Kayaking the Cottage Creek

November 19, 2024adventurekayakingcs

Breezes light and sunshine giving way to mostly cloudy provide good conditions on this Fall morning. Launch into the salt marsh was from the newly constructed ramp in Southport. Our small group explored the Cottage Creek as far as we could go. Twisting marine marsh narrowed to single file and then the gentle turns became switchbacks. Finally the Smooth Grass and Needle Rush closed in and in the narrows the paddle was no longer useful as designed but did serve to swish at these tall reeds that were impeding progress. Using the paddle as pole to push against the mud bottom shallow at this point we slogged through.

We came. we saw, and so reversed course picking our way back out; trying not to lose our way. After awhile each turn starts to blur but fortunately there were few wrong turn options and we could DR toward the sea. Coming out onto the ICW we hugged the shore until boat traffic permitted a direct crossing to the other bank.

We elected to circumnavigate the spoils island directly across from the marinas there on the ICW by way of Dutchman Creek and the Elizabeth River. The relatively open water was freedom compared to the close confines of the creek. The exposure to wind, waves, and powerboat wakes was stimulating.

Kayaking the Lockwood Folly River

November 15, 2024adventurekayakingcs

At 12 miles roundtrip this was a personal best for endurance. This gray Fall morning day was rather bleak compared to the previous weekend. Temperature 60F and NNW wind at 12 gusting 20 mph at times presented an uphill battle. Lost my Tilley hat (recovered) to one of these with no one else to the wiser.

Lockwood Folly River is a few miles from its ICW connection to the Atlantic Ocean so there are tidal flows to consider. Luckily I was positioned for success with high water and slack current on the outbound leg.

The closest forecast is – Holden Beach, NC

Against the wind the outbound leg to the NC 211 Bridge took 2:15 but the return (1:35) was a joy with current beginning to move in my direction, the wind at my back, and the Sun making an appearance.

Squinting to Read Old Handwritten Church Records

November 12, 2024computersAncestrycs

It helps if you know what you are looking for. One Sallie Maria had gone before me and had [allegedly] successfully extracted the line of interest:

Jep (or Jeppe) Berthelsen married Mette Nielsdatter on June 20, 1732

And here is a facsimile of the original document.

Do you not see the marriage record for Berthelsen? Me neither. Even after a scrutinous look my human eye can’t even locate the individual(s). But, we have the notion that the record is there somewhere. Sallie had somehow transcribed the ~~mess~~ Danish penmanship.

Any genealogy explorer and interested hobbyist like myself may trust but should verify the investigations of others. A problem arises where if enough people take a single researched answer for granted as fact and (copy | paste) assimilate them as there own piece of the puzzle family tree then herd consensus becomes de-facto. Search indexing picks up on the trend, AI is trained on the indexed data and… history is printed.

Not immediately accepting the reading of this church record as gospel (see what I did there?) I perform my own diligence by looking harder and with AI as an assistant. AI is not [yet] a silver-bullet. As good or as weak as it is for the translation and transcription, it needs the person with the keyboard to steer it in the right direction or to keep it focused.

There is also an AI behavior known as confabulation. Beware that AI aims to please an can actually make up stuff thinking it’s fulfilling an expectation bias. It’s early days and not a sinister act. When called out on it, the AI apologizes and amusingly so, confesses the deed. (but you do have to expressly raise the doubt to sus it out)

Keeping this in mind it is prudent to distrust the bot. So, why bother? because the AI can spur you to look in certain direction and give insight into what was not obvious. Here’s what I mean: Following my Chat GPT ask for a full transcription, AI found 3 blocks that I had previously by eye, deemed to be incomprehensible and seemingly meaningless. e.g. the third one: “Exaudi (Sunday before Pentecost) – Third reading (banns) for Jep Berthelsen from Vinge Parish and Anne Nielsdatter from Svinninge Parish.“

Without my asking the AI proceeded to explain: “These are the banns (public announcements of an intended marriage) for Jep Berthelsen of Vinge Parish and Anne Nielsdatter of Svinninge Parish, read on three consecutive Sundays leading up to their marriage. The specific Sundays mentioned are part of the liturgical calendar: Cantate, Rogate, and Exaudi, which fall in the weeks before Pentecost. This format suggests they followed the traditional practice of announcing marriages three times in church before the wedding could proceed.” Very good! I had no previous experience of what a Bann was and now I know. Nice.

The AI still hadn’t confirmed a date for this marriage and the AI had wandered off into the weeds with a subsequent Bann (Dom:14) from another party of record and made an [incorrect] assumption: “The 14th Sunday after Trinity would be in late August or early September, depending on the liturgical calendar of that year. This suggests their marriage would have taken place around early September 1772.” You can see what is meant by keeping the AI on point.

To expedite, I queried point blank: Is there a date of 20 JUNE to be found anywhere in this ANNO 1772 record? Answer: Yes, in the initial marriage record image you provided, there is indeed a reference to 20 June:

Torsdagen den 20 Juni, viet Jep Berthelsen af Vinge Sogn og Morten Nielsdatter af Svinninge Sogn.

AI Translation:

Thursday, 20 June – Jep Berthelsen from Vinge Parish and Morten Nielsdatter from Svinninge Parish were married. So, it appears that Jep Berthelsen and Anne Nielsdatter were actually married on 20 June 1772. It looks like the earlier banns we discussed (from Cantate to Exaudi Sundays) were for this marriage.

Now you can see it. With some coaxing which the lens of AI pinpointed and summarized we have clarity.

Betrothal: May 7, 1732
Three banns read on consecutive Sundays (Cantate, Rogate, Exaudi)
Marriage ceremony: Sunday, June 20, 1732

Sally Maria had it right.

Kayaking The Black River – Newbys Landing

November 8, 2024adventurekayakingcs

The Black River meanders and oxbows as it makes its way to the Cape Fear. Mature cypress swamp forests flank the river banks. The water surface reflects black (hence its name) from brown tea stained tannins.

Researchers deem some of the old trees to be 1000+ years old but it is difficult to take core samples as most are hollow (like this one pictured). We had hopes on this outing to view Methuselah and the other two sisters but perhaps next year. Cypress are deciduous and as it is now Fall season they have lost their needles. The remaining Spanish Moss draped on bare limbs makes for an eerie feeling of isolation.

FSD update

November 3, 2024carsTeslacs

With v. 12.5.5.2 Tesla’s vision based autopilot (supervised) the emphasis is on driver supervision, still. While autosteer and adaptive speed control has become relatively polished and worry free there are edge cases where driver intervention is necessary/mandatory.

One might think that the driver, after having made a manual course correction or driving adjustment, would “teach” the car. Future revisits to that kink in the road would then go smoothly but Tesla’s system doesn’t work that way. At the end of the day, reams of video clips upload from the vehicle cameras to mothership — Tesla’s neural network.

Pulling data (last 30 days sample) from vehicle (as a network client) transiting my network to the NN uploaded: 71.6 GB

Autopilot behavioral changes and improvements come from Tesla’s end-to-end AI training system, code named Dojo, via versional updates downlink to the fleet. In this my car (and all cars) becomes smarter. What needs to be smarter? Safety, always of course, but key on the list is the ability to flow naturally with traffic and mimic driver behaviors good or bad. For instance:

The “Hollywood Stop” aka rolling stop might be considered bad but most people do it. Autopilot is not permitted such liberty. It comes to a dead stop before proceeding and this is slightly irritating but lawful.

Along this vein, the NHTSA stop, where one comes to a complete halt at the white painted marking at a stop sign before edging forward to see traffic and proceeding. Good form but unexpected in the common place sense.

While at the intersection, number 1 at the traffic light signal, turns green. Go. Defensive driving used to be taught but people seeing the green light step right out. Autopilot waits a split second before proceeding. It’s a minor irritation, and I haven’t had anyone from behind impatiently sound their horn yet (but I know in certain parts they surely would). The pause is good. Drivers with the green should look for oncoming. Autopilot has been hardcoded to know that cross traffic frequently will ~~fudge~~ run the red light.

Not wanting to be labeled as one of those Hypermiling roadie types, I still like to begin a coast down as I approach a traffic light that has turned red. Aggressive drivers usually charge right up until the last moment before braking. This avoids the dreaded cut-in and unfortunately autopilot mimics this. I would prefer that autopilot would rely on re-gen to decelerate and minimize use of the friction brakes. Conversely, without traffic, autopilot accelerates from stop signals like a jackrabbit — way beyond Chill.

v. 12 autopilot dictates what it considers to be a safe rate of speed based on conditions and environment. Previous iterations of FSD would rely solely upon and match posted speed limits. But now, the car dawdles on some stretches sometimes doing 10 mph under. I know other cars in trail are thinking “Sunday Driver” or little old lady that can barely see over the steering wheel. You can poke the accelerator pedal a bit to help with the confidence I suppose. So much for the annoyances.

Intervention: the need to take charge, assume control, over-ride the automation. Save the day!

More seriously, and Tesla does require users to acknowledge the need and requirement for supervision, there are edge case where autopilot has low confidence or encounters a situation for which it can not deal without help. In safety situations autopilot (hopefully) recognizes and alerts the driver with an audio chime and a take immediate command text exclamation. A situation is imminent (1-2 secs.) and if the driver has not been attentive there could be consequences.

The Handover: automation off, manual control on, is fine when the human operator desires but when it happens unexpectedly because of autopilot initiative the human can be momentarily caught off guard. A surprise transition is messy.

Luckily, these are now rare. The vast majority of intervention occurs when the driver’s comfort level is close to being exceeded. e.g. the vehicle cuts a corner, or threatens to curb a wheel. In such a circumstance driver takes control by disengaging.

Disengagement (driver induced): press the off button, tap the brake pedal, or for the most immediate action; yank on the steering wheel

A disengagement by manual steering will literally cause the autopilot to take embarrassed offense by posting a text to driver: “what happened/what went wrong?” Optionally the driver can respond with a haptic press on the microphone and give a short verbal complaint. e.g. “the car lost situational awareness in that turn and assumed the incorrect lane”. This, along with associated before/after video clip sequence capture, goes to the engineers for review.

I wish there was a way to similarly send kudos or an attaboy. Occasionally, autopilot does something unexpectedly brilliant. Recently exiting a parking lot with a construction barricade just prior to turning right onto the highway required a hard 90 degree turn which the self-driving accomplished with low speed steering full-lock all while maintaining lane discipline. I was primed to takeover because I was skeptical for the outcome but no need. Later, also a 2 lane road, I spied debris (a small branch and leaves clump) in my path and seeing it coming put my hands on the wheel when I felt autopilot do the nudging and offset ever so slightly right to avoid contact. Very subtle and I wanted to applaud.

There are other features with v. 12 that I am experiencing such as Autopark. More than a party trick (i.e. Summon) Autopark is cool and works well consistently backing into the white lined bounded box centered and without any involvement. When its time to leave the parking spot autopilot knows in which direction you want to go. i.e. if you backed into it you probably want to pull out forward when leaving it. Autopilot automatically selects forward ‘gear’ saving you the effort. (As supervisor, verify and confirm the selection of course)

There are times of despair when you say don’t take away the steering wheel just yet, FSD won’t be happening anytime soon, and not ready for prime time. You feel like a beta tester and wonder how they get away with selling this Full $elf Driving option. The manufacturer should be paying ME to be the early adopter helping with the machine learning. I do feel like I’m riding herd with a 15 yr. old with a learners permit coaching / anticipating everything.

The next FSD version 12.5.6 and within a short time (Elon time) v. 13 there are to be significant changes.

With FSD version 12 my driver job is quite secure. It is more fun to drive than to watch it being done and less stressful. I’m always comparing technique and so far I can still say I’m much smoother and more efficient at it. Never the less Technology is a wonder and it is exciting to be a first hand observer of this innovation and progress.

AI Reading Pen and Paper Genealogy Records

November 2, 2024computersAncestrycs

This old Danish Church record, written in longhand, is fairly legible and as a human I can make out the various dates and names. But to get a complete understanding one must read the top most header row to understand what is contained in the columnar rows. To avoid the laborious task of Danish > English translation, it seems logical to let Artificial Intelligence (AI) take a crack at it.

I feed this record in its original high resolution image page format to 3 of the top AI bots and posed the same question:

the person of interest is Fanuel Peter August. what is the birth date and christening date?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet:

[reply] Looking at the church record, I can see Fanuel Peter August (written as "Samuel Peter August" in the entry) listed as entry #3. According to the record, his birth date is listed as 19 Jan 1817 ("19 Jan 1817") and his christening date appears to be on the same day as shown in the "Daabens Datum" (baptism date) column.

The entry number 3 is good as is the birth date. The mistaken S instead of F in the first name can be forgiven; it was penned with a flourish. The baptism date from its column in the record however is interpreted as being synonymous with date of birth. My eye can see that there appears to be a differing date in that column so I pose the following follow up question:

what actually does the Daabens Datum column say. it looks like an actual date?

Claude responds with:

Looking at the "Daabens Datum" column for Fanuel Peter August's entry (#3), it shows "19 Feb in die Kirch" (19 February in the church). So to correct my previous response:

Birth date: 19 January 1817
Christening/Baptism date: 19 February 1817

This would have been an apt first time answer but still the Christening/Baptism date shows the 19th when to my eye the number is clearly a 14. Confidence is low so I run this identical query with another flavor of AI: X’s Grok 2

Grok 2

[answer] For Fanuel Peter August:

Birth Date: 19th January 1817
Christening Date: 19th January 1817

This individual appears on line 3 of the document, with his full name listed as "Fanuel Peter August." Both the birth and christening (baptism) dates are noted as the same day, which was common in historical records where infants were often baptized shortly after birth.

This returned response, as far as the dates are concerned, is identical to that of Claude AI previously. There is the added claim that birth/christening dates are commonly one and the same (equal) in historical records. (expectation bias or confabulation? ) That will need to be a separate fact check investigation.

Now I come back with my follow-up question to try and coax the bot to have another look at the Daabens Datum column and:

[answer] Upon closer inspection of the Daabens Datum column for Fanuel Peter August, it reads:

Daabens Datum: 19 Jan 1817

This means that the christening or baptism date for Fanuel Peter August was indeed on January 19, 1817, which matches the birth date also listed as January 19, 1817. This is a common occurrence in historical records where infants were often baptized on the day they were born or shortly thereafter.

Grok doubles down sticking to its guns and refuses to modify its ~~incorrect answer~~ original interpretation. Let’s try ChatGPT.

ChatGPT

This was the best of the bunch. Chat pretty much nails it and with the single query . No follow up question necessary.

[answer] In this record, the entry for "Fanuel Peter August" provides the following details:

Birth Date: 9th January 1817
Christening Date: 11th February 1817

The christening date gets listed as the 11th however. So… less than perfect. Yet, very cool that a machine can scan a difficult document make sense of it and feed a summary back to me with only a one or two sentence plain English prompt. The consensus of bot+person:

Fanuel Peter August
Birth Date: 9th January 1817
Christening Date: 14th February 1817

Kayaking the Waccamaw River at Longs, SC

November 1, 2024adventurekayakingcs

Launching from the Chris Anderson Landing we began a pleasant paddle excursion downriver. This section traverses the Waccamaw River Heritage Preserve so it is undeveloped wilderness.

Kayaking the Waccamaw at NC 904

October 25, 2024adventurekayakingcs

We slipped into a quiet cove to nose around and here I am parked between the Cypress. Prime fall color from these. S’ man and I tried to return to this cove after the weekend but even after such a short time it had become landlocked.

Lots to explore on this river that is 140 miles in length from its North Carolina lake origin to discharge in South Carolina. This river section sampling goes through Pireway Game Land. Antlerless deer season and distant rifle fire sounded reminding us that we were some distance from city life.

Strombotne Blog (since 2002)

Strombotne is an old Norwegian Family Name