- Lower East Fork Lewis River Greenway Hike (OregonHikers.org)
The Lower East Fork River Greenway is a corridor of county land on the East Fork between Daybreak Park and La Center. The corridor is undeveloped except for a gated maintenance road that runs its length. The road is mowed for the convenience of hikers, birdwatchers, and equestrians once the flooded sections have dried up in late spring. Over the last three decades, there has been much removal of invasive species and reintroduction of native plants. In 2025, an enhancement project was dealing with filling in gravel mining pits in the river floodplain and restoring salmon habitat.
- Duck Lake is a shallow, marshy expanse in the overflow plain of the East Fork Lewis River. It is rimmed by a dense growth of wapato (Sagittaria latifolia). Duck Lake is managed by the state as part of the Mount Saint Helens Wildlife Area.
- Antenna diodes in the Pentium processor (righto.com)
I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures where signal lines were connected to the silicon substrate for no apparent reason. Two examples are in the photo below, where the metal wiring (orange) connects to small square regions of doped silicon (gray), isolated from the rest of the circuitry. I did some investigation and learned that these structures are “antenna diodes,” special diodes that protect the circuitry from damage during manufacturing. In this blog post, I discuss the construction of the Pentium and explain how these antenna diodes work.