by cg on February 5, 2010
Willow Garage, a robotics research facility here in Menlo Park, may be my most favorite InMenlo assignment to date. This past Wednesday, CEO Steve Cousins was kind enough to take me through the large, bustling plant, where there are futuristic wonders to be discovered at every turn.
Privately funded Willow Garage is developing advanced robots – both hardware and software – with the goal of advancing robotics to the tipping point (still thought to be many years hence) at which the field will advance rapidly to the eve of, say, affordable domestic robots that can load dishwashers and perform other simple chores (remember Rosie the robot maid on The Jetsons?).
With nearly as many robots as humans, the corridors at Willow Garage are busy. Autonomous robots known as the PR2 (Personal Robot 2) can navigate the halls, open doors (first making sure the door is unlocked by gently trying the knob), find outlets and plug themselves in to recharge.
Another robot, the tall, thin Texas model, allows remote workers to interact with on-site peers via ‘telepresence.’ Indeed, while I was photographing robotics program co-director Eric Berger (inset photo, above), Dallas Goecker, a Willow Garage engineer who lives in Indiana, came over to see what was going on (you can see “him” in the background of the larger photo on InMenlo). Earlier I photographed designer Curt Meyers with some 25 of his “Texas” model, known plurally as “Texai” (top photo).
Willow Garage, in keeping with its mission, is an open source developer, and makes its software, including contributions to the Robot Operating System available online. The institution is in the process of making the (reportedly) $500,000 PR2 available to researchers, also free. We were impressed. Wow…
by cg on February 4, 2010
It was a very full day for your deeply fatigued author aujourd’hui, as it was yesyerday, and he is prevented from sharing yesterday’s most exciting experience by the editor of a certain community blog, aka the spouse, at least until InMenlo runs the post.
The fatigue, by the way, was earned and not some cancer artifact (for a change) – we’ve just been very busy. Rehab (today at UCSF in the City), taxes, an insurance switch, a sewer line that keeps backing up, InMenlo assignments, closing the books for 2009, my domestic responsibilities… well, I’ll stop now.
We can, however, reveal our big excitement (other than the embargoed item referenced above) was that we found a need to extend our new photo friend, light stick, to do special effects: in this case to produce photos that had that Wired Magazine “weird science” look – the spooky blue glow, the hot magenta/red highlights et al.
Normally, this is done with studio strobes covered with expensive theatrical gels, but your hemiplegic-but-mobile photog managed to extend his battery-powered setup by buying some colorful acetate report binders in the office supplies section at Fry’s this morning, and, after trimming them with scissors, gaffer-taping them over the strobe heads. Final cost? $3.95 plus tax. Can’t wait to share some of the pix…
by cg on February 2, 2010
Since almost no one noticed a product unveiling at Apple last week, or, at least, one aspect of said event, I feel called to step up, and weigh in. Apple, some may have noticed, announced that it was designing the silicon for the new iPad, as well as writing the OS and the core applications. One august journal proclaimed “a new direction” for Apple.
Us iGeezers just say “Huh?” We remember the first Mac, and most all subsequent Macs until Motorola et al. dropped the PowerPC chip – Apple software, wed to Apple hardware, with Apple apps for frosting – the complete Apple lock-in (or attempted lock-in) – not exactly a resounding success, judging by the vast number of PCs in the world now enrolled in botnets.
This, really folks, is Vintage Steve, doing what he did in 1984, except with the added touch of trying to also control the means of all future media distribution thrown in for good measure.
Don’t get me wrong: I own a little Apple stock, and I wish the company all the success in the world. And it’s not that Mr. Jobs has been standing still for 26 years. In that time he has been able to, for example, revolutionize music delivery.
And I think he’s right that, these days, people are not averse to lock-in, just so it works, and works smoothly and elegantly a la iTunes. My digital life is a patchwork of devices, places, protocols, cords, tethers and messy complexity. My iPhone already has knocked a couple degrees of cruft off that needless confusion and iPad stands poised to move the ‘simplify’ needle another few notches out of the red ‘Hopeless’ zone, and, possibly, much further. Apple, the ‘benign Microsoft?’ Probably not…
by cg on February 1, 2010
Blog: Dude, it’s been, like, real, OK? But it’s time for me to move on. Fly the nest, you know?
Me: You have a better offer?
Blog: Oh, dude, don’t go there! It’s not like I haven’t learned a lot here in Geezerland. What was that thing you did, desktop punishing?
Me: That was desktop publishing.
Blog: Whatever, but it was kind of like, seminal, you know what I mean? You used a computer to lay out content, even though the UI and delivery protocol (bits! fer crissake) was hopeless. I kind of got the whole framework from the core where it all began. But I just have to move on dude…
Me: It’s that we don’t have video podcasts isn’t it?
Blog: Dude, that’s not the half of it – basically, you got nothing. This pop stand’s looking dark and deserted, if you catch my drift. 2D is so, um, 15th century you know? Monks and parchment and, like, Gutenberg, man. Look at the hit logs, look at your seven readers – only four of them even bother to follow you on Twitter.
Me: So, you’re gone…May I ask where?
Blog: Dunno, but some very wired cats with a hot Facebook game need a blog, bad. I’m gonna go over and wow them.
Me: Do you need a recommendation?
Blog: Um, no, dude, and, uh, if you don’t mind, if someone calls or emails or texts, you never heard of me, OK?
Guess we’re on our own from here on out…
by cg on January 31, 2010
So, yesterday was so full that neither Linda nor I blogged. The big occasion was the installation of our new Rector, but we had lots of InMenlo catchup to do, as well as dealing with the foot of water that has pooled, increasingly fragrantly, under the house after last week’s torrents. But, wait, what’s this…? It’s blog: Sleep, now. No more, dog-ate-my-blog stuff… just go to bed…
by cg on January 29, 2010
After we were fortunate enough to catch the assignment to shoot Tuck and Patti for InMenlo, we began hankering for a portable lighting setup, like the one we rented to shoot monsieur and madame.
The usual traveling one-light setup consists of a monobloc (an integrated power supply and strobe/modeling light), an umbrella or softbox, a light stand sufficiently robust to support the usual, ruggedly-built 200 or 400 watt-second device and all the small stuff – cords, flash meter, sand bags, gobos, grip gear, cameras et al. etc.
Needless to say, it took me about a half hour to set up, and bless ‘em, Tuck and Patti were completely understanding, but that’s not going to often work for me or most of the time-pressed people I’m likely to shoot these days. I’m slow enough getting in to their office, as it is.
So I’ve been trying to think of a very lightweight, easy to set light that I could handily take along to assignments. One of the (nice) dirty secrets of the latest-gen digital cameras is that their noise (aka ‘grain’) figures are very low. One needed to tote serious power in order to reliably get a decent f-stop on Ektachrome 100 – not so, these days. Modern DSLRS have image quality at ISO 400 (DX-format) and even ISO 1600 (full 35mm frame format) that one was reserved for fine-grain transparency film.
Indeed, AA-battery powered strobes will provide sufficient light for many applications, particularly when a 460-pixel-wide image is the target medium. So we’ve been web-surfing, cruising the product offerings, and come to see I’m about the last photographer to notice this datum. There are a ton of relatively inexpensive products available to make a cheap, portable light source, a number of which I snapped up at Keeble & Shucat this morning.
Anyway, we’ve come away with a very light, relatively easy-to-set-up thing we call the ‘light stick,’ basically a modern version of the light 1930′s photogs christened the ‘bare bulb.’ We used it today, but I’ve promised InMenlo not to publish the photo before they do. Short take… I like it…
by cg on January 28, 2010
Probably not many life partners were discussing a gibbous moon this evening, but Linda and I were. As we headed out for dinner I motioned to a cloud-veiled moon hanging low over the Stanford campus and intoned, with some authority,” That, dear, is a gibbous moon.”
Only problem is, it wasn’t. For some reason, I’ve had it stuck in my mind, probably for decades, that gibbous referred to “hazy” or “obscured.” Linda replied that she thought that gibbous referred to the shape or phase of the moon, which, indeed, proves to be correct (less than full, more than half).
Later in the evening, as we departed the Mayfield Café, I observed that the moon was “less gibbous,” given a clearing sky. Wrong on both occasions, it would seem…
by cg on January 25, 2010
We finally ginned up the courage, after last summer’s setback, to return to writing our (newly expanded) insider’s view of Hemiplegia, the condition which affects my left side. As we’ve made our way back from that warm season disappointment, at first timidly, despite the admonitions of our rehab therapist Heidi Engel, and, lately, more aggressively, we feel the confidence return that we exhibited when we made our way to southern Burgundy last May, and daily walked the steep ridge upon which the village of Ameugny is situated.
We realize that, while, indeed our body suffered from the brain swelling episode, the real problem has been a loss of confidence. There are lots of daily actions – able-bodied me never even thought about them – that are daunting to the hemiplegic. Stepping off curbs is one – it took 18 months of carefully planned and heavily repeated rehab exercises before I could confidently, and reliably, step off a curb without risking a fall.
In any case, we returned two weeks ago to the aggressive strength-building program that Heidi had started us on last April (and which she’d been pushing us to resume), a little fearful – we had been lifting some, for us, serious weights before departing for France. Upon our return, some 12 pounds lighter from muscle atrophy, and, with a left arm that would barely move, we could lift only a fraction of our previously-set goals. Six months of near-daily exercises later, we have managed to surpass, by a small amount, our previous sets.
Confidence, however, lags strength – we’re still gun shy. So much so that, two weeks ago, we not only managed to fall, but knocked down a dear friend who was trying to help me navigate a curb late in the day. I am lately realizing that my left side will do more than I’m asking of it and I need to seize the opportunity to counter the brain’s natural tendency to work around the damage. We are so trying to get back to April, strength and mobility-wise…
by cg on January 23, 2010
The boss over at InMenlo decided there would be no respite this weekend, and we found ourselves slaving over a hot Nikon again today, shooting an artist, a neighborhood, an old truck and a rainbow, which, added to Friday’s jazz musician and café and ongoing weather coverage made for 7 assignments in 48 hours. We even had to write some of these things.
We start early and we finish late – no wonder my poor blog has suffered neglect this past week, with either no posts, or thin prose mostly complaining about how tired we are, or, worse, yet another fruit shot. It is written: “No man can serve two blogs”…
Willow Garage, a robotics research facility here in Menlo Park, may be my most favorite InMenlo assignment to date. This past Wednesday, CEO Steve Cousins was kind enough to take me through the large, bustling plant, where there are futuristic wonders to be discovered at every turn.