fdsailor.blog-city.com — January 2005
4:00 pm: In the air...
In the air again. This time I am flying to meet with some people from a small company in Colorado Springs that Harris is considering teaming with for a small contract to the government. Colorado Springs, like many Colorado cities sits on the boundary between the great plains (flat…) and the rocky mountains. The transition between the two is rather abrupt, with only several miles of foothills.
This is going to be another one of those trips that is mostly getting there. The flights and connection only take 6 hours and two time zones, but if you want a full day of meetings, you have to fly out the previous day (that would be today) and return on the following day in the morning. So clock time it takes a full two days to get 8 hours of meeting time. At least I can be close to the mountains and look at them – don’t really have time to stop and play… In particular, it would be fun to go cross country skiing here, since they usually have good, dry power snow.
Well, I guess it’s time for an obsession update. Let’s see.
Hot tub cover is finished – a success. Check! x
Hot tub fabric cover – not really started, so I won’t count that. Obsession in remission.
MP3 creation – doing well, but still a long way to go. I am currently at classical G, which brings me to the 65% level. I think I have about 100 CDs left. Once I have done this, I will need to take a second pass to clean up the metadata, but everything is coming well.
MP3 players – G and Masha now have small, flash memory-based players, and they are great! They are tiny (4 cm x 6 cm?), and hold about 5 hours of music. Magic. However, I have a plan for myself to purchase a hard-drive based MP3 player that can hold the entire MP3 collection (about 350 CDs worth). At this time there is an obvious choice – an iPod, but iPod uses a proprietary scheme for licensed music, and I don’t like it. There are other players out there, but none are, well, as nice as an iPod (which has 90% of the market right now). So at least for now my plan is to wait until they invent something I like. I was patient and waited YEARS to get a digital camera (waiting for the technology to get to the right price point), so I can wait a bit on the music player front.
Photoshop CS – one of my more recent obsessions. For a long time I used JASC Paintshop pro to edit my images. And JASC is a great application. But using the more advanced features on this app was not exactly intuitive, and I never learned them well. Well, finally I obtained a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS. This is the industry standard application, and it is huge – if it has to do with an image, this app can do it. But guess what – sort of like Jasc, it is not obvious how to make it do things. So I bought a book on the subject, and have started reading through it.
There seems to be no way around it – when you have a really complex application, the only way to use it is to study it, read the books, and work through examples. This has taken quite a bit of time, but it is paying off. I can now color balance pictures, and take people from one picture and put them is other pictures where they have never been. And I am getting really good at removing pimples from peoples face, airbrushing, etc.
This brings me to a side obsession – color science. Color science includes a lot of fascinating theory about how light works and (more to the point of my obsession) how color can be recorded, mapped and transformed. An example is in order – this one will be really watered down, but will still be enough to bore.
The human eye can see a broad range of colors. These we perceive through a combination of red, blue and green cones in our eye – right? Yes, right, but it is not that simple. First of all, the sensitivity of these individual cones is effectively bell curves, and they broadly overlap. They are also not equally distributed. Now consider the spectral distribution of the light reflected off of an object – this is not exactly monochromatic either. Now add another variable – the spectral distribution of the illuminating light, which could not only be continuous, but include spectral “bright lines”.
OK, leave this for a while. Suffice it to say this simple topic is not looking so simple. But either way, the eye is capable of seeing a broad range of colors - an amazingly broad range.
Now let’s try to capture this same scene with a camera. Hmmm. Well, we still have three sensors, but they response curves are not exactly that of the eyes. Hmmm. Oh, and by the way, they do not have as broad a range as the human eye. And they can see infrared, even though humans can’t – true, all they can do is record this as red, however. So here is the situation – despite how well the camera designers do, your camera is just not going to see things exactly the same way you do, and it will really depend on what kind of light is being used to provide the illumination. Their “color space” is also a significant subset compared to a human eye – consider taking a picture of, say fluorescent yellow - it just won’t have that “glowing” look to it.
But wait, you say – how can you look at a digital camera image – such a thing is just bits, just a file. Oh yeah – you need to display it on a monitor. Well guess what, monitors also have their capabilities, and they don’t match either the eye, or the camera, or the printer.
So here is the overall “digital darkroom” problem – you want to be able to edit, color balance and adjust an image on a computer, look at it on a monitor, print it and have it match. Well, you guessed it, what seemed like such a simple process is not so simple after all. And no, your bright florescent orange is not going to print correctly, because there is no way you are going to mix magenta, cyan and yellow inks and get that color!
There – bored yet? If not, and you want to read more, I would check out:
http://www.normankoren.com
http://194.100.88.243/petteri
Well, as I have been writing this the sun has set over the Kansas plains – so no mountain viewing for me. Hope the plane misses them.
The music at the moment? Suzanne Vega – drowns out the screaming kid sitting two rows back. I am slowly ruining my back slumping low in my seat because the person in front has reclined her seat (perfectly reasonable thing to do) but it takes up all of my laptop room. Probably time to quit.
9:30pm (Mountain Time)
A couple of amusing things so far this trip.
The plane is descending into Denver airport at night - very flat, lots of lights. OK. I find the airport. I look at other planes landing - they are flying right into the airport, but we are flying past the airport.
Strange...
Now the airport's behind us. Now the pilot comes on. Says "you may have noticed we have flown past the airport. Don't worry, we will land soon. However, there is a minor problem that we have to deal with. The front flaps on the wing don't seem to want to come out to their normal 30 degree position. As a result, we will have to land with 15 degrees of flaps. This is not unusual or abnormal - we practice it all the time. You just land faster - that's all. Normal landing."
"However, since this is not the normal landing procedure, we have to follow the rules, and technically we have to declare this an emergency landing. As a result, you may notice a number of emergency vehicles in the airport - don't worry, we won't need them. But don’t worry – this is all normal. We'll have you all on the ground in just a few moments - make sure your seatbelts are buckled..."
Yeah... Well, I am strange and say sort of out loud "Cool, this will be fun-- fast landing!" I collect a stare.
Well, since I am writing this everything went fine - in fact if it weren't for the 10 fire engines scattered down the adjacent runway with flashing lights (about one every quarter mile or so, and yes, there were at least 10), I don't think anyone would have noticed anything was at all strange. Yeah, the plane was going pretty fast, and yeh, it did take a while to stop, but otherwise normal. So great job to the pilot! No one applauded, amazingly enough!
OK, here I am in Denver airport - a very clean, new, slick airport. Could be one of my new favorites. I walk down the hall looking for a bathroom. Found one and on the door is clearly marked "Tornado shelter". Gee, Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. But wait - we are! (or at least close).
Airports... tornados - these don't seem like happy bedfellows...
One other amusing thing about the airport. For those who don't know, Colorado is a major downhill skiing destination. Well, in the baggage claim area there are the standard baggage carousels, but here they also have vertical moving carousels just for holding skiis! Strange world.
My abnormal trip continues. I get to National rent a car, where I should have a car waiting for me. Well, they are out, so tell me to go and pick one of the SUVs "for no extra charge". Wow, what an opportunity :-(
OK, so I am in a Jeep something. I climb in. Amazingly enough I didn't need a ladder, but did feel like less oxygen was available being so far off of the road. Then I start driving it. It drives all right, then I look down at the speedo - I am going 120 Km / hour in a 105km zone, and don't even notice it - since I am so far off the road it seems like I am going slower than I really am - like being in a plane.
I slow down a bit. It feels like I am invincible. Heck, I could hit deer, small children, bicycles in this thing and may never even notice! Small cars? No problem - just drive on over them. What about the small cars in back? What cars - their headlights are illuminating my wheels - I can't even SEE the headlights!
Oh yeah, I love SUVs.
Well, time to call it a night.
9:46 pm Mountain time – Fog in Colorado?
It’s foggy here. It was foggy this morning. This is NOT San Diego. This is supposed to be sort of a desert. You know, we learned it in school – the moist air goes over the mountains, drops its moisture, leaving relatively little precipitation for the eastern side. The snow is supposed to be really dry because there is no humidity. It should not be foggy.
But it is – just another strange part of this trip (which is going quite well otherwise).
Tomorrow back home. Home sweet home.
12:19 pm Mountain time – stupid me…
Stupid me. To think that it would only take one hour to travel 15 miles! Seems like a pretty reasonable thing. But this morning when I got up I didn’t look out the window. Denver seems to have received 15 cm of snow, and who would of thought that this could paralyze their main roads! But it did. It took almost 2 hours to get to the airport, and I missed my flight. So three hours later I am ready to try again – no big problem, I just get home 4 hours later than planned. I didn’t plan to do anything tonight anyways L
I wish airports would put back their luggage lockers – I really miss these. Usually when I have time to spend in an airport I lock away my bags and then go shopping and for a walk. You would think that if they put them in the gate area (already passed security) they would not be too much of a risk! What a pain, not being able to leave my bags (I have two).
1:48 pm Mountain time – a waiting land
I am currently flying over the plains of Colorado, which will soon change to Kansas. Looking down, I find a totally new landscape, a dormant landscape.
The land is ruler flat. As far as the eye can see, the world is divided into an endless array of perfect rectangles. Each rectangle holds one or two houses or barns and nothing else. One can easily imagine the farmers that live there planning their day’s chores, planning, worrying…It never seems that theirs is an easy life, but it is surely a life of both certainty and uncertainty. Everything is weather to a farmer, I expect – the seasons, the rain, the baking sun.
But now is winter – you look down on a field, and the snow is virgin. For miles there is nary a trail, a parh, or even a footstep. Nothing grows, so no reason to visit, and not much to see.
From the air, it is different. Only with the vast plain of snow can one see the subtle details – the drainage rivers, the original shape of the land before the tools carved it into such perfect squares. In some ways it is like the everglades, where a 15 cm elevation differences make for the difference between reeds and trees. But there are no trees here – not for 100 miles, it seems.
In the spring, everything will come alive – and the world below will once again become alive.
9:44 AM - Summer for a day!
Today is one of those crazy days we get sometimes where the temperature gets up to 20C in the middle of winter. Yup, it's true - warm, no jacket required, some university and high school kids are probably wearing shorts....
There was also a sale on strawberries - $1.50 for 500g. Tasty breakfast.
Then tonight there will be a storm - by the time I go to bed it will be -5C and winter will have returned.
So while it lasts, Happy Summer!
11:49 AM – Snow, we have snow!
Got up this morning and there was 12 cm of white, fluffy snow on the ground. Very cool! J It looks like we will get an additional 10 – 15 cm in the next half day. And it is pretty cold—minus 8 now, and it will get down to -18 tonight. In fact all this week is expected to be in the -8 to -10 range during the day.
So sledding – maybe there will be sledding (and skiing).
It was a good weekend. Masha was really busy – Friday night through Saturday dinner time – visiting a friend (overnight), including a late party. Saturday evening – pick up Masha and go to dinner with two of our friends (Dave an Lori) – a fun time with wonderful conversation, great food, and great wine. After we came home Masha then went out again until 2 am, and the next day did some babysitting and then attended an ice skating party with her exchange organization.
We went skating Sunday night (club ice) – my skating is going “all right” – I have something strange going on with my left foot that hurts when the boot is on. Otherwise I was tired, but worked on one foot spin, edges, and (impossible) not bending at the waist when I skate (my main problem for life it seems).
Music wise I finished ripping Classical through Mahler. I now only have about 30 CDs to go and I will have only really strange stuff (environmental waves, rain, bird songs, etc) and I will be done.
On another note, as part of the Photoshop obsession, got a pen tablet to play with – very interesting experience. No mouse, use a pen to draw outlines. With a pen pad, the pad maps exactly to the screen – upper left = upper left, etc. Compare this with a mouse on a pad – here position means nothing, just relative movement. Boy does it take a lot to get used to that concept! But for outlining things (and signing your name) it works great. More when I learn it.
I printed my first picture (a scene with Boats on the river from Pestovo) – it came out quite well.
9:47 pm - Hmmm.
Just in time for the weekend, it warmed up to about 0 C today, which is about normal for the season. A big change from the last 2 or 3 weeks when it has been really cold for January, with highs only about -15C, and lows -18 to -22C (!). Bu the good news is that the snow is still here - quite deep still, with about 30 cm actually on the ground.
Last weekend the three of us and two "international club" members went to Mendon ponds for a Winterfest. Originally this was supposed to be a "school" function, but they cancelled it because it was too cold or something! Not to be deterred, we went anyways and had lots of fun! We tried showshoeing, visited some police horses and dogs, cross country skiing, visiting a handheld own and falcon, and finally sledding. The only disappointment was that Abbot's was closed for ice cream afterwards!
February is booked - every weekend we are doing something. We finally made arrangments to go to Florida for winter break - this will keep us busy, and hopefully get us some nice warm time and a swim in the ocean.
