Archive for December, 2008

Louise, modeling some cloths she got from my dad, and a sock monkey monster from my sister.

Muni Ride Log – Stevens Trail, Colfax, CA (another link to info about it).

I started using the iPhone app “iMapMyRide“. It dumps things back to a website and generates a nice map. Unfortunately, some data points seem to get lost, and it shows straight lines. The ride really took 1:35 mins (roughly), which is right, but I don’t think the mileage is correct. Most sites say 4.5 miles each way, and 9 miles total, which sounds more correct given the time. I rode it on the geared 24 KH muni; mostly in the high gear on the way out ,and in the low gear on the way back.

I think the elevation profile (1200′ of loss and gain on the way out) does seem right:

Overall, the program is pretty cool! Especially considering it is free. The thing I don’t like is that the map information (data points) are stored online only; I would like a local copy. Now..only if JR finishes his app.

HDR images can really pull out some highlights that you normally wouldn’t see.

Here’s a comparison of an HDR generated by taking a single RAW photo and exporting 3 different exposures from Aperture. I then combined them in Photomatrix.

Original:

Generated HDR, including some cropping and alignment:

Photo also on flickr.

To me, the HDR looks more real, and feels like what I was seeing at that time. The picture is Louise’s choir group, the Choral Project at a really cool St Dominics Church in San Francisco that had huge ceilings and amazing flying butresses that were apparently added after the fact to retrofit for earthquakes.

Louise and I have (somewhat) matching Geared KH 24 Mountain Unicycles:

Mine’s rim has horizontal stripes:

While Louise’s is a candy-cane:

Unfortunately, the paint job on mine got warn away after one day of riding at Northstar (lots of drops on rocks):

At San francisco

I don’t like the idea of killing a tree every year just so we can stick it in our house and put presents under it, so I convinced louise to let us get a live tree. So, instead of removing a tree from our ecosystem, we will be planting one back into it. Imagine how many trees we could plant if everyone started doing this. If you live in a city, you can still take your tree to a nearby park or forest and set it free after the holidays.

MUNI v1 – Mountain Unicycling Video from Corbin’s Treehouse Productions.

High Quality, 22 MB, H.264, AAC encoded. Get QuickTime to play it.

Featuring: Chuck, Corbin, Jason, Louise, Bevan and appearances of Kevin.

Post on the unicyclist forums: Forums link

Here’s the big pile of maple and poplar that I got for the project:

Building the face frame was super fast and easy to do with pocket jointery:

I wanted to start work on my built in dressers for the upstairs, but first I needed an out feed table for the tablesaw. I wanted something that doubled as a work space, and added some additional storage. I also wanted a built-in sanding table, but I decided to do that another day.

So, using some pocket hole joints, old 2×4s and 2×6s ripped clean and glued together, I made a really rock solid outfeed table. The top is two pieces of 3/4″ MDF glued and screwed together, with counter top stuff on the top to protect it and add a smooth surface to slide pieces of wood on.

It went together really fast, and has already been a great help. In particular, it makes sawing long pieces much safer, as they just catch onto the outfeed table instead of dropping down.

In the above picture, you can also see the updated router table that I made.

Some pictures from Honduras, hosted on Flickr (one of too many photo sharing sites that I use)

HDR picture of the dock in Roatan, Honduras.

This picture makes you think. You want to turn your head, since the horizon is not level, but at the same time it also looks correct, since part of the pier is horizontal to your reference. At the same time, it fades slightly to the background.

Interesting Palm tree

Black and White flower