Friday, July 18, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
4th of July and Travel
(One of my more successful firework pics)
I am writing to you live from San Francisco, where I have to returned to work on another planetarium. The weather here is not what I was expecting. In fact, the city itself is not what I was expecting. 'Frisco has a certain grime and dirtiness I wasn't prepared for. I guess that comes from basing all of my assumptions its various depictions in movies. It's not a bad place. There are many good restaurants and cool shops to check out, don't get me wrong. But what justifies it being one of the most expensive places in the United States to live? Is really that cool?
The visit to the homeland of Grand Rapids was wonderful. Mandy ran the Buck Creek 5K, we had a great 4th of July party (complete with a fireworks-prompted visit by the law--link to pics), a well-executed surprise party for Jess (link to pics), and many other tales of fanciful whimsy. I will try to migrate these pics over to Flickr, once it stops acting like a bitch and lets me upload again.
I left on Wednesday last week (the 9th of July) for San Fran. Mandy has stayed on a few additional days and will be leaving tomorrow with her mom and Nikki to drive back to Denver. Her mom is then flying back out to Grand Rapids at some point early next week. I will be returning home on the 23rd or 24th of July, returning just in time for a visit from Chad. Wish Mandy and family good luck on their travels.
It's been a crazy summer so far. It's been great to have so many visitors come out to Denver. It's also been equally amazing that I have found ways to be there at the same time they've come to visit. By the time I get back home, I will have been gone for over a month... a long time to be away from home. I'm looking forward to being back there for a little while before heading out again. Maybe I'll get some time to ride our new moped, an amazing 150CC monster. I will take pictures of it when I get back and write a little post on the guy who sold it to us, and why we think it's a good investment.
That's it from San Fran. Peace n' love!
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Satisfied / Exhausted
I am sitting on an Amtrak train in Chicago waiting for it to depart. I am connected via a wireless cell modem that the company I work for has bought us to use around the US and in the UK. It's a nice fringe benefit for working there. It does, however, come at a cost, even if it's not a monetary one.
This past week (9 days in total) was IPS. The International Planetarium Society meeting. IPS is the single largest gathering of planetarium vendors, directors, content producers, immersive display engineers, and VR junkies in the world. It only happens every other year, and it alternates what side of the Atlantic it's held on. Next time (2010) it will be held in Egypt. Due to its size and our status as a relative new-comer to this field, it was vitally important that we showed well. In the end, I think we did that, though, and at the risk of repeating myself, it came at a cost.
We demoed two of type of ulta-black projectors (500,000 to 1 sequential contrast) that SEOS develops. These two projectors were placed in a 15' fiberglass dome and fitted with two tons (4,000 lbs) of gear shipped out from the UK at some exorbitant price. The dome assembly and subsequent fitting of gear began last week Wednesday (the 25th of June) and continued through the end of the show (July 3rd). To assemble the dome and make all of the gear function, we assembled a team of five engineers, two project managers, and a carpenter. In addition to that, we had to use union teamsters, electricians, and decorators. Apparently, this is required by law. Some of these guys were great, and I had a good time ordering them around. Others, however, were not. For example, we had to wait for 2 hours for a union decorator to arrive so he could Velcro our black curtains over the dome, a job any one of us could have completed in less than 10 minutes. The dome went up with little trouble. Since I have no experience assembling such things, I concentrated on getting the servers and projectors functioning. Here our troubles began.
I don't want to bore anyone who has read this far with all of the technical hurdles we had to overcome throughout the show, but I can at least say it was intensely frustrating. There were more times than I'd like to remember where the group of us would work for 18-20 hours straight and be worse off than we were when we started.
In spite of these difficulties (or maybe because of them) we came off as a very cohesive group. The general attitude from show-goers was that we were very professional, approachable, and technically adept. I think I'd agree with everything, but there is obviously much room left for improvement. These tradeshows need to be managed like any other project and have the same time and resources applied to them as there would be for any other project we do. If not, we're going to end up Egypt running around like headless chickens with flashlights. [Interestingly, in Egypt we will not be allowed to wear our black polos, since black is only worn by people in mourning].
Our central showpiece on the night we sponsored was a project called Space Confidential. It was sort of a contest to get teenagers to produce content using the our software. It worked really well. The two winning girls were flown out with their mothers to Chicago for the event, where they presented the space show they had created and answered questions about how they did it. It was especially good since all of the rest of the main-stage presentations were tech-demos. Ours really got to the heart of the idea that content still is king.
We finally have a new site up that goes into more detail about what we do, who we are, etc. You can check it out here. The web tester in me has already noticed a slew of grammatical errors and dead links and will be passed on to the company designing the site.
I've posted a bunch of pictures I took at the summit on our Flickr stream. The stream can be accessed by clicking on a picture on the little slideshow applet running on the right-hand navigation bar.
This past week (9 days in total) was IPS. The International Planetarium Society meeting. IPS is the single largest gathering of planetarium vendors, directors, content producers, immersive display engineers, and VR junkies in the world. It only happens every other year, and it alternates what side of the Atlantic it's held on. Next time (2010) it will be held in Egypt. Due to its size and our status as a relative new-comer to this field, it was vitally important that we showed well. In the end, I think we did that, though, and at the risk of repeating myself, it came at a cost.
We demoed two of type of ulta-black projectors (500,000 to 1 sequential contrast) that SEOS develops. These two projectors were placed in a 15' fiberglass dome and fitted with two tons (4,000 lbs) of gear shipped out from the UK at some exorbitant price. The dome assembly and subsequent fitting of gear began last week Wednesday (the 25th of June) and continued through the end of the show (July 3rd). To assemble the dome and make all of the gear function, we assembled a team of five engineers, two project managers, and a carpenter. In addition to that, we had to use union teamsters, electricians, and decorators. Apparently, this is required by law. Some of these guys were great, and I had a good time ordering them around. Others, however, were not. For example, we had to wait for 2 hours for a union decorator to arrive so he could Velcro our black curtains over the dome, a job any one of us could have completed in less than 10 minutes. The dome went up with little trouble. Since I have no experience assembling such things, I concentrated on getting the servers and projectors functioning. Here our troubles began.
I don't want to bore anyone who has read this far with all of the technical hurdles we had to overcome throughout the show, but I can at least say it was intensely frustrating. There were more times than I'd like to remember where the group of us would work for 18-20 hours straight and be worse off than we were when we started.
In spite of these difficulties (or maybe because of them) we came off as a very cohesive group. The general attitude from show-goers was that we were very professional, approachable, and technically adept. I think I'd agree with everything, but there is obviously much room left for improvement. These tradeshows need to be managed like any other project and have the same time and resources applied to them as there would be for any other project we do. If not, we're going to end up Egypt running around like headless chickens with flashlights. [Interestingly, in Egypt we will not be allowed to wear our black polos, since black is only worn by people in mourning].
Our central showpiece on the night we sponsored was a project called Space Confidential. It was sort of a contest to get teenagers to produce content using the our software. It worked really well. The two winning girls were flown out with their mothers to Chicago for the event, where they presented the space show they had created and answered questions about how they did it. It was especially good since all of the rest of the main-stage presentations were tech-demos. Ours really got to the heart of the idea that content still is king.
We finally have a new site up that goes into more detail about what we do, who we are, etc. You can check it out here. The web tester in me has already noticed a slew of grammatical errors and dead links and will be passed on to the company designing the site.
I've posted a bunch of pictures I took at the summit on our Flickr stream. The stream can be accessed by clicking on a picture on the little slideshow applet running on the right-hand navigation bar.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
It's 3:30 in the morning... do you know where your geek is?
Sorry for the delay in posting. Yesterday, I worked from 7:00AM to 5:30AM, with very few breaks for eating, etc. I slept from 5:45AM until 10:00AM and have worked straight until now... 3:30AM. I don't write this to complain. In fact, I'm having a great time. It's been a little stressful with some of our preparations going awry, but everything seems to be falling in place. The light at the end of the tunnel is due, in no small part, to the amazingly diverse and flat-out brilliant peeps I work with. It's been a great ride so far, and we haven't even opened the doors to public yet.
Currently, I'm sitting in the server-room of the Adler Planetarium waiting for a cohort to return with a license dongle to activate a server we have here. I will write more about this nifty piece of hardware, but only after its unveiled. Imagine the announcement of the G3 iPhone, except for planetarium nerds. It's going to be that cool.
I have been taking lots of pics (some actually are pretty good) with my new lens, and will posting them once I've had more than 18 minutes to sleep. All is well in the Chi-Town. Peace n' love!
Currently, I'm sitting in the server-room of the Adler Planetarium waiting for a cohort to return with a license dongle to activate a server we have here. I will write more about this nifty piece of hardware, but only after its unveiled. Imagine the announcement of the G3 iPhone, except for planetarium nerds. It's going to be that cool.
I have been taking lots of pics (some actually are pretty good) with my new lens, and will posting them once I've had more than 18 minutes to sleep. All is well in the Chi-Town. Peace n' love!
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
IPS Update 1
I think I'm going to try to do video updates while I'm here. I have the camera and I'm way too tired to do much typing, so here it is. Peace n' love from the windy city.
(Tired Matt rambling about domes and whatnot in Chicago)
(Tired Matt rambling about domes and whatnot in Chicago)
Sunday, June 22, 2008
On the Move
I am going to bring my web cam with me. Time-permitting, I will post a few video updates on IPS in Chicago, the integration in San Francisco, and the festivities back in Grand Rapids.
Matt
San Francisco - June 22 - June 25
Chicago - June 25 - July 3
Grand Rapids - July 3 - 9
San Francisco - July 9 - 18
Mandy
On the road between Denver and Grand Rapids -
June 27 - 28
Grand Rapids - June 26 - July 14
On the road between Denver and Grand Rapids - July 14-16
Mandy's Mom
Flying from Grand Rapids to Denver - June 24th
Denver -
June 24 - 27
On the road between Denver and Grand Rapids -
June 27 - 28
Grand Rapids - June 26 - July 14
On the road between Denver and Grand Rapids - July 14-16
Jess and Mike
Flying from Denver to Grand Rapids - June 23
On the road again... just can't wait to get on the road again...
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
VIDEO - Surgeon Uses Robot to fold Origami
Impressive. The wingspan of the bird is less than the length of a penny. The robot arms move so fluidly, it looks like the doc is right there. Actually, he was on the other side of the country, controling the robot from over the internet. Impressive.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
BBQ: Hell. Yes.
This guy knows how to BBQ. Like a pro, he's even using implements of torture.
I love BBQ'ing. There's something so immediate and primal about reducing cooking to the basics: Gather food, apply heat, eat. I love it. It's simple, it involves things on fire, bits of animal flesh, and, of course, eating.The BBQ'ing season is upon us. This summer, I plan to smoke, cook, and consume my own bacon. No, not bacon made out of Matt, just regular bacon made by me out of pork. As much as I'd love to eat Matt Bacon... mmm... Matt Bacon.
It turns out that it's not that complicated a process. To do it, a person needs a smoker, some raw pork belly (complete with piggy hair that needs to be shaved prior to smoking), plastic bags, and curring agents (mostly salt and sugar).
Here are few links that suggest different methods of preparing the bacon.
- The origional bacon blog that got me thinking about it
- Basic Bacon (this is the Meat Man... bad name)
Francis Bacon. Known as the catalyst of the scientific revolution in England. Also: First mayor of Baconsville.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
School Lesson: Never trust authority figures
A school in California shocked the students by telling them that 20 students were killed in a drunk driving accident. The fifth-graders (yes, they were in 5th grade) High school students obviously went crazy, cried, some went hysterical.
Then they told the students no one had died, and they better not drink and drive.
A teacher is quoted as saying, "We wanted them traumatized." I guess they succeeded.
What person, in what twisted version of reality would think this is a good idea? Unbelievable. I hope they did learn their lesson: Never trust authority figures.
Then they told the students no one had died, and they better not drink and drive.
A teacher is quoted as saying, "We wanted them traumatized." I guess they succeeded.
What person, in what twisted version of reality would think this is a good idea? Unbelievable. I hope they did learn their lesson: Never trust authority figures.
Monday, June 09, 2008
It's all coming together....
The past weekend was strictly working time. Saturday we spent the day cleaning and organizing the loft. It is amazing how much crap you can accumulate over the years....what am I a saying, we just moved into this place last December! Anyhow, we had many things that we moved that we were going to "deal with when we get there"....Saturday was the day.
Sunday we took a drive over to an unmentionable large store. Although we felt very dirty walking through it we had no other choice as they were the only place in town that carried the items that we liked and needed: end table, small dresser, and wardrobe. We assembled the wardrobe and end table last night while we watched Henry VIII on Masterpiece Theater.
The next three weeks will be busy as we are having people visit from Michigan. The Valentine's will be in Denver this week - we plan to spend Wednesday and Thursday with them. Jess and Mike are coming out next Tuesday and staying for about atweek. Mom will be coming out the day after they leave and staying for almost a week. Then her and I hit the road (with Nikki in the back seat) and drive back to Michigan for the 4th of July festivities. I will be in GR the first couple of weeks in July. If you want to hang out you can either write me email or call my cell phone (or my parent's phone after June 29th).
Matt has bestowed upon me luscious gifts for our Anniversary: KitchenAid mixer and a Cuisinart Food Processor. We made pizza last night. I used the mixer to make the dough and Matt use the Food Processor to make the sauce. The pizza turned out fantastic and we had a lot of fun creating it. More info to come on the creations from the new appliances!!!
(Nikki's feet don't even touch the bottom of the fountain.)
Sunday we took a drive over to an unmentionable large store. Although we felt very dirty walking through it we had no other choice as they were the only place in town that carried the items that we liked and needed: end table, small dresser, and wardrobe. We assembled the wardrobe and end table last night while we watched Henry VIII on Masterpiece Theater.
The next three weeks will be busy as we are having people visit from Michigan. The Valentine's will be in Denver this week - we plan to spend Wednesday and Thursday with them. Jess and Mike are coming out next Tuesday and staying for about atweek. Mom will be coming out the day after they leave and staying for almost a week. Then her and I hit the road (with Nikki in the back seat) and drive back to Michigan for the 4th of July festivities. I will be in GR the first couple of weeks in July. If you want to hang out you can either write me email or call my cell phone (or my parent's phone after June 29th).
Matt has bestowed upon me luscious gifts for our Anniversary: KitchenAid mixer and a Cuisinart Food Processor. We made pizza last night. I used the mixer to make the dough and Matt use the Food Processor to make the sauce. The pizza turned out fantastic and we had a lot of fun creating it. More info to come on the creations from the new appliances!!!
(Nikki's feet don't even touch the bottom of the fountain.)Saturday, May 31, 2008
Busy couple of weeks....
Sheesh!!! The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind.
We began and are almost finished with painting our room. We will post pics on Flickr when it is totally done.
In case you haven't heard I completed my first 10K - the Bolder Boulder. It was pretty challenging and a lot of fun. I am looking forward to doing at least one, if not two, more before I come back to GR in July. Hopefully this time around I won't do yard work and painting two days beforehand.
This is what pain looks like.
I have changed my major.
I have now decided to become a vet technician. I have enrolled in a Technical Institute out here named Bel-rae. They are a small school and the only program that they offer is for vet tech. My classes start September 29th!!!!
We began and are almost finished with painting our room. We will post pics on Flickr when it is totally done.
In case you haven't heard I completed my first 10K - the Bolder Boulder. It was pretty challenging and a lot of fun. I am looking forward to doing at least one, if not two, more before I come back to GR in July. Hopefully this time around I won't do yard work and painting two days beforehand.
This is what pain looks like.
I have now decided to become a vet technician. I have enrolled in a Technical Institute out here named Bel-rae. They are a small school and the only program that they offer is for vet tech. My classes start September 29th!!!!
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Lovin' The Star Wars
This video has been floating around the intertubes for a while now, but I thought I'd share it with the crowd out there. Watch it through to the end, and if you're at all a Star Wars fan, you will laugh. Oh, how you'll laugh.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Foster's Australian for....
There seems to be at least one Aussie that needs to get the priorities straightened out: Beer
Sheesh!!
Sheesh!!
Sunday, May 11, 2008
United Airlines Sucks
I am now getting close to entering my third hour of waiting on a plane. The cause? A 'slide' is missing. No one seems to know what this means, but here we sit nonetheless. The best part is I won't get to my hotel before 1AM at the earliest, and I have to work at 7AM EST. Woot.
I better get some frequent-flier points or something for this.
Reckless Abandon
It's hard to come across any true absurdest humor. Adding something strange to a setting does not make it absurd, it just makes it silly. It's hard to see that perfect balance of something odd, not repeated somewhere else, and accessible. Behold: A funny video...
Damn. Five minutes after posting the above video, I found another by these guys. They're called "Waverly Films" and they're amazing. It reminds of me of some videos me and some friends made in high school and after. We always had a deep appreciation for good absurdist humor. One of our earliest (in my opinion funniest) videos was an interviewer asking a man it it was true that he couldn't stand having nickels next to his ears. The interviewee says, "Yes." Smiles and winks. The skit ends with a shot of the interviewee staring at the camera and two nickles appearing next to his head. He gasps and the screen goes blank. I love it to this day... and if anyone reads this blog and still has this video accessable, I am kindly requesting that they upload it on YouTube or something so I can embed it here for the dropmystraw audience (all three of you).
I especially enjoy absurdist humor that has a twinge of maliciousness running through it. Think of a band like Ween. They are very talented musicians, and enjoyment of the music comes not only from the melodies and rhythm, but also the humor. And the humor itself is profoundly absurdist, and profoundly creepy. A great example is the song "Spinal Meningitis," wherein the band sings about a child who has spinal meningitis and is asking if he's going to, "see God." The enjoyment comes from it being so absurd and evil and well performed. It's a strange combination that many people don't seem to get into, but I love it. Here's the great example from these "Waverly Film" peeps. Enjoy.
Damn. Five minutes after posting the above video, I found another by these guys. They're called "Waverly Films" and they're amazing. It reminds of me of some videos me and some friends made in high school and after. We always had a deep appreciation for good absurdist humor. One of our earliest (in my opinion funniest) videos was an interviewer asking a man it it was true that he couldn't stand having nickels next to his ears. The interviewee says, "Yes." Smiles and winks. The skit ends with a shot of the interviewee staring at the camera and two nickles appearing next to his head. He gasps and the screen goes blank. I love it to this day... and if anyone reads this blog and still has this video accessable, I am kindly requesting that they upload it on YouTube or something so I can embed it here for the dropmystraw audience (all three of you).
I especially enjoy absurdist humor that has a twinge of maliciousness running through it. Think of a band like Ween. They are very talented musicians, and enjoyment of the music comes not only from the melodies and rhythm, but also the humor. And the humor itself is profoundly absurdist, and profoundly creepy. A great example is the song "Spinal Meningitis," wherein the band sings about a child who has spinal meningitis and is asking if he's going to, "see God." The enjoyment comes from it being so absurd and evil and well performed. It's a strange combination that many people don't seem to get into, but I love it. Here's the great example from these "Waverly Film" peeps. Enjoy.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Tomorrow's the run
We are Jess and Mike's house getting ready for the Riverbank Run tomorrow. The shirts have arrived (and no one has collected theirs except Chad and Megan). We're all stoked and ready to go down and chill with the masses. I am going to bring my camera with me and take pictures as we talk. I'll post them on the Flickr stream when time allows.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Thursday, May 01, 2008
UK pictures and other miscellaneous items of potential interest
After many problems with our crappy Mac uploader "JetPhoto Studio", we've finally gotten our good UK pictures up on Flickr. The Flickr slideshow stream on the right-hand navigation bar should be showing the last 10-15 photos we uploaded. I am still in process of naming and organizing all the pictures into their respective sets and collections, so if you check them out right away, they won't be named or have any hilarious notes written on them. We will create a set of our top ten favorite pictures from the collection once they are all organized. I'll post about it later, when we've assembled the set.
I am still in partial-recovery mode from the knee surgery last Friday. My pain meds have run out, so it's back to the grind (literally) as I work on getting my knee up to snuff for the 5K walk in a little over a week. I have an official go-ahead from my doc, so I'm not really worried about blowing the knee up right after having it worked on. There is lingering surgery pain, but the chronic pain that I had been dealing with for the past few years seems to have abated some. That, and the horrendous grinding/snapping sounds that would accompany any lateral movement of my calf have also greatly diminished. So far I have to say I'm very pleased with the outcome.
Now that I've had a few days off for medical leave, I've been able to get a some things done that have been piling up due to me being out of the state on business and plain, old procrastination. I now have an official Colorado license, I am registered to vote, washed, vacuumed, and got an oil change for the car, and have two new pairs of glasses on order. The last thing I really should do with this semi-free time is go in for a teeth cleaning. I dread this as I'm pretty sure I have a cavity that needs filling, and we have no dental insurance. Alas. Might as well get it done before they all fall out.
Nikki has been having doggy-seizures. We've always been kind of suspicious that when she stares off into the distance and her head begins to shake (like a palsy, not a foaming, rabid grand mal kind of thing), it might be a seizure. She has been having them more frequently (she had a good 5-minute one this morning), so we decided to set up an appointment with our vet to get some tests run and try out some anti-seizure medication. Another clinching thing is that Nikki is having many of the side-effects from seizures on dogs are prone to. She looses her appetite before having one (she refused to eat breakfast and even treats this morning - just before having a seizure). She'll also get restless and won't sleep. Hopefully we'll know more tomorrow when her appointment is done.
That's about it from here. We're heading out to GR next week Thursday and will be sticking around until Sunday at the earliest. I have work at the Smithsonian in DC and in Minneapolis starting that Monday, so I don't know if I'll leaving Sunday night late, or Monday morning early.
I am still in partial-recovery mode from the knee surgery last Friday. My pain meds have run out, so it's back to the grind (literally) as I work on getting my knee up to snuff for the 5K walk in a little over a week. I have an official go-ahead from my doc, so I'm not really worried about blowing the knee up right after having it worked on. There is lingering surgery pain, but the chronic pain that I had been dealing with for the past few years seems to have abated some. That, and the horrendous grinding/snapping sounds that would accompany any lateral movement of my calf have also greatly diminished. So far I have to say I'm very pleased with the outcome.
Now that I've had a few days off for medical leave, I've been able to get a some things done that have been piling up due to me being out of the state on business and plain, old procrastination. I now have an official Colorado license, I am registered to vote, washed, vacuumed, and got an oil change for the car, and have two new pairs of glasses on order. The last thing I really should do with this semi-free time is go in for a teeth cleaning. I dread this as I'm pretty sure I have a cavity that needs filling, and we have no dental insurance. Alas. Might as well get it done before they all fall out.
Nikki has been having doggy-seizures. We've always been kind of suspicious that when she stares off into the distance and her head begins to shake (like a palsy, not a foaming, rabid grand mal kind of thing), it might be a seizure. She has been having them more frequently (she had a good 5-minute one this morning), so we decided to set up an appointment with our vet to get some tests run and try out some anti-seizure medication. Another clinching thing is that Nikki is having many of the side-effects from seizures on dogs are prone to. She looses her appetite before having one (she refused to eat breakfast and even treats this morning - just before having a seizure). She'll also get restless and won't sleep. Hopefully we'll know more tomorrow when her appointment is done.
That's about it from here. We're heading out to GR next week Thursday and will be sticking around until Sunday at the earliest. I have work at the Smithsonian in DC and in Minneapolis starting that Monday, so I don't know if I'll leaving Sunday night late, or Monday morning early.
(I want one very badly.)
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