Journal
Thoughts on photography, technology, music, and creative work.
I was watching the most recent episode of The IT Crowd, and I thought I spotted a copy of MAKE sitting on the desk in Roy's flat. I grabbed a screenshot and then compared it to my complete MAKE collection and it is clearly Volume 02 ofMAKE.
Last night during the filming of Life on Mars, the Neon signs atop the Rosslyn were relit. I posted a little more background info about the process and the signs on blogdowntown.
Of course, I wasn't the first or only person to shoot the temporarily lit sign, Jim Winstead, Bert Green and Sha In LA also shot and blogged about the sign. You can see more of the photos I took in my gallery.
Dear Santa Claus,
I have been a relatively good boy this year and I would like a shiny new Hitachi TM-100 Tabletop Scanning Electron Microscope. I know what you're going to say, "Dave, you already have a microscope and it can easily fit on a tabletop." Yes, that is true, but I have an old optical microscope and if I had an electron microscope just think of the photos I could take! They would by much cooler than these I took last year.
The TM-100 will be on display (hopefully a hands on display!) at the 2007 WIRED Nextfest.
The WIRED Nextfest is coming up next week here in Downtown Los Angeles. I am really excited about many of the exhibitions. It's one thing to read about a cool robot online, but to actually see one in real life is even better, as long as it doesn't try and chop off your arm with its sword. I have compiled a list of what I think will be some of the more interesting robots at Nextfest:
](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1394361717/ "Photo Sharing")Keepon: This cute, yellow, dancing robot is currently my favorite robot. His little eyes are two cameras and his nose is a microphone. His mastery of expressive head bobbing is quite impressive. I want to get a close-up shot of his insides which are actually quite complex. He will also be making an appearance with Spoon on the 10th](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1382794430/ "Photo Sharing")Chroino: This little robot is totally bad-ass. Check out his strut and watch him stand up, like a person would, unlike a Robosapien 2. This will be one of my next robot purchases!](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1395455462/ "Photo Sharing")Kiyomori[Warning Flash + Music]: Personally I've always thought that the world needed more robots wearing traditional samurai armor replete with swords. I hope that nobody pisses off Kyomori and loses an arm.](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1381804889/ "Photo Sharing")Hubo FX-1: Holy smokes, the alpa stages of mech warriors are upon us! In Korea, "human-riding robot" doesn't ride you, you ride robot.](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1395432792/ "Photo Sharing")HumanKind: Hanson Robotics has endeavored to create expressive robot heads that appear to be human. I don't know if I'm the only person who is creeped out by this, but I'm guessing that I'm not. Their new head, Joey Chaos, is a "one of a kind humanoid rock star is known for his attitude and smart remarks," I guess that could be fairly entertaining.](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1395467076/ "Photo Sharing")Zou Ren Ti: What's creepier than an expressive robotic head? How about creating your twin in robot form. Yep, Xi'an wins.](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1394566023/ "Photo Sharing")REEM-A: Pal Technology's REEM-A robot has a sense of equilibrium and if you try and push him over he will regain his balance. I wonder what happens if you push him too hard?](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1394354571/ "Photo Sharing")Juke Bots: My German isn't so great, but from what I can tell from the pictures, the Juke Bots are a pair of what look like industrial welding robots that dance to music. Dancing robots are always crowd pleasers, and oddly enough dancing is a common robot design feature.](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1394569791/ "Photo Sharing")Shadow Hand: This robotic hand is supposedly "the most advanced Dexterous Hand in the world." It looks pretty complicated, containing 40 air muscles.](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1395437912/ "Photo Sharing")Salamandra robotica: Ok so this isn't the most interesting robot ever, but the page has some neat motion graphs.](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1395442072/ "Photo Sharing")Outerspace: This robot looks like your average desk lamp, but comes alive and responds to your input as you can see in this video.](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1394554343/ "Photo Sharing")Recon Scout - Reconnaissance Robot: This little dumbbell shaped robot is remote controlled and made for military work. You can toss the Recon Scout into a battle zone and drive it around to get an idea of what lies ahead.](http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/1381866451/ "Photo Sharing")Glowbots: These intercommunicating, interactive, LED-encrusted robots remind me of a physical version of Conway's Game of Life. You can watch some videos of the Glowbots here.Wired Nextfest takes place September 13th through the 16th in the South Hall of the LA Convention Center. Tickets will run you $20 if you're and adult, $15 with a student ID, and kids 2-12 are $5.
UPDATE I have added photos of the robots I saw at Nextfest. You can check out the rest of my photos here: Nextfest Day 1 and Nextfest Day 2.
The time has come for the first of the three Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council's (DLANC) Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training sessions! The training will begin this Saturday, September 8th, starting at 8:30am and running to 4:30pm at the Los Angeles Theatre, located at 615 S Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles. DLANC is sponsoring the training and is providing delicious lunches from the Corner Bakery.
There is no charge for the training or the meals, the only thing you need to bring is your thinking cap and note-taking supplies.
Please be sure to RSVP to [email protected] with your full name and phone number if you are planning on coming.
Every teenager dreams of working in a giant warehouse full of discarded nuclear test equipment, well used high-pressure vacuum fittings and an endless assortment of puzzling devices which may or may not have any value in the modern era. Ok, so maybe not every teenager has this dream, I was and still am somewhat of a strange person, but in High School in New Mexico, this particular dream of mine came true.
After tooling around the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Library and the Bradbury Museum for the better part of a day, my father took a break from coding the labs IBM AS/400 systems he was responsible for and took me to The Black Hole, also known as the Los Alamos Sales Company. He introduced me to Ed Grothus (photo below), an eccentric old fellow who had worked for the lab (what the locals call LANL) until being let go after marching in a peace protest in the '60s.Ed offered me a job, which paid minimum wage, which I believe was about $4.25 in New Mexico. He didn't really tell me what the job would entail, and honestly I didn't care. I had fallen in love with the endless piles of mysterious equipment that filled the former supermarket that had become The Black Hole. As it turned out my job description was quite eclectic and covered everything from taking apart electronic assemblies to recover whatever was valuable inside to helping customers find that centrifuge they were looking for to tearing old lockers out of High Schools.
I worked for Ed for 3 or 4 summers and I really enjoyed my time there. It was an amazing experience and I learned about all types of scientific laboratory equipment, how it worked, and what it was worth second hand. I had been meaning to visit the Black Hole and Ed for almost a decade, and I did just that on my recent vacation to New Mexico. Here are some photos with short captions covering what I saw:
Ed Grothus shows off his Peace Obelisk, one of two identical 3 ton marble obelisks. Ed traveled to China to have the massive monuments hewn from quarried marble and then polished and inscribed. The obelisks will have a message in fifteen languages inscribed in the hematite spheres that the obelisks will rest on. He is still searching for a location to place the monuments, I recommended the Trinity Site.
Except for the rusted sculptures and the "Military Surplus" sign, the front entrance to the Black Hole hasn't changed much in the decade and a half since I worked there. The former supermarket, it's parking lot and the church next door no longer sell groceries or facilitate worship, but instead provide cover to millions of salvaged scientific apparatuses. His frequent customers include LANL employees who are ironically buying back the same equipment the lab sold to salvage for pennies on the dollar over the years.
Ultra High vacuum equipment is some of the most high-tech looking hardware in the world. Comprised of thick walled stainless steel and machined with great precision for even greater amounts of money, HVac or UHV fittings are designed to withstand extremely high levels of vacuum. They are used for thin-film and spectroscopy research applications which require insane levels of negative pressure.
This large device is a Marley High Speed Camera built in England in 1944. The camera is capable of taking 100,000 photos per second. It was most likely used to photograph nuclear or other explosions.
To the left of the parking lot in the photo above you can see the A-frame church. When I worked at the Black Hole, it was filled with especially old, and possibly valuable equipment. The parking lot has been a source of trouble for Ed through the years, after neighbors complained the city of Los Alamos ordered Ed to clean up the lot. He ended up refusing to do so, being arrested, and while he was in jail the city hired a private firm to clean up the Black Hole. Instead of cleaning the parking lot out, they sold most all of Ed's most valuable items and pocketed the profit. As you can clearly see, the yard is still not clean.
More after the jump, and the whole archive can be found in my gallery
As I mentioned in my previous blog posts, I attended my 6th Defcon this year. I had a great time and actually ended up getting hired by Wired Blog to shoot photos of the event, many of which can be found here. A few of them also made it onto the main Wired website. Of course I took hundreds of photos and only a handful were used by Wired, so here are some highlights from my collection:
More after the jump, and the whole archive can be found in my Defcon 15 gallery.
About a month ago I upgraded to the newest version of Adobe's Lightroom. Adobe fixed most of the problems that existed in their first version, most importantly the horrid sluggishness that occurred when browsing through the library. It's not perfect yet, but it is much better. I am looking forward to the next version and the release of a plugin SDK.
When my lovely wife Penelope and I were staying in Taos, we decided to go rock hounding around the Enchanted Circle scenic byway. We took a 4WD trail up a mountain and took some photos near Angel Fire:
You can see more in my Angel Fire New Mexico gallery.
Penelope and I stayed in an Earthship in Taos. For years I have dreamt of building an Earthship, and someday I may do just that. We really enjoyed our stay and Taos, like the rest of New Mexico is beautiful:
More photos in my Taos gallery