t-minus 4 days…

17 August 2009 – 9:57 pm

Its not quite as intense as the leadup to the latest and greatest earth observation satellite launch.. I mean, we don’t have engineers over checking out our packing boxes for structural integrity – but woah – I always forget how much work packing up a life, well, three lives now, is.

We’re leaving Tasmania on Friday, 3 days from now. Its quite amazing to think we’re about to dovetail the various piles of stuff around our house into two cars… and the fun part is we’re not really sure where we’re going to land yet!

Well, we know where we will be for the first month – kicking back on the shores of the Mitta river at Bel’s parents property living the unconnected life and enjoying a really very necessary slowdown. No mobile phone, no TV, no internet, no mains power. Ahh..

I have a month off, so its time to unwind, and time to organise the next phase of life. Oh, and since we’ll be just down the road from the snow, time for a mission or two. I’m looking forward to slogging it out in the white stuff – it seems like its been a long time since the fires of wilderness adventures have been let loose to burn bright.

..and once I’m thoroughly cold, wet, exhausted, and burned out, I’ll come home to an amazing little family, a warm wood-fired home by the river, and peace.

My only fear is that the time will pass all too quickly… better make sure every moment counts! Next post? from the north island, and some time away…

seeya then!

By adam | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Movin’ and shakin’

8 August 2009 – 10:40 am

Well, its just about two weeks till we up and shift back north across the moat – Bass Strait. It all seems a little nuts, given that we still don’t officially have a place to move to. Yet. However, Plan A is still on track, and Plans B through Z are pretty well formed.

In other news, Joe is growing like crazy – he’s now more than double birth weight, and 20cm taller! yikes! A few new photos have also arrived: http://adstereo.net/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=354

…and thats a wrap. Busy, exciting, interesting times.

By adam | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

wide angle

27 May 2009 – 4:29 pm

An imagery update – I’ve been getting around to producing some of my own panoramas, as a change from making image mosaics for work…

This one is from Gardner Island, just off Davis Station, Antarctica:

Gardner Island panorama

Enjoy…

By adam | Posted in environment, panoramas, photography, science | Comments (0)

Blognastics, or the joy of hyperlinks!

9 May 2009 – 1:17 pm

Since facebook seems to have taken over my online social life, it seems increasingly difficult for people to venture off to… well, this blog – or the gallery that sits at the same site.

That’s cool – facebook is a kind of ‘one stop shop’, so why would you go anywhere else? Luckily the developers realised this – there’s a neat subscription mechanism in facebook’s ‘notes’ application which lets facebook pull content from here.

The only problem is, I also want to pull an RSS feed from my gallery, so that people get wind of new photos that arrive there. This is particularly important since the arrival of Joe!

However, I can only subscribe to one feed at a time via facebook notes, which means at present, I’ll have to write a blog post every time I add photos. Hmm. I’m lazy, and I like computers to do such menial tasks for me.

I wonder.. can I get gallery to push content to wordpress? or can I use wordpress to pull in a gallery RSS feed? or does facebook have a separate RSS subscriber. That would be cool.

Anyway, just so you know, some new photos have arrived! One of Joe, one from my 2008 Antarctic trip, and a brilliant panorama from the summit of Frenchman’s cap, on the infamous Dick Smith trip of 2008. Find your way from here: http://adstereo.net/gallery/.

Oh – I nearly forgot. For all the photo updates you can subscribe to the Gallery RSS feed yourself, here: http://adstereo.net/gallery/main.php?g2_view=rss.Render&g2_name=images+on+adstereo.net

Enjoy!

By adam | Posted in joe, life, web | Comments (0)

The enduring peace of a mountain bike trail

6 May 2009 – 3:34 pm

I’m feeling like typing, obviously!

I rode a trail I have neglected for a long time the other day. In fact, I’ve ventured down it twice in the last week and a half. It has drawn me in, with a subtle mixture of technical intricacy and moments of unity with the trail, the bike, the air.

So far, I haven’t managed to keep the bike between me and the dirt on it yet. But I’m compelled to go back. Its a problem and a solution in itself. The solution will come, but the problem will still remain as challenging and interesting as it was at the first attempt. Its almost like rock climbing at your limit – the problem will only be solved when you’ve found that unity of body and mind in the moment, applied at the exact time and place. Like climbing, its not just one moment – a series of connected moments, requiring that unity to be carried through from one to the next.

And having found that unity, and carried it from moment to moment, there’s nothing to stop it being carried from day to day, from year to year. The enduring peace of a mountain bike trail.

By adam | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

The wisdom of raw humans.

6 May 2009 – 3:21 pm

Joe is growing into his new space so amazingly – every day is something a little different. Sure, he does baby things. But the little things that come up every new day! He’ll sit and stare at the world from the safety of my lap – or Bel’s, just absorbing everything. He’ll wake up and stretch for ages, and his endurance for interaction is growing so rapidly. Its so hard to remember he’s only been out in the air for 9 weeks.

He’s starting to learn about hands, and getting strong. He’ll lie on his stomach and keep his head up for ages, so keen to see what’s happening. Curious, and just soaking up whatever we give him. He really does teach us the meaning of peaceful at times.

…but like all babies, the calm comes between the storms. Understandably, he lives from moment to moment. No concept of ‘dinner will be here soon’, or ‘if you’re tired, you need to sleep’. Just whatever experience passes through at the time. Its incredible to watch, as all parents will know.

I’ll post more photos of the little man soon. He’s a changin’…

By adam | Posted in joe, life | Comments (0)

Pulling back the frontiers of science part 1: Fixed width data files

16 April 2009 – 10:59 am

To do science these days you need to be able to deal with very long lists of numbers. Luckily, computers are very good at doing that for us – most of the time.

However, being human we like to screw things up for reasons like ‘it looks nicer’. Which brings me to the topic of this post: fixed-width data files.

Fixed width data files are generally beautifully-presented blocks of text with lines that are always 80, 120 or some other number of characters wide. Nice to look at, but quite possibly one of the reasons that science is so damn hard!

Trying to extract data from these beasts can be excruciating, since it is uncertain how much whitespace is between each of the actual data fields. You need to painstakingly go through every combination of how many characters a data field can occupy, or become very good at regular expressions. Not to mention if your example file is missing a data column you have no real way of telling.

On the other had, if you standardise the bits between the data [for example, always put two spaces or a comma between data fields], life becomes much simpler. Two commas ina row? missing data. Six spaces in a row? missing data. Simple. A given data value can be 3 characters or 35 characters long, it doesn’t matter!

Sure – your file looks messy, but it is orders of magnitude easier to interpret, display, plot, make into beautiful graphics that get your message across, et cetera.

So, if you’re thinking of producing datasets: please think of all the people who will need to process them at some later stage and avoid the temptation to make fixed-width output files.

Thats it for pulling back the frontiers of science today ;-)

By adam | Posted in science | Comments (0)

on freehubs, the universe and everything

27 March 2009 – 9:20 am

I’ve become a bike part cynic. Its sad really, the magical wizardry of shiny new things only makes me suspicious now. I arrived here via a set of fandangle Mavic wheels, that promised, well, to be wheels – but they looked great, rolled really well and I foolishly thought they would last forever.

Ooops.

Now, 18 months and two freehub bodies later, I’m down a rear hub. The all powerful ‘force transfer system’, which is really just two tiny ratchet pawls mounted on stainless steel rods in an alloy hub body, failed catastrophically. One of the pawls was forced through the hub body!

I found this a bit surprising, since I’m not the strongest rider the universe has seen. Surely not in the same league as pro road racers who endorse these things [or maybe get given them for free and only use them for a month or so].

Anyway, I’m sobered. And looking for a Better Freehub. Its going to come down to Shimano vs Industry 9 vs Hope vs Fulcrum vs Chris King. Whoever can offer a steel cassette carrier, bearings that don’t need tweaking every ride [old shimano days - maybe things have changed..], and more than two puny engagement points to transfer mavic-crushing power [haha!] to the rear wheel…

I’d better start saving, and find something before Bel wants her rear wheel back…

By adam | Posted in bike!, life | Comments (0)

four weeks…

26 March 2009 – 2:58 pm

Today, as well as having his photos put on the internet, Joe is four weeks old! I think thats quite the achievement – he’s handling the transition to breathing air and living in a seemingly-endless space quite well.

Bel and I are just amazed constantly by the little fella. Yes, he keeps us up at night, but I’ll paraphrase a friend of mine here: ‘he could cry for three weeks straight, and then he’ll smile for a minute. In that minute, you instantly forget about the three weeks of crying’..

Baby magic huh?

Bel’s sister Tess is here for a few days, so we’re ordered to go out to dinner tonight, and leave Joe with Tess for the evening. Our first ‘date’ in ages! But we’ll miss him after a few hours, I’m sure…

By adam | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Photos of the new little man!

26 March 2009 – 2:53 pm

I’ve finally got some pictures of Joe together and loaded them to the interweb. I figure the little man deserved at least a few weeks before world-wide exposure and fame. Head to the gallery and see the beautiful man in all his constantly-changing glory..

By adam | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)