mortiz080

Not many weeks ago...  ... I was visiting some family in Wisconsin, land of the dairy farm.  (A generic Wisconsin dairy--not my family's farm.)   That made me start thinking about milk and a few related topics came to mind.   The first thing I remembered was my experience with milk as a child.  I grew up in Los Angeles in a gilded age when the milk was delivered to your home by the milkman.  You'd leave a note for the milkman--say, "2 quarts whole; 1 pint cream"--and then the next morning, the order would appear. The milkman and his truck were a common early morning sight in the US, back in the day.     Usually, the milkman would leave it on the doorstep, but the really nice houses had a kind of built-in receptacle to hold the milk and keep it out of the sun.   But in earlier days, milk seems to have been delivered in a totally different way.  Here's an image I've had in my files for a while--from an era even earlier than the days when I...

You never know what you'll find in the hills...   In my case, I found the remnants of two 19th century mining towns!  How did we do this week?  Remember that the Challenge questions were:    1.  What were the names of the towns located near  37.1832161, -121.8543355  ?  Where did the inhabitants come from?  2.  Did these two towns have churches?  If so, what denomination were they?  3.  What was the most common disease / syndrome at these towns?  What would you do to cure the disease / syndrome?  4.   (Optional / extra credit)   Can you find any pictures of these town taken at their prime?  As AlmadenMike was the first to point out, this photo location is in Almaden / Quicksilver County Park.  Just drop that lat/long into Google Maps and you'll find that out.  When I'm doing historical and location-based research like this, I like to look at the place on a map.  You'll...

As you know, I like to go trail running...  ... and once upon a time, I used to run the trails in these hills.   This is a view from one of my favorite trails, not far from 37.1832161,-121.8543355  Near where I took this picture, there's the vestige of an old town that I've run through many times.  In fact, there were two towns near this place, both named for the commonplace languages of the people who lived there.   I'd like to learn more about these two 19th century towns, but they're not listed as official places any more!  What do I do?  An important SearchResearch skill to have is the ability to find information about places (and the inhabitants) of locations that no longer exist.   Both of these towns flourished in the 19th century. There are still some ruins (I've seen them!), but not a lot of information.  Let's focus on just a couple of pieces of information about the people who lived there over 100 years ago.   1.  Wh...

So.. was it a real plant!  The book I was reading told me this plant existed in Ancient Rome, and was so valuable that it was depicted on ancient coins as an emblem of wealth.   Strangely, It was valuable partly because it was used as both a medicine AND as regular kind of seasoning. It could also be that part of the reason it was so valuable is that it was fairly rare.   Yet, remarkably, this plant somehow vanished--it seems to have totally disappeared from the earth.   What?  It's a  plant ... wouldn't some enterprising farmer have figured out a way to grow it (and earn millions of  denarii  in the process)?   (I have no idea what the mystery plant looks like, so I went with a generic plant background.)   We know it was used all around the Mediterranean, and yet somehow, it slipped from our collective horticultural fingers.   Can you solve this 2000 year old cold-case?   1.  What was this plant?  How is it possible ...

Remember our ongoing discussion of the Farallons?  ( Can you see the Farallons from San Francisco )?   I finally got to the beach to check it out on foot, IRL.   As a reminder, here's a shot of the Farallon Islands from the parking lot at Sutro Baths (about 250 feet above sea level).  See those bumps just on the horizon?  Those are the Farallons!     Earlier this week, I happened to be driving past the Sutro Baths and took this opportunity to take a picture from the nearby beach.  As I drove down the hill, I watched the islands disappear beneath the horizon.   The arrow marks the spot where the islands should be on the horizon , if only they were visible from 6 feet (ca. 2m) above sea level.  Looks like our calculations are just about spot-on.   Just thought you'd like to know...  Search on! 

How to see a place in two views...  ... at the same time?  That's really the essence of this Challenge.  My goal is to allow for easy comparisons between an A and B version of photographs taken from the same place.   To do this, I've given you two images of San Francisco.  The A version is from 1938:  And the B version is SF some 21 years later:  1.  Is there any way I can make a web page that lets me have two pictures side-by-side and then have a slider that let's me easily move a divider between one image and the other?   (Here's a mockup of what I'd like. In this illustration, you can click on the circle and drag the divider back and forth to see more of one image or the other.)  The question was, how can I do this for real?  There are a few approaches to doing this kind of side-by-side comparison. Here's what I did...  #1.  You can build a web page that uses some fancy Javascript to create a slider that moves acr...