Fr0z3n

It didn't seem to chilly when I walked the dog. I just wore a light sweater.

I put on my jacket over the sweater, threw my backpack into the cat litter tub on the back of the bike and started to work. A process that is principally trying to not suddenly coming from nowhere and then be under a nice BMW.

By the time I made it to the stoplight, it was painfully obvious that it was a lot colder than it felt.

That is to say, my hands were getting very cold.

The worse part was right after passing through the cloverleaf/death-trap, and turned downhill towards work. Then I realized I had been pedaling with the wind, and the last mile was going to be all about hoping my fingers would work well enough to work the brakes.

It's not summer yet.

Things I've Noticed

I took this picture in Downtown San Fransisco. I was impressed at how far the trolley poles on the electric bus could articulate. Several months later, I looked at the picture again and realized that there is a large hole in the hill behind the bus.

I used to spend hours talking to people from payphones using calling cards. Now they just block shelves.

The ChevOldsmoBuiac uses two light bulbs per tail light, leading to curious malfunctions.

Garlic jars melt. Easily.

Christmas.

There's a Monty Python Reference here somewhere.

Ladybug in December

The spittoon in one of the printers at work is getting quite full.

The lamp over the stove is cracked. The plastic has decayed in spite of using a lower heat CFL.

Girl feet.

More Axial Rotation

Stitching together a panorama of 20 images taken at the salt flats was challenging because most of the useful detail is contained in the skyline, and in a few rare cases, in tiny textural anomalies in the salt bed itself. A lot of work had to be done by hand, and a few photos that wouldn't align right had to be tossed out of the group. 

Autumn in Virginia from up high.

Begging the Question

Sometimes engineering can be very philosophical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys

The Bottom of the Pile

It reminds me of a citadel, or maybe a zigurat. Something huge and monumental, which, oddly enough, it isn't. Its walls step straight out of the forest, and give the moss something to grow on. It seems rather demure until you're standing right under it, then you see it goes much higher than the trees.

I find construction equipment intriguing. It's always so worn, and the workings are alien in a landscape otherwise populated by commuter vehicles. These machines actually do work, something meaningful. There is more than just a puff of gas left in the air after they leave.

The sign wast starting to look pretty neat, so I took it's picture. A few days later, they replaced it.

Another example of wise prophet words.

Dog nose hairs.

The girly under a New York autumn.

Panorama-orama

When I originally started making panoramas, I had to add to do a significant amount of work by hand before software was able to merge photos to create final images. As a result, I never completed a lot of panoramas that were more challenging to organize.


I found that I had a small collection of folders with titles ending in -pano that dated from various points in 2009. Some of them had significant technical flaws that made stitching either pointless or un-approachable: severe paralax, out of focus, or wild exposure variations. But, a few came together quite nicely. I also found one that I do not think I ever posted.

I have one from 2008 that I wish to complete, but will require quite a bit of labor to get posted. It is a a 270 degree view of the middle of the Bonneville Salt Flats. The lack of detail confuses stitching software to no end.

Mt. Major, New Hampshire. In spring, I think.

Thompson Farm Field Site. Newmarket New Hampshire

The corner of Court and Union Street, Dover New Hampshire

A rooftop view of Reston Virginia (2011)

Inbreeding

Sometime, I try to imagine what it would be like if two movies were blended together to make a third movie. Kind of like how people argue if space fleets from Star Trek or Star Wars would win in a battle.

I was thinking I would be interested in a cross between Back To the Future and Speed, where Sandra Bullock tries to keep a bus at 88.8 mph to prevent it from going back in time. When the bus runs out of gas, she finds her self 30 years in the past. She works with a mad scientist to use a bomb to force the buses time travel engine to go foward in time. Shortly before they try to return to her current time, she goes to a dance where she meets and falls in love with Micheal J. Fox, and decides to stay in the past.

While driving the bus to find talk her into going back to her own time, the scientist accidentally triggers the bomb. The explosion successfully triggers the buses time travel mechanism, causing it to go forward into the future and the explosion completes a few hours after Sandra left, conveniently destroying a VW van filled with Libyan terrorists. The NTSB spends a great deal of time trying to determine why a bomb was used to power the time traveling mechanism instead of the ridiculously common AA batteries it was designed to for. The final 500 page document (written by Keanu Reeves) concludes that Christopher Loyd must have been incapable of reading the manual (found the wreckage of the glove box).

Meanwhile in the past, Sandra has discovered that the man she fell in love with is actually her father, and decides to marry him. Thus she simultaneously fulfills her overtly Freudian fantasies and finally understands the source of her longstanding suspicions that she was turning into her mother.

Oh, that's how it works...

I was reading about Forrest Mims employing LEDs as light detectors for building a simple sun photometer. I wondered how straight forward such an implementation could be. I'm pretty familiar with the idea that most light emitters also generate some kind of response when they are illuminated (unfortunately, flashlights still don't run backwards in a meaningful way, Calvin). Picking off this response out of the noise is a little challenging, but commonly done. For instance, laser diodes have been used in matched emitter/detector pairs. Intuitively, one would guess that a plain LED would respond similarly to a photodiode, but with different, and likely lower, spectral response.

As far as using plain LEDs as light detectors:
It turns out the process is very simple. They act just like their photodiode brethren. Both current and voltage scale with light input. I took a blue LED, attached it to the µA input of my multi-meter, and pointed it at the desk lamp.

Ding! There's signal here.

Switching to mV, it pegged the meter. What a good sign! Going between the shade of my hand and the desklamp scaled across ~1.5V.

Ding! Ding!

That was easy.

On the principle that different LED colors respond to different wavelengths, I went as weird as I could imagine to see what would happen.

I grabbed one of the mystery black LEDs and attached it the the µA input, and pointed at my hand, the computer screen, and the desk lamp. There was some variation, but not as much. Similiar results were obtained with the voltage input.

At times, the voltage response seemed inverted... it looked liked the voltage was dropping as I moved between light sources. This was very confusing for a moment, until I realized I was resting it near my cup of coffee when I went to fiddle with the meter.

That totally broke the enigma.

That little black LED didn't care much for light I could see, but it sure did love a hot cup of coffee.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Stirings

Our worries that winter has forgotten us have been poured into a mold and have started to congeal.

I rode my bike to work on Tuesday, and things are looking up for tomorrow as well. I write this with mixed feelings on the subject. Suffice to say, after growing up in the Rockies, where snow must be shoveled from September until May, I have no real love for winter's drudgeries. Especially the shoveling, scraping, and cold-morning dog walking.

I do recognize that winter serves a purpose in the ecosystem. Among them, a good hard freeze will kill all the insects. As it is, we are still getting bites from last years bugs. The implications abound.
This year has been a very un-DC winter, the pattern of rain/snow, followed by several days of cold amplified by stout winds has not materialized. It's been a carolina winter. 

In the fall, I purchased ~100 bulbs at Home Despot, and planted them everywhere in the yard I imagined a flower my take hold, especially in places where The Dog can't reach. I figured if I saw one or two flowers, I'd consider my project a success. Things are looking up in that regard, as long as The Dog can hold the deer at bay.
 
Perhaps I should consider getting the air conditioner in the Volvo repaired? Does this forebode for summer? I intellectually know it does not, but I am not there yet spiritually.

Everything Feels like Burning

I was cooking sausage for my lentil soup, and thought it would be a good idea throw in some spice to give it some extra kick. I threw a few shakes of cayenne pepper into the oil and put the lid on the pan.

I checked the pan a few minutes later, and when I pulled the lid, I was greeted by a thick pall of smoke, and suddenly, it was pretty much impossible to breath. My mouth, nose, and trachea were on fire.

I was trying to make dinner, but I accidentally made tear gas.