aggressive modification of the subconscious

Posted on July 12, 2012 by kaan

On a recent journey through Three Valley Gap with four friends, we made the collective decision to blur the lines between creepy, astonishing, and intimidating. “The Enchanted Forest” occupies the middle bit of the Venn diagram those three descriptors create. I have heard that people visiting this site on mushrooms never recover.

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the last spite

Posted on July 11, 2012 by kaan

On a recent road trip I stopped at “The Last Spike” in Craigellachie, BC.

Jason and I decided to re-enact the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

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a/version of yourself

Posted on June 25, 2012 by kaan

Friday night I went to an art opening. “a/version of yourself” by Sophia Bartholomew is now installed at topdown bottomup.

In short, the project involves Sophia creating a new shirt for each day of the year. The completed shirts are placed in an interactive library where people can not only browse the shirts but can also chose to exchange whatever shirt the viewer is currently wearing for a shirt from the art installation. Quoting the signs: “to loan a shirt, leave your shirt behind.”

I left with this beauty.

 

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hair loss

Posted on June 21, 2012 by kaan

It turns out that Keith’s mad skillz with sharp edges are not limited to shredding the pow on skis. He can also handle scissors masterfully.

Keith gave me a hair cut last night. This is my new look.

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eplay

Posted on June 19, 2012 by kaan

My two favourite places on the computer to play are stellarium and google earth.

This evening I discovered a national geographic collaboration with google earth to integrate some super high resolution images of wildlife into the satellite view. You can see most of it in google maps too but sometimes it won’t let you zoom in as far..

If you have Earth installed, go to these coordinates: 10.90365, 19.93385.

If you want a peak at a herd of elephants in Chad, go to those coordinates in Maps, flip to satellite mode and zoom right in. Or here is a link.

At maximum zoom you can see tails, tusks, and ears. Super neat.

At these coordinate [-13.702259, 31.141429] you will find a pod of hippos in the Luangwa River, Zambia.

Radness.

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libration

Posted on June 13, 2012 by kaan

Back in December, when we had our last lunar eclipse, I went off on a rant about the phrase “dark side of the moon.” I pointed out the absurdity of this phrase given that the same side of the moon always faces us. My vocabularic expulsion was so ranty I even made the claim that the moon constantly has “exactly the same part of its surface facing the earth”. Eric quite rightly pointed out this was not quite correct and indicated that we can see about 59% of the moon.

At the time I accepted I was wrong without really digging into the associated learning opportunity too deeply.

Today I looked it up. I discovered a new word and some rad animation.

Simulated views of the Moon over one month, demonstrating librations in latitude and longitude. [src: Wikipedia]

It seems the premise under which I was operating was headed in the right direction but I had a substantial failure of imagination. The moon is indeed in a tidal lock with the earth, keeping one face pointing at the earth’s centre of mass. We still get to see a bit more than half of it though! This is due to the irregularities in the lunar orbit (it is neither perfectly circular nor perfectly in plane with its rotation) and due to our shift in viewing angle from moon rise to moon set. These geometric and angular irregularities cause an apparent motion in the moon called “libration”.

Excerpt from the wikipedia page:

There are three types of lunar libration:

  • Libration in longitude results from the eccentricity of the Moon’s orbit around Earth; the Moon’s rotation sometimes leads and sometimes lags its orbital position.
  • Libration in latitude results from a slight inclination between the Moon’s axis of rotation and the normal to the plane of its orbit around Earth. Its origin is analogous to how the seasons arise from Earth’s revolution about the Sun.
  • Diurnal libration is a small daily oscillation due to the Earth’s rotation, which carries an observer first to one side and then to the other side of the straight line joining Earth’s and the Moon’s centers, allowing the observer to look first around one side of the Moon and then around the other—because the observer is on the surface of the Earth, not at its center.
Posted in Overconfidence, Ramble | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

light it up

Posted on June 11, 2012 by kaan

The media heavily reported Ray Bradbury’s death on the 5th and ironically reduced his life to a series of factoids and partial information devoid of context. Stephen Colbert offered what I think is the best possible tribute to this marvellous and iconic author. He publicly burned a copy of Fahrenheit 451. Mad respect. Sort of like a summer time Guy Fawkes Night.

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hair

Posted on June 8, 2012 by kaan

Back in second year engineering I had a substantial afro and beard.

One day at the campus pub, we unplugged a tv and plugged in a straightening iron. This was the result.

My hair is starting to get a bit long again. Any suggestions as to what art might be made on this canvas?

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tm chsm

Posted on June 4, 2012 by kaan

This past weekend was spent in the interior of the province. We camped near the canyon edge in Chasm, BC.

This was essentially the view from our tents. (I erased one very central tree from the panorama by merging photos taken from either side of it.) We are on the west side of the canyon looking east.

Looking back from the other side of the canyon, the arrow shows where that last photo was taken from. In the centre of the image you might spot the ever faithful truck, white lightening.

From where we camped, the chasm begins about half a kilometre to our left and extends for several kilometres to our right. This is a shot looking down the valley (still on the west wall but now looking south-east).

The green patch dead centre is actually a small lake. More on that later. Also note the light green patch in the centre of the top right quadrant. We hiked around to the other side of the cliffs and out to about that spot. The same light green patch is visible in the middle of this photo but now we are on the east side looking west.

Hopefully all that bouncing around from one side to the other was not too visually confusing. In any case, the scenery was grand.

Next up, of course, it is incumbent upon us to descend into the canyon. Everything here is beautiful. From the enormous vista to the smallest lichens.

… and down we go!

Descentaineering into the chasm was not trivial, but we persevered.

The red rocks of the canyon wall were even more spectacular upon close inspection.

The brush was pretty thick but the view of the lake in the distance beckoned us onward.

The crew emerges from the brush victorious. Now only boulders and tall grass stand between us and our lake!

Arrived!

A family of ducks beat us there.

The water was far too appealing. We definitely went for a swim.

And then we reversed course and climbed out of the chasm!

One last panorama as we make our way out of the canyon.

We retired to a beautiful moon.

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engorged

Posted on May 28, 2012 by kaan

This weekend I went climbing with five friends in the Cheakamus gorge between Squamish and Whistler. It was a super beautiful location with super rad people on a magnificent day. Eric is visiting from Switzerland and this seemed a great opportunity for him to give multi-pitch climbing a try for the first time.

He rocked it.

The approach down from highway 99 took us across a talus slope toward the Cheakamus river. It was no match for our brawn.

(most of) team “U-Turn”

It was four pitches of mostly arête climbing (an outward facing corner). I led the first pitch and then Eric led the following three.

Alice and Phil descend the talus to the start of the first pitch. Dave has just climbed the first pitch and is chillin with me at the first belay ledge. Eric has just finished climbing the second pitch and is sorting himself out (the blue pixel at the top).

An experimental panorama using my phones built-in thinger. Panning is from my left, down past my feet, and then up to my right from the second belay ledge. Dave and Ross are on the first ledge while Phil and Alice get ready to start climbing.

A non-pano view from the same spot.

view down the gorge

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