Science Sphere Globe

My company’s foundation announced today that they were donating one million dollars to a local science museum. I guess to make them more competitive, more modern, and to help steer kids towards careers in science and engineering if they’re so inclined. This is a pretty hefty sum of money, so I looked into what this money was being spent on and one of the things they’re going to install is a Science on a Sphere® exhibit. So I looked up and talked to a woman in my division who’s involved and it seems pretty neat. Basically it’s a big sphere that, by way of projectors, becomes a live globe. It will show current weather patterns, simulate weather patterns, show all aircraft in the air in real time, or if you wanted to get crazy, you could project the sun or another planet on it. On the NOAA’s site (they make this thing and sell this thing) they had a slide show going of other places that have this live globe. Some looked pretty cool, but some looked totally lame. The woman I was talking to about it asked me to send her the pictures I found and let me know what I thought, so I picked out some of my favorites and least favorites and added a little commentary, and then I decided to put them here too. Now although there are pictures, these are not my pictures. Thanks to the NOAA for all the pictures, and for selling us this thing for the science museum.

Ours needs to be less like Rockport (very boring)..

And be more like Korea (South Korea; nobody should be more like North Korea)!

Here’s a casual, open set up:

But it’s maybe too casual. It doesn’t emphasize the awesomeness enough, like a dedicated room would.






Chicago added some nice touches with the dome and the continents:







This is cool from a design standpoint, but you can’t get very close. People will want to be able to see the details:







I think the lady in yellow is the Queen of England. If we could get her to come to ours that would be key:







I’m pretty sure this one is in the lobby:

That’s definitely not OK, unless the stuff inside is exponentially cooler.







This room seems pretty slick:














Want more information? Go here: http://sos.noaa.gov/ Want some pictures? Go to my Flickr!

P.S. Formatting this post really cheesed me off. Damn blogger kept wanting to embed the pictures and have the text wrap around them, which was all wrong for the way I did my comments. Only way I could figure out to fix it was to blow up these stupid pictures, so sorry. It's still not even formatted how I wanted it. The text for the pictures are too close to the previous picture.

Vibram's... run #2

Well hello there. Long time no see. I really would like this photo blog to get more use, and be more of a place where I can go to share some of my thoughts. Will anyone read it? I'm not sure. But I don't care. Well that's not entirely true; I'd love to have some readers, but even if it's just a few friends or family, it ought to be a good place for me. And I don't do enough fun/creative/non-professional/not-boring writing anymore. So here it goes folks, any questions? Yes, go ahead. Will I post every day? Probably not, but I wouldn't rule out consecutive days now and then. Will I post more than once a day? Perhaps on occasion, if I feel so inclined. Will there be a photo with every post? Most definitely, even if it's completely unrelated to the text (or maybe an old photo from my flickr if I'm feeling crazy). Will you try to be funny in these posts? Uh, yeah. Will they all be this long? No, probably not. That's enough questions, this interview is over.

So on to the blog post... I'd like to tell you all about these crazy shoes I got from my Mom. These are made by Vibram and are designed for barefoot running without the barefoot. Minimal padding (just some rubber) and individual toes make these baby's as close to barefoot you can get without being all nasty and running around barefoot like a damn dirty hippie.

So I got these for Christmas, but because of crummy weather I hadn't tried them until last weekend (I only want to run out outside in them). My first run was interesting. I had some issues with my left leg and foot, with a little bit of pain in the shin area and my left big toe and little toe were rubbing a little funny. The shin pain went away after a few tenths of a mile and I thought the toe issues could be rectified with a nail trim. All in all I enjoyed it. It was weird at first because I wanted to run heel to toe, but that was very impacting, and I didn't want to break myself, so I had to make a point to land on the ball more, which isn't terribly unnatural for me (I do it somewhat with regular running shoes). My calves really got a workout landing like that. A friend at work suggested I start out slow and only do a mile or so on my first run, and I'll be damned if she wasn't right. I hit my fastest mile that day too, which was interesting because my brother mentioned later that he's read numerous accounts of people running faster in these than in regular running shoes.

So now you're caught up to today, when I got out for the second time in them. Now that's what I call a run! NO feet issues and my left shin was iffy for the first 20 paces but then was fine. My calves were very sore from the first run, but were workable today. There was some pain, but it was manageable pain, and not the kind of pain that was bad and would lead to an injury. They're BUMPIN now though. But again, in a good way.

This much soreness surprises me. I've always been a real 'King of the Calf Machine' kind of guy at the gym. Loading up the weight, hitting a full range of motion. I'm also the guy who would scoff at people with either too little weight or too little range of motion (or too much weight and still no range of motion). Running barefoot really hits your calves in a way my muscles aren't used to just yet. Today was good though because the running style felt very natural after only a few strides and I hit a pretty good rhythm. Near the end I was even able to muscle through the last few minutes at a pretty good clip. Not quite a sprint, but about all the sprint my poor calves could handle.

Now, some pictures. Congrats if you read all of that; I appreciate it. Was it boring? Maybe some of it since I was blabbering about running and junk, but it interests me so I'm apt to go on and on. But I need to stop now and go make some dinner. And probably take a shower.

uh, I don't think there's anything wrong with the action on this piano

Well it finally happened; it got really cold here. OK, so it didn’t just happen, but it’s finally effected me. I went for a long run last week with my brother. It wasn’t super long for him, but it was for me, and the longest I’d ever run non-stop. Well tonight, I was ready to get back into my routine, so I decided I’d do it again. I knew it was cold, so I bundled up and headed out. I hadn’t run this route before, so I didn’t realize it was pretty much uphill the entire route until the very end, where it was a steep downhill run. That wouldn’t have been very satisfying to run uphill all that way and not get to enjoy a long downhill, so instead of calling it good, I turned around at the peak and doubled my distance. That was all good until I hit this wide open part (I’m in the burbs – no trees sometimes) and was hit straight in the face with a 17 to 28mph wind. When I finally got home I checked the temp and it said it felt like 22 degrees and confirmed the wind speeds. All I can say is this weather is ridiculous; completely ridiculous. It’s way out of line.

So now I’ve finally warmed up a bit and can use my fingers effectively enough to ramble for a couple paragraphs on this blog. I tried to keep it short, because really, who wants to read all about my run tonight? Anyway, I also played around with some new close-up filters I got; they fit my 50mm, so they’re perfect! Check these out. They’re a little soft, but what do you expect? First one is with the lightest magnification, second one is all three stacked, and the third is what I believe to be just my 50.

pictures from today

Today I did a lot of moving. Walking, hiking, running; I did it all. The hiking lasted the longest, and most of it was in tall grass. Some of it was in trees that were way too close together. I decided that in areas where people have to walk, trees aren’t allowed to be that close together. I figure I need to talk to the US Forestry Service about that most likely. These trees, bushes, brush, and streams made me pretty angry at times. Like the time I jumped over a stream successfully… until the mud I landed on slid into the stream… with my foot on it. D’oh! Stupid mud. All in all it really wasn’t bad. It was definitely better than being in the office, and I probably burned a ton of calories. I also got to swear at nature for a few hours; it totally deserved it. When I wasn’t busy giving nature the what for, I managed to take a few pictures.

tennis!

Traveling and staying in hotels is nice sometimes because it gives me an evening to sit around and write... if I'm not too tired from the day. Luckily tonight I'm tired, but not too tired. I've been thinking about tennis lately. Tennis is a great sport. I love playing it and I love watching it. I started playing tennis when I was pretty young, but then stopped and didn’t pick it up again until I was in college. These days I generally play until I’m physically too tired to continue; I can’t get enough. It’s a good lifelong sport too; something you can play for your whole life. I wish I played more often than I do right now. I need to work on that. I also need to work on being better at tennis. Anyway, here are some tennis related pictures I’ve taken over the years.

Oh but first, how about a little pro tennis? Who's your favorite? Rafa is clearly mine. One year I listened to the French Open on the radio at work. It was a lot more entertaining than you'd think, because there were these two guys commentating, Eli Weinstein and Araz Gulekjian. These guys were a couple of the most entertaining color commentator guys I've ever heard. Unfortunately they're not on Roland Garros radio anymore, so it's not worth listening next time around. Anyway, they took a lot of letters from listeners, and the one that has always stuck out in my head was someone comparing Rafael Nadal to Roger Federer. Now this writer was a Federer fan, and was writing to explain why Federer was better. He explained that in his mind Federer was far more graceful; a maestro on the court. He proceeded to characterize Rafa as far less refined; "a fist pumping farmer" were his exact words. This was back in the good old days of Rafa. The days of him wearing capri pants and tank tops. Classic Rafa. I think he needs to go back to that wardrobe.

Oh and did you see this? Pro Robby Ginepri will miss the rest of the season due to a squirrel attack. He was riding his bike and swerved to avoid running one over and fell and broke his elbow. I've never been attacked by a squirrel, but strangely know a few people who have; one of whom has been attacked multiple times. Pffft, squirrels.

Ok enough of that, here's this:







(holy crap, I took that one in 2005!)


(film! and california!!)

3 things wrong with this dock

I don’t really know why this dock is here. Well, that’s not entirely true; it’s clearly for boats to tie up to, but when you really examine this dock you have to wonder what it’s doing.

First of all, it was amazingly hard to get to the dock from the road and cabin area. Someone had cut down a tree, and was in the process of very slowly burning it, so perhaps normally there is a path down. But as it was, you had to climb around this tree, down some serious rocks, and through shin deep ash. That’s the first problem of many.

The second problem is that there is no protection for the boats tied to it. They’re just sitting there in the open water, getting slammed by wakes. It would be far more effective if it had a slip, or was configured differently to offer protection.
Although this next problem is not normally a problem, right now it is. The water is unusually low because of dam maintenance, so even driving to this dock is probably somewhat dangerous in anything but a WaveRunner.

Other than this dock being questionably placed, everything about the cabin at Toronto lake was great!

Have a good day. See you tomorrow.



(I already posted this one, but this is the "path" down to the dock)

welcome home(?)

So I've done a terrible job of blogging lately. I've been really busy, what with traveling all over the place. First I went to Alaska for vacation. Then when I got back I spent a day in town before going to Oklahoma for work. When I got back from there, I spent two days in town, and then went to the Chicago area. I was supposed to stay there for 7-10 days, but we wrapped up the portion of the project I was working on early, so I got to come home early. I wouldn't have minded staying longer, because it was reasonably easy work and I was getting a pretty good amount of overtime, but it was nice to get home early because I was missing my girlfriend. Oh yeah, and I have a girlfriend now. So that's nice. Anyway, I wanted to give a little update, and let you know I was still alive. I’m going to make a good effort to blog more often; maybe some random thoughts and whatnot? Now please to enjoy these photographs.