WW: Latest invention

(This is a longwire block. It provides a quick means to anchor a longwire antenna – used in ad hoc radio communications – at the transmitter end without winding it around something, which is electrically problematic. I designed it myself and made this prototype from a cheap plastic cutting board. It's entirely metal-free, another necessity.

It's possible – probable, probably – that someone else has had this idea in radio's 100+ years. But I've never seen such a thing, and came up with the principle independently, following a process of problem-solving. Therefore I invented it.

I also designed the lo-viz paint job and the articulated hooks holding it down, made from the same cutting board. [Note original colour.]

The block design needs a few adjustments, but as you can see, we've got proof of concept.)

Compassion Kyôsaku

"[Kitano] was thin and not in good health, but Shunryu was mesmerised by the way he would lay out his bowing cloth and lower himself to place his forehead on it, and above all by the way he would rise up again. He was so frail that every time he bowed Shunryu thought he wouldn't be able to get up, but he did, time after time.

"Eventually Shunryu realised that it was harder for him to watch Kitano bow than it was for Kitano to do so."

David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber



(Photo of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva statue in Bodhisattva garden of Truc Lam Tri Duc Zen Monastery courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Jungle creek

(A shot of a creek in the jungle where I sat my 100 Days.)

Seedling Year

just a foot long, but it'll do
New Year's pine

Issa















(Pine Tree by Pan Dawei courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Straight Key Night 2019

(Every New Year's Day brasspounders observe Straight Key Night. During this 24-hour period [1 January UTC, 0000 to 2359], we eschew our fancy-pants electronic keyers – such as the one shoved back against the wall in the picture – and pull out a classic old-style Morse key, for auld lang syne. The example in the foreground above is the very one I started on, all those years ago.

It's been humbling. In my young days OTs [old-timers] complimented me on my skills, but it turns out that several decades of laziness plays hell on one's fist. My New Year's resolution is to remedy that.)

WW: Green sea anemones

(Anthopleura xanthogrammica. With support from elegantissima.)

Signing My Work

P3s – big US Navy turboprops – swept the village all day, thundering north-northwest over my camp, so close to the mountain they nearly left skid marks on the ridge. Eventually I realised they were all a just one plane, repassing every forty-five minutes. What the folks down below had done to draw such fire I never understood.

But somewhere, on some Navy base today, is a P3 with「鴉烏」scrawled on its belly in laundry pen.

(Tips on meditating under challenging conditions available here.)


(Adapted from 100 Days on the Mountain, copyright RK Henderson. Photo courtesy of Mark Wagner and Wikimedia Commons.)