La Moretta

Going Wayback

I try to keep certain things hidden, but sometimes they slip out nonetheless. One of them is that I am a fairly high-def research geek. I actually have a favorite databases category on my blog, for Pete's sake. This is because there are times I simply must share.

Here's a database I strongly recommend: The Internet Archive

http://www.archive.org

In case you don't know about this one, it literally holds archived copies of Web sites going back more than a decade in some cases. It's not a perfect tool (a lot of the archived sites have been stripped of some images) but it has been very helpful in going back to check out old Web sites to see if the material I have been looking for has ever been on the site.

It's not helpful for blogs, but go check it out if you are ever looking for something you are sure you saw. In my day job I've been able to unearth some pretty impressive and helpful stuff that way. Unfortunately, I can't really explain that to my clients.

Rare bird in back yard

I have been working non-stop for the past few months, and gladly. However, it has resulted in a lot of sitting at my desk, right next to the window. We have a tree near the window, and sometimes birds will alight. Depending on how brightly colored their plumage is, those birds can sometimes distract me.

Recently there has been a beautiful red bird visiting, and I finally decided to identify him or her. To do that, I went to a site that I have used in the past: WhatBird.com. To identify birds you plug in all the information you have noticed about them, the system comes up with a list of possibilities, and you select the one that matches your visitor. 

For my new friend, I entered in "red" and a few other details took a look at the results. Here's what I learned about my exotic guest.

• The bright red color reveals that my friend is, in fact, a he.
• His habitat is the eastern U.S. and Mexico.
• One of his preferred habitats is the suburbs. 
• His song, which I did not hear, goes: "whoit cheer, whoit cheer, cheer-cheer-cheer; cheer, whoit-whoit-whoit-whoit; wheat-wheat-wheat-wheat", "bir-dy,bir-dy,bir-dy,bir-dy"
• He hops instead of walks on the ground.
• When he hangs out with his friends, the group is called a "college", "conclave", "deck" or "radiance", among other things.
• He is the state bird of seven states.
• Luckily for him, his conservation status is "least concerned", meaning that he is not at as much risk as most other birds. 

If you have guessed who he is by now, good for you. I, however, was delighted to learn that he was a Northern Cardinal.

Now, I am not good at noticing details unless I am very engaged and focused. For example, I still can't identify most cars or plants. So it's no surprise that I am bird-challenged. However, this is one of those cases where one does not need to know, one needs to know how to learn, which is why databases like this are such a blessing.

I have used this database twice before. The first one allowed me to identify a magnificent blue bird who turned out to be a "bluejay." And it allowed me to figure out that the little birds who nest behind our alcoved front-door light every year are some type of "finch." Now if I can only identify those gray-and-white birds that I always see in city parks...

Not so-beaux bridges

As a research geek, I have collected (in my head and bookmarks) a series of mucho fun databases.

This one is a lot of fun -- it tells you which bridges in your area are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. The former means Creak/Collapse/Aaaaagh! and the latter means that you've got four lanes worth of traffic crammed into one. (OK, maybe "fun" is not the right word for this particular database -- perhaps morbidly fascinating.) Sort it by structural rating for extra fun.

There is a lot of talk about how Obama is going to New Deal us out of this recession -- if so, this database shows what a blessing infrastructure projects could be. 

Above: Four-lane highway bridge in Moretta's state. 

Photo: Peter Van den Bossche from Mechelen, Belgium