Typical me

A few days ago at work it was snowing. I don’t have a window in my office, so I was getting regular updates on the rate of snowfall by more privileged coworkers. The terms they used were wildly inconsistent, though, and I thought there had to be a way to determine the actual rate of snowfall that wasn’t “kinda coming down softer now.” So I ran a little experiment. I took a black piece of paper and taped it outside in the courtyard. Then one coworker with a camera and a view of the courtyard hooked the camera up so that it was looking across the courtyard at the black piece of paper. I wrote a little bit of software that would take the image, analyze the part with the black paper, and see how many pixels were above a given threshold. The theory was that the varying levels of snowfall would block the paper as the snow fell. In other words, the falling snow would appear as white spots on the camera in front of the black paper. Then I could just count the number of white spots at any given second and have a number that represented the rate of snowfall at any given time.

Sadly, the weather made a mockery of my experiment and by the time I had set it up and was ready to test, it had stopped snowing. Still, it was fun to try out, and I think it was working correctly and just needed some tweaking, though the importance of such a task in the grand scheme of things is right up there with grooming shag carpet or arranging my spice cabinet by region of origin.

Tasty Elk

I was fortunate enough to acquire some elk from my grandpa during the holidays. Three t-bone steaks and some back strap, as well as some sausage and jerky. I wanted to do something good with it besides just eat it alone over a few days, so I invited six friends over. Only one had ever had elk before, so they were excited to give it a try.

For hors d’oeuvres I had a plate of five different cheeses, a plate of crackers, and a plate of elk sausage and elk jerky (and some pepperoni in case they didn’t like the elk).

The last person was arriving late, so we agreed to put off dinner until they made it, which was no problem because we had good conversation. I started the steaks in the oven under the broiler and right after they were done, when I said “it would be ideal if Carolyn showed up right now,” she walked in the door. It was perfect.

For dinner we had a salad, french bread, rice pilaf, scalloped potatoes made by Carolyn, wine from Bill and Lindsay, and the steaks. After dinner we munched on the cheeses and meats. Finally, I whipped up some cream to put on the pumpkin pie I had made earlier in the day.

In all, I was happy with the food, and especially happy that I got to share it with people who appreciated it.

The next day I brought the rest of the pumpkin pie to work and wandered the halls giving it to anyone who wanted a piece. The pie was really good, but I enjoyed giving it away more.

Jump 9

I arrived at the airport at 10:30. Larry was there, and two guys who wanted to jump. This was not enough, as we needed 5 people to jump, and a pilot. We called everyone we knew, but only managed to round up one other, bringing our total to 4. We called the pilot, and he refused to come over until the Seahawks game was over. We were watching the game at the same time and were dismayed for a few reasons when the game tied and went into overtime. Sadly, the Seahawks lost, but shortly afterwards we got our own game into gear. We decided to split the cost of the 5th person among the four of us, so we could still jump. The pilot arrived, but we had some issues. First, the car with the gas pump wouldn’t start, so we couldn’t go get the plane out of the hangar or put gas in it. Eventually it started and they got the plane. Then they couldn’t find the key for the lock on the gas pump, so they couldn’t put gas in the plane. Then the battery was dead on the plane, so they couldn’t taxi it over to the pump directly. After charging the battery for a bit, they got it started, went over to the pump and got gas, and came back. I wasn’t sure if it was the universe telling us that we shouldn’t be jumping today to have had all these setbacks. It wasn’t until 2pm that we actually got in the air; almost 4 hours after I had arrived at the drop zone. I’m not complaining about all the setbacks. In fact, it was more a comedy of errors that make a great story. I also got to hear some stories from the other guys.

After my gear was on and checked, the jumpmaster told me what I was doing. I hadn’t been diving for over a month, so I wasn’t sure if he was going to make me jump from a low altitude or do an instructor-assisted deployment or what, but he just told me to jump from 5000 feet, count to 10 and pull at about 4000 feet, then told me to get in the plane. This was 1500 feet higher than I had jumped, my first time without a radio at all, and I had only pulled my own ripcord once before, over a month ago, so I was a little uncomfortable.

We reached altitude, got over the drop zone, and I was the first out. My arch wasn’t textbook, but eventually I corrected it and faced belly to earth. I counted to 10, checked my altimeter, decided to fall a couple more seconds, then threw my pilot chute. It was so much fun, surprisingly peaceful and easy, and it felt so natural. At about 3800 feet I pulled my chute, so I had quite a bit of altitude to bleed, and I was on a beginner chute, so it was going to take a long time to bleed it.

Until this point, I haven’t mentioned the weather, mostly because until this point it was inconsequential. There were very few clouds in the sky at all, but there were some at about 4000 feet a couple miles away, so it was neat to be looking above some distant clouds when I jumped. The more important part of the weather, though, was the temperature. It was about 10 degrees F. all day, but I hadn’t been too worried about it. It was very lucky that I had been loaned gloves, because while I was under canopy, the cold really got to my hands. The higher the altitude, the colder the temperature, and under canopy one is traveling ~25mph, so I had a cold breeze going through my hands for the entire time I was in the air. By the time I landed my hands were hurting really bad and I barely had the dexterity to gather up my chute correctly.

It was still a lot of fun, though. One of the guys who jumped out behind me brought his canopy near mine while we were coming down and did a couple tricks in his harness, so that was neat. I enjoyed the scenery and planned my descent, which was a little harder because there was no wind at all. I started my pattern too early and landed a little far from the center of the field, but still on the field, so I was happy with that.

Any jump where I land without injuries is a good one, and since I landed safely on the field and had some freefall and did it all myself, I’ll consider it a fantastic one.

A Great Weekend – Skiing, Dancing, and Skydiving

What a great weekend! I wish they were all like this.

Saturday morning I woke up early so I could meet up with people to head out to White Pass for some skiing. I played around with my breakfast and ended up scrambling some eggs with cheddar cheese and smoked salmon. It was fantastic. We were a little slower than I would have liked leaving their place, but we eventually got on the road. Our party included me, Ed, Ben, and two women from Sweden named Emma and Louise who were visiting. Once we arrived, I got my ticket and rented some skis and met up with everyone else. Ben stayed behind to teach Ed to ski, and Emma, Louise, and I had a couple of runs. The weather was spectacular, and my skis performed well. We found Ben and Ed and waited with them for a few minutes. The girls got hungry, and Ben and Ed were taking a while, so we all split up. I usually have my pockets stuffed with fruit snacks, water, pepperoni, and sometimes homemade prunes or cheese sticks, so I just snack while I’m on the lifts to take advantage of as many minutes as I can.

While I was skiing alone, I never stopped. I explored all over the mountain, going through moguls, trees, and especially going fast. I really like just getting my skis about shoulder width apart, crouching low, and bombing straight down a run. There were slalom poles set up on one run, so I played in those a few times, and doing much better than I expected. Eventually I ran into the rest of my party (not literally), and we skied as a group for the last hour. It was a lot of fun.

On the way back we stopped at a place in Yakima called Miner’s, which is an independent burger joint that has the largest hamburgers I have ever eaten. They are huge, and perfect for a day of skiing.

We arrived back in Richland and separated ways for a couple hours to prepare for the night. At about 10:30 Ben, Emma, Louise, and I met again and went to a bar I had never visited before called the Branding Iron. I had never been there because it was a cowboy bar, complete with live band, older men with cowboy hats and boots, and women with teased hair. Oddly enough I knew some people there from dancing in other places, so I quickly made myself comfortable. It was interesting seeing some styles of dance that were completely unfamiliar to me, but entertaining nonetheless.

The next morning I was up around 9 and headed over to the airport for some skydiving, but that’s a separate story.

Another Great Documentary

The new year started off strong with Rize, and I didn’t think I was going to find a better documentary for a while, but I didn’t have to wait long. I don’t know if it was better, but this documentary is well worth watching. It’s called “The World According to Sesame Street,” and it’s three stories about integrating Sesame Street into developing and struggling countries. I had no idea Sesame Street was being used like this, and I have to say it’s among the best things our country has ever done for other countries.

Sesame Street was enormously successful in the United States, so the group decided to offer what they’ve learned to other countries. They specifically try to avoid any impressions of imperialism by encouraging each country to take over as much of the responsibilities as possible, integrate their own culture into the show, address local issues and values, and use their own puppets. It’s incredible to see the kinds of things that they accomplish and the value of what they do, from improving Albanian/Serb relations in Kosovo to combating HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

Computer Lights Show

Back in college I occasionally did DJ gigs. It was a lot of fun and I did some pretty neat things to make it easier. I had a remote control for my WinTV card and I remapped the buttons to control WinAmp, so I could control the music while I was dancing on the floor. Another thing I did was build some lights for inside my computer case.

When I originally built it, the lights were controlled by the internal serial port, and I wrote some software to advance the lights. I was even able to integrate the sound volume into it and had some rudimentary beat detection going so that the lights would change on the beat. Unfortunately, the system slowly degraded over time. The first problem was that the beat detection didn’t work when I upgraded from Windows ME to Windows XP. The next problem was that the external power supply died. Finally, I switched to Linux, so the software I had written to control it wouldn’t work.

In January 2007 I cleaned things up quite a bit. First, I connected the power to the computer’s power supply, thus removing the dependence on an external plug. Next, I set it up with a 555 timer chip and inserted a potentiometer to vary the speed of the flashing. I had to replace a light bulb, but the refurbishing took only a few hours. Now it seems to be working fairly well. See the pics and the video. There are 5 lights throughout the case, and they flash in order.

The circuitry is very simple. I have a decade counter which increments every time it gets a pulse. Each time it increments it turns on a different transistor, which powers a different light. On pin 6 it goes to the reset pin so that the decade counter only counts 1-5 over and over again. The 555 timer provides the pulse to the decade counter. If you want more details about the circuitry, contact me.

Video of the computer lights show in action (Windows Media Video (WMV) format, no audio)

 

Bob Baddeley Memorial Fountain

At the lab a model of the campus additions was placed on display in each of the buildings so that people could get an idea of how the campus was going to change. One day I made a little addition to the model. It stayed up for at least 4 months and moved from building to building.

The addition was the “Bob Baddeley Memorial Fountain,” and it was placed right in the middle of the display. It was made out of green cellophane taped to a piece of colored cardboard that was taped onto the piece of paper labeling it the memorial fountain, which was then taped to the display. I managed to get the scale believable, and the fountain just blended in with the rest of the display. At first I was sure it would disappear and I would get in trouble. After a few days, the display disappeared from my building. Later I got a message from a friend in another building asking me if I knew about it, because the display had been moved to his building and he had recognized the name. I knew about the display moving to two other buildings after that, and I never heard from anyone about it. I walked by it a few months later and it was still there.

I have been asked why it’s the Memorial fountain, as I’m not dead. My answer is two-fold: if I had been discovered by the wrong people, I might have been dead, and this way I can say it was a joke ahead of its time. I was also asked why I used my real name. In retrospect, I should have picked a more clever name, like a famous scientist or a random person. Oh well,

Audio Switch

I have a set of speakers that I embedded into my coffee table. This actually made a lot of sense because it moved the speakers to the center of the room and away from the apartment walls and increased the stereo effect, as well as saving room in the cramped apartment. The speakers serve both my computer and my Playstation2. The speakers only have a single 1/8” plug, though, so I built a switch using a tin of mints (the mints were horrible anyway) that accepts the speaker plug and the plugs for the computer and the Playstation2. It’s a cute little thing and does exactly what I needed.

Steadicam

My digital camera needed some accessories, and the steadicam seemed like a perfect addition. Built out of simple parts from a hardware store (and a pie plate from ShopKo), this steadicam makes sure that while I’m taking video the camera stays level and steady.

The pictures should be pretty self-explanatory as far as building it. We were making two at once, so there’s twice as many parts as you’ll need. The parts can be acquired at most hardware stores. The purpose of the pie plate is to create a wide surface so that the steadicam can be set down and used like a tripod without tipping over. It works surprisingly well. One thing that is different from the pictures is that we discovered that the plastic screws were too wobbly, so we went with metal screws instead. The plastic wing nuts are still fine, though.

Composite to S-Video

With the projector in my apartment, I have a VGA cable and an S-Video cable running as inputs. However, my Playstation2 cable only has composite video output. It turns out that composite can be hacked into s-video fairly easily. By running the composite video signal to both the brightness and color parts of the s-video you get a usable video feed. It’s not great quality, but it’s better than nothing. I also managed to find a Playstation2 cable that had s-video out, so it’s no longer an issue, but for a while I needed a solution.