wasn't worth doing anything about.

Now, though? There's really no excuse, and so we finally got started working on this. The first step is scraping down the old paint and that is going ... rrrf. Big enough chunks of the old paint can be coaxed off with razor, scraper, and sander to make it feel like the rest should go, and it doesn't really want to. Today I tried getting the hair dryer --- we don't have a proper heat gun --- and that helped at least one patch. Then the skies darkened and the air cooled and I got everything hurriedly packed inside just in time for the first drops of rain. Also the last drops, since the storm just grazed us and we got literally seconds of rainstorm.

At some point I will give up on scraping all the paint off down to bare wood, although there is a good bit of bare wood exposed. After all what's important is that the paint not come off too readily, and if it's resisting all this assault it's probably on pretty good. And, of course, will be covered by flowerbox for years to come, too. I'm thinking maybe tomorrow to declare the wood prepped and then we can look into primer and real paint.

For our last full day of the June 2019 trip we didn't go to any amusement park. We did go to some amusement-park-adjacent stuff, though, one of which was extremely us. Want to see? Look along ...

The entrance to the Allan Herschell carousel factory museum. It is the spot that housed the Herschell factory, a century ago, though it's a long time since it was a working factory. Note they were going with a two-R spelling of carousel.

The Seaway Trail poster explaining the site, with a history of the factory. We didn't see other things from the scenery trail, but this does at least give you a clear idea why you might want to visit the place.

More of the side of the factory, with some of the wares that used to be on offer.

And here finally is the entrance. The carousel test building is on the right.

Looking up into the rafters of the main carving room.

Carving equipment, none of which was original to the factory, but which was representative of what they'd use when carousel horses were carved here.

The welcoming home of the Niagara Band, on a sign facing away from the general public, is one of many things I didn't understand.

Allan Herschell Portable Dark Ride flyer, showing the basic facade for a portable dark ride and the promise that this will make money.

More advertising material; this looks like the covers of a catalogue to me.

And more rides! The roller coaster's billed as a Monster Mouse. I'm fascinated to see a Caterpillar, almost extinct nowadays, offered at what has to be the early 60s based on the Mercury Capsule-like ride in the lower right corner.

Another poster offering sure money-maker rides. The Little Dipper, second row right, is their kiddie coaster that they offered from like 1950 on. Looper, fourth row left, is all but extinct now; the one at Knoebels is the only instance I know of that still exists. I can't date this but the typesetting looks to me late-50s/early-60s.

And a band organ. We had not before this visit appreciated the ties between the Allan Herschell company and the Wurlitzer band organ company. We would learn!

Trivia: By 1932 Imperial Airways offered one-way plane tickets, London to Karachi, for £95. Source: Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure, Alastair Gordon.

Currently Reading: Enchanted Rendezvous: John C Houbolt and the Genesis of the Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous Concept, James R Hansen. So this actually reprints Houbolt's famous ``voice in the wilderness'' memorandum pleading for NASA to study Lunar Orbit Rendezvous seriously and I have to say, uh, you can see why in the memo he takes pains to insist he is not a crank, which does not by itself convince.

Today is just a day for my humor blog. Here's what's been running:

• Tales From The 80s, last week's big piece, with the shocking revelation about Tales From The Darkside.
• In Which I Encounter Some Bambi LARP while on my evening walk.
• Statistics Saturday: Top REM Studio Albums Of The Year, 1983 – 2011 a guide both useful and dumb.
• 60s Popeye: Paper Pasting Pandemonium, but a polite pandemonium so, you know, a cartoon.
• Filling my mind so it’s good that I got my work done early today one of those quick dumb bits.
• What’s Going On In Mary Worth? Is banana bread hard to make? June – August 2020 and seriously, how can you not work out how to bake banana bread? My dad sent me an e-mail about this specifically.
• Statistics August: People Wanted To Know About The Guy Who Drew Pluggers Last Month, my usual readership review.
• Everything There Is To Say About Writing A Résumé so you never need worry about me repeating this week's big piece.

And now ... we reach the end of our Darien Lake trip. Much of the last hour was taken up with the magic show, but the lighting conditions were not ones that let me get good pictures, unfortunately.

Ride of Steel's station has these diagonal slats that make it look like the Volunteers of America thrift store out on Saginaw.

The magic show! bunnyhugger remembered the magician from when he worked at Cedar Point, a decade-plus ago. She volunteered for one of his stunts (of which I got no good pictures; it was quite dark) and she wasn't able to get the hang of a trick he showed everyone in the audience how to do (a thing about making rubber bands appear to jump from two fingers to the other two fingers on your hand). Afterwards we talked about Cedar Point and he told us that it wasn't that he got too big for them --- he went on to working cruise ships for a while --- but that Cedar Point decided to do their magic shows in-house rather than hire outside magicians. So that was fun to learn.

There were several minutes left in the park's operating day after the magic show so we rushed to Predator for one last ride here.

A look at Predator's lift chain, on its return leg; the lift hill is above us here.

Comic foregrounds for your photography needs.

Ah, so, the Giant Wheel: notice the sign. This particular Ferris Wheel had been at the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee, and was the World's Largest Ferris Wheel at the time. We didn't ride it.

Midway game operator putting away the Bank Shot prizes.

The center fountain and surrounding areas as we walked out of the park.

A better-populated directions sign than the one from a couple days ago.

The other side of that directions sign, and a view of one of the midway games that I think is the one we played. We won a pineapple duck.

Going back out the park; here's the overhead arch with the six flags from the departing side of things.

The exit gate and its sweet message ``We Miss You Already!'' Nice place. It was 5pm when we left it.

Trivia: Ecstasy was originally patented in Germany in 1914, by Merck, as a treatment for obesity. It was never marketed. Source: Molecules at an Exhibition: The Science of Everyday Life, John Emsley.

Currently Reading: Equal Time for Pogo, Walt Kelly.

PS: How August 2020 Saw People Finding Non-Comics Things Here, some statistics for my other blog.

There's a grasshopper in the basement, somewhere. It's more convenient to us than having a katydid in the bedroom, but we have to hope the grasshopper knows what he's doing. Seems to be near the hay kept downstairs, at least.

Also, the ant colony in our driveway has had another pretty good year: the other day it was sending out torrents of winged ants, looking for a place to expand into. Apparently the neighborhood Facebook group has had a lot of people saying their ants are flying too. I guess it's nice to know the last couple years have been good for somebody.

Pinball At The Zoo is still officially scheduled for the first weekend in October. It can't possibly happen, of course, but I'm curious how close we'll get to the date before they concede the point.

Comic strip reading, now. What's Going On In Mary Worth? Is banana bread hard to make? June - August 2020 gets its plot reviewed and it comes to the giddy delight of Toby, alleged grown woman, coming this close to burning California down in the attempt to make banana bread. It's great.

Now back to Darien Lake, in the June of 2019, and another roller coaster with a special surprise!

Ride of Steel's queue, seen from the rear of the launch station. There's a lot of space for riders; the lift hill is on the right here.

Ride of Steel returning to the station. You can see how it really looks like it goes off forever from here; that's the ride with a hill perpendicular to the return hills in back.

The Predator: Darien Lake's wooden roller coaster and a well-regarded ride.

Some plaques commemorating, on the left, Inside Track's naming this ninth-best roller coaster in the world in 1990; on the right, American Coaster Enthusiasts and a few other groups salute the park for having a great wooden roller coaster.

Maker plate for Predator. Summers and Dinn are from Cincinnati because that's the group that grew out of making The Beast at Kings Island, a ride that by all right should have been a fiasco (novice roller coaster designer just going back and asking for more money to put in more coaster, and getting it) but worked out brilliantly.

Predator returning ot the station. The woman's hunched over just enough that, with the light reflection on her seat, it looks like she's a bad Photoshop job. I swear she really existed.

And here's the train after us getting ready for dispatch. The Predator was, delighted to say, my 250th distinct roller coaster credi.

Walking down the Predator's exit. It goes out onto a lower part of the park so there is a lot of space to walk back and forth leaving the ride. You can see the track of the coaster in the background.

Ride of Steel's station as seen from above, at the Predator's exit queue.

And here the Predator's exit queue gives a view of Ride of Steel's station and also some maintenance areas, including hoops of lights.

Predator's lift hill, and the tunnel underneath it which you walk through to get to Ride of Steel or to get back from its exit. The main part of the park is in the background to the right.

Haymaker, a ride which looks much like a large-size Paratrooper. It's made by Heintz Fahtze and if flatrides.com is right, this is the only installation of this model running.

Trivia: In 1790 Representative William Smith of South Carolina argued that the Residence Act, which moved the seat of government to Philadelphia for ten years and then to the District of Columbia, was unconstitutional. His reasoning: only Congress had the authority to decide when and where it would meet, and therefore a bill requiring the President's signature to say where and when it would meet was patently constitutional. Washington deferred to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson for advice about whether the bill was safe to sign. Source: Washington Burning: How a Frenchman's Vision for our Nation's Capital Survived Congress, the Founding Father, and the Invading British Army, Les Standiford. And yeah, they got really hung up on constitutional sophistry in this era but I'd like to see some deeper thinking into constitutional implications.

Currently Reading: The Plastic-Man Archives, Volume 8, Jack Cole. Editor Dale Crain.

PS: So I'm hosting the 141th Playful Math Education Blog Carnival and I'd be grateful for your help!