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On the Road in Iraq

Tuesday, May 3, 2011 

We took a very nice tour from Baghdad to Basrah by car. The countryside is pretty amazing, from the relative lushness of the fertile crescent to the desert sands of the south to the marshes of the deep south and the distant flare gas fires on the horizon.

Flares_on_way_to_Basrah.jpg

Normal flare gas

Ut oh, blow out…

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Camels in the desert… camels crossing the road:
Posted at 14:46:28 GMT-0700

Category: photoPlacesTravelvideo

HDR video with SLRs

Friday, September 10, 2010 

HDR is kind of cool – a nice way to get past the limitations of solid-state image sensors and recover some of the latitude of film, even improving on it.

The problem is that solid state image sensors tend to have very linear responses to light – an underexposed image vanishes into the noise floor of the sensor while an overexposed image clips off to pure white.  Film exposure response is commonly called an “s-curve” and basically means there’s some data in the random conversion of a light sensitive molecule here or there even in the most underexposed image, and a few that resist converting under the harshest blast of light such that there is perceivable data in both.

This film is a pretty impressive example of HDR video.  But there’s something a bit odd about such a technical achievement in cinematography mixing up “underexposed” and “overexposed.” The funny thing is, they’re using the terms as in making a print (e.g. printing on photo paper) or an x-ray where more light darkens the print: the paper starts out white and turns black with more light vs. a film or digital exposure where the media yields a black result that increases in representational lightness with with increasing light exposure.

moz-screenshot-119.png
Posted at 00:51:58 GMT-0700

Category: FilmsTechnologyvideo

Kitten Mittons!

Friday, July 9, 2010 

After Tortuga had her kittens, the clatter of tiny paws was almost deafening.  We really could have used a whole case of these!

Posted at 13:01:04 GMT-0700

Category: Funnyvideo

Spooky Cupid Shuffle

Friday, June 25, 2010 

A modern Macarena? Is it odd when people start a synchronized dance at the German embassy?

[quicktime]http://www.blackrosetech.com/gessel/wp-filez/cupid_shuffle.mp4[/quicktime]

Posted at 20:12:38 GMT-0700

Category: video

Splish Splash, an SRL prop takes a swim

Sunday, April 5, 2009 

An SRL prop takes a swim…

This was recorded on my Blackberry way back in the ancient era and I ffmpeged it back to life. Fun times in the gold olde days when SF still had a thriving art scene. The post is backdated to the contemporary era, but these comments are 2023.

If the video doesn’t play, dump your iPhone for a non-walled garden device.

Encode parameters

 ffmpeg -i splishsplash.MOV -vf vidstabdetect -f null -; 
 ffmpeg -i splishsplash.MOV -vf vidstabtransform=zoom=1:smoothing=5:optzoom=2:interpol=bicubic:input="transforms.trf" -c:v libsvtav1 -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -preset 2 -svtav1-params tune=0 -b:v 0 -crf 41 -pass 1 -an -f null /dev/null && \
 ffmpeg -i splishsplash.MOV -vf scale=-2:960:flags=lanczos,vidstabtransform=zoom=1:smoothing=5:optzoom=2:interpol=bicubic:input="transforms.trf" -c:v libsvtav1 -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -preset 2 -svtav1-params tune=0 -b:v 0 -crf 41 -pass 2 -c:a libopus -b:a 24000 splishsplash.webm

 

Posted at 19:23:58 GMT-0700

Category: GeopostSRLvideo

loading our bags

Thursday, November 6, 2008 

Our plane stopped on it’s way out of the gate, went back to the gate for a quick mechanical fix to the toilets, we were told.  Outside I saw them loading a few more bags including Carolyn and Mine (the grey and yellow plastic ones).

loading our bags.3GP

Posted at 16:00:12 GMT-0700

Category: photoPlanesvideo

Tossed like a Salad…

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 

The New York Times had an article about the trials of the survivors of Ike in Texas. Pretty dramatic, but nothing highlights the malevolence of a storm than an allusion to tossed salad:

“Outside, the peninsula was under siege. Flooding and winds moved beach houses onto the highway, tore off awnings and walls, and rushed straight through houses and businesses, leaving their roofs intact but their insides tossed into a salad of clothing, furniture and debris.”

Read more…

Posted at 11:50:56 GMT-0700

Category: FunnyvideoWeather

Acceleration Slidewalk

Friday, August 15, 2008 

For the last year or so I’ve been waiting for the acceleration slidewalk at the Toronto Airport to open. One day last March I saw it running, but never since. It works a bit like an acceleration ski lift. The hand rests and the tread expand for the first 10 meters or so of the slidewalk as it starts, moving faster as they expand. It looks like it runs about twice as fast as a regular slidewalk – nearly a jogging pace. At the end it slows down as the treads compress into each other. I can’t wait until it opens.

Acceleration_Slidewalk_YYZ.MOV

Read more…

Posted at 19:00:25 GMT-0700

Category: PlacesTechnologyTravelvideo

4th of Juplaya

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 

Carolyn and I went out to the Black Rock Desert to partake in the 4th of Juplaya experience. Kent put together (along with Dismal crew) an amazing fireworks show, well worth the trip. We drove out in my old ’79 F250, which is becoming a classic (apparently the 78 and 79 are much desired according to a nice ranger we met), and camped in it.

Dismal_fireworks2.jpg

The show was really great. It was, by far, the best fireworks show I’ve ever seen. The pyrotechnics weren’t necessarily as big as a city-sponsored show, but they were close, “crowd interactive,” and very creative. Photographs, especially with a point-and-shoot digital, do not do justice the experience.

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We camped with Nephology/FKO, and had a very nice time with our “neighbors.” Vera and Eric caravanned out with us and we ended up next to Simon and Julia. Between us we had brought a lot of good food and enough cooking apparatus to make very nice meals like citrus marinade for the ribs and chicken and butter lettuce and sides of seared vegetables and yams.

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The fourth is a good time to head out – the playa is uncrowded and if you must avoid an impromptu rave that sets up near by you can just drive straight away until the sound fades to zero a mile or two away. By doing so, we slept very soundly in the back of the truck.

On the way out we took a very pretty dirt road that paralleled the paved road between 80 and Gerlach. We ended up driving down it a bit further than anticipated and the GPS told us to take a right at a “road” (as it was named on the GPS map) we could barely discern from the desert.

Road_through_Washoe.jpg

After an hour of crawling over washouts and flash creeks we found ourselves at a gate and a fork in the road. While waiting for the GPS to figure out which direction led to pavement (the battery died, the cigarette lighter in the truck doesn’t work so it was bare wires against he pins to wake up the GPS)… there was a fairly significant “BOOM” from under the hood and the engine stopped suddenly and a could of steam spurted out…

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We were 25 miles or so from the last place we saw a human being and an indeterminate distance from the nearest paved road or even cell service. It was about 1pm. About 105F. Not the best time to be out in the middle of nowhere with the top blown off the radiator.

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After inventorying what was in the back of the truck I dug out some ratchet straps, cut down a stick I found by the side of the road with the vestigial saw on my multi-tool, and used the stapler to fabricate a seal from a rag and strapped the radiator back together so it wasn’t blowing out steam fast enough to flood the distributor. I refilled the radiator with drinking water and we were ready to go. We found ourselves walking distance from a ranch where the lovely Annette there let us a refill our water bottles and we managed to drive over the pass and out to the paved road. With a few adjustments and minor events we made it all the way to I80 where the truck finally gave up.

There we met a friendly rattler who kept us company until AAA showed up and took us to Waynes Auto repair in Sparks. They seemed to know F250s pretty well, so they’re doing all the work the truck needs at the moment.

Posted at 23:00:44 GMT-0700

Category: OddphotoPlacesvideo

Guca Golden Trumpet Festival…

Saturday, January 26, 2008 

Carolyn and I were on a night train from Zagreb to Venice last night and our cabin mate was on his way from Belgrade and told us that the most amazing experience of his life was the Guca Golden Trumpet Festival, especially the finale where the hills around the town are wired with dynamite charges, one for ever of the 47 years of the festival.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXR6v1d2ZVg[/youtube]

Posted at 10:47:59 GMT-0700

Category: Travelvideo