Picture of Me in Wired

Wired: Bomb Detection CEO Could be New Darpa Chief

The article focuses on a rumor that Regina Dugan (in the center of the picture) may be appointed the next head of DARPA. DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has been responsible for developing all kinds of technology. They had their hands in the development of the internet, advanced unmanned aerial vehicles, etc, and were the creators of the DARPA Grand Challenge (the famed contest between robotic vehicles [wikipedia.org]). Blah blah blah...

The interesting part of the article (for me at least) is I'm in the picture that is running with the article! That picture was taken almost 10 years ago, when I (as part of a team) went to the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab to demonstrate some miniature autonomous robots.

Yup, that's me on the right there, back when I had a crew cut. I was having a bad hair decade. Remember, there was a point in my life when I had a mullet and thought that I didn't look like an idiot. It's not exactly like I have the best self-evaluation skills. I don't know what the hell I was thinking... Like my head isn't odd-shaped enough without drawing attention to it with a crew cut. All I needed was a pair of thick glasses to look exactly like a stereotypical aerospace engineer from the 50s.

This was, of course, before I discovered that it would look less ridiculous if I put an entire quart of hair gel into my hair each morning (which is what I do now).

Photo Credit: Case Western Reserve University

Stairway

New Autocross Numbers

I mentioned a while ago that I have gotten back into autocross, which is an amateur form of auto racing.

Like most forms of auto racing, the officials and announcers need a way to quickly identify cars, so you are required to have a set of numbers and class letters on the side of your car. Up until now, I have used a set of numbers that I made myself. They worked, but kind of looked like a trained beaver chewed them of a big sheet. And they didn't stick that well to the car. And because each letter and number was a separate magnet, one was always crooked (no matter how long I spent trying to line them up).

I finally got around to getting a nice set of numbers professionally made:


I decided to have the class letters on a separate magnet from my numbers, to accommodate any future class changes (if I changed class, I would only have to have the smaller magnets remade). I could have had the background match the color of my car, but then it would have looked weird when/if I buy another car. I figured the classic black/white was boring, but best for the long term.

The Future of Photography

Esquire: Megan Fox Transforms: June Issue Sneak Peek

"You probably noticed there's something different about this Megan Fox cover tease for our next issue: It wasn't shot with a camera. At least not a still camera. For the first time in Esquire's history (and, we imagine, magazine history in general), a cover image was shot as a video."

"'...As in still photography, a lot of it is capturing unexpected moments. This takes that one step further.' He then went back and pulled out the best images..."

I think it's obvious this is the future of photography. I suppose that isn't such a revolutionary statement. It's been clear for the past few years that we're seeing the convergence of a lot of different technologies. And as digital still cameras get better and better at taking video, it's only going to be natural that we'll just switch over to shooting video all of the time. Let's say you're at a wedding -- you could just shoot video continuously, and then pull out the best shots to email to your friends or pull short video clips.

How many times have you tried to take a still picture of something in action and missed the moment? Well, that never has to happen anymore if you're shooting this way.

That's exactly how high speed video cameras have worked for at least a decade, by the way. They continuously shoot video and write it all to a buffer. When you hit a trigger button, it starts writing that buffer to disk. That way, even if you hit the trigger right after something you want, you'll still get it recorded because it's in the buffer. I have to imagine that sometime soon, we'll see that technology coming to regular cameras.

More Pictures from Vegas

Here are some pictures from our visit to the north rim of the Grand Canyon:




Sorry this is so lame. I'm still trying to get caught up. Real posting next week.

Back from Vegas

Heimlich and I just got back from Vegas. Posting may be sporadic until I catch up with everything...


Here's us by Lake Mead:


I've uploaded all of the pictures from our trip to Flickr, but haven't had a chance to label them yet. You can find them here [flickr.com].

3 Years Ago...

3 years ago, Heimlich and I got married. It seems like only yesterday that people were getting royally pissed off for not being invited to our reception...


Really, though, the past three years have allowed me to fully appreciate how compassionate, patient, and loving that Heimlich is. Even when she is insisting that I seek help from a mental health professional (which is frequent), I still love her.


Oh year, and it seems like only yesterday that I was completely embarrassing myself out on the dance floor due to my total lack of rhythm. If audio had been recorded during the below picture, I'm sure that I would have been saying, "No. REALLY. I don't know how to dance. Why can't I just do The Robot all evening?"


I later learned that all of my friends joked that me dancing reminded them of those old, really bad Frankenstein movies.

Anyway, I love you, Heimlich!

House Moving

My old PhD advisor is moving a house (as in the house itself, not the contents). I would never have the confidence to wheel around a house without worrying that it was going to tip over in the process... The big hole in the following pictures is where the old foundation was.





More pictures on Flickr [flickr.com].

Detroit-Superior Bridge

Over the long weekend, Heimlich and I took a tour of the Detroit-Superior Bridge (otherwise known as the Veteran's Memorial Bridge) in Cleveland.










More pictures on Flickr [flickr.com].

Parking Garage Bench

As much as we love the city we live in, we have noticed a lot of oddities about it. Hopefully, this will be the start of a series of weblog posts with weird pictures...

Here's one of a park bench that was apparently built to face directly into a parking garage:


Here's a closer shot:


These shots were taken on Belle Ave, just north of Detroit in Lakewood, OH.

If you were going to build a park bench there, wouldn't you build it facing the street? Or is the parking garage host to some crazy spectator events (demolition derbies, monster truck rallies, etc) where seating may be required?

Congrats John and Heather!

Congrats to John and Heather on their wedding!


We had a fun, wedding-filled weekend. But we had a blast with everyone, and wish them the best. And we got to catch up with a lot of really great friends that we don't get to see very often, like this couple:


Here's a picture of people lifting the groom the day after the wedding:


More pictures uploaded to my Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Unrecognizably Old

Eve had a response [dreamingheart.net] to the old college pictures that I posted last week. Her comment about the way we looked in college was:

"The girls look dated (clothes, hair), but they don't look so young. The guys, they look like boys."

I totally agree. It must be that guys go through a lot more physical change than women do at that age. And just to throw her under the bus, here's a college picture that she was in back in '95:


In this picture, everyone is piled onto my lofted bed, which I had the brilliant idea of putting in the middle of our dorm room (as opposed to against a wall). It turns out that having both sides of a lofted bed open is really bad, after you have had, say, 20 shots of Firewater [internetwines.com].

Someone else I know made a comment that guys eventually age to the point where you can't recognize them in college pictures anymore. And I'm not talking about when we reach our 60s or 70s. I'm talking about in our 40s.

In other words, we all reach the age where we are unrecognizably old -- where people, who didn't know you back then, can't identify a picture of you earlier in adulthood.

College Pictures, Part 2

As long as I've started this trip down memory lane, why don't I share a few more pictures?


As I mentioned before, I was on the varsity fencing team. Here is a picture of me fencing at a tournament (I'm on the left -- the one with the horrible form). Right at this moment, I am probably screaming, "Arrrrr, ye scurvy dog!"

It's hard to see, but there is a piece of metal (called a bell guard) above your weapon hand that protects your hand from getting hit by your opponent's weapon. IIRC, this was one of those tournaments where I discovered (the hard way), how much it hurts to get hit in the face with a bell guard. See Sabre fencing [wikipedia.org] for more information.

The thing that we're standing on is a metal mat, by the way. The weapons have sensors to detect if you have scored a hit or not. Many weapons need to be able to differentiate between a hit on the ground and a hit on an opponent's foot or leg. The metal mat performs that function, by grounding the weapon if it touches the floor.


Here's a picture of me (on the left) with our rat pack. It was great except that none of us could ever get a date. EVER. It's hard to say whether the inordinate amount of video game-playing were a cause or an effect of that.

Thank goodness we all learned to be better dressers...

College Pictures, part 1

My post about the reunion yesterday caused me to dig through mountains of crap to find my pictures from my college days. And what I found was hilarious. Apparently, 10 years ago, my group of friends were really into bands like Soul Coughing [wikipedia.org]. I was doing tons of mountain-biking, and I was on the varsity fencing squad (sabre, baby!).


Above is a picture of me (on the right) and Birch [livejournal.com] while on a trip with the fencing team. Not only was I considerably lighter, but I had this idiotic idea to cut my hair really short, which made me look frightening similar to pictures of my father when he was in the military.


Above is a picture featuring The Bearman and Adam [livejournal.com]. They were hanging out in my dorm room. I made sure to crop all of my Star Trek posters out of the picture...


And finally, I won't embarrass these individuals by identifying them. But the picture was taken around our bomb- and riot-proof dorms, a short 2-mile walk to classes (uphill in snow both ways...).

Berlin Photo Essay

Ok, last post on Berlin for a while. I finally have finished with the photo essay I have been talking about:


The photo essay consists of 22 photos, with associated descriptions. I could have put it together using Flickr, but I thought it would be easier to use this other format to tell the narrative.


Above is a picture of Heimlich that I love. She's standing next to a statue of a dog at the Pergamon Museum.


The above picture of the Aston Martin that I spotted in Potsdam is just included for the few car lovers that read this weblog. ..and because it was so surprising to finally see one in person. I cannot believe that someone parked one of those on the street.

More pictures from Berlin in my Flickr photostream.

More entries about Berlin: April 1, April 2.

Food and Sights in Berlin

Here are some more choice shots from Berlin:


There is one long stretch of the Berlin Wall which is still standing, which is called the East Side Gallery [wikipedia.org]. Above is one of the works that was painted onto it. The works are being rapidly eclipsed by graffiti, and we even saw people writing on it.


Food is my favorite part of any trip. There were great bakeries all over the place, so we got our fill of delicious bread and pastries. Although I was very adventurous with food (as always), I learned that weird breads (that have fillings or any special ingredients) generally will NOT taste good to Americans.


And, of course, the most amazing part of any city in Europe is the architecture. There are beautiful buildings hundreds of years old, right next to ultra-modern structures. And somehow it works. Our cities look downright boring next to theirs.

Photo essay coming in a few days...

More entries about Berlin: April 1, April 3.

Back from Berlin

So, if you were wondering where I have been, Heimlich and I just got back from our vacation in Berlin:


Unfortunately, it was pretty cold over there, so we had to wear 800 layers of clothing. As a result, we look like the Michelin Man in every picture. The pictures of us look like they put a bunch of museums in Antarctica, and that's where we took our vacation...


It turns out that there are tons of things to see in Berlin, so we never were bored. Above is the Monument to the Murdered Jews in Europe [wikipedia.org]. As you might imagine, a lot of the sights were related to WWII. For example, Exhibit B (at Checkpoint Charlie [wikipedia.org]):


The rest of our pictures have been uploaded to my Flickr photostream [flickr.com], but they really don't tell a narrative. Plus, the sheer volume of pictures is going to prevent most people from looking through them. I'm working on a photo essay consisting of 20-30 pictures, but it won't be ready until later this week.

More entries on Berlin: April 2, April 3.

Airborne

Right now, there is a post on the Flickr blog [flickr.com] with links to some really hilarious pictures of people in the mid-air.


Amazing. Those pictures are starting to get my creative photography thoughts flowing.

Alter Ego Costume Party

Over the weekend, we attended an awesome costume party. Our friends had the idea that everyone should come dressed as their alter egos. Here are Heimlich and J:


And our friend Di:


I came as a zombie. Or Zipper Man. Or an accident victim. Or Tom Cruise. You just can't tell.


Oh, I crack myself up. More pictures here [flickr.com].