After having multiple chunks of skin cut out of my body over the last couple years, I think about UV light pretty much whenever I’m outside. There’s an interesting article on Slate about a photographer who took video of people under UV light. You can see how different skin features like freckles absorb and reflect UV light. And after watching the video, I’ll never look at sunscreen the same way again! It works by absorbing UV light so it doesn’t reach the skin. When people put it on in the video, it looks like they are smearing black tar on themselves. You can check out the video below but the article is worth a read too.
The Martian and Mistborn
I’ve been reading some fantastic books lately, but I realized that I haven’t written a lot about them. The three best ones in the last year or so are:
1) The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss – I’ve already written once about this trilogy. The only negative point is that the third book isn’t finished yet and the first two were so good that it’s almost physically painful to wait for the third one! I heard someone say, “If you haven’t read these books or you didn’t like it, then you’re not my friend.” I won’t go quite that far, but this is one of my top three recommendations right now. You can listen to an interview with the author on the Triangulation podcast. (2,581 four and five star reviews on Amazon)
2) The Martian by Andy Weir – Technically I suppose this is sci-fi but it’s set very close to present day and is based on as much current science as possible. Tiny spoiler but in the first page or two, you realize that an astronaut gets stranded on Mars (they think he’s dead) and then he has to try and survive. It’s a bit like Robinson Crusoe on Mars. You can listen to an interview with the author on the Triangulation podcast. (4,271 four and five star reviews on Amazon)
3) Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson – This one is the most heavily fantasy/sci-fi of the bunch but it’s another solid recommendation. The basic concept is that there are a small subset of the population that can use various ingested metals to have a single simple super-power and an even smaller group can use all of the super-powers. The setting is a pre-technology world with an evil overlord and there are rumblings of a revolution which most people think is impossible. If I didn’t have so many other pressing responsibilities in my life, I could envision binging on three straight books. Fantastic storytelling! (980 four and five star reviews on Amazon)
If I had to pick just one book to recommend, it would probably be The Martian because it probably appeals to the broadest swath of readers. Or you can just wait a few years for a movie to come out. After the success of Gravity, I don’t see how they won’t make a movie of The Martian. Do yourself a favor and read it now.
Throwback Thursday – In A Hole 1987
Dad built us a great treehouse when we were kids. I’ve been thinking a lot about it wondering if I should build something for Elijah and what it might look like. Today’s throwback picture shows just how deep the wholes were for the posts.
I guess this type of photo runs in the family because I did the same thing to Elijah when I dug the hole for the irrigation backflow prevention valve.
RC Planes And Hot Air Balloons
After many attempts, I finally gave up on my FT Duster. I finally figured out that a crash somewhere along the way had caused the tail to be out of whack. I used the heat gun to melt the glue and remove the old tail, fabricated a new one and then installed it. Everything was square and it actually flew pretty well. But then, mid-flight, the power pod broke loose and the plane spiraled hard into the ground. The fuselage was pretty bent up and correcting it basically would mean rebuilding a plane. It’s only a few dollars work of foam board but I’ll save that for another day. I was getting too frustrated with it to continue.
Instead, I pulled out the plans for an FT Nutball which is MUCH simpler to construct and fly. I had it together in an hour or two and the first time I powered it up, it flew great! I ran into another problem though. Elijah was afraid of it. He’s never been afraid of the planes before but for some reason, he just wasn’t happy whenever it was in the air.
I landed before using up all my batteries, but as I was cleaning up, I noticed three hot air balloons making their way towards the park! They make regular morning and evening flights down the valley and we can see them from our house. But this was the first time I’d been at their landing spot. We stayed around for about an hour watching them land and pack the balloons away. Elijah enjoyed watching them, but he was more impressed by the park’s John Deere Gator that was driving around in the parking lot. That boy loves trucks!
Meydenbauer Beach Park
A couple weekends ago, Tyla and I headed to a new (for us) park in Bellevue. It’s small but it has a nice little swimming area with life guards. Mandy and Ike joined us for the sunny fun and I snapped a few photos. You can also check out my quick Photosynth from the park. Well, technically it’s the view FROM the park. I didn’t want to look too creepy photographing other people’s kids.
Solid State Drives
In the old days if your computer ran slowly and you asked a geek how to make it faster, they would probably say “Add more RAM.” With most computers having 4-8GB of RAM now, memory isn’t generally an issue. There’s still a new answer to that question: Get an SSD.
I had my first taste of a solid state drive years ago when I built my media center PC. I wanted something quiet and lower power. Once I saw first hand how fast it was, I started on a mission to replace the main operating system drive in every computer with an SSD. They were expensive at first but now the costs have come way down, and while they’re still significantly more expensive than the older spindle based hard drives, they’re not cost-prohibitive in most situations.
How much of a difference does it make? I ran benchmark comparisons of the SSD and the old HD in my computer. The average speed of reading data off the disk is 2.5 times faster with the SSD. That’s for reading single big files though. More common is that you’re reading little pieces from a bunch of small files all over the place. For that, an SSD really shines. In random access tests for small files, the SSD was more than 40 times faster! The times when you notice an SSD the most are when booting the computer (or resuming from a sleep state) and when you open programs.
If you’re interested in buying one, you can find them for around $0.40-0.50/GB. Don’t go too much smaller than 120GB for your operating system drive. Windows doesn’t take nearly that much space but by the time you get it installed, do some updates, and install a bunch of programs, it’s not too hard to use that much space. If you don’t want to spend much time shopping around, consider the Samsung 830 it’s not quite the cheapest but it’s a good bang for the buck.
Throwback Thursday – Baseball 1997
I just realized that this photo was taken halfway between my birth and today. Wow. Anyway, now that I feel old, here’s a shot from my Junior year of high school baseball. This was the best team I’ve ever played on. Our coaches were awesome and our team was really good. That’s me in the #12 jersey in the middle of the back row.
I dug up the stats sheet from that year:
- We were ranked 10th in the state and finished 21-6.
- I had a 1.55 ERA.
- I set the school record for picking the most people off base. The exact stat isn’t in there, but I’m pretty sure it was 16. As far as I know, that record still stands.
- My batting average? 0.00. Yep. They usually DH’d for me, but I had 14 at bats and never got a hit. It’s a good thing I could pitch because I was terrible at batting. Pretty much they only time they put me at the plate was when they needed a bunt because I could do that reasonably well.
- I made the All-District team and the Academic All-State team… What’s academic all-state? Well, you’re not THAT good, but you’re a geek too so we’ll give you some extra credit and make a special team for you.
By now you should hear Bruce belting out Glory Days loud and clear.
Graduate Organ Recital
The video of the recital by one of our organists at church is finally completed! This was by the far the most complex event recording I’ve ever done. There were 4 video recorders and a professional audio track. Getting everything synced and color corrected proved to be quite the challenge, but I’m happy with the result. It’s just over an hour long, but you can jump to specific songs if you look for the links in the description. Dave has the audio tracks and recital program notes available on his DropBox account. Congratulations to Dave for finishing is graduate degree!
Recording Public Events
After my last post on Friday about the new camcorder I use for recording at church, it dawned on me that I’ve never written up some of my learnings from recording public events. I’m far from an expert, but I’ve made enough mistakes that I have some things to share.
- Get there early. If you’ve never recorded at the venue, go there days ahead of when you’ll actually need to record. Figure out where all the gear will go and where the action will be taking place. But even if you’ve recorded at the same place many times, you can’t arrive too early. There’s always something that needs extra attention.
- Don’t try to do this without a good video editing package that you’re familiar with. I like Adobe Premiere Elements. Whatever you use, you need (at a minimum) to have the ability to sync individual audio and video tracks and then cut between them.
- Unless you are going to have a completely stationary camera, you’ll need at least two cameras. Leave one at a wide angle capturing everything and then do your zooming with the other camera. You can cut to the wide angle while you’re adjusting/zooming the second camera and then switch back to the zoomed view once you’ve got it all set up properly.
- Have at least one backup for everything. So if you’re using the two camera setup described above, make sure you have at least three cameras in the process. For the audio, hopefully you can record straight off the sound mixer, but also set a little portable audio recorder up near the action to use as a last resort. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been saved by what I thought was just an extra device.
- Plan for people getting in your way. If all of your cameras are clustered in the same spot, one person walking in front of you can ruin all of the angles at the same time. Scatter your cameras around the building.
- Start recording early. Don’t try to hit record right as the action starts. Figure out what time it’s scheduled and then walk around hitting record about 5 minutes early. This gives you time to fix any last minute issues, and then you’ll be comfortable behind your main camera well before anything exciting happens.
- The most time consuming part of this for me is always syncing up the various audio/video tracks. If you can pull it off, walk into the view of all the cameras and clap your hands together. (Or if you’re fancy, use one of the clap boards like they do in the movies.) That’s almost never feasible for me so I have to revert to other tricks. Sometimes I’ll cough really loud after turning on all the equipment. Other times I’ll just do my best to work with some other noise/visual that most of the gear picked up. Inevitably I spend a ton of time moving clips back and forth frame by frame trying to get them all lined up.
The more I do it, the more I learn because I keep finding new ways to screw up! If you want to check out my work, a lot of it ends up on the church’s YouTube page.
Solar In Seattle
I love the idea of solar power, but the technology just isn’t quite there yet if you want to have a quick return on investment. Yes, I know there are other reasons that people do it, and yes I know there are ways you can use it to generate a bigger portion of your usage, but for me, it’s going to be a while before I head that direction. If Tyla and I ever decide to buy some vacation property east of the mountains, I will be revisiting this topic. They get a LOT of sun over there and I could see it being a very useful way to power a vacation home.