crawwling

River Discoveries

2006-09-18T23:50:00.000-07:00

The Los Angeles River is known around these parts as being more of an industrial drainage ditch than a river. The usual image that comes to mind is of sickly green water trickling down the middle of a vast concrete depression wide enough that cars have raced along it in countless movies. So I was pleasantly surprised when a friend of mine showed me the way it looked by her house. The river was still bordered by sloping concrete, but the greenery had found a way to take root in the bottom and renew a small amount of the lost natural beauty the river once held. If you didn't look too closely at the garbage strewn about, and ignored the faint odor, it was actually a very pleasant spot. I've tried to capture that aspect of it in the picture here, and the other photos on flickr. Unfortunately for the water in this picture, the journey ahead is not pretty.

Shooting Planes

2006-09-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

;)
[more from this outing are on flickr]

Exploration

2006-09-03T12:06:00.000-07:00

Its been quite a while since I've sat down and added something to this blog. School has started, and my internship is continuing at least through the end of this semester, so I've become significantly more busy. I've missed posting stuff though. There's lots that has happened. Maybe I'll fill in some of the gaps and set the post-date back to the time the events took place.

First, however, is an illustrated summary of a somewhat impromptu trip to Mount Wilson. Mount Wilson is in the San Gabriel mountains behind Los Angeles, and at its peak rises 5715 feet above sea level making it one of the taller points in the vicinity. There's an observatory at the summit which is open to the public every day that the access road is passable, which generally means from April to November. Unfortunately, it was closed for the day by the time we arrived. Nonetheless, the trip was outstanding in and of itself and was a great opportunity to escape the gridlocked city for a while.

To begin, one takes Highway 2 north of LA, past Pasadena. This road eventually turns into the wonderfully named Angeles Crest Highway. It isn't long before the San Gabriel mountains begin to loom up in front.

The road narrows and the mountains begin to close in on you from both sides. Ears pop. I was tempted to roll down the window to get some of these pictures, but the outside temperature at 1 in the afternoon was 97*F (36*C) so to keep cool the windows stayed rolled up. I predicted (incorrectly) that as we drove higher it would get cooler. I had been along this road once before several years ago in August, in the middle of the night, to catch a meteor shower, and remembered it being uncofmortably cold. The temperature fluctuation in a 24 hr period must really be something to experience.

We passed signs that indicated what lay ahead and provided helpful ways to remember that driving off a cliff is not the desired way to pass an afternoon.

The first vista point we pulled off at showed how far we'd already come in half an hour. It really amazed me, throughout the trip, how quickly we progressed. I've never sensed that this wilderness was so close by. Looking at the picture, you can see downtown Los Angeles in the distance almost totally obscured by brown hazy smog. Dramatic, but also depressing.
Looking South towards Los Angeles...

Looking North towards the mountains...

The roads were surprisingly empty for a Saturday, which was a relief, since the winding road was difficult enough in places without having to worry about the Porche behind you whose fun you were entirely ruining. More vista points, more scenery:

Although it was nearly 100*F, apparently the roads get pretty rough in the winter. Also, someone didn't seem to like the fact that chains were required (see shotgun hole in sign). We continued up the mountain, and Los Angeles receeded further into the smoggy distance...

Surprisingly soon, we found ourselves making real progress up the mountain and the vista points began to get more and more impressive. At one point we turned off where in the '20's a cog-wheeled railroad had run passengers up and down one of the inclines. It was beautiful up there. The only noise after shutting the car doors behind us was the sound of the hot wind in the fir trees. Up there you really started to feel as though you were on the roof of Southern California.

Looking North you could see the San Gabriel mountains continuing as far as the eye could see. Exploration for another day.. today we were going to the top of Mount Wilson. The roads were in really good condition, which was surprising since they were literally hewn out of the cliffside as you can see from the photo. At some points the rock wall was literally hanging over our heads as we drove underneath. Note: this trip gave me a chance to get familiar with a polarizing filter I'd bought several months ago. I was really pleased with what it allowed me to do.. but it has the tendency at wide angles to produce some vignetting (the fuzzy black around the corners). Sometimes thats a pain, other timesI think its alright. In any event, it really helped save some of the skies that would otherwise have been much more washed out.

The peak of Mount Wilson turned out to be absolutely covered with telemetry. There was a veritable forest of communication towers laden with antennae and dishes of every variety. Unfortunately, the observatory had just closed by the time we arrived, so we contented ourselves with examining in greater detail the crown of electronics:

I'll have to go up here again sometime to get a look at the observatory. The observatory at Griffith Park, some 4000 feet below, was really cool but its been closed for refurbishment for the last 4 years. I'd love to see the inside of one of the big telescopes, and I'd bet the view from their observation deck is pretty stunning. Next time. We headed back down the mountain, and in just over an hour, were back in the thick of things in downtown Los Angeles. Now that I know that all of this is so close at hand, I guess I don't have any excuse not to get out here more often.
Note: I think i'll put a couple more pics (different ones) on my Flickr.. so check there if interested.

Goodbye Green

2006-08-09T13:22:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong, i'm not an anti-environmentalist, but there was way too much green on this blog. I've finally made some time to personalize this space a little more, and while its not yet complete , its a big improvement over the cookie-cutter template it started out as. Its also much more me. Its always amazing just how much time playing with CSS can eat up. Its also amazing how flexible the Blog*Spot people have made their interface and how easy it is to customize in great detail.

Full Moon

2006-08-08T21:51:00.000-07:00

looked so nice tonight...

Cluster Power

2006-07-19T22:06:00.000-07:00

click to enlarge.

9 floors below my humble desktop hum the multitude of machines that make up most of the DETER cluster. (The rest are at UC Berkely, about 400 miles north.) Every server in each rack is equipped with 4 network cards allowing for the simulation of computer networks much larger than the number of nodes in this room. To give an idea of the cost of such a setup, each one of the machines with the little blue light on the front costs just upwards of $9,000. Racks, cables, switches, monitors, warranty and service contract extra. Looking at the panoramic version..the bright red tanks on the right hand side of the room are for fire supression, next to them is one of the air conditioners. The bulk of the servers in the center with more servers to the left, beyond the cabinet. The switches (picture with the mass of bright red cables, and pictures with impossibly many blue cables) are around the corner behind the black cabinet on the left. The room is more impressive in person. The distinct, acrid smell of industrial strength conditioned, filtered air and piping hot electronics, harsh flourescent lighting, and spare white walls and flooring remind you that this room was built strictly with the comfort of the machines in mind. Its hard to believe, sitting at my desk, that with the right keystrokes I can harness this mass of computing power to do my bidding. Kind of fun :)

Perfect

2006-07-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

Last night I left work a little early and was in time to see a spectacular sunset. It was the kind of evening that gives California its dreaminess.. 80 degrees, a warm light breeze off the ocean, scattered clouds high in the sky and brilliant fire flashing off the glass facades of the office towers. I drove the 10 blocks to the beach from work as fast as I could in the hopes that I might capture the fading remains of the day. I got so much more than I expected. Everywhere I turned my camera there was something intriguing to shoot. Not only was this particular beach directly below one of the departure runways for LAX (providing continuous air traffic into the sunset every minute or so), a small school of dolphins soon showed their fins and cavorted for a time in the subsiding surf. As the sun sank the colors collided, producing even more vibrant and varied hues and patterns across the sky. I shot till I was out of memory and then remained to watch the last of the rays disappear behind the sea. Not even the craziness of the freeway maniacs could disturb the deep feeling of peace and content I was left with afterwards.

Goodnight.

2006-07-16T02:21:00.000-07:00

A Digital Mountain of Pictures

2006-07-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

I just realized I have over 7000 digital photos on my hard drive. I guess I've been taking pictures for longer than I thought. The yearly breakdown is as follows: 2001: 326, 2002: 58, 2003: 98, 2004: 336, 2005: 2,397. That means that so far this year (7 months) I've taken 4,090 pictures! Of course, having invested in March in a Sony DSC-R1 and travelling to Argentina drove a lot of that. But still. Damn! In an attempt to allow at least some small portion of them to see daylight, I think I'll post a 'picture a day' even if I don't have much else to write about. I find editing and preparing photos to be such a relaxing and rewarding passtime. I'd say I spend at least an hour a day (4% of my week) working on random pictures in photoshop. Today's batch:

Getting By is a Team Effort

2006-07-13T16:07:00.000-07:00

Man there are times i wish i had this kind of help ;) I'd probly go crazy though. Just playing around with my camera and photoshop again. I have a feeling there will be more of this kind of rubbish. Today is the first day in a while where I've had time to think about doing something other than work. I have some stories about that, but I'm waiting until I go through the pictures. I need a tripod. Badly. I also really want to redo the layout of this blog.. Its so cookie-cutter. Finally, I'm from Wisconsin, we do cold there, not heat. The last couple days here in LA have been unbelievable. Ugh.
I'll be back soon.

Dogs are great.

2006-07-03T22:31:00.000-07:00

Its been a week since I've said anything. I guess I'm in a bit of a rut right now. Luckily I have lots of pictures to share. If theres anything that can guarantee a smile out of me its the antics of a dog. The unrestrained joy of a dog relishing the freedom of the outdoors is a refreshing reminder to enjoy whats around you and not take things too seriously . This is my cousin's 13 year old black lab Tia. She's always been photogenic, but she's outdone herself here.

Later.

Here's to Friends.

2006-06-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

First a little apology: that last post was pretty technical. I'll try not to do that again for a little while. There's just lots of different stuff to think about, and some of it ends up being pretty involved. I'll keep this one short.

The weekend disappeared somehow, and it has left me feeling somewhat like the rug was pulled out from under me. I'm facing Monday morning with a long list of things I'd hoped (and needed) to get to. I didn't even get a chance to take any decent pictures this weekend. On the upside, I had a great time with a couple good friends and it felt good to get out and be carefree. Occasionally enough good experiences pile up closely enough to each other that the "important" things just seem less pressing. Good food, drink and conversation make the time fly I guess.

Thank you Lukku (and others) for reading and commenting.. Knowing someone actually reads some of this makes it even more fun. Hope everyone has a great week.
Later.

Solstice

2006-06-22T22:34:00.000-07:00

The summer solstice, June 21st, is the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. For the southern hemisphere, it is the shortest. I thought it'd be cool to write a little something about it. Little did I know how hard it would be to describe in words the interaction of the various movements and rotations that conspire to give us our seasons. This is definitely one of those situations where a picture says 1000 words. Here's my crack at it:

The number of hours of daylight we experience on a given day varies according to two factors: the day of the year and our lattitude (how far north or south of the equator we are). To see why, recall that the earth is tilted about 23.5 degrees on its axis (the imaginary line that runs through the North and South poles, and about which the planet rotates). The Sun is so far away from Earth (approx 93 million miles) that its light can be thought of as arriving at Earth in a single beam, much like a flashlight shining on a ball. Such a flashlight can only illuminate at most 1/2 the ball at any given moment since the dimensions of a sphere prevent a directional light from illuminating its "back" side. So it is with the sun. Exactly half of the planet's surface is bathed in sunlight at any given moment, and exactly half is in shadow. If the earth's axis were not tilted relative to this beam, (ie: if the axis and the beam formed a 90 degree angle) then every location on Earth would experience 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness every day of the year.

Part of the difficulty in understanding this idea has to do with our perspective. From our perspective the sun traces an arc across the sky roughly from East to West. Day turns into night with the disappearance of the sun beneath the western horizon. This apparent motion of the Sun is an illusion, however, caused entirely by the rotation of our planet around its axis. An observer standing on the Sun would see a different picture. The continents would appear to rotate into view from left to right (dawn in NY preceeds dawn in LA), each appearing and disappearing once every 24 hours. When a location first slides into view, an Earth observer at that spot would perceive sunrise, and, when it has rotated across the sun's "field of view" and is on the verge of returning into shadow, the Earth observer would perceive the onset of the night. In short, if a hypothetical observer on the Sun can "see" you on Earth, you are experiencing daylight, and if such an observer can not see you, you're in darkness. Now the conceptual leap:

The hypothetical observer on the sun, looking at Earth, would have no concept of night. Everything he or she can see is daylight. Night is, by our definition, anything the Sun cannot shine upon and is thus not visible to the observer. This is important because it implies that the relative amount of the planet at a given latittude (distance above / below the equator) that the sun-based observer sees at any time is directly related to the length of the day at that lattitude. Thats a mouthful, I know. Pictures help. Look at the diagram above. If you stand at any place on Earth and imagine a line extending off into the east from where you stand, (the earth being roughly spherical) that line will eventually circle the globe and return to you from the west. This line is your line of lattitude. If you are at lattitude (A), then you never experience nighttime at the particular time of year displayed in the diagram. For you, the Sun appears to just touch the horizon before rising again. This is because you and your entire lattitude circle are always visible to the sun. That is: 100% x 24hrs = 24hrs sunlight. For most of us, lattitude (B) is more common. As the earth turns on its polar axis, some percentage of the time is spent in view of the sun and some percentage in shadow. The relative percentages determine the relative length of day and night. If only 70% of lattitude line (B) is visible to the sun at any given time, then the length of the day at that lattitude is 70% x 24hrs = 16.8hrs sunlight. Just for completeness, look at lattitude (C). This region is in the unfortunate position that at this time of year it never sees the sun and thus experiences 24 hours of complete darkness. That is, 0% x 24hrs = 0hrs sunlight. doh.

As if all of this weren't enough, the planet is not only rotating around its axis, but also around the sun itself. If it weren't, then the calculations we made above would hold for each day of the year. Parts of the planet would be locked in a truly endless night and would most likely be barren, frozen wastelands while other parts would be continuously exposed to the sun. It is an interesting fantasy. Fortunately, our planet orbits the sun once every 365.25 days (the fractional part is why we have to skip a day every four years to keep up) giving us variable day lengths over the year even if we always remain at the same lattitude.

The diagram shows Earth rotating around the sun in its yearly orbit. The line through the planet is the imaginary polar axis connecting the North and South poles. As you can see, on March 21st and September 21st there is no discernable difference between the relative distances of the northern and southern hemispheres (as opposed to on December 21st when the North Pole clearly points away from the sun and the South Pole towards it). In fact, these two dates, one in spring and one in fall are called the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes and they are the only two days of the year when every spot on the planet, regardless of lattitude, experiences exactly 12 hours of daylight. This is entirely due to the relative position of the Earth's axis and the Sun.
The rest of the year, this same relation combines with your lattitude to determine the length of the day at your location. The variation in day length grows more pronounced with increasing distance north or south of the equator as seen in the rough sketch in the 2nd diagram of day-lengths for lattitudes (A) and (B) from the first diagram.

Thats about as simple as I can make it. Its a weird concept. Getting your head around it primarily involves being able to see things from the Sun's perspective.
Note: With this information in hand, it is only a matter of getting the geometry right before you can arrive at a formula for the length of the day for any given location on Earth for any given day of the year. The tricky part is figuring out how to determine the percentage of the lattitude line visible to the sun on that day. It took me a good weekend once. Maybe I'll post that sometime, but I doubt it. :) this took long enough to explain, and is probly more interesting conceptually.

Don't forget that we live in a BIG universe and things aren't always the way they appear here on Earth. Enjoy the "sunrise" ;)
Later.
ps: if you read this whole thing, then thank you! it took quite a while to write it.

Switching gears without the clutch

2006-06-20T21:59:00.000-07:00

The Internet is amazing. It had to be said. Its probly been said before, but maybe not recently. We can get accustomed to the most incredible things if we're exposed to them long enough. Its still amazing. When you think about it.

Have you ever watched ants? Have you ever seen an ant traffic jam? probably not right? What IS it with humans when they get behind the wheel? You never see a stream of ants suddenly coming to a stop because one ant decided to change 3 columns over. They all move along sure and steady, and they all get where they're going. I've never seen 3 ant pileups on the side of the trail.
No sense of common purpose, thats our problem.

Just to keep this post incoherent, here's a random photograph:

This was taken during one of the less interesting moments of a nearly empty 4 hour flight from Milwaukee to Los Angeles. The bubbles are nice. It would have been nicer to have had someone to talk to instead. This picture and more are are on my flickr account.
Later.

Beachin It

2006-06-18T20:26:00.000-07:00

Went to the beach today for the first time this summer. Gotta do that more often. Here are some pics. Later.

Security

2006-06-17T22:55:00.000-07:00

I watched a CBC documentary tonight on the increasing privatization of security. Not that I get the CBC in Los Angeles, but the Internet has a marvelous ability to expand the range of one's access to information. In any event, the program was interesting in many respects and made me think about just how often I come under the jurisdiction of a private security force. Think about how much time you spend on private property. Malls and shopping centers, office buildings, airports, sports arenas, some schools and universities, and of course, apartments, lofts and other housing complexes and parking facilities. Many of the owners and landlords of these properties have taken the security of their investments into their own hands by hiring a private security force to patrol the property and to keep order.

The program drew interesting contrasts between these burgeoning security forces and the more traditional, public police. Private security officers can usually be trained within a few weeks at most, some in as little as a four days. They are paid little more than minimum wage, and, since relatively little effort was required to train them, they are generally expendable. Contrast this with the public police who undergo months of formal training, are required to keep that training up to date, are well paid and considered a resource by their departments and the community.

Professionals tend to provide professional service. In the same vein, the public police are accountable to the taxpayers (us) whereas private police are generally accountable only to their employers. That, to me at least, is an important distinction. Unfortunately, the resources of the public police are so strained that it is often difficult for them to provide the level of service and coverage that we the public expect. Increasingly, it seems, we've turned to private security to fill that niche. Are lower quality and less accountability better than no protection at all? In some cases, certainly, but I'm hesitant to say that its unconditionally a good thing. For example, no one polices these private police, and there are few if any checks against abuse of their power. With a large number of the private police appearing and acting very much like public police, misconceptions and uncertainties as to the extent of their jurisdiction and reach may lead to the public being duped into relinquishing more of their rights than they legally must.

That said, I live in an area of Los Angeles that is relatively high in crime and drug use. My property has a couple security guards that basically make sure no vagrants are setting up camp and no one is casing the parking lots. They are entirely unarmed and there are at most 2 at any given time patrolling 4 large, multistory apartment buildings and 2 parking lots. The police in this neighborhood are *busy* and the sort of preventative protection these extra eyes provide is important. They aren't perfect, and there's little they'd actually do if something really serious happened, but I've sat with them outside at night and its incredible how often someone tries to sneak into the parking lots to see what they can see.

You go ahead and have a good day now

2006-06-15T22:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's post was sort of a downer, but days like that come and go. Today was much better. I'm starting a new policy of going to work at 12 and leaving around 8:30 or so.. I got home tonight in a record 19 minutes. Thats down from the hour and forty five I spent when I left at 5:30. ISI isn't paying me, and I'm not really required to be there except for Thursday afternoons, so I don't see why anyone would complain about my new schedule.

The Goodyear blimp floated past my office window this evening so I took a picture. I think it turned out alright. Thats the smoggy Los Angeles twilight you're seeing there.
Which reminds me, I haven't described my office. I would not be surprised at all if the office I now occupy is the best office I get for a long time to come. I'm on the 11th floor of a 12 story building in Marina del Rey, facing East (away from the ocean, which is all of 2 blocks west of the building). I have a door (no cubicle for me , thank you), a big whiteboard, plenty of room, and two enormous windows that overlook a consistently interesting section of downtown Marina del Rey. I have my own computer, a screaming fast 600 mhz machine with 256m ram (for non-techies still reading this, I'm being heavily sarcastic) which manages to open my email client in under 2 minutes. On the plus side, I can pretty much do what I like to this machine without anyone getting too upset. Overall, the office is a 10. Here are some pictures, including one of me before I finally cut my hair. (For those that don't know me, thats pretty much as long as it gets. record-breaking.. i know.)

Thats one happy grad student. Anyway, I work for ISI in Division 7, the Experimental Networks division and, despite their typically sleep-inducing website, they do some pretty interesting work that I'm sure I'll explain in a future post when I understand it better myself.

Thats all for tonight.

Later.

up and down, but mostly down

2006-06-14T21:07:00.000-07:00

Today was rough. Although I spent more than 11 hours at work I don't feel like I moved anything forward. Tomorrow I've got to present what I've discovered over the last week about the state of trusted computing platforms in the world. That is going to be one quick meeting. All of the literature is acronym soup. I can handle acronyms, but when they start abbreviating long acronyms with more acronyms to the point where it is necessary to recursively expand acronyms to actually arrive at english, thats the point when its gone too far. Example: TCS = TCG Core Services = Trusted Computing Group Core Services. please. Its hard to read stuff like that.

In other news, GOOS is at a dangerous point right now.. its functional to the point where I can say "look what I made" and actually have it be somewhat impressive, but it still doesn't qualify as an operating system. Not by a long shot. Unfortunately, I don't know where I was when they were explaining memory mapping, but I sure wasn't paying enough attention. As a result, I am frustratingly confused by a simple topic, and that's not helping my motivation. I need to make some progress soon or the project will be in grave danger of becoming the newest member of my incredibly large collection of unfinished endeavors.

Because I was feeling crummy, I thought maybe a walk would help so I left ISI to walk along the bike path that meanders through the boatyards in Marina del Rey. I took my camera, as always, and managed to get some interesting pics of a seagull.

Being outside always helps things.
Later.

learning to crawwl

2006-06-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

damn that was easy.