RAW development rubs me Raw

I’m exhausted. For the last four nights I’ve been up late Lightroom’ing the pictures I took on my little Arizona annular eclipse trip. I’m a new Lightroom user and I’m not entirely impressed with the program. It’s a first class general RAW developer but I don’t think it’s as good as Capture NX when working with Nikon NEF files. For the nonce I will keep Lightroom’ing away; you have to master something before you can have a valid opinion about it!

Lonely Lake Powell boat at dusk

As annoyed as I am about Lightroom I know, from bitter experience, that when I first process images I only see problems. The composition sucks. The colors are off. Things are too dark or to light. After a few dozen disappointments the mood darkens and I wonder just who the fuck took all this shit? But I solider on, waging relentless pixel warfare, because in few years, when I’ve forgotten about light curves, sharpening parameters, edge masks, color spaces and all the technical hoo-hah that goes into digital image making, I start seeing the pictures not the flaws. I sometimes catch myself looking at my old pictures and wondering just who took all these great shots. You change your mind about pictures!

This is why I don’t use “star” ratings. Most image management systems have ratings. Lightroom has a five-star system, Thumbsplus does something similar and every image management tool I’ve looked at has a comparable feature. Obviously the masses expect and demand ratings. Too bad the masses are wrong. In the long run ratings are meaningless. You really see this with restoration projects. I’ve spent days restoring pictures that what I would rate as total crap if I had just shot them. Yet here I am spending long hours on yesterday’s crap.

Restoration work also changes your attitude about duds. In my film days I ruthlessly pruned my slides and negatives trashing exposures that didn’t meet my standards of the time. Now I curse that delusional jackass for throwing away my precious originals. It’s surprising how useful duds are; they fill in missing details and remind you of your ever-changing opinions.  Save your duds I guarantee you will feel differently about them in a few years and, of course, others will have completely different takes.

Annular eclipse fans

The Wahweap Wow

Glen Canyon dam

Last weekend I was in Page Arizona to visit my parents and catch the May 20^th 2012 annular solar eclipse. Page is a little town that owes its existence to the construction of the Glen Canyon dam in the early 1960’s. The reservoir behind the dam, Lake Powell, has appeared in so many movies that it should collect royalties. Charlton Heston crashed his spaceship here in the first and only good Planet of the Apes movie.  John Travolta nuked the place in Broken Arrow. Even Jesus Christ used Lake Powell as a Dead Sea ringer in The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Page, the dam and Lake Powell did not disappoint. I had a great time toodling around shooting pictures. I only had one day which was partly devoted to the eclipse but I saw enough to give Glen Canyon an unqualified thumbs up. If you’re into rocks, desert and water this place is bucket list material. Like MacArthur I will return.

Wahweap Overlook eclipse fans

While pleased with Glen Canyon I was surprised by the large number of people who turned out for the annular eclipse. The US park service in conjunction with local amateur astronomers set up viewing grounds on Wahweap Overlook and ran full size shuttle buses from the nearby Carl Hayden dam visitor center. At least four busloads of eclipse fans were carried to the overlook where they joined more amateur astronomers and serious eclipse photographers that had set up dozens of telescopes and cameras for the big show. There must have been at least four hundred people on Wahweap Overlook and Wahweap was only one of many sites where people set up to watch the eclipse. It’s gratifying to see that when a real star puts on a show the audience is huge.

Before the eclipse started, and during the early phases when the Moon was creeping on the Sun’s disk, I walked around looking through telescopes. Two scopes stood out. One expensive large aperture Hydrogen Alpha scope served up gorgeous high-resolution views of the Sun. In Hydrogen Alpha light solar prominences , filaments  and photosphere mottles are clearly visible. The big Hydrogen Alpha scope put on a good show but bang for the buck went to a 15 dollar light funnel that a 14-year-old made by hand and attached to a small refractor. His makeshift funnel projected the brightest and clearest white light image of the Sun. I told him his projection was the best; he was happy to hear it.

iPhone image captured by holding eclipse shades over the lens.

As the eclipse approached the annular phase I set up my camera. I didn’t have the right filter, only a 4D neutral density, but I thought I’d give it a try. When the light ring formed I fired off a few shots. The filter didn’t cut enough light so I immediately gave up and went to plan B. Plan B consisted of covering the lens of my  iPhone with eclipse shades and Phd’ing it.  I took a few frames and managed to catch the ring. It was a minor triumph of iPhoneography.  After that I just gawked through my eclipse shades while the Sun and Moon wowed the masses with their dance. The crowd burst into applause when the ring broke but, sadly, the performers declined an encore.

Lake Powell houseboats

As I have already said, annulars are not in the same awe-inspiring class as totals but this annular, falling where it did, was special. From the overlook you could see the lake, the dam, towering red rock formations and of course the sky. The perfect ring of light was just the icing on the cake of a Wahweap wow!

GPX from Google Maps KML J Script

In preparation for my Arizona jaunt to watch the May 20^th annular eclipse I spent a few hours on Google Maps selecting locations to visit.  Here are my prime targets.

View Larger Map

After selecting targets the next step is to load them onto my “GPS device.” Currently my GPS device is the MotionX GPS iPhone app.  MotionX can read GPX files in many ways but you need GPX files not Google Maps KML files. Converting KML to GPX is a recurring nuisance. I’ve used online converters for this chore but today, after being annoyed by this problem for the zillionth time, I dashed off a J script that transforms Google Maps KML to GPX.  The main verb gpxfrmapkml is shown below. The entire script is available here and in the files sidebar. Browse to the J Scripts directory. Happy KML to GPX’ing my friends.

gpxfrmapkml=:3 : 0

NB.*gpxfrmapkml v-- gpx from Google maps kml.
NB.
NB. monad:  clGpx =. gpxfrmapkml clKml
NB.
NB.   NB. download Google map waypoints as kml
NB.   kml=. read 'c:/temp/arizona annular eclipse.kml'
NB.
NB.   NB. convert to gpx and save
NB.   gpx=. gpxfrmapkml kml
NB.   gpx write 'c:/temp/arizona annular eclipse.gpx'  

NB. parse kml form waypoint table
dname=. ;'name' geteletext '<Placemark>' beforestr y
wpt=.   ;'Placemark' geteletext y
wpt=.   ('name' geteletext wpt) ,. <;._1&> ','&,&.> 'coordinates' geteletext wpt
hdr=.   ;:'phototitle longitude latitude'

NB. format gpx header 
gpxstamp=. 'Waypoints: ',(":#wpt),' GPX generated: ',timestamp''
gpxheader=. ('/{{headername}}/',dname,'/{{headerdescription}}/',gpxstamp) changestr GPXFRKMLHEADER
gpxtrailer=. GPXTRAILER

'idx pkml'=. HTMLVARBPATTERN patpartstr GPXSMUGPLACEMARK
rvarbs=. idx htmlvarbs pkml

NB. all row varibles must exist in data header
assert. *./ rvarbs e. hdr
rows=. (#wpt) # ,: pkml
rows=. ((hdr i. <'phototitle'){"1 wpt) (<a:;(rvarbs i. <'phototitle'){idx)} rows
rows=. ((hdr i. <'latitude'){"1 wpt) (<a:;(rvarbs i. <'latitude'){idx)} rows
rows=. ((hdr i. <'longitude'){"1 wpt) (<a:;(rvarbs i. <'longitude'){idx)} rows

gpxheader,(;rows),gpxtrailer
)

2012 Venus Transit and Annular Eclipse

I’m gearing up for two big eminent celestial events. On May 20^th I’ll be near Page Arizona observing an annular eclipse of the Sun and on June 5^th, weather permitting, I’ll be in St. Louis watching Venus creep on the disc of the Sun for the last time in my lifetime.

Eclipses and transits are spectacular events for amateur astronomers and innocent bystanders. Of the two eclipses offer the greater spectacle. In fact, for sheer unbridled awesomeness, it’s hard to beat a total eclipse of the Sun! You can add up all the World Cups and Super Bowls ever played and they would barely register on the logarithmic total solar eclipse spectacle scale. The one total solar eclipse I saw easily ranks as the greatest thing I’ve ever seen and I’m including the births of my children. The May 20^th solar eclipse is annular so it’s not in the same galaxy as a total but annular’s have their charms. At maximum eclipse the Sun appears like a perfect blazing ring of light. In Page it will be 10 degrees above the north-western horizon: a good altitude for composing solar landscape pictures.

By comparison the June 5^th transit of Venus will not be a big show. Without proper equipment you won’t be able to see it at all. During transit Venus looks like a little black dot on the Sun. The best way to see this event is with telescope or binocular projection. Under no circumstances should you look directly at the Sun without proper eye protection!  For safe transit viewing techniques look here. In 2004 I used binocular projection to view the last transit of Venus from Ottawa Canada. Transits of Venus come in pairs, eight year apart, followed by over a century before the next pair.  After 2012 you will have to wait until 2117 to see another transit of Venus. This is our last chance people. Yeah mortality seriously blows.

2004 transit of Venus from Ottawa Canada. I used 10x50 binoculars to project an image of the Sun. The little dark spot on Sun's limb is the planet Venus.

The Joys of Photographic Waybacking

Remember Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine. Mr Peabody was dog, with a pet boy Sherman, that used his Wayback time travel machine to visit the past. I’m not sure if he ever visited the future; that’s a question best left to Rocky and Bullwinkle historians. Well, I have Wayback machines; they’re called film and flatbed scanners. I spend way to much time scanning and restoring old photographs. Over the years I’ve scanned thousands of images. It only takes a few minutes to get a high quality scan but it can take days of image editing to restore old damaged originals. Hence, I always have a backlog of scanned pictures to fix.

My enthusiasm for this endless task waxes and wanes with my general photographic energies. A few weeks ago I upgraded my arsenal of DLSR cameras and lenses. New lenses always give me boast. So lately I’ve been out pixel harvesting with a lovely little f2.8 macro lens.  I think she I will be an item for years to come — wide open her bokeh is beautiful. While I enjoy working with my spanking new crystal clear digital images I find myself wandering in my vast image file directories and picking out old scans to work on. Today I whiled away a rainy afternoon restoring pictures I took over forty years ago. Here’s a shot from my ACS Beirut Lebanon boarding school days. This is from an old Instamatic camera. I believe it was my second camera. Over the years my cameras have gotten better and better but they still cannot go Wayback in time.

Lying on my bed and trying to look tough for the camera. I don't think the pajamas are helping. This image is from an old Kodacolor Instamatic slide taken in 1968. In the original scan fingerprints are visible. I take good care of originals but accidents happen. For more before-after diptychs click.

Old white guys look at the sky!

Last Friday I joined the Saint Louis Astronomical Society (SLAS). In the last twenty years I have been a member of two chapters of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Kingston and Ottawa, the Forth Worth Astronomical Society in Texas, the Minnesota Astronomical Society in Saint Paul and the Orange County Astronomers in southern California. No matter where I go I can see the sky and I can find people who share my interest in it. The SLAS is very similar to other clubs. If you were to walk into a typical astronomy club meeting your overwhelming impression would be: old white guys like looking at the sky!  

The undeniable old whiteness of astronomy clubs is a concern because it tells you something about the health of our culture.  If you think I am pulling your leg or being sarcastic consider the following.

1. Club members have strong noncommercial or unprofessional interests in science.  Most are not professional astronomers or even scientists. Few derive any income from their interests in astronomy and many spend insane amounts of time and money building telescopes, observing  the sky and keeping up with findings in astronomy and related sciences. What’s the point? Wouldn’t these people be better off devoting the time they “waste” on astronomy to more productive pursuits?  Mind you the same applies to unprofessional artists and hobbyists of all types that “waste” comparable amounts of time on their own “pointless” pursuits.  Astronomy club members love what they do, and, in my experience, it’s a constant and enduring love that never dims or goes away. Anyone with a real passion knows what I’m talking about.
2. Astronomy club members respect, understand and value scientific arguments. We are constantly reading depressing assessments of the public’s dismal understanding of science. For example, 44% of the US public accepts that, “God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.”  Only 5% of scientists accept this nonsense and even 5% seems to high for my skeptical ass.  Astronomy club members will poll more like scientists than the general public on this question. A society that depends on science yet harbors ignorant masses that do not grasp or appreciate basic scientific findings will not hold.
3. Club members welcome anyone with an interest in astronomy. I have belonged to half a dozen astronomy clubs and without exception they welcome anyone with an interest in the subject. I have never seen somebody turned away, or discouraged, for reasons of race, age, sex, sexual orientation, political or religious affiliations, or social class. Astronomy clubs are about as egalitarian as it gets! It gets better. Most clubs nurture and cherish the youngsters in their midst’s. This is partly because we don’t see a lot of youngsters and by youngster I mean anyone under thirty!

So why are astronomy clubs in North America old and white? Do people think you need expensive telescopes and other pricey gadgets to enjoy amateur astronomy?  I’ve looked at the sky for decades primarily with binoculars. They are still the best way to learn the sky. Has the public’s interest in science declined during the last forty years? Is elementary science education worse than it was when I was a child? Is the XBox’ed and Avatar’ed generation bored with looking at faint smudges in the sky? Finally, do we smell?  I don’t know why astronomy clubs are old and white but I do know that I will probably be associated with one until the day I die.

I lose another battle with Gravity

24 Hour Fitness

Yesterday I found myself back in Saint Luke’s emergency department being asked what day it was. An hour before I had stepped into the shower at 24 Hour Fitness over on Clayton,  I had just finished my noon hour workout.  I try to force myself to the gym at least four times a week.  It’s one of my many delusional projects. I’ve always wanted the lithe, lean muscular body of Spider Man but since I cannot cling to walls I’ve never managed the trick. As I stepped into the shower I suddenly felt sick to my stomach, it was a good pre-vomit feeling, I briefly thought about sitting down but then I stepped into the hot water and then … the next thing I remember  …  I was lying on my back on the shower floor with a few nude guys looking down at me.  A guy off to my side said, ”you were out for bit,”  another added,  ”you hit your head when you fell.”  Apparently,  if the news could be believed,  I had fallen out of the shower stall on my back.  I couldn’t remember a thing. I had passed out in the freaking shower!  My first thought,  ”oh goody one concussion coming up,”  I oddly didn’t care about my naked body inelegantly sprawled over harsh shower floor tiles for all to admire.  See you can get over gym shower shyness.

Of course this alarmed the gym staff, we live in a litigious, sue on the drop of — in this case my body — age.  They dutifully took notes and advised me to ride the ambulance to emergency.  ”It wouldn’t be a good idea to drive away and pass out on the highway.”  They had me there!  The EMT guys arrived, strapped me up to an electrocardiogram,  started an IV and then hauled my ass over to Saint Luke’s where I am almost on first name basis with the staff.  One of the nurses said,  ”I remember you, weren’t you the guy that tore his quadriceps?”  I enjoy being  recognized if only it was somewhere other than emergency.   Emergency staff plugged me into electric doo-dads,  drew my blood, measured my oxygen levels measured and shined lights into my eyes.  An earnest and very nice resident carefully interviewed me and declared I had experienced a syncopal episode.  Google it,  it doesn’t sound good,  I may be a dead man walking or I could have just overdone it at the gym.  Time will certainly tell.

PIP News: Isabelle is Up!

Before my fall I launched a PIP (Perpetual Impossible Project).  PIPs are long-range risky undertakings that cannot be finished. PIPs contradict and subvert the very notion of tightly controlled corporate style projects: hence their manifest appeal to recusants like myself.

I won’t go into details about my particular PIP. Let’s just say it captures every delusional notion I have ever entertained. Part of my project involved installing a few Proof Assistants. Proof assistants are programs that verify formal mathematical proofs. There are many proof assistant programs available. These programs are not mathematical magic bullets. They don’t prove theorems and they don’t make the job of “theorem proving” easier. To use a programming analogy: a traditional proof is like pseudo code while a formal proof is like an assembly language program.  If you have ever written a nontrivial assembly language program you have some idea of the sheer effort required to produce a formal proof.

So, if formal proof only makes mathematics more difficult, why bother? This is like asking, so if implementing pseudo code only makes programming more difficult, why bother?

A screen shot of Isabelle 2011 on my Ubuntu machine. To install this program I had to convert a Windows machine to Ubuntu and install a host of Linux tools. Reaching this point represents a lot of water under the software bridge.

A Peculiar Book Club

While holed up in a rehabilitation hospital recovering from a nasty fall a coworker invited me to a noon-hour Bible study group. The group conveniently met in my rehab hospital so I rolled upstairs in my wheelchair and started attending their meetings. When I told my wife about this peculiar book club she thought I was suffering from post traumatic shock or had lost my mind. It’s not that dramatic! I’m a hard-ass skeptic but I enjoy reading religious and mythical texts. I’ve plowed though vast swaths of the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Iliad, Beowulf, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Egyptian Book of the Dead. I, like many atheists and agnostics, know far more about these works than believers might expect and consider them jewels of world literature. The Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita are still taken seriously while the greek gods of the Iliad and deities like Osiris in the Book of the Dead are no longer worshiped! Emerson said it best, “The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.” Once you accept the view that the Bible is literature you can relax and enjoy the fabulous tales it spins. If, on the other hand, you believe you are reading “inerrant scripture” then you’re in for a world of logical hurt!

Jesus makes wine - click for consequences

When I was younger I argued with believers, mostly Mormons in Utah and Muslims in southern Iran and northern Ghana, that only allegorical interpretations of the Bible or Koran made sense. A literal view forces you into never-ending and embarrassing conflict with science and violent clashes with other believers. You would think after millennia of religious warfare we would catch on. You cannot simultaneously be a good Hindu and Christian. Something has to give; they both cannot be true but they both can be false! Believers are aware of these problems but most pull back from logically analyzing their positions. They instinctively know where analysis leads: myth will not hold. In the long run Allah and Jehovah will share Osiris’s and Apollo’s fate.

This is not a view I will be advocating in my peculiar book club. I am content to let others enjoy their beliefs as long as they have no material impact on me! Atheists that constantly scream about “under god” in the pledge of allegiance or “in god we trust” on the dollar annoy me! Hypothetical entities are far less tiresome than shrieking banshees. If the term “God” irritates you substitute “Santa Claus.” As for militant believers of all creeds: we have a problem! The separation of church and state is one of the deepest and greatest things about the United States. It protects all of us from our mutual idiocies. I have no problems with people erecting, on their own dime, plaques emblazoned with the Ten Commandments but it annoys me that religious institutions enjoy special tax status. Go to your mosques, churches and temples but pay your damn taxes!

Hospital Staff Training

Yesterday I transferred from Surreyplace to St. John’s rehabilitation hospital. St. John’s is a mainstream rehab hospital and is better equipped to deal with my situation. Now that I am allowed active leg movements the therapy will get more intense. To be honest I am not looking forward to longer and more painful sessions. Yes, I am a complete girly man when it comes to searing pain! I will have a better idea of what’s in store for me after tomorrow.

Whatever happens in therapy they will not be waking me up at 4:30 am to draw blood! You can imagine my delight at being roused from a crappy nights sleep, (try sleeping in python tight leg braces), and then being poked by a zealous staff vampire that took singular delight in telling me this little suck would be a daily ritual. Whoa cowboy: there had better be really good medical reasons for waking me up!

Half an hour later another nurse came in and tried to make me take a stomach lining pill. People it’s 5:00 am I am not going to start pointless drugs at such an hour. Then, shortly after refusing the stomach pill another nurse was back to administer an EKG. Clearly sleep was not on the agenda.

I’ve been told all these tests were part of a baseline workup and that I will not be subjected to many of them tomorrow. The vampire will have to suck elsewhere.

I went through the same thing at St. Luke’s and Surreyplace. I don’t want to train hospital staff in the delicate art of me maintenance but it appears unavoidable.