January 2008 – Page 2

The Armory Loop

Tonight, like every Tuesday night during the winter months (e.g. standard time), the Second Wind running club meets at the Armory on the campus of the University of Illinois for a fun run. A few people stay indoors to run laps on the 200 meter track, but many people venture outdoors to run a 5.75 mile loop through town.

I took my GPS with me this evening to get a good map of the route I’ve been running for years. I used Mathematica to import and plot my GPS data on top of images from Google Maps.

Here is a map of the Armory loop with mile markers:

And here is a map of the Armory loop with kilometer markers:

The Na Pali Coast

Melissa and I hiked along the Na Pali coast of the island of Kauai while visiting Hawaii for the wedding of Melissa’s sister Michelle in May 2006. If you don’t ever get a chance to see its beauty in person, at least check it out in Google Earth.

The Remote Timer

Canon makes a SLR camera remote timer that sells for a couple hundred dollars. Using inspiration from various web sites I built one for myself using about $15 worth of parts from RadioShack.

First, it is a simple wired camera remote control. Just plug the cable into the remote jack on the Canon SLR camera and the black button on top will trigger the camera auto focus, while the red button will focus then take a picture.

Second, it is a timer than can be used for time lapse photography. A 9-volt source (battery or DC adapter) powers a circuit I built using a 555 timer and a 6-way rotary switch where each way is hooked up to different resistors. Switching between these different resistors varies the timer interval. The timer triggers a relay switch at specified intervals which causes the camera to take pictures. It is based on the astable 555 timer circuit described here. I used the following capacitor and resistors:

C = 3300 µF
R1 = 1000 Ω
R2 = 620 Ω (~5 second delay)
R2 = 2670 Ω (~15 second delay)
R2 = 10000 Ω (~48 second delay, I just realized I calculated this one incorrectly, as I intended for it to be 30 seconds)
R2 = 15000 Ω (~1 minute delay)
R2 = 65000 Ω (~5 minute delay)
R2 = 200000 Ω (~10 minute delay)

Here are some photos of the actual device:

Okay, so the innards are a little sloppy. This was my first real electronics project. The soldering took some practice, and I actually hosed my first circuit board and had to start it over.

Here is a simple example of the sort of thing this timer allows me to do. I set it up to take a picture of a glass of ice cubes every minute for a couple of hours (i.e. until the battery in my camera ran out).

Ah, stupid YouTube! The aspect ratio is wrong, but you get the idea.

The Cars

My little nephew Caleb loves Cars. Here he is playing Cars with uncle Andy on our recent trip to Texas for the holidays.

The Schroth Trail

This morning I ran with a group of Buffalo Warriors, a C-U area trail running group affiliated with Second Wind Running Club. We ran at Schroth Trail on the south side of the Sangamon river in Allerton Park. We traversed the 5.9 mile loop twice in 5˚ weather. In the photo you can see how much ice accumulated on my beard and hair.

The last time I ran this trail was almost exactly 4 years ago, a month or so before I injured my left knee. As was the case today, that run was also 1 week before the world renowned Riddle Run, my first and only (thus far) ultramarathon.

This trail is also special to me in that I ran there frequently my freshman year at UIUC with the cross country team. One September Sunday morning we did a 16 mile long run on this trail in 1:40:00 (6:15 miles), which is faster than I ran 11.8 miles today, and probably remains one of my best long runs ever.

Unfortunately, my little GPS didn’t do a very good job in the dense forest. The two paths should be identical :(

The NUMB3RS

I made that software. That’s what I said to Melissa as I was watching NUMB3RS tonight. Several people at Wolfram Research work as math consultants for the CBS show and they frequently make use of Mathematica related props on the show. In the past they have shown copies of the Mathematica book, A New Kind of Science, and various posters created with Mathematica.

Tonight one of the main characters Charlie was using Mathematica (on Mac OS X even). Okay, so some of the footage may or may not have been special effects, but Mathematica was there. My software was there.

The Expo

Today is the final day of the 2008 Macworld Expo in San Francisco. I did not attend Macworld this year, but I always find the expo exciting nonetheless.

In January 2001 I began working full time for Wolfram Research, where I was charged with porting Mathematica to the soon-to-be-released Mac OS X operating system. My 3rd week of work I was sent to attend a workshop at Apple‘s headquarters in Cupertino, where they were to provide me with assistance in this process.

The workshop took place the week following the 2001 Macworld Expo and it worked out that I was able travel to California a few days early to catch the tail end of it. This was my first trip to Apple/Cupertino/Macworld/San Francisco/California so it was a big deal to me at the time.

I toured the hundreds of vendor booths at the expo and saw lots of great technology demonstrations. I purchased a laptop bag which I still use to this day. I also purchased my first and shortest-lived digital camera. It was a real piece of crap, but I got what I paid for…

After the expo I did some sight seeing in San Francisco before taking the train down to Cupertino. I still remember walking downtown, taking my first trolley ride, running through Chinatown, seeing Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time.

I have been back to San Francisco on a number of occasions since then and every time I go there I discover something new. San Francisco has become one of my favorite places to explore, and the Macworld Expo is what brought me there.

Month: January 2008