Broxtronix

*tap, tap* Anyone still out there?

It has been a long break from the blog, but I’m going to try to hop back in the saddle here after nearly 4 months of relative silence. Thanks to any dedicated readers who are still checking back here from time to time. For the rest of you, I hope you are subbed to my RSS feed!

It all started when my laptop bugged out on me while I was innocently writing an email from the comfort of a local coffee shop. Colors inverted on the screen, windows started disappearing, and eventually the whole UI ground to a stop. The poor thing lost its mind. I immediately started the process of ordering a new machine, but it ultimately took about 2 months for my request to wind its way through a particularly complicated bit of bureaucracy. It’s actually a funny story that could probably do well as part as one (or several) Dilbert cartoons. During that time I was clunking along with my old G4 laptop, so I had to put compute-intensive projects like my photo processing on hold, hence the lack of new photos and blog posts.

However, I did take my camera along with me to a few notable events during the winter months. A few folks in the robotics group got invited to a Honda special event at the Computer History Museum where they were showing off ASIMO, Honda’s (very impressive) humanoid robot. The big new technical achievement of the day was ASIMO’s brand new ability to run — to actually get both feet off the ground, if only for a fraction of a second — as it (he?) crossed the stage. He did this along with the usual physical antics like dancing, kicking soccer balls, and climbing stairs. It was all quite impressive, but what really turned my head was the quality of ASIMO’s industrial design. He is all shiny, smooth edges. No exposed wires or cameras. ASIMO looks like a tiny astronaut in a space suit. Even his movements are all very fluid and natural — it’s all very human. It was clear from the Honda representatives that this is intentional. They are designing ASIMO expressly for the purpose of interacting with/serving humans, and they’ve done everything they can to get rid of the “scary robot” look and replace it with something pleasing and familiar. ASIMO has a long way to go before he’s serving your Grandma a bowl of soup, but he’s clearly on that trajectory, and I think he’ll make it there at some point soon.

I also took off a few hours one day when NASA’s SOFIA Aircraft visited Moffett Field. During their visit, they invited people at the center to take a walk-through tour, so I grabbed my camera and ran to see what a total retrofit of a commercial airplane (in the name of SCIENCE!) looks like.

SOFIA stands for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. It’s essentially a Boeing 747 that has a gigantic (2.7-meter diameter) reflecting telescope pointing out of the side of the fuselage. It is designed to gather astronomical observations at 40,000 ft. where it can fly above much of the water vapor in the atmosphere, which tends to block light in the longer wavelengths. It replaces NASA’s old Kuiper Observatory (which some of you will remember from Yuri’s Night last year). While it may not be one of NASA’s so-called great observatories, it’s still cutting edge, and I think it’s a pretty amazing that they’ll be able to hold that telescope steady enough to take pictures while that plane flies through the air.

2 Comments

I’ve been traveling a lot lately, and when I pass through airports on these business trips, I am usually bleary eyed and fuzzy brained. Amidst the sea of diverse people, the repetitious buzz of PA announcements, and the downright irony of the ever-present cable-news and airport terminal advertisements, it takes quite a lot for something in that environment to really stand out.

However, when Matt pointed out the words on this glass display case in Dulles International Airport, I couldn’t help but laugh…

This could be the result of wry humor from some disgruntled airport employee, or maybe there isn’t a process in place at Dulles for copy-editing the lettering on a glass display case. Either way, when you’re grumpy because you’ve been on an airplane all day, it’s hilarious!

No Comments

A very, very busy summer is drawing to a close, and we’ve been wrapping up some exciting projects at work. Our latest effort has been to prepare map data and educational content for a new version of Google Moon!

Although it lacks the cheese of the original version (which many people seem to miss), we’ve added a nice range of new features that should appeal to scientists and members of the public alike. Aside from the basic Visible and Elevation layers, you will find a collection of historical lunar Charts with a wealth of geological and topographic information. These charts should be useful to amateur astronomers, teachers, and even folks who might be planning their own private mission to the moon as part of the next X-Prize Competition. The charts are definitely handy, but the new Apollo layer is, without a doubt, the most exciting new addition. In this layer, you can zoom into each of the Apollo landing sites and take a tour that chronicles the story of that mission. There are fun anecdotes, images, movies, and even zoomable panoramas to explore. It’s an excellent way to become acquainted with what was learned during the Apollo program, both in terms of science and in terms of the operational challenges encountered by humans operating in the lunar environment. With NASA and other space agencies gearing up to return to the Moon at some point during the next decade, now is a good time to dust off that old knowledge so that we can start planning our next trip.

For more information, check out the NASA Planetary Content Team website about lunar data in Google Moon or read the post on the Google Lat Long Blog.

No Comments

For years now, I have been trying to go to Burning Man, but life always conspires against me, and for one reason or another I have had to call off my plans. Well, this year I finally made it. And it was awesome.

I hardly know where to begin in describing the experience. For one, Burning Man is big. I’ve heard estimates that there were on the order of 40,000-50,000 people there this year, which is more than twice the size of the town I grew up in. The level of organization and infrastructure is staggering for a city that springs into existence for only one week out of the year, which is funny because very little of the event is actually centrally organized in the conventional sense. Instead, it seems that everyone brings something, and some people band together to bring big things. Some things have been brought repeatedly, and over the years they have evolved to become a lasting part of the Burning Man culture, and in some cases, to literally define it (e.g. the Temple, or the lamplighters). The culture means a lot to the people who participate in it, and there is a universal sense of respect and awe for what the event has become, especially given that no one person or group can claim credit for architecting it. Even the event organizers have adopted a hands-off strategy, encouraging the event to emerge based on the artistry and passion of the attendees.

I managed to take a small handful of pictures, but to be honest, I was having too much fun to be lugging around a camera most of the time. However, there were a few magical moments that just begged to be captured, including a spectacular double rainbow that nicely complemented the full lunar eclipse that I witnessed on the night when I first arrived. I also grabbed a few shots of some of the incredible large-scale art, including the Supplicant Figure, the Steampunk Tree House, and a life-size block puzzle. There are numerous places where you can find very good photos of the event; here for example.

There is no question — I will definitely be at Burning Man again next year. And for those of you who have been trying to come for years, as I had been, all I can say is that you should put in that extra bit of effort to make it happen. You’ll be impressed.

1 Comment

Just a quick update to announce that we have released our first batch of data for Google Earth in the form of a new NASA featured content layer! Simply fire up Google Earth, go to the layers pane in the lower left and select NASA under the “Featured Content” heading. Kudos really go to Matt (at Ames) for pulling this all together and the folks at other NASA centers who worked hard to prepare the original content — I only played a supporting role insofar as the Vision Workbench was used to do much of the image processing.

The layer contains two sets of placemarks: astronauts photography and satellite photography, which contain some of the most interesting imagery collected over the years of the earth as seen from space. Several of the placemarks allow you to overlay imagery on the globe itself, and in some cases there are several images that show a progression over time for a given location.

The NASA layer also contains a global base map illustrating urbanization via Earth’s “city lights” at night. You can see some very striking patterns in this map, and it really underscores how certain features immediately jump out at you when you can see things on a global scale. For example, it’s striking (though not surprising) to see how population centers remain closely clumped around sources of water, like rivers. Just take a look at the Nile! Some geopolitical boundaries are evident, and so are major transportation corridors. One of our favorite thing to do with this layer is to turn on cities and roads in Google Earth while the city lights map is enabled. As you zoom in, you can watch as the roads “connect the dots.” Perhaps most interesting of all is to see what areas are not urbanized but are clearly very populated, like parts of China and Africa.

In conjunction with the featured content layer, we also released some great global scientific data sets that are being provided as downloadable KML overlays. Go directly to the planetary content web page to access global maps of land and sea surface temperature, lang vegetation index, ocean chlorophyll concentration, and land cover classification. I also highly recommend that you follow some of the links on that page to other NASA sites that specialize in earth data. I’m a particular fan of the very slick NEO website from Goddard Space Flight Center.

1 Comment

Summer is full of many pleasantries, but our recent trip to Hidden Villa to hike with baby goats was surely one of the nicest weekend outings of the year. Hidden Villa is a locally owned and operated farm where Claire works. The occasion for this particular visit was a celebration of Claire’s birthday!

Hidden Villa is somewhat similar to Terra Firma, the CSA that delivers a box of fresh fruits and veggies to our house every week. However, unlike many CSAs in the area, Hidden Villa specializes in outreach to kids of all ages. As part of this program, they have a number of farm animals including cows, a ram, and (of course) baby goats.

As it turns out, baby goats aren’t the best hikers. They are easily distracted by new green things to eat (mmm… ferns…), and they definitely resist being led around on a leash. In then end, Vytas and Lindsay both ended up carrying the goats a good portion of the way.

1 Comment

The summer has arrived, and with it, the fog. Yes, Mark Twain’s old adage, “The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco,” has taken on a whole new meaning of late. The weather had the good grace to lift over this past weekend (and the sunshine was enjoyed, to be sure), but it has been rolling in every day for the past several weeks and we’re scheduled for at least another month or two of this strangely consistent but highly localized weather pattern. Fortunately, if I drive in pretty much any direction — either to the east bay or to work — I escape into the regurly scheduled California sunshine. So… it wears on me less than it otherwise might.

However! The weather can hardly offset my good mood, for summer has arrived in full force! My calendar is rapidly filling with summer campouts, backpacking trips, bbq’s, and weekend house guests. I feel like I need to schedule a free weekend here or there to recuperate! (But no, that would be foolish…)

Much has been happening lately, and it has all gone unreported here. Allow me to briefly summarize.

First, to follow up on a previous post, Yuri’s Night happened, and it was a great success. My photos, mostly taken during party setup, are here. There’s a lot to say about the party, but I’ll leave it to the Internet to summarize. Keith Cowing’s article really hits the nail on the head and captures my feelings about the event fairly well. More press and pictures can be found on NASAWatch or on Flickr.

Also noteworthy is the news that Lindsay and I have moved into a new house in a SF neighborhood called Glen Park. The house is an amazing 6 bedroom place (I’ll eventually get around to posting photos), and we’ll be living with four other close friends. It’s already shaping up to be a good community focal point — we had guests over every day during the past two weekends, and I’m glad to be back in a semi-large group living situation.

The spring was filled with an assortment of fun trips and activites including a long weekend in Vegas (a ridiculous place, but fun), a trip to New York City for Leo and Celine’s wedding, and an assortment of festivals and parties as the SF “scene” gears up for the summer. There have been some good outdoor adventures to Point Reyes and Yosemite (pictures forthcoming), though I’m already itching for another long backpacking trip.

So, with summer just getting started, many recent positive experinces to draw on, and a new house to look forward to, I can’t help but smile. Life is good. I hope that you all are enjoying a similar mix of contentedness and optimism. Go have some fun!

No Comments

The ability to take good photographs of people has long alluded me. I get lucky occasionally with a particularly candid, close-up portrait, but I’m usually too shy to take many people pictures because I feel like it’s an invasion of privacy or that it makes people nervous. Plus, my slightly quiet demeanor means that I sometimes lack the charismatic, outgoing attitude that helps a photographer to put people at ease in these situations. And counterintuitively, the larger and nicer the camera and the lens, the more nervous the subject will be. My large, noisy camera makes people plenty aware that their photo is being taken…

But, as with all things, practice seems to help. I’ve been slowly overcoming my own hesitations, and perhaps more importantly, I’ve focused on capturing pictures of my closest friends. They have learned to relax and enjoy themselves when I’m taking their picture and this leads to some great results!

Even this had been a slow process until the most recent Raging Madness trip to Zion National Park, where I finally made a huge breakthrough! This album has some of my best photos so far!

There were a few techniques that worked out particularly well on this trip. First, getting close, or shooting from the same viewpoint as a person on the trip (e.g. standing over someone’s shoulder) puts you into the middle of the action and conveys what is was like to be there. Next, when the emphasis of the photograph is the landscape, but you want to include people for scale or context, it seems to help to show them walking or facing away from you. On the other hand, when the main subject of the photo are the people, it’s best to have them face the camera. I also love the effect that you get when you tilt the camera off angle. This yields a more dynamic shot. It can even induce vertigo! Finally, you just can’t beat panoramas for showing you expansive scale and context.

Putting photography aside for a second, I also want to mention how much I loved hiking in Zion! I wasn’t sure what to expect when I arrived — with such stiff local competition from the Grand Canyon, Canyonlands, and Escalante, I wasn’t sure if Zion would be able to distinguish itself. But my fears were unfounded: I was very, very impressed. It’s definitely one of my three favorite National Parks of all time, and it’s particularly exciting that it’s within striking distance of the Bay Area — I can get there in about six hours from door to canyon, so I expect I’ll be visiting there quite a lot during the coming years. In fact, some of us have sekkrit ninja plans to return for a technical canyoneering trip in the near future. Some of the best parts of our backpacking trip were the days where we explored rocky side canyons that were full of hidden treasures. Our short trip up waterfalls canyon ended when we encountered this obstacle, so we would like to return with more gear and a better plan next time so that we can delve deeper into the park.

2 Comments

I usually have no excuse for the lengthy delays between posts, but this time I have been very busy working on something extremely worthwhile.

I have been helping to organize Yuri’s Night 2007, a celebration that commemorates humankind’s first venture into space (by Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin). This event is celebrated all over the world, but we planning the largest Yuri’s night event ever, which will be held on April 13th at NASA’s Ames Research Center in the massive SOFIA aircraft hanger. We hope to host 3000+ people for a night full of artists, scientists, astronauts, performers and musicians.

Our main attraction include perspectives from pioneering space traveler Anousheh Anasari as well as Dr. Chris McKay, a world reknowned expert in astrobiology and terraformation from NASA ARC.

The hangar and adjoining tarmac will be filled with space-inspired art installations and cutting-edge interactive technology and science demonstrations including innovations from the worlds of robotics, engineering, chemistry, and astronomy, all presented by NASA and Bay Area scientists and engineers. You will be able to explore interactive virtual worlds including NASA World Wind, Gigapan, Second Life, and Burning Man Earth. We will also be hosting demonstrations of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ (ASME) human powered vehicle and NASA robots, including the next generation of rovers and a videoconference with a live robotics competition.

And we haven’t forgotten the celebratory aspect of the event. Far from it! Live video performances coordinated with a world-class lineup of live electronic music will continue throughout the night, including Plaid, Telefon Tel Aviv and Bluetech, which happen to be three of my favorite musical groups!

Tickets are on sale now, and selling fast! I hope you can make it!

No Comments

Post processing photos in Lightroom can take a long time, but I generally try to proceed sequentially and take no more than about a month to move through the stack. However, these photos have been sitting on my hard drive for about a year now and it is long past time for them to be posted. So without further ado, here are the Raging Madness 2006 photos for our trip last year to Green River, Utah. (BTW - if you are interested, you can find more photos from other folks at Nick’s Web site).

For those of you who don’t know, Raging Madness is an annual outdoors trip where twelve of us head out to a superlative outdoor locale for a week-long escape from civilization. Past years have featured trips to Sequoia National Park, the Lost Coast, and Escalante National Monument. We generally stick with backpacking trips, but this year we opted instead for a canoeing adventure in the canyons of southern Utah.

It turns out that canoes really change the equation when it comes to what you bring on the trip. For one thing, the food this year was extravagant and much more delicious the the average backpacking fare. With coolers to keep meat fresh and a Dutch Oven for cooking, we were fed everything from apple pie to steak. For drinks, we actually had a full keg of Full Sail Amber Ale in a bucket of ice on one of the canoes. This led to (1) crazy docking maneuvers between the boats on the river so that we could refill our glasses with beer (with subsequent toasts), (2) looks of disbelief from strangers who we encountered on the river and offered fresh, cold beer, and (3) frequent stops on the side of the river for snacks and the afternoon nap.

The canyon itself was stunning, and grew deeper in deeper as a we proceeded onward. We had many side canyons to explore, and several good campsites along the way. Our final campsite was of the bottom of Water Canyon, one of the largest side canyons and the only point on the trip where we encountered clean running water. This was the highlight of the trip — we spent one full day exploring the many wonders of Water Canyon. A small group of us also made out of the canyon up into the Maze District
of Canyonlands National Park, which is just about the coolest place I’ve ever been.

All of all it was a fantastic trip, and the great part of it is that I’ve procrastinated with these photos for so long that the next Raging Madness is coming up in just a few months!

No Comments