THE WORLD OF
ASTORIA BOB
 

Projects

Re⟳⥁m – This is a new concept in solid waste management and product design, variously called recomposition, recommission, recombination and more. Imagine a materials design and handling system that is very close to close-looped, distributed, with minimal energy use and very low toxicity to the environment. Explore with us this new way to talk about and do solid waste!

Astoria Path Wanderers Association – The path in front of my house has been partially rebuilt and upgraded as the first project of the Astoria Path Wanderers Association (APWA). Work on this project is on-going. We will be adding some retaining blocks this summer, and doing some cleanup and beautification of the area.

Portugal Travelogue – Another attempt to bypass Facebook, which I've been using for blogging and to post my travelogues after the fact for the past few years. My latest trip, to Portugal in September 2024 is the first attempt at this, and you can see it evolve on this page. Stay tuned for more travelogues after this one is completed!

Insumnia (electronic Krypto) – My friend Michael and I developed this on-line game a few years ago when we had a startup that produced educational games. It was only after the game was developed that we found out that there was a card game called Krypto that was very similar to our game. That was quite the bummer, but still, our game has some features that you can't do with the physical card game, so it's worthwhile to post it here for everyone's enjoyment.

Mischling Book – My friend Steve Berk wrote a book with a friend, Evi, who survived the Holocaust and ended up in the Los Angeles area after lots of tribulations. I converted the first version into HTML, and am actively editing it. The goal is to publish the book at some point, but I'm not sure Evi is still alive, and Steve has moved away and not sure about the status. I want to at least keep this manuscript alive, since it tells a fascinating story of a Jewish and Catholic woman in Nazi Germany and other places in Europe at that time. A mixed-religion person in Germany at that time was called a mischling – hence the name of the book.

Online Compendium of Crossnumber Clues (OC3) – Crossnumber puzzles are like crosswords, but the grid is composed completely of numbers. The clues can be completely mathematical, or something as mundane as area codes, or the year of a hit single. The purpose of this compendium is to gather clues for each of the whole numbers 1 and greater that can reasonably be put in a crossnumber puzzle. It's possible for a 13-digit or even higher number of digits number, but the typical number length is 1-6 digits. Though not many puzzles have 1-digit values in the grid, this compendium starts with 1. Eventually, people from the world over will be able to contribute to the compendium, but for now, clues will be added by the author.

Puzzles (including the North Coast Puzzle Club) – I taught a course at the local community college in their community education program about puzzles, mostly math puzzles that you could solve using brute force algorithms on a computer, and someone in the class suggested a local puzzle club, which we started soon after the course ended. This project involves giving resources for all kinds of puzzles you can find online and in stores, with a page for the club as well. I gave a workshop on puzzles to Astoria School District teachers a year later, and have been trying to get students to engage in puzzles when I substitute teach and outside school.

Bob, Nancy & Tevan's Really Good Missives on the Web

Blogging – I used to have a blog with a company that no longer hosts blogs, as well as with Google Blogger. This project will incorporate what I can find from these blogs into a simple blog of my daily life, to substitute for Facebook. I will try to incorporate blogging features in here, but it will most likely be a simple log of things I think others might like or enjoy, or things I really want to say without the fear of being de-platformed on regular social media sites.

Why We Moved to Astoria

One-Page Calendar – Ethan Siegal, who publishes articles on the Medium platform about science and philosophy, came up with a really cool one-page calendar idea that I adapted to the web and you can see on this page for 2025.

Hipfishmonthly Web Version

Aid Gents & Ladies – This company or organization would act as a clearinghouse for matching agents with customers/users and companies/organizations that are unreachable directly and have used answering services previously.

Bob's Computer Consulting (bcc:)

Steve Berk's Hipfish Articles on the Web

Books I'm Reading (from 2022) – A list of books I was reading or re-reading in 2022 during Covid; I hope to make this an evolving page that describes the books I'm reading at any time.

Recipes

Chemish – English has an alphabet of 26 letters. The Arabic numeral system we use in the U.S. and in most other countries has 10 digits, 0-9. Together, we use these building blocks to put together thousands of words and countless numbers. When you’re growing up, you learn to use a primary language to communicate concepts to others. In America, it’s usually English (American English). But if you make it to high school or above, you may learn another language – the language of chemical formulas and reactions. This language has about 100 “letters” (chemical element symbols), and also uses the Arabic numerals. If you know this language, you can read the chemical literature, but more importantly, maybe understand the world a little better, or at least what it’s made of.

Divisive Issues List – I started writing this list to give me stuff to write a tome on about how so many issues today are about things we just don't know enough about or have tribal feelings about.

Elemental Dictionary – Here's a dictionary with a twist – all the words in it are composed of concatenations of the chemical symbols of the periodic table!

Fonts For the Web

Summaries of Newspaper Articles

Webpage and Website Design and Implementation

Publishing on the Web – Turning PDFs and word processing documents into HTML files visible in a browser.

The Great Digitization Project (or GDP)

Politics (especially alternatives)

Photo Improvement

Using AI Bots

Writing for Substack, Medium and Other Social Media Platforms

A Bob's Life – Being a recounting of what this particular Bob remembers of his life up to now... Started this many years ago and got not very far...

About Bob

Bob was born on Long Island (the one in New York) and grew up in Philadelphia and New York City (Queens). He went to the State University of New York at Buffalo as an undergraduate, obtaining a B.A. degree in chemistry. After a stint working at Brookhaven National Laboratory (working on coal liquefaction), Bob took a bus to Berkeley (the one in California), got a job at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and then began the chemical engineering program at the University of California, Berkeley. He finished his studies and research at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, and received his Masters in Chemical Engineering. He did research on car batteries at Berkeley, and developed biofuel technology in Australia.

Back in the U.S., Bob worked for a company that makes fluorescent pigments and then for a computational chemistry firm in the Bay Area. He moved to Seattle in 1989, to do computational chemistry with a biochemical research institute. He met his beautiful wife Nancy on a hiking trip with The Mountaineers, and enjoys hiking, along with ice hockey, ultimate frisbee, gardening and travel when he can. Bob worked for 12 years at the Washington Department of Ecology, helping businesses, governments and other organizations to comply with environmental rules, and to improve their technology and economic performance. He retired from his job in 2004 to spend more time helping at his son's school.

Since moving to Astoria in 2005, Bob has been involved in various activities. He has been an instructor in the science class of the ENCORE program, which is run through Clatsop Community College. This excellent program (mainly) for retirees has a great variety of interesting courses and activities. Bob is a volunteer programmer at KMUN, the local community radio station, currently subbing for some music shows, and reads Bedtime Stories every other Sunday. He also sings bass/baritone in the North Coast Chorale.

Bob and family on the beach on New Year's Eve

Bob as Judas in Godspell at the Astor Street Opry Company

Jacob Marley and the Turkey Boy (Bob's son Tevan) pose for the camera after a production of A Christmas Carol at the River Theater last year

Rabbi Bob on the set of Fiddler on the Roof at the Coaster Theatre

Bob and the bottom of a huge tree on the trail near Fort Columbia

Bob has caught the thespian bug from his son, Tevan, and just finished a production of Godspell at the Astor Street Opry Company theater in Astoria. Maybe you saw him in Our Town at the Coaster Theatre in Cannon Beach, or as the ghost of Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol at the River Theater (now sadly closed) last fall, or as the rabbi in A Fiddler on the Roof at the Coaster a couple of years ago. He's also been in Do I Hear a Waltz and Break A Leg at the Coaster, and Twelfth Night at the River. And this past summer, Bob performed in a pirate dinner theater production at the Astoria Events Center (arrrrr). Community theater is a big part of Bob's and Tevan's life, and they've met many wonderful people there. [Update: Bob has acted in many other plays in theaters across the region. He is slated to be in a production at the River City Playhouse in Ilwaco this fall called The Brothers Grimm Spectaculatron.]

There was a stint volunteering at the county animal shelter, with the result that Bob's family has increased by two (cats). And Bob has been involved in the county mentoring program, and is involved with The Healing Circle, participating in VOCA (Victory Over Child Abuse) camps most years since he arrived in Astoria. He served one year as board member of the Astoria Cooperative, and continues to be involved in the co-op's product selection committee. He ran unsuccessfully for Astoria City Council, losing by 3 votes, and also ran and lost for Astoria School Board and the Sunset Empire Transportation Board.

Bob is now a very infrequent writer for HIPFiSH, the coast's alternative monthly newspaper, though he still does their website and has worked for the East Oregonian Publishing Company (publishers of the Daily Astorian) posting web sites for their various newspapers. He currently is doing substitute teaching in and instructional aide work in most schools (pre-K to 12) in Clatsop County. And in his copious spare time, he helps several friends and clients with their web sites.

Bob recently celebrated his 66th birthday, and lives in Uppertown with his wife and 2 cats.