Answer: Finding your way?

 Searching for a path..  

... is almost always a fruitful thing to do.  It's especially wonderful when you're exploring, trying to connect different pieces of your world together.  That's what we're trying to do with this little Challenge: Connect different pieces together.  

Recall the two Challenges: 

Tuzigoot site, near Cottonwood, AZ

1.  Just outside of Cottonwood is an ancient pueblo site called Tuzigoot.  The pueblo was built by the Sinagua people between 1125 and 1400 CE and is the largest and best preserved of the many Sinagua pueblo ruins in the Verde Valley.  The name comes from ″Tú Digiz/Tuzigoot″ a Tonto Apache term for "crooked waters," so named for a nearby bent lake formed by a meander of the nearby Verde River.  

Tuzigoot is a wonderful place to wander and explore, but I wonder if it's possible to hike from the Tuzigoot Visitor Center to the end-of-the-road parking lot near the campground on Flycatcher Road (34.7627216,-112.0217716).  Obviously, I could walk alongside the roads from one point to the other, but is there a decent trail that connects the two points?  How long is that trail?  

First, I looked on Google Maps, just to (literally) get the lay of the land.  Here's what I see on the Map in satellite view: 

The red pin is the parking lot, and you can see the blue pin which is the Tuzigoot Visitor Center.  Just by inspection, it looks like you can walk directly up the dirt road (Tavasci Marsh Road) and then cross over land to Tuzigoot Road.  But CAN you actually make it overland?   If you zoom in, you can see it's just about 1 football field in distance: 

But even zooming in, I can't quite tell if there's a trail there.  

So I did a query to find out! I was hoping to find a page that talked about the Tasasci Marsh road (which now seems quite abandoned) and perhaps connecting to Tuzigoot Road.  

     [ Tavasci marsh trail ] 

Sure enough, I found a page at National Geographic webpage that talks about hikes to go birding near Tuzigoot, and this page specifically tells us that you can get from Tuzigoot to Dead Horse Ranch (which is just south of the parking lot).  

There's also a link to the Tavasci Marsh and Tuzigoot trail at AllTrails.com which shows exactly the route we'd want to take to hike from the parking lot at (34.7627216,-112.0217716) to the monument.  

Tavasci Marsh / Tuzigoot Trail (credit: AllTrails.com) 

2. In the Sierras of California, there's a wonderful place to go for a long hike or backpack trip: Evolution Valley.  

It's an easy place to visit (although taking a few days to wander there is definitely the way to go).  But I wonder how difficult that hike would be.  Can you find an elevation profile of the trail from Florence Lake to Evolution Valley?  What's the maximum altitude you would reach while hiking on the obvious trail from the lake to the valley?  

Now that we've seen that looking for a trail by name seems to work well, I did the query: 

     [ trail Florence Lake to Evolution Valley ] 

Sure enough, that brings up a good set of results, including another trail on AllTrails.com.  As it turns out, that page even has the vertical profile of the trail!  (I didn't know that before I started this Challenge.)  Here, I've picked the highest point on the trail (9700 feet)

Map (with vertical profile) of the trail from Florence Lake to Evolution Valley.  Credit: AllTrails.com

As Regular SRS Readers might recall, we discussed creating vertical profiles in an earlier post on SRS.  In the post "When will the sun hit the beach?" I pointed out that you can use Google Earth to create an arbitrary path on a map, and then ask for the vertical profile.  In this case, I quickly sketched in the trail from Florence Lake to Evolution Valley, and then asked for Google Earth to create the vertical profile. This is what I got when I did that: 

The trail from Florence Lake to Evolution Valley as seen on Google Earth (the app). 

In this trail vertical profile, I've selected the highest point (9970 feet), which is slightly higher than the AllTrails elevation.  That could be due to actual differences in measurement (but I'm willing to bet that I didn't select the trail very carefully while sketching out the path, and I might have gone off-trail a bit... that's probably also why my Google Earth trail is a bit shorter than the AllTrails path--they took more time to map it out in high-resolution).  

In any case, the trail goes fairly high (9700 feet is 2956 meters), but I will tell you--it's a truly wonderful place to visit.  For more great pictures of the place, check out this gallery of Evolution Valley on Google Images.  (If you go: Beware of mosquitos in the summertime!)  

SearchResearch Lessons 

1. To find a trail from location X to Y, search for [ trail X to Y ].  Amazingly, if there's a trail (and sometimes if there's not a trail, but you can bushwhack from X to Y), someone will have written about it.  These pages are invaluable knowledge!  Check them out before going on that hike. 

2. To get a vertical profile (or max elevation), you need something else--a tool to help figure it out.  There are lots of tools to do so, but the easiest one to use (in my opinion) is Google Earth.  Draw the path you want to hike, and then click the "Elevation Profile" tool to create your own detailed map. 

3. Always check for ground truth by looking at the satellite imagery.  You know how to do this... now get out and enjoy the summer!  

Search on! 

SearchResearch Challenge (6/23/21): Finding your way?

 

When I was a kid, 

I spent several happy years growing up in Cottonwood, Arizona. If you're young, it's basically endless wilderness to explore. Cactus, coyotes, roadrunners, snakes, and scorpions: perfect!   

That early sense of freedom at the end of civilization has persisted in me for years.  I still love to hike and wander in the hills, in Arizona and in California (and truthfully, all over the world).  

This week's Challenge is made up of two exploration / way-finding tasks. 

Tuzigoot site, near Cottonwood, AZ

1.  Just outside of Cottonwood is an ancient pueblo site called Tuzigoot.  The pueblo was built by the Sinagua people between 1125 and 1400 CE and is the largest and best preserved of the many Sinagua pueblo ruins in the Verde Valley.  The name comes from ″Tú Digiz/Tuzigoot″ a Tonto Apache term for "crooked waters," so named for a nearby bent lake formed by a meander of the nearby Verde River.  

Tuzigoot is a wonderful place to wander and explore, but I wonder if it's possible to hike from the Tuzigoot Visitor Center to the end-of-the-road parking lot near the campground on Flycatcher Road (34.7627216,-112.0217716).  Obviously, I could walk alongside the roads from one point to the other, but is there a decent trail that connects the two points?  How long is that trail?  

2. In the Sierras of California, there's a wonderful place to go for a long hike or backpack trip: Evolution Valley.  

It's an easy place to visit (although taking a few days to wander there is definitely the way to go).  But I wonder how difficult that hike would be.  Can you find an elevation profile of the trail from Florence Lake to Evolution Valley?  What's the maximum altitude you would reach while hiking on the obvious trail from the lake to the valley?  

I think these Challenges will keep you busy, possibly inspire you to go out and visit the outdoors during this beautiful summer.  

And when you DO figure out the answers, let us all know HOW you found the path.  What SRS knowledge did you use to discover the best way to navigate in the wildlands?  

Search on! 

Answer: What's THAT?

 I often find myself asking"What's THAT?"  

A Regular SRS Reader pointed out that this is the 3rd or 4th time we've had an SRS Challenge asking "What's that?"  It's a fair point--we do get these kinds of posts a lot, but mostly because even the task of just figuring out what something is... well, it's still fairly hard.  We've done logo identification, radiotelescope identification, flower identification..   and so on.  

Since these kinds of questions come up ALL THE TIME I'm going to invent a new term for the process:  thing identification.  

Last week's Challenge was for three things I found around the house.  Can you figure out "What's that?" for each of these pictures?  The first is a gadget by the window, the second is something I found in a garage, and the third is a photo of a place I'd visited... but forgotten about.  

Here's what I did... 

1.  This is an image of a widget in my house.  Unfortunately, it's broken.  I want to get a replacement, but I don't want to go to the hardware store and say "it's that thingie you turn to open the window."  

Can you figure out what the correct name of this thing-with-a-handle-you-turn-to-open-the-window?  

Great job, Searchers!  

Mathlady found it by using a straightforward description search: 

      [ rotator to open window ] 

which gives a useful set of results, even though the word "rotator" doesn't appear anywhere on the results page.  See this: 

The thing that's slightly tricky here is that this thing is called an "operator."  (See that in the title of the video and in the title of the HomeDepot result?  

I don't know about you, but the word "operator" has a LOT of different definitions.  It's someone who operates a machine, it's a mathematical function (the multiply operator), it's a slightly villainous person (who might be called a sharp operator), and so on.  

But it ALSO is the name of the mechanism that one uses to "operate" a casement window.  Check out this casement window diagram: 

And mine is broken.  When I go to the hardware store I'll ask for a replacement casement window operator.  

It's worth noting that other SRSers found it by using Search-by-image.  Good job by all!  

2. I found this in my Mom's garage this week.  Here's a decent close-up photo of the gadget.  It's about 3" in diameter (7.6 cm).  It's a part of something larger.  Can you figure out what it is?  (And what it's a part of?)   I believe it used to be a glossy black color, but time has made it a little beat up.  Any ideas? 

I meant this to be a difficult search and to illustrate a particular SRS point:  It's hard to do searches like this (of a fairly generic thingie) without a little context.  

You all did a great job, but this looks like a million different things.  Some of the better ideas this week were linen smoother (suggested by Jon).  I had no idea what this was, so I looked it up: 

A reasonable guess.  

Jon also thought maybe it was an antique wood burning stove knob.  Remmij guessed it was a lid to a cast iron pot.  

But the real problem is that there's just not much to go on.  It's a flat black disk of steel with a knurled knob.  It could be anything.  

That's why I added the hint about "older writing technology."  And that was enough to give Remmij a clue.  In Remmij's comment:  Could it be a "lid/cap for a typewriter ribbon tin or spool…? pre-plastic…"  

I figured it was from my Mom's old typewriter (which she, unfortunately, tossed into the trash before I could save it).  So I started with a broad Image search query to see if I could spot anything helpful.  

     [ old manual typewriters ] 

and did a quick image scan to see if I could spot anything.  After only a few seconds, I saw THIS is one of the images: 

See that flat black metal disk with a knurled nut on it?  I happen to know that this is the cover to the typewriter ribbon spool.  Here's a diagram from Typewriters 101.  

This encouraged me to do another image search for: 

     [ typewriter spool cover ] 

Scrolling through the images I saw a Remington typewriter with this kind of spool cover, so I then refined my query to: 

     [ Remington typewriter spool cover ]  

And then, after not getting too far with Google Images, I switched to Bing Image search (same query).  I scrolled down about 5 pages worth and found a wonderful blog post with a compelling image.  The blogger (Robert Messenger in Canberra, Australia) is searching for this (the image from his blog):  

Look familiar?  Robert writes that he's looking for this part, which he calls a "ribbon spool cover," to a Remington Noiseless Portable Typewriter.  With that as our query, it's easy to find other images of the Remington Noiseless with the ribbon covers installed: 

Image from the Cooper Hewitt collection.

Now that I know the terminology, it's straightforward to find other images of this thing... and it's even easy to find these parts for sale on eBay or other online sales places.  

3. This is a picture of a place I visited a while ago.  Unfortunately, it was before I was using Google Photos, so I couldn't just look this up.  If you can tell the name of the place AND what kind of structure this is, I'm sure I'd recognize it.  What's that?  AND... Where's that? 

Several people reported that a good old Search-By-Image tells us that this is a trullo house in Puglia, Italy, a dwelling make of carefully stacked dry stones.  

Even more specifically, it's probably in the town to Alberobello, which has an abundance of well-maintained trulli houses.  The story goes that in 1481 the Counts of Conversano D'Acquaviva D'Aragona, owners of the territory of Alberobello, imposed a tax on the use of mortar in houses.  Consequently, the residents built their dwellings without mortar to avoid paying the despised tax.  

I managed to find the original image in my Photos collection and using the EXIF trick, discovered exactly where I'd taken the photo.  (See red drop pin below.)  

SearchResearch Lessons 

There are a few here... 

1. Thing identification is often Search-by-image... and when it's not, the simplest possible description of the thing ("rotate crank handle window") will often work to get you to a page for identification.  

2. When that fails, get some additional context!  In our typewriter example above, there just wasn't really enough information to do a good thing identification.  In this case, you really needed to know that it was part of a typewriter.  With that additional context, we could figure it out.  (And if you don't have enough context, ask!)  

3. Once you find the objects, be sure to look into the background.  Often, the most fascinating stories are the ones that start with a new thing-identification.  Now that you know the name, you can do a search on that and start to get some of the history.  Following the story of the trulli is fascinating.  But you start with an identification and go forward from there.  

Search on! 

SearchResearch Challenge (6/9/21): What's THAT?

 

I often find myself asking"What's THAT?"  

Perhaps you do too.  Most of the time, a Google search tells us what the object of our interest is.  But sometimes it doesn't quite work the way you expect.  

Here are three things that I had to recently identify.  Can you figure out "What's that?" for each of these pictures?  

1.  This is an image of a widget in my house.  Unfortunately, it's broken.  I want to get a replacement, but I don't want to go to the hardware store and say "it's that thingie you turn to open the window."  

Can you figure out what the correct name of this thing-with-a-handle-you-turn-to-open-the-window?  

2. I found this in my Mom's garage this week.  Here's a decent close-up photo of the gadget.  It's about 3" in diameter (7.6 cm).  It's a part of something larger.  Can you figure out what it is?  (And what it's a part of?)   I believe it used to be a glossy black color, but time has made it a little beat up.  Any ideas? 

3. This is a picture of a place I visited a while ago.  Unfortunately, it was before I was using Google Photos, so I couldn't just look this up.  If you can tell the name of the place AND what kind of structure this is, I'm sure I'd recognize it.  What's that?  AND... Where's that? 

As always, be sure to tell us HOW you figured out the answers.  Details, people, details!  

(And if nobody is making headway on #2, I'll drop a big hint next Monday.)  

Search on! 

Answer: What's your story of SearchResearch?

 

We had lots of comments this week... 

... which made me happy.  Lots of people checked in to write something (including a few folks who haven't stopped by the blog in a while)!  

As you remember, the Challenge was:    

1.  What's YOUR SRS story?  Have you had to do a search for something recently where there was a bit of a Challenge along the way?  Was it something not-completely obvious that you needed to work out, or look up, or correlate?  What's your tale of SRS?  

Krossbow wrote to say that he was looking for the artist who built two intriguing obelisks in a park in Lima, Peru.  

He also reminds us that the Library of Congress offers a series of online seminars for people just like us (SRSers).  The seminars are free!  I just signed up for "Finding PrimarySources on LOC.gov" which looks great!  

There is also a fabulous Researcher Toolbox web page with lots of teaching/educational resources for image and photo researchers.  (Including this very SRS-like posting: "Is this really General U. S. Grant in that Civil War photograph?")  

Is this actually Grant on horseback?  Maybe not. LOC photo.

ikijibiki worked with her students to find government documents and found great resources for her students which let them do their research.  (She reminds us that the Hathi Trust often has documents that Google Books doesn't have in full-view.) 

Gina wanted to find Garry Oaks (Quercus garryana), a beautiful variety of oak that grows along the west coast of the US.  Her SRS skills led to some local groves that might be Garry Oaks.  (She's waiting for confirmation by a botanist.)  

She also used the ability of Google Photos to create a map of her local oaks.  (Follow the instructions here:  Create and Edit photo albums including maps.)   

A friend wrote to say that she was having issues with finding charging stations for her Tesla EV.  Ramon added a comment suggesting some great search terms and a link to the Plugshare.com website to help find charging points.  

Ramon is also honing his SRS skills with searches about software worms, viruses, and Day Zero exposures.  He is also looking for "15 minutes of fame," which suggests we might be reading more about Ramon in the papers sometime soon!  

Longtime Regular Reader Rosemary M commented that her recent searches for treatments of hypothyroidism have led her into a difficult space where it's tough to tell the legit results apart from the marketing and hype.   Bias is a constant, and low-quality results in medicine (or any highly technical field) are often difficult to discern.  This is a great suggestion for a future SRS post:  Hype vs. marketing vs. reality--how to tell them apart?  Look for it.  

Jon (the Unknown) does SRS craft work all the time in his searches for a variety of topics--from Ground Penetrating Radar, to air purifiers (probably for the same reason I am), background on Gerry Adams, and searching for the definition of "santabarbaraite," a kind of phosphate mineral hydrate discovered in Italy.  (I note that this is very different than a "Santa Barbarian," which is an inhabitant of Santa Barbara, CA.)   

Mathlady (welcome to the group!) is using Google Books for historical research, but also points out that even if the book you seek is read-limited, other books (with same information) might not be--so keep looking!  Jon reminded us that periodicals (e.g., through online newspaper sites--see a previous SRS post about digital newspapers) 

Thanks to everyone for sending in their own Challenges and SRS tasks this week.  We'll be back with our normal programming next week.  

Search on!