My fish eye

As anyone who watches this space knows I fail at posting blog posts. :-/ However in hopes of getting started again here is something small.

I have a new fish eye lens. It’s a cheap one but I really like the projection (the edges are not too compressed). However I am realizing that what people say about chromatic aberration and fuzziness are very true. It is not a very crisp lens. But from what I have heard it is the only lens which is stereographic projection.

Here are some pictures taken with the lens:

At OrFunner (a burn-a-like event)

At OrFunner (a burn-a-like event). There are fish in the pond.

The Congress St bridge in Austin. There are people standing on it because it’s near sundown and people come out to watch the bats come out.

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Almost there

My father and I just crossed the Texas border. We are still a 7 hour drive from Austin but this is the last leg in some sense. We will be spending the night at a motel somewhere along I-10. And tomorrow moving into my apartment.

Last night I tripped in the camp ground and skinned my knee and mildly sprained my ankle. I managed to see some of carlsbad caverns today anyway. So that worked ok.

It’s hard to take pictures in a cave, even a lit one. So the carlsbad pictures will be mediocre at best. Though I do have an interesting idea about post processing: could I merge the sharp image of a flash picture with the color and brightness of a natural light image to get a sharper version of the natural light image?

And by the way, we live in the future. I’m posting this while moving at breakneck speed (75 mph) across the west Texas desert on US-285.

Again there  will be more text and pictures about this trip in coming weeks as I work through my picture (around 1500 of them I think) and write up some discussion of the trip. However as a preview. The main take away from this trip is you really need 2-3 days at most of the locations instead of 4-5 hours.

A VLA dish (I’m in front of it, look for the ant sized creature)

Rocks and plants at the Valley of Fires Campground we stayed at last night. (where I hurt me self)

A drapery at Carlsbad Caverns in the “Big Room”.

Driving to Austin (Preview)

I said I would try to post so here is a quick one. I’m in a KOA campground in Holbrook, AZ. So far the neat stops have been almost all canyons, with one exception:

• Crooked River
• The Bonoville Saltflats
• Kolob Canyons (in Zion National Park)
• The Grand Canyon

We have been camping (except for one night were we cheated and went to motel). The next couple of days will be the VLA (Very Large Array Radio Telescope) and maybe Carlsbad Caverns.

Here are a few pictures. Many more have been taken and will be shared later.

Bonoville Saltflats

Kolob Canyon (Zion National Park)

Grand Canyon (from Imperial Point)

Visiting Japan: Part 3

This is the third of three posts. The three parts are 1, 2, and 3.

May 28

Once I parted ways with Martin, Kyoko, and Sarah I got on the Shinkansen to Nagoya for the next conference.

That night I stay at a Ryokan, a “traditional” Japanese hostel of sorts. It was of course a tourist trap, but it was also pretty cheap and sleeping on Tatami was interesting. It was pretty good night. I failed to find any of the restaurants I went looking for for dinner, so I ended up just getting convenience store Sushi, which is pretty good in Japan. Also I got a red bean danish, which was awesome. In fact I really wish I could get themhere. That and the awesome green tea ice cream bars. I should try to source them in the US.

May 29

In the morning I had a “traditional” Japanese breakfast involving eggs cooked at the table over a flame and various fishy things. It was good. Then I headed to the conference (WFLP). I was the first to present in the morning and I presented my abstract on evaluating functional programs in parallel using random traversals, “The Random Traversal Technique for Parallel Evaluation of Functional Programs”. It went well and someone told me I was wrong which I was pretty happy about. I mean at least it was interesting enough for someone to have an opinion about. WFLP was only a single day. Read more »

I wonder if craigslist will C&D google

So PadMapper (a very nice housing search system) has reintroduced craigslist ads. This is interesting given that craigslist C&D’d them based on the craigslist terms of use. However they found a work around: 3taps. 3taps provides access to craigslist data without a terms of use. It has been theorized that this is done by using a separate caching system such as google cache. However this cache would probably be in violation of the TOU of craigslist because they are redistributing the craigslist content after accessing the craigslist servers and hence agreeing to the TOU. So will craigslist have the bawls to tell google and other caching services to stop? Also what about google search? Wouldn’t that also violate the TOU and expose craigslist data?

I would love to see the fall out of craigslist trying to control all that. I think it would explode in their face and be very interesting.

Visiting Japan: Part 2

This is the second of three posts. The three parts are 1, 2, and 3.

May 26

In the evening I got on the Shinkansen and went to Tokyo to meet with Martin, Kyoko, and Sarah. I met them at Shin-Yokohama and we went to Minato Mirai and rode the large farris wheel. It was pretty cool.

Then we had Sushi. Which was interesting. Raw fish is subtle, but tasty. Honestly I learned through the trip that I prefer raw fish to cooked fish. Also the rice is amazing in Sushi. In fact the rice Shuyu, Wasabi combination is my favorite part. I ate Fugu (puffer fish) but I was not actually that impressed. It was good but not impressive deep fried, but the raw Fugu was really tough and kind of boring. However I really enjoyed the Unagi (I think, it might have been a different eel) and what I think was some kind of tuna. Overall it was very good. Sushi is the only meat that I ate in Japan that I kinda wish I ate more often, but I think I will be happy with vegetable Maki because rice and sauce are my favorite part. That being said, if I go back to Japan (which I would like to do) I would probably eat more Sushi.

Then we went back to Martin and Kyoko’s apartment.

Read more »

Visiting Japan: Part 1

So better late then never like they say. This trip was almost 2 months ago, but I’m only now getting to posting about it. Life has been distracting. I was in Japan for 8 days from May 22 to May 30. And I’ll give a quick day by day with some pictures.

This is the first of three posts. The three parts are 1, 2, and 3.

May 22-23

A quick update

It’s been a while since I posted. Sorry about that. And this will be a short one. I just thought I’d post a quick update.

• I got back from my Japan trip (which I will post about soon I hope with lots of pictures). Japan was interesting and I presented two papers.
• I have submitted what I believe is the final version of my thesis.
• I walked for my graduation and I should officially graduate in a month or so.
• I am planning my move to Austin, TX and I’m visiting Austin next week to find an apartment and all that. I’m also going to talk to a few faculty members and maybe start some research thought.

Going to Japan

I’m in the airport waiting to leave on my trip to Japan. I’m insanely early, but it seems to be one of those things where if you get there early everything goes fast, but if you are running late you get later. So I am over 2 hours early for my flight.

I am on my way to Kobe, Japan for FLOPS 2012. I will be traveling for roughly 24 hours: 2.5 hours to LAX, 11 hours to Tokyo, and finally 6 hours on a train to Kobe. That doesn’t add up to 24 hours, but there will be time in custom and things and I’m not sure how I estimated it in the first place. Maybe it will be less.

I will spend 3 days in Kobe and then head up to Tokyo to visit Marty for 2 days and then back down to Nagoya for another conference (WFLP) for my last day and then back up to Tokyo for my last day. It’s going to be quite a trip with lots of time on trains, but I’m kind of excited about the trains so that’s OK.

I have a JR pass (similar to the Eurail Pass) for 7 days (it just hit me yesterday that I will be in Japan for 8 days, so I guess that last trip up to Tokyo will be in addition to the JR rail pass cost). The JR pass does  not cover Nozomi (the fastest of the Shinkansen, “bullet trains”) but all of  the Shinkansen are fast which should be fun.

I am presenting a paper at both conferences. At FLOPS it is a paper I co-authored with my adviser (Sergio Antoy). At WFLP it is a Work-in-Progress extended abstract that I wrote my self based on a class project I did last fall. I’m excited about both, but slightly more so about WFLP because I am the sole author and because I’ve been working with the subject of the FLOPS paper way too much because it is also the subject of my thesis.

In other news, I passed my thesis defense earlier this month and I submitted the final version of my thesis yesterday. So I’m finally done with that and I will be graduating in June with my Master of Science in Computer Science. This is pretty exciting to me. ;-)

In my last post I mentioned the camera I was eyeing. I did get it and I’m pretty darn happy with it. You can see some pictures at my google plus album. I’m thinking about starting to use flicker or something like that for better photo sharing.

Anyway, wish me luck in Japan. It should be exciting. Sadly, I’d really rather have sleep right now, not excitement (and not just because it’s 5:30am). I am looking forward to getting back from Japan and getting some real rest. It has been a really intense term.

An update on plans and schools and being an academic

So it’s been a while since I posted and, just in case there in anyone who reads this who I don’t regularly talk to, I thought I’d give an update.

I have decided (3 weeks ago) to go to Austin for my PhD. I’m scared but it’s the right choice academically. I will definitely lose something, since I have a several very good friends here in Portland. But who knows maybe I will be able to come back someday. I do like it here.

Regardless, it is decided. So in Aug I will be moving across the country again. Not quite as far as last time, but it’s still a ways. I’ve been thinking about logistics: I will either ship things (FedEx) or drive a mini-van or similar. I’ve already started making some contacts in Austin and I will probably visit there in July before I move. There are a couple reasons. One is that it will allow me to get an apartment. The other is that there are some people at UT that would like to talk to me before the semester starts, including a student who is leaving and I will be continuing their work to some extent (probably, nothing is set about what I will do and there are a lot of options).

Also I submitted my Master’s thesis to my committee. I will be defending it on May 10th (if you are in Portland you would be welcome to come to the defense just email me and ask for location and time), so I still have a lot of work to do to prepare for that and once that is done I need to prepare for my presentations in Japan (see below), so I’m still quite busy but I’m relieved to have the thesis out of my hands for at least the moment. I will still have to do another revision after the defense.

In other news, I’m going to Japan for a week in late May. I have a paper in FLOPS (First author is Sergio Antoy) and will probably have an extended abstract in the WFLP Work-in-Progress session. I will also have 3 days to be a tourist. I have a 7-day Japan Rail Pass, so I will be able to run around Japan in most of the trains. It will be pretty exciting, but also scary. I still have logistics to work out.

I’m planning on buy a semi-fancy camera for the trip and because I like to take pictures of things currently I plan on getting the Sony Alpha NEX-5N. I will be buying it very soon, probably today, so that I have it for my trip.

Also my websites got hacked a while back and I didn’t even notice. Grr. I feel like an idiot. I have now fixed everything and upgraded everything. I am 99% sure there are no lingering backdoors. :-/ I’m going to set up some monitoring scripts, so I will get notified immediately if it happens again.