Elliott’s Blog

The volume of spam comments is too much for me to handle. Virtually all of the “comments” I get are spam.

I have turned off the ability to post comments on these entries.

Here is the long-awaited photosynth of the Summit at Le Reculet:

Marty and I at the top of Le Reculet

Marty and I walked to the summit of Le Reculet in the Jura mountains in France on Wednesday. This is the second tallest point in this range of mountains, with “Le Crêt de la Neige,” just to the north, beating it out by a mere 2 meters. It was challenging, and kinda fun!

Background: My work group at CERN does this every fall, and some of the folks actually race up! I joined in last fall, not knowing what I was getting into, and I failed–making it only about half way.

I have thought a lot about why I failed, and it boils down to several factors: I had no idea how hard it would be; I was wearing heavy boots and tight jeans; I had a backpack; I started out following very light and athletic people, who did not follow the path but, rather, went straight up the mountain side; I was out of shape.

All of that is different now! I wore, as you see, gym shorts and sneakers; I followed the path, with my lovely and talented son pausing with me when my heart rate got too high; I joined the local gym last January and have been doing 2 to 5 hours in that gym per week.

Going up was very slow and challenging to one’s cardiovascular system.  Going down was also rather slow, but thanks to the excellently-maintained path (the worst inclines are actually paved with concrete), quite managable.  

There are several long sections that are at, or near, 100% grade!  I swear there are a couple of places that are even more than 100%.  (Click on the link, but the upshot is that 100% grade means that you rise 1 meter for every 1 meter of horizontal travel: 45 degrees.)   

Up works one’s calves, heart and quads; down is a big quads workout!!

Here are my statisitics for the day, taken from my Polar heart rate monitor:

• Time: 2 hours 20 minutes to get to the top; 30 minutes at the top; 1:50 to get down; total time: 4:41:42.  The sign at the parking lot says it take 2:30.
• Calories burned: 3423 (40% fat)
• Heart Rate: Max-154 (92%), Average-129 (77%)
• Elevation change: 1718 m at Le Reculet; 862 m at the parking lot: 856 m.  (Work done: W = m*g*h = 787,362.5 joules)

Check out more pictures at Picasa.

The Canon XSi/450D is still a great camera!  But I have discovered a couple of little problems, due to the fact that I am used to using the all-manual cameras of my past, the Canon F1 and my father’s Leica M2 (rangefinder).

It is just too light

One of the criteria I had was to have a light camera, and the XSi is one of the lightest DSLR’s around!  Only the Panasonic G1 was lighter (but it is not an “R” camera–no mirror).  The problem is that the mass of the mirror moving out of the way is enough to shake the whole camera!  This is a real problem when you have a long-ish shutter speed.  I never had this problem with the F1 (which is actually quite heavy).  Even on a tripod, the camera shakes a bit when you snap the shutter.  

The work-around is easy enough: move the mirror out of the way before snapping.  But this effect comes into play even for a moderate sutter speed (say, 1/30 second).  It is really hard to get a truly sharp picture if you zoom in at all because of this!

I have adapted, but this is a moderate negative for me!

Also, the lightness makes the camera hard (for me) to hold steady.  The F1 was GREAT for this–I could, with reasonable reliability, hold a 1/15 exposure.  Not so, with the XSi.

The kit lens is not very wide

The other small problem is that the “kit” lens (the 18-55 mm) is really not very wide angle.  The low end, 18mm, translates to about 29 mm in the 35mm world (about 65-degrees angle of view).  This is not really all that wide.  I was taught as a teenager in Columbia that you work with factors of two in focal length: Start with a 50mm, then get a 25mm and a 100mm, then a 200mm.  Most people were satisfied with a 35mm as their “wide angle” lens.  In the day, 28 mm lenses were common (and I have a crappy one) but neither of these is NOTHING like the 24mm Canon FD lens I got  (about 74-degrees of view)!  That is a wonderful lens–I wish I had one like it now.  With 24mm, you can get ANY tight shot: in a room, a big crowd, anything!  The 18mm is just not wide enough for me.

(I have the FD-to-EOS adapter, so I can physically put my old 24mm FD on the XSi, but it is about the same angle of view, but not as nice, as the 50mm f1.8 lens I got.)

Very minor: 55-250mm second zoom is clunky

A third minor gripe is that the second zoom (55-250mm) is a little clunky–I can see and feel the stabilization working on this lens.  It often make a noise, “ka-CHINK”, when I half-press the shutter, engaging the stabilzation.  This is not at all a big deal–it is just wierd.

Conclusion

All-in-all, was the XSi a bad choice?  No way!  But if I were making the decision right now instead of last fall, I would seriously consider the Pentax 2000K.  It is heavier (reviewers say it is “very solid”), has a wide(r) variety of really small fixed lenses and has in-camera stabilization.

I’d like to post some comparitive pictures, to show what you can really do with the very-high-quality Canon XSi!  In my spare time …

For the first time since, basically, I bought my Volkswagen Jetta diesel, the price of diesel has dropped below the price of regular unleaded gas. Yesterday, at every station I saw in our little tour of “tourist Switzerland”, diesel was 1.53 to 1.54 (Swiss Francs per liter), and regular gasoline (”petrol” for you British readers out there) was 1.55 to 1.57 CHF/liter! To translate this for the American leaders, that is $5.35/gallon for Diesel, $5.42/gal for regular gas.

I am averaging 38 miles per gallon these days; 6.1 liters/100 km (I think)

There are a couple of points to be made by an Old Guy on the top three of Martin McCrory’s TNG Top Ten.

BoBW Full credit needs to be given to the TNG writers for exhuming the end-of-season cliff-hanger! This started with the “Who Shot JR” summertime cliffhanger of 1979/80 for the TV show Dallas. Nothing will ever touch THAT, but the hupla around this TNG cliffhanger was fanned, for the first time, by the Internet! Of course, http://www.starttrek.com, or any other web page, did not exist at that time (1990). So Usenet Newsgroups carried the buzz. And what a buzz it was! The rec.arts.startrek newsgroup was a full-time job to read! I spent way too many hours that summer reading it! (Please let me know if you can find the archives of this newsgroup from 1990. The Google version only goes back to 1992.) The anticipation of the conclusion was fantastic!

Of course, now we know that the writers actually didn’t know how to end this episode when they wrote it! But some of the suggestions of the possible resolution on Usenet were awesome. Many of these suggestions showed up later in the Star Trek universe. The one I remember best was that they should beam in hundreds of photon torpedoes and simultaneously detonate them, destroying the cube. This was done in an alternate timeline episode of Voyager.

Next time you watch BoBW part One, turn off the TV and wait for 3 months before you watch it again.

Yesterday’s Enterprise. I agree completely with Marty’s assessment, particularly the part that there are no holes in this time travel episode. Superlative!

The unique aspect of this episode is that they placed the time-travel action in the present!  In every other time traveler I know of, the hero travels backward or forward in time to get into some connundrum, which s/he barely escapes, with the timeline in tact. Think, Back to the Future and the classic TOS episode The City on the Edge of Forever.   Doctor Who has been time travelling on the BBC since the early 1960’s, but he always traveled to some other time.  This is the first time-travel plot line where we, in the “present”, have hosted time travelers. Ingenious! And the perfectly natural way in which Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) returns is brilliant!

I got a nice set of photos on my way to work this morning of the snow-capped Jura mountains. I made a photosynth of it:

Location:

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There were three, count ‘em, THREE Bugatti Veyrons at the Geneva Auto Show.  I think the best way to depict them is through Microsoft’s Photsynth technology.  Here is the PAIR of Veyrons that were on display at the Bugatti booth in Halle 1 of the show.

Here is the third Veyon, which was on display in the Swiss Car-Pimping company, Masonry. Aparently, Photosynth cannot handle shiny things on a turntable, but here it is anyway:

I like Microsoft’s Photosynth technology. Here is one of my favorite pieces of public art, which I pass on my way to work every day:

I guess you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

I went skiing at La Dole on the French/Swiss border last week and fell, hard, twice.  Both times I was not able to control my speed and lost control of my balance.  The first time I fell backwards very hard.  I hit my head, but the helment saved any injury there.  But I landed very hard on my back and this hurt like hell.  I lost my breath (for the first time in probably 40 years).  Nothing is broken except my confidence.  Sterling was right there to help me.  We had to walk down a bit of the hill to a level part, and then we skied the rest of the way down.

When I hit my back, I felt a sharp pain go from my back, through the left side of my chest, to the front of my chest.  This pain has not gone away.  We went to lunch, and then tried again.  I successfully navigated several small “blue” hills until (of course) the last one of the day.  I hit an icy patch while going too fast; my left ski (the uphill one) came off the ground and then hit the ground again a little skewed.  It dug in a bit and I fell forward, hitting my chest rather hard, and lost my breath again!  Once again, Sterling was there to help me down the hill.  But that was the end.

I went to work on Friday–no big deal.  But I hurt a bit, still. I attributed the hurt to muscle pain.

But on Saturday, it was still very bad.  So we went to the doctor.  He says I have a cracked rib (or two).  Ugh!

I expect a one-month recovery time.

Now, three of the five people in my family (me (cracked ribs), Alex (broken wrist) and Joanne (”not fun”)), are probably never going to ski again.

I interacted with a fellow at work recently who broke his shoulder while skiing, and cannot even sit up for more then an hour or so.  And I see several people all the time at work on crutches.

You know, I just don’t get skiing.  It is not fun (to me) to hurtle yourself down a mountain at (shall we say) breakneck speed, on the edge of loosing control at all time.  I guess this appeals to some people, especially if they have been doing it since they were babies.  There were a few moments for me that were a bit of fun, but nothing so fantastic that I would want to risk it again.

I think I am going to change my gym workouts with golf in mind, from now on (as soon as I can bend over and twist my torso again).  Golf is a MUCH safer activity!!!

Update, March 8, 2009

Although the cracked ribs are not completely healed, I am feeling much improvement on that front. Sterling wants to go skiing again, but I doubt that is going to happen.