Black Coffee (Deprecated)

Game 'Mayor' Concludes

This week I played the decisive move of the Diplomacy match I was participating in:

signon rmayor foo resign signoff

Good riddance. So exceptionally tedious. Although we'd only played 1.5 game-years, we'd already been through two different players for Austria, and were waiting to find a third. The time between rounds was taking forever, guaranteeing frequent bad-timings and moods of zero enthusiasm.

I only perservered the last season because I kept telling myself that 'If I resign, I will get a bad player ranking.'

Eventually I retorted, 'But if you don't like playing email Diplomacy, why do you care???'

Diplomacy seems like a game much better played in someone's livingroom in a single evening.

Live in Montreal

Sorry we've been away for awhile. Just back from Algave Portugal where we did a marvelous club there called Godak. This clubs holds about six or seven thousand people, and it was just an unbelievvvable night that was had by all. Me, along with Mr Jeff Neils in the house with 3 turntables and a 909 turn machine AND 31die was in with lots of Portuguese DJs in tow as well. Very very good scene over there.

But I'm back now! Getting ready for a Seminal 7:30 series set for Rennaisance. It's taken a very long time to put me on course, but good things happen to those who wait and I think it's been a wait well worth it. I'm really excited about playing here tonight. The crowds been very musically open to what the DJs have to offer. So hopefully the minds and the ears are open to what Nils Blutig has to bring tonight.

Kerala India Photos

I've started scanning in some of the photos we took while in Kerala, India last month. As I figure out what I'm doing, I'll be able to make more coherent presentations. As of now, I'm still tinkering with settings and figuring out how to efficiently and nicely retouch with Photoshop.

Mysterious Process Eating My Pearl Jam CD

You are looking at the front-side view of a mysterious process that has been consuming one of my oldest CDs -- a copy of Pearl Jam's 'Ten'.

It had been packed up in a Case Logic CD case along with several hundred other CDs, and seldom used after I spent the better part of eighteen months downloading MP3s. It's endured two trans-Pacific transits in a seaborne cargo container. Recently I pulled it out to listen, and it's unusable -- acts just like a terribly scratched cd. No suprise, large chunks of data have disappeared along with the aluminum.

It seems that no other cds have suffered this fate. What's special about this cd? This was literally perhaps the third(?) cd I ever purchased -- sometime around 1993 I believe. I'd say it is as old as anything else in my collection. Also, it has some sort of fungus growing on the surface.

I haven't spent too much time investigating this phenomenon. Although I did find an article about a researcher who discovered some sort of aluminum eating fungus which destroys cds.

Interestingly, it refers to another issue where bits of oxygen embedded in the cd itself slowly oxidize the aluminum over the years. Perhaps that's what I am suffering. I find the path the degradation has taken (straight lines, right angles) to be decidely weird.

How Deep Is Your Love?

I cannot get enough of the background "music" on this website. I can't even begin to imagine what machinery produced it... Clown Orchestra? Electric Accordion? Theremin?

Raid on Tamuz

Sort of an interesting story, but it occured in 1981, so the details didn't really sink into my nine year old head.

However, I must say, the use of FLASH makes this one of the strangest presentations I've ever seen in my life.

I am sure someone warped could come up with all sorts of Onion-style variations of the 'Israel Special Actions in FLASH'.... "Cartoon Mossad spray nerve gas in terrorist's ear," "Israeli Bulldozers demolish Palestinian Homes," "Israeli-backd Phalangists massacre refugee camp" etc. etc.

At any rate, before anyone, Jew or Muslim, starts sending me hate mail, stop. I'm not biased -- I think you are all homocidal lunatics.

Hey, look everybody...IT'S CHEATERS!

Just found the grave announcement on Tommy's website that:

I would like to personally thank you for your support over the last 3 years. You will hear lots of things regarding why I am not on the show, but I can tell you directly and simply; I did not leave the show by choice, but to the contrary, I have been forced out by unlawful greed to which I cannot fully comment at this time due to pending litigation. I also miss hosting this show that I helped give birth to and appreciate all the continued fan mail from disappointed viewers who follow my work. Many thanks - Tommy

I've not been able to find anything discussing the legal imbroglio surrounding Tommy Habeeb or Cheaters, unfortunately. You'll get nothing out of the syndicator.

Tommy was the core of Cheaters and it's hard to imagine how the show can continue without him. Purists and loyalists may have to content themselves with reruns of those three, precious seasons... Only fair-weather friends of Tommy would tolerate Joey Greco intruding in his place.

I think everything will work out, though... Tommy's followers will not forget him.

Image Catalog

Still trying to figure out an image catalog solution. Unbelievably, the extensive public feedback on my site hasn't come up with the golden answer yet, so I have had to resort to Google Groups and Photo.net.

After taking enough digital photos and buying a Super Coolscan 4000 to scan in the rest of my slides and negatives, my filesystem is a mess. Pictures are scattered all over the place, different versions (resolutions, cropping, adjustments) are scattered all over the place, projects are scattered all over the place. It's only getting worse.

Ideas?

Broken Garmin GPS

I have disliked Garmin from almost the first day I used my Etrex Vista and Mapsource software. We've spent a lot of time documenting how shabby Mapsource is. Over Christmas I found that the hardware was junk too!

31die and I wanted to set up a Singapore geocache. We were stymied, though when the 'clikstick' control started working increasingly intermittently and I was having bad visual effects on the screen -- black lines, missing lines, etc. The unit was unusable.

Quick searches on Google revealed other people with the same problems, which could only be solved by sending the unit in -- no software patch would fix it. Ironically, at the same time, my colleague, MonoRaj, had been dissuaded by a salesman in NYC from buying the Etrex Vista, as they found it unreliable.

Of course my unit was a month out of warranty.

Anyhow, 31die took it back to the US to save me the international postage and sorted out the RMA. Garmin "graciously" covered the problem for free. (I would have raised a hew and cry if they had tried to charge me the $125 service fee -- this is a well documented, apparently systemic problem in these $300+ units)

Promised at best a two-week turnaround, 31 sent it in. Surprisingly, it was returned and repaired less than a week later.

The service report read:

"Confirmed Problem. Resoldered click stick switch and display flex cable to correct problem. ... Unit passes all tests and is operating within normal limits."

Bad soldering? That is lame. But at least it's fixed and apparently tuned.

What drives me nuts is that Garmin acts like Microsoft in that they seem to emphasize "new features and new products" instead of worrying first about reliability. Shit, I'm trying to figure out why I'm having video problems with my unit, so I download the latest patch. It's not to fix the video problem, it's to add functionality so I can make High Altitude Low Opening parachute jumps like some wannabe Navy Seal! Hell's Bells... who would even want to use the unit in circumstances like that when this unit seems to regularly fail and act flaky.

It would be interesting to see what commercial-quality alternatives there are to Garmin.

The first candidate must be Trimble, used by surveyors, but their functionality might be inappropriate to our usage (adventure trips). We're not as concerned about absolute accuracy, but instead good map uploading/downloading, route planning, size, and robustness. Expensive? Probably, although this sounds like a candidate for an Ebay purchase.

The horrifying thing was that in some of the photos of commandos at Mazar-e Sharif I distinctly saw those guys using Garmin Etrex units! That's suggesting Garmin is the best option? Good grief...

What's with the black lines ???

First Weekend With My Film Scanner

So last week I bought a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED film scanner and the Nikon SF-200 auto-slide-feeder.

Combined, it cost about $2700SGD, but I convinced myself that it would be worth it, allowing me to get more out of my existing library of slides and negatives, and in the future, make my photo development costs cheaper (eliminate unecessary prints and expensive slide-to-print charges). Developing, printing the 20+ rolls of film we took in Kerala last month cost nearly $400. Just developing the film, and scanning them at home would have been south of $100. Selective digital printing at RGB Color would have been a reasonable price.

So this weekend I have been busy learning how to use the system.

The auto-slide-feeder, which costs about 300$USD is a curiously-priced thing. It's incredibly simple, made only of plastic, and isn't that exacting. So why is it 300$? As far as I can figure, Nikon Marketing said, "someone who doesn't have to have autofeed can live with the single slide-by-slide feeder. The people who really need it, not having the time to feed slide-by-slide, can also afford the $300 charge." It has nothing to do with the mechanism, and everything to do with the users' alternatives.

How does it work? I had some fears. I'd read that it jammed easily and that it needed crude modifications to feed certain slides. In fact, the manual lists compatibilities, and the common 'plastimount' slides you get everywhere are noted in the "mounts known to cause jams" category:

"The uneven edges, surface projects, curled edges or apertures, or burrs on these mounts (Kodachrom 1.1 mm cardboard mounts, Plastimounts, and Pakon mounts) can cause jams."

I would expect that the certified mounts are harder to come by and more expensive. (approved mounts: GEPE 3mm, GEPE 2mm, REVUE, AGFA system G, AGFA reflecta CS, Reflecta GR, Kaiser SR, hama fix, and ROWI quickslide.) [Hama DSRs and WESSs can only be used in restricted orientations]

Anyway, the fact of the matter is that all weekend long I have been pouring box-after-box of plastimount slide through this feeder, and experiencing no jams. I think jams are a big pain if they occur (special utility software is included to assist unjamming the big box), but my guess is that as long as I don't put really fucked-up slides in, it'll be ok.

The scanning software seems pretty decent. It comes in two parts -- one is an applet to interface the TWAIN scanning client to other software (like Adobe PhotoShop). If you don't use Photoshop, you can pull up the simple NikonScan utility, which talks to the applet and loads in your scans. I haven't figured out how to do multiple-feeder scans from inside Photoshop yet (a question for Google I think), so I have been using NikonScan. This has worked fine.

Configuring the scans is taking some experimentation.

The scanner itself has many image enhancement features (ICE to remove scratches & dust, GEM to improve film-grain, and ROC for 'restoration of color' [in old photos]). This adds considerably to processing time, somewhat reduces the sharpness, and since these are brand new slides which suffer none of these defects, is unecessary. I am sure I will use, especially ICE, for some of my more-handled slides from a few years back.

The scanner applet provides the same "Image Adjustments" that Photoshop provides.

So my approach to configuring the scan parameters was: "Scan the slide only once, at maximum resolution, and with no image adjustment." My rationale was to handle the slide as seldom as possible, and as I need smaller versions, or adjusted versions, use Photoshop to modify the big master copy I already have.

In practice, this is problematic in that each image, at full-resolution mode (this is a 4000 dpi scanner) approaches 30MB as a jpeg. This is very ungainly when you are scanning in 700 photos from a single trip... Not sure what I should do. Perhaps keep scanning them this way, but then just archive them to many CDs? Keep a smaller, say 10MB image on my disk, and only get a super 4000dpi scan if I need it? Whatever I decide, keeping all my photos as 30MB images isn't going to work. They easily double in size when you start screwing around in Photoshop.

Also apparent more-than-ever is the need for some decent image-library software. Need to write up a nice post for some of the photo forums and see what comes back.

At any rate, now I'm in the middle of preparing some interesting presentations for Karavshin, which I'll be putting up over the next several weeks.

KAP Rig Improvements

Over Christmas we also brainstormed about avenues for improving our Kite Aerial Photography system...

• Several kites appropriate for different wind conditions (parafoils, etc)
  
• Digital Camera instead of 35mm.
  
• Aluminum rig -- stronger, lighter, tidier.
  
• Unified power system. Get rid of the excessive bricks of batteries, strange transformers, etc. Maybe even use those one-time-use military lithium batteries.
  
• More powerful transmitter. Makes the viewfinder image more usable.
  
• More sensitive, directed receiver. Makes the viewfinder image more usable.
  
• Tripod-mounted base-station. Allows one person to control rig, watch the viewfinder, and shoot photos.
  
• Better vibration isolation for (a) line noise (b) servo-induced shaking.
  
• Weather balloon booster. More lifting power, also maybe less vibration?
  

Onboard Video Cameras

A few weeks ago I was reflecting on the videos we've made during our trips, and how they could be better. The videos, although amusing, seem to be much inferior to the photography we shoot.

Here are some of the common problems that seem to stricken our footage:

• White balance gets thrown off, which washes out the landscape. This struck a few times in Death Valley while we were crossing the Saline Valley on our way to climb the Lippincort Trail.
• Audio suffers from a lot of wind noise
• Inane, incessant background chatter. I always most appreciate what a dork I am, and what a shit-stream I babble, when I hear myself in these videos.
• Camera jerkiness. Not so much bouncing of the camera, but just very crude, excessive zooms and pans. Seems like you need to move the camera much, much more slowly than you'd move your head to see the same scene.
• When filming from the car, way too much dashboard in the scene, and just a lot of bad aiming in general. Often something exciting comes up, and I am so excited by it, I neglect the camera and start filming the glovebox.
• Sun dazzle.
• Allowing the camera to focus on the windscreen

Some ideas for making the videos more interesting:

• Outside-of-car shots of the car travelling
  
• GPS telemetry being shown on top of the video.
  

I'll have to think about some solutions to these problems. Solutions for some of them would be as simple as being aware that I should shut up, or should move the camera more slowly. Others will just take some manual reading and technical adjustments (White Balance). I have also briefly looked around for camera rigs to mount to the car. So far I have just found expensive crap, but I am sure there are some interesting devices around.

Problem burning Audio CDs with Windows XP

from Google Groups

Second posting...
First posting...

SECOND OF TWO ARTICLES

From: black-coffee2002@karavshin.org (Nils Blutig)
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player
Subject: Cannot burn .wav files as an audio cd, but can play them!
NNTP-Posting-Host: 202.166.126.229
Message-ID: <665ffe9b.0302120749.3330a446@posting.google.com>

I made a post recently about being unable to using WMP8 to rip some
.wav files to an audio CD.

Before I found a solution, I decided to upgrade to Windows Media
Player Version 9. I still cannot rip them successfully, but at least
it's giving me a semi-reasonable error message "0xC00D1199: Cannot
play the file" instead of the totally useless "0xC00D117A"

The bizarre thing is, WMP DOES play the files fine -- I can listen to
them all day long. It's only when I try to write them as an audio cd
does it fail, and give me this error message.

The diagnostics in Microsoft Help don't really help me out...
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/support/mperr.asp?prd=Windows&spb=MediaPlayer&pver=9.0.0.0000&olcid=0x409&clcid=0x409&id=C00D1199

"0xC00D1199: Cannot play the file
Windows Media Player cannot play the file. You may encounter this
error message for one of the following reasons:

The file type is not supported by the Player. The following table
lists the file types supported by the Player. If the file type you are
trying to play is included in this table, then the file may have been
encoded by using a codec that is not supported by Windows Media
Player. If this is the case, Windows Media Player cannot play the
file.

The file type is supported by the Player, but the file was compressed
by using a codec that is not supported by the Player.

The file type is supported, but you are trying to play it in a way
that is not supported by the Player. For example, you may have
attempted to drag a DVD file with a .vob extension from a DVD to the
Windows Media Player icon. Or you may have attempted to open a .vob
file by clicking Open on the File menu.
You are trying to play one part of a multipart file. Use a newsreader
or other program to combine the files, and then try again. "

----

[I said, MediaPlayer _CAN_ play the file, just not write it to an
audio cd]

Ideas?!

THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE

From: black-coffee2002@karavshin.org (Nils Blutig)
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player
Subject: Unable to rip .wav to audio cds in XP/WinMP v8
NNTP-Posting-Host: 202.166.126.232
Message-ID: <665ffe9b.0302120714.42637e0a@posting.google.com>

I can write data CDs fine using the basic tools provided by Windows
XP. Today I tried to write a couple .wav files as an audio CD using
the same techniques, but failed, miserably.

My setup:

PC running up-to-date version of XP
Windows Media Player for XP version 8.00.00.4487
CD Burner: Plexwriter 24/10/40A
Burning a fresh "Sony CD-R 700MB" cd (I tried a couple in case I drew
a dud)

My steps:

1) Drag my three .wav files (each only a few megabytes -- adding up to
about 30 minutes total sound) to the cd drive icon in my file manager.

2) Tell the wizard I want to write them as an AUDIO cd.

3) This spawns Windows Media Player to launch w/ the three files
listed in the left side "Music to Copy" playlist column.

4) My CD drive (D:) is selected in the right side "Music oi Device"
column

5) I press the "Copy Music" button. System thinks for a few seconds,
then turns the three wave files RED. When I select "details" for any
of the redded-out songs, it launches an error dialog saying "Windows
Media Player has encountered an eror on the portable device. Click the
Details button for more information"

6) the further details say:

----
Windows Media Player has encountered an error on the portable device
One of the following problems may have occurred with your portable
device:

The storage card on the portable device is full. Free some space on
the storage card, and then try copying the files again.
The portable device is not turned on. Turn on the device, and then try
copying the files again.
A playlist or folder cannot be created on the portable device because
it does not support this function.
Error ID = 0xC00D117A, Remedy ID = 0x00000000

----

This seems like a totally nonsensical error message. I'm writing to a
CD, not a 'portable device'. I can write data files with no problem.
I couldn't find anything helpful regarding that error message anywhere
on the internet, furthermore.

HEre is a link to a screenshot montage of all the error dialogs I am
describing:

http://karavshin.org/special/wav-ripping-error.png

Ideas?!

A new photography angle -- Terrestrial Telephotography

For being an Art Bell-type, www.lazygranch.com has some pretty interesting articles and photos. The author seems to like to run around with some insane telescope-cum-camera and specialist films taking pictures of installations across the No Trespassing border. Sounds pretty entertaining.

When I have more time, I shall have to do some Google Research on the topic.

Hell, and even if grainy black-and-white photos of metal buildings doesn't interest you, who can pass up more Area 51 information?

Another interesting Geocache, in Alameda County

Here is another geocache candidate: a strange antenna/radar array location in Alameda. It's got a bunch of cool antennas, a bunker, and some uninformed insinuations that their long-wavelength antennae are responsible for a mass-murder in Sunnyvale several years ago. Appeals to cranks of all ages!

An Interesting Geocache

A lot of geocaches are corny -- too easy to find, stupid items in the cache. Some virtual caches are interesting to find, but they just end up with 'scenic vistas'. I stumbled onto an interesting target for a geocache hunt -- a map of some United States military aerial refueling routes.

It's not clear if these are always used, or just used during Nellis AFB's annual 'Red Flag' training exercise. But if you were lucky to find the route at the right time you'd see any number of planes cited as participating in the exercises:

A typical Red Flag exercise involves a variety of attack, fighter and bomber aircraft (F-15Es, A-10s, B-1s, etc.), reconnaissance aircraft (UAV -Predator), electronic countermeasures suppression aircraft (EC-130s, EA-6Bs and F-16s), air superiority aircraft (F15s, F-16s, etc), airlift support (C-130s, C-141s), search and rescue aircraft (HH-53s, HC-130s), and aerial refueling aircraft (KC-130s, KC-135s). The E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft plays a significant role in the training by using its unique radar capability to monitor and support many aspects of the "Blue" force effort.

Since I built my new computer, and my shitty Garmin GPS is being repaired, I haven't bothered to install Mapsource on my pc, so I don't know exactly where the GPS Waypoints sit in Nevada. But there are particular parts of the route that might be more or less interesting. This page explains the components of the refueling route and provides a diagram title "Anchor Pattern" at the bottom of the page. There are locations like 'Tanker Orbit', 'Receiver Holding Pt' and 'Outbound Course.' Some of those may be more or less likely to have something interesting to see. These legs are supposed to be at least 50NM long.

This could be an amusing weekend's project and a fun Geocache writeup.

Plagiarized from unknown source

Less obvious, and less interesting, are the tens of thousands of tech companies that trail the [Moore's] law and finally opt out of the chase altogether. Theirs is the world of weary industrial parks, forgotten trade shows, and unmotivated employees waiting for their stock options to vest. Their fate is the long, slow--and often quite comfortable--slide to inconsequence and oblivion."

Spongiform Degeneration in mahoganoid Mutant Mice

Stanford University researcher, Adam Eldridge, has collaborated in an exciting research suggesting Mahoganoid is a mouse coat-color mutation whose pigmentary phenotype and genetic interactions resemble those of Attractin (Atrn). Atrn mutations also cause spongiform neurodegeneration. Here, we show that a null mutation for mahoganoid causes a similar age-dependent neuropathology that includes many features of prion diseases but without accumulation of protease-resistant prion protein. The gene mutated in mahoganoid encodes a RING-containing protein with E3 ubiquitin ligase activity in vitro. Similarities in phenotype, expression, and genetic interactions suggest that mahoganoid and Atrn genes are part of a conserved pathway for regulated protein turnover whose function is essential for neuronal viability.

DeathCog2002

Check out the stunning footage from the infrared camera of an AC-130 gunship plowing down a village full of Taliban sometime last year. Shocking!

If this link disappears or clogs up, just search for AC130_GunshipMed.wmv on Google.

---
There is a 150MB version of this movie; higher resolution and a bit more footage.

My Visit to the Kochi Pepper Exchange

Please enjoy the multimedia essay on my visit to the Kochi Pepper Exchange...

Image Cataloging Systems

So slowly everything is coming together. I'm taking a lot of photos, I'm learning PhotoShop satisfactorally, and I've got a computer strong enough to support a digital darkroom.

What's actually becoming a mess is my filesystem. My digital cameras are dumping their images one place, I've got shoeboxes of image CDs in two rooms, I've got raw pictures scattered all over the place, and then Photoshop-touched versions of all those files. My catalog of images is growing umanageable.

Within a week or two the almost eight hundred photos I took while in India will come online... that's too much to just dump in /india.

So now I am thinking out-loud about some software package I can use to manage my photos.

Immediately throw out things like:

homebrewed mySQL and PostgreSQL systems that generate static HTML libraries of thumbnails and all that sort of thing. I've no interest in that kind of brittle, half-thought-out shit. I want some finished product that smart professionals have thought up all the nice little details.

Adobe 'Photoshop Album' seems too pastuerized. It sounds like a great product for lots of people, but I don't really need it's integration with Photoshop Elements, or it's collaboration/display functionality. It's very much something you'd expect to find bundled in Microsoft XP.

What I do need is more powerful categorization and labelling/captioning.

Also what would be cool would be some sense of "versioning." What I mean is I take a photo, it gets scanned in as a 20MB file. I generate different versions of that file... a tiny thumbnail, a 30MB retouched version, a 2MB cropped version, etc. etc. But the software keeps some sense that these are all from the same root, but just different versions. Then I could manage that cluster instead of a dozen different files that suffer diaspora.

I just started thinking about this today. DMOZ (un)fortunately has scores of candidates. I am sure most suck. I need to find some decent overviews to get me on my way. Photo.net continues to deteriorate, so I am going to look elsewhere.

Just browsing around Google turns up a few things to investigate:

• Jasc Software is normally pretty good, and inexpensive...
• CNET Review of Photoshop Album
• PhotoMesa is a University of Maryland browsing-centric product.
• I should probably just be reading current Google Groups...
• A weak article

On a side note... the PC version of Macs iPhoto sounds cool...

The Noodle Vendor Who Didn't Vend Noodles

Received an interesting note from Robin Liu regarding a photo of a 'Noodle Vendor' I posted from our trip to Chengdu:

Hi, I like your pictures taken in Chengdu. However, I have to point out that there is a mistake on Noodle Vendor. Actully, what the man sold is RUSH, not Noodle, used in making rush-candle. Maybe this is the reason that you missed the delicious Chengdu flavor food, not just rice.

I don't know if these Rush Candles are the same thing Robin is talking about. They sound like very simplistic candles for the poor.

Angry Volcano Guy

I pissed off a Volcano Guy by saying that his tour of Indonesian Volcanoes seemed unreasonably expensive.

It's a valid point that it's sensible to have a professional guide to places like, say, an active volcano. Maybe the criticism should have been more nuanced, like, "It's not clear beside the obvious escort capacity, what value-added the $2500 would get me." Presented better, maybe his tour would sound like a bargain.

Unfortunately now I remark to myself that he seemed to get so angry so quickly that he doesn't sound like too much fun to hang out with.

Quick, Volcano Guy, chill out for a while, and comment here all the benefits of using your company, and why you are a great guide to retain!