Cycling: Transit for Women with Groceries
There has been much debate in America over the years on how to integrate bicycling into urban transit. There is debate among cyclists about the value of multi-use-paths (MUPs). This article seems to draw the current trend, to design cycle oriented transit towards a typical user being a sixty year old woman with groceries.
http://www.humantransit.org/2010/04/can-we-all-cycle-the-last-mile.html
I like the mention of the “bike station” — bike rental at bus stations. Unfortunately, the notion of renting standard safety bicycles might not be as useful as renting folding transit bicycles (which addresses current bus+cycle loop issues highlighted in the article) — or recumbent tricycles, which are less physically challenging and thus more appealing to older riders.
Cycling Power in Watts
If you had to generate electricity with a bicycle, how many light bulbs can you power? Well, consider that an average bicycle on level ground in still air needs 100 Watts of power to cycle at 12mph. If you wanted to add an electrical generator to your normal cycle, the effect would be like going up a hill. You feel this resistance because you would be working against the electromagnetic resistance in the coils of the generator. To power a 60W bulb, it would feel like you were climbing a 4 percent grade…you’d break a sweat. So on your next bike ride, you could light one room in your house. For comparison, an electric range could use up to 12,000 watts, I’m guessing just one burner on high would use 2000 watts.
Trikes Safer Around Cars?
Just stumbled across this post describing how recumbent tricycles feel safer around cars because they’re given wider berth.
Ironic Gas Humor
Love this, never buy gas again.
Quake Rattle and Roll
We got a real roll from the 7.2 quake in Mexicali earlier this afternoon. Weswayed and rolled for nearly 45 seconds; the dining room chandelier swayedfor nearly 5 minutes afterwards. Both Dad and I felt a bit seasick for awhile afterwards! Kind of a strange one.
The recent Mexicali quake data from the USGS. News from ABC.com.
Update, my mom has a great sense of humor:
Lucy Jones just said we shouldn’t be surprised to get a “trigger” earthquake up to a 6.0 “somewhere in southern California” during the next week. We’re pretty much bolted down; it’s fun watching the home videos of the tsunamis generated in So Cal swimming pools!
Fastest Bicycle Found at Bellingham Farmers Market
Here we have the Juice Peddler at the Bellingham Farmer’s market. This rocks!
Juice Peddler Bicycle Smoothies
Finding Ada
Was listening to FLOSS Ep. 114 and the topic is Ada Lovelace Day. Neat concept. Who would you put on the list?
Good weekend rides
Going up Ferndale road has been quite nice. It was fun to see the Saturday packs of riders. Where were all the Sunday riders? Duh: church? Looking forward to corned beef tonight!
Foundation Bolt, 2010-01-26
So after listening to that podcast about digital color, I’m not so concerned (in fact, I can happily prefer) to use somewhat over-exposed images. It’s much easier to darken and add contrast than it is to safely reduce contrast. Unless you actually blur the picture and add more artificially gradated pixels, you cannot add color resolution to an image. So you can guess what this picture used to look like when I started.
Whatever a foundation bolt does out in the middle of a parking lot–this one does its job quite well.
Foundation Bolt, 2010-01-26
Keep a Chain Tool On Hand!
This morning as I was on may way to to the store before work, I got to Conneticut and Northwest and .(This being my lucky corner) my chain failed. This is only 2-3 blocks from my house, so like the time it was 18F outside when my freehub died at the same intersection, I was able to quickly walk the bike home.
However, I was not prepared: I was not carrying a chain tool on me. It took about 20 minutes to repair, and I oiled the chain while I was at it…but if I was on the side of Northwest, this would have been much more difficult.
That Much Closer to Jacking In
I heard these articles mentioned on The Commandline podcast:
Your analog brain.
A wearable brain computer interface. And for only 9000E, you can type by thinking.
I would have thought that this technology would have made it on the scene a long time ago. It’s very much something that would mesh will well with wearable computers. Just need a VRD to get you an augmented view of reality.
Moon, 2010-03-04
I’m impressed that even though I was so lazy as to not hang a sandbag from my tripod, it was as sharp as it is.
Moon, 2010-03-04
Bark, Bellingham, 2010-01-31
This was a rainy weekend walk, where again I risked my camera. I wasn’t too worried, it’s a pretty tuff camera and it’s not too fragile a lens. Anyhow, it was the 28MM F5 Vivitar tank. It’s actually quite good at close ups. Almost all the pictures I’ve uploaded have been hand held at 100 ISO.
Bark, Bellingham, 2010-01-31
Shack, Aldrich Rd, 2010-02-03
I like taking pictures of … neglect. I don’t like the word neglect, so much, but rather the character a structure expresses after being abandoned to the elements. There’s another shack out on Aldrich Rd that I’ve been meaning to photograph, too.
Shack, Aldrich Rd, 2010-02-03
Expose to the Right
I was very impressed by Ray Maxwell’s explanation of what a histogram on a digital camera shows in Maxwell’s House episode 60 [http://twit.tv/mh60]. The histogram is showing the amount of pixels that have a particular exposure and that exposure is power. So the further right on the histogram you go, the brighter the luminance.
However, the halfway point on the histogram isn’t necessarily the halfway point of the color resolution. What does this mean? Well, if the furthest right you can go on a histogram is brightest white, say, 256, one stop down (1/2 the exposure, thus, 1/2 the power) is 128. Two stops down is 64. Goodness…how many stops are there on a gray scale? 10? That means 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1….Does that mean that we run out of bits as we enter the dark end of the photo? Yup.
The previous episodes explain how this is managed using color spaces. This episode’s advice indicates a few bits of advice: 1) camera’s don’t themselves have ICC color profiles,
2) shoot in raw because that’s the full color resolution (common knowlege these days)
3) overexposing a bit will give you smoother tones, and a good way to get this effect is to set the “contrast” setting on the camera to “low contrast”.
4) the histogram you see on the camera is actually only possible after converting the raw image thru a color space (like sRGB).
5) what actually determines the information of the raw photo is a) ISO, b) shutter speed, and c) aperature. Other settings, like saturation, contrast, and white balance, are manipulations of the raw photo into JPG format (and that of course is done through color-space).
Neat stuff, good episode. I’m inspired to move towards using DNG format on my Pentax K10 now. The only bummer is that the Gimp doesn’t natively support DNG raw format (last I checked.)
Rebar, 2010-02-19
Bob the Build-*cough!* Ahem, ahem! Bob the…get the tune out of my head! Kevin, start whistling, please!
Rebar, 2010-02-19
I’m going to be building and building…software…but not my sink. This is not a matter of confidence, this is a matter of reliability.
Mt Baker from Aldrich Rd (Panorama) 2010-02-19
Here’s an attempt at making a very wide desktop background: 2560×1024. There are obviously better photos I could have chosen, but this one was recent. I think I need to figure out how to turn my bicycle into a tripod. I could certainly lose the shake, even on a 28mm lens.
Mt. Baker from Aldrich Rd, 2010-02-19
Feel free to tease me about this photo. You can even do that on twitter now: @jed_reynolds or @bitratchet.
More Discussion on Monitor Gamma
This discussion of monitor gamma has some more math about the subject, and different diagnostic images.
Wildly Varying Monitor Gamma
With all my recent photo work, I’ve started developing an eye for how my photos are looking on different monitors. I have an LG monitor at home for which I have a ICM profile for. I can get Ubuntu to load this profile using xcalib. At work, I have two Viewsonics that don’t live on viewsonic.com anymore, and there are no model specific ICM profiles available for them to download. So on my recent Ravenna Tree Sign picture, the Viewsonic monitors displayed that picture distinctly darker than my home monitor. I upped the gamma setting on my viewsonics to 1.50 (?) using the on-screen-menu. However, this is all very vague–using on-screen menus isn’t necessarily the bees knees. This leads me to wonder: What is a typical screen gamma?
According to this ancient discussion on monitor gamma photo.net, Macs and PCs have an entirely different default range, 1.5 for Macs, 2.2 for PCs (Windows). Apparently this lead to a development of storing gamma-hints in picture formats(?) First I’ve heard of this. However, here is an interesting monitor gamma dipstick posted in that thread:
Monitor Gamma Dipstick
On an LCD monitor, moving your head around makes the gamma value change. So if I tilt my monitor up to be more perpendicular to my line of sight, I change the apparent gamma from 1.65 to 1.35. Wow, looking at the picture in this html editor, it’s now 1.05. I think if someone were to pay me to do this stuff, I think I’d probably stop using an LCD to do color managed work. (Are there good LCD monitors for color managed work?)
If you have trouble viewing my pictures, or if you think they are too light or too dark, let me know. I’m not going to get a colorimiter (a Color Spyder) for my home monitor anytime soon, but if my home monitor gamma and brightness off the tracks, I want to know.
Tree Sign, Ravenna Park, 2010-02-15
I’ve walked by this sign in Ravenna park for years. I’m guessing it used to be a yield sign. Now it’s a macabre symbol that reminds me much of the art I produced in middle school.
Tree Sign, Ravenna Park, 2010-02-15
Purple Blossoms, Bellingham, 2010-01-18
I was surfing around looking at campsites tonight. Suggestions appreciated. If this February is a sign of what May will be like, I’m all for it. Consider how vivid these blossoms were in January. Any places you like to camp? Please share.
Purple Blossoms, Bellingham, 2010-01-18
This was a brief experiment tonight doing a “dissolve filter” and a mask. The unfocused background was kinda distracting because it was a lot of lens-circles. I blurred out the whole layer and masked the foreground out of it, dissolved it in and threw a “soft light” to rebuild the color on the blossoms. If you’d like a print of this, please ask.
Water Lid, 2010-01-26
This banal piece of rugged hardware has a very strong design. This is an experiment to bring out that bold design.
Water Lid, 2010-01-26
If you’d like a bigger file to print out, please ask.
It was a good day for cycling!
I hauled furniture in the kid trailer today.
Hauling Furnature in the Kid Trailer, 2010-02-08
I saw a wonderful sunset illuminating Mt Baker from Aldrich Rd. on the way home. Yes, I did Aldrich Rd with a bike trailer. I did not walk up any hills.
Mt. Baker seen from Aldrich Rd, Ferndale 2010-02-08
Stones, Squalicum Beach, 2009-01-26
It was cold and rainy. However, I needed to talk a walk. I recall that this walk I had the back of my camera dripping wet from the fog condensing onto my beard. My gloves were soaked, and my jacket sleeves were starting to soak thru into my shirt. But I had my new camera! That made it great!
Stones, Squalicum Beach, 2009-01-26
