The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for the ‘General’ Category.
I’m off to Saudi Arabia today with my coworker Jack for Earthmine. I’ll be back, albeit jetlagged, November 3rd.
Next, US cross country trip!! approximately November 14-22nd
Overlooking Putrajaya Malaysia at dusk from the infinity pool of the Shangri-La Hotel.
A vignette for you…
The Old Dog
One day an old German Shepherd starts chasing rabbits and before long, discovers that he’s lost. Wandering about, he notices a panther heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of having lunch.
The old German Shepherd thinks, ‘Oh, oh! I’m in deep doo-doo now!’ Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the panther is about to leap, the old German Shepherd exclaims loudly, ‘Boy, that was one delicious panther! I wonder, if there are any more around here?’
Hearing this, the young panther halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees. ‘Whew!’ says the panther, ‘That was close! That old German Shepherd nearly had me!’
Meanwhile, a squirrel who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the panther. So, off he goes..
The squirrel soon catches up with the panther, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the panther.The young panther is furious at being made a fool of and says, ‘Here, squirrel, hop on my back and see what’s going to happen to that conniving canine!
Now, the old German Shepherd sees the panther coming with the squirrel on his back and thinks, ‘What am I going to do now?’, but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn’t seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the old German Shepherd says…
‘Where’s that squirrel? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another panther!Moral of this story…
Don’t mess with the old dogs… Age and skill will always overcome youth and treachery!
BS and brilliance only come with age and experience.
My Flame Effects class had a little get together at NIMBY over the summer. Here are some photos from David Nichols
My favorite images from the set…
Great fun!
I’m septuple booked with fun stuff this coming weekend.
– meeting with Schuyler for burritos and mechatronic art fun
– going to SWARM Camp, upgrading SWARM for the singularity
– Picking up equipment (and coworker) from the airport and calibrating it over the weekend for my upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia
– Going to a relatively low key fire art kinda party
– Going to an over-the-top fire art kinda party
– Assembling RBBB kits for an upcoming Crucible class (I’m probably not teaching any of it though :-( )
– Going to a One Man Band festival (Cafe Du Nord, Sunday 10pm) and finally seeing Chicken John in the flesh
Trav writes a very thoughtful piece.
Wandering around the desert wearing nothing more than body paint, a jockstrap made from a $1 pair of used overalls, and a ceremonial staff covered with LEDs and driven by a microcontroller that you soldered together and programmed out of $15 worth of parts is the new conspicuous consumption: it takes $16 worth of materials, and 2,000 hours of time.
Yup. That’s how wer’re wired. Funny, i’n’t is? Go read the whole thing.
Darn, I see all kinds of interesting arguments I’d like to pick at. If only I could get my inbox below 400 unread emails. (yeah, I’m flaunting a little by saying that, but also it’s uncool of me to not reply to my friends’ emails :-o)
Here’s a video bit of Brent and I talking about earthmine to the people in Cyberjaya, Malaysia.
http://cyberjaya-tv.com/v2/2010/10/3d-street-level-view-data-collection/
(local version)
PS. Great thanks to Moses Francis at Cuzzy Media for sending me an .flv version of the video that I can make available here. The Cyberjaya folks are all terrific!
I’m in Hong Kong airport after a successful 10 days of picture taking. Malaysia is totally nice; I’ll show you my 50,000 picture scrapbook soon.
I drove every meter of every road in George Town, Cyberjaya, and Melaka. Well, think we missed like 3 blocks total but that was my fault.
Next up: Riyadh from Oct 25-31.
Holy crap. Driving on the wrong side of the road is INCREDIBLY STRESSFUL!
I just went out to dinner. We’ve always been having dinner in our hotel at the Putrajaya Shangri-La. It’s good but we have both been getting bored with the menu. I went out but Brent stayed at the hotel.
In Malaysia, the steering wheel is on the right, the shifter on the left, the blinkers on the right, both side mirrors are convex (i.e. “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear”), the rear mirror is to your left, but the ignition is oddly still on the right.
I drove a total of like 3km to the mall and back and I’m so frazzled. I shouldn’t be. I mean, I’ve been sitting in the back seat as navigator for like 1,o00 kilometers of roads, half city miles. My job has been to make sure we drive EVERY meter of EVERY road in all the cities we drive… Cyberjaya, Malaka, Georgetown, and some other cities coming up. Amazingly, I haven’t gotten car sick from reading in the car even though I’ve been reading maps in a moving car continuously for 3 days straight. It took a while to get used to navigating in this drive-on-the-left country; left turns are easier, reading offramps is backwards etc…
Now it’s time to sleep! (It’s 10pm here, it’s 7am in San Francisco!)
I am sitting in a high backed easy chair with arms that curve up and down sensually. Out the window I can only see the tops of palm trees out to 200 meters and the spire of Taman Putra Perdana. The torrential downpour shrouds the rest of the world in a gray mist. An hour ago I could clearly see the dramatic oversized moire cables of the Seri Wawasan Bridge, and the dramatic onion shaped minarets of both the Putra Mosque and the office of the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Any of those landmarks are good for a story on their own. But right now the rain, lightning, and grand opulent rolling thunder take center stage.
It’s quite a show! Every day by 3pm tall black featureless clouds amble in from the north. You can see them an hour away. Today I could sense them approaching while sitting in this very spot. I couldn’t see them from my seat but I knew they were about to make their appearance. The color of the air changed a little, the wind shifted, the distant drumroll of thunder offered ample announcement.
This has been quite a trip. Yesterday the rain caught us while driving. Due to the sensitive nature of our cameras, we can’t have even 1 drop of rain on any of our 8 lenses. We found ourselves at a highway underpass, along with some motorcylists, hiding from the torrents of rain. But it found a way to get me soaked. The first time a car went by, the splash soaked the backs of my legs while I was slipping the lens covers on the rig. I thought I had the rain beat by hiding behind the car when the next vehicles went by. But the truck sent up a wave that soaked us both even behind the car! Now, ducking my head low behind the car, below the windows as each car past I felt better… until a van got the angles just right and soaked me again! I laughed out loud, totally soaked with the clean warm rainwater.
(this photo taken 5 minutes after the rains let up a bit)