Another tri-state area

When one hear the term Tri-State Area or Region, I believe most people think of the well-known New York-New Jersey-Connecticut (NY-NJ-CT) tri-state region. Well, at least the two are synonymous for me probably because I've spent ten years living in Jersey.

Of course, other tri-state areas exist but I was astonished to discover there are actually as many as 38 officially-marked "tripoints" in the United States. Moreover, the NY-NJ-CT tri-state region does not actually possess a tripoint. (See this authoritative Wikipedia entry.)

Last week, I visited one of these real tripoints on my drive home from Boston to Tucson. As seen on my iPhone 3G map display, this is where Virgina, Tennessee and Kentucky meet. (The blue GPS blob marks the point where I was standing.)

Although it's a nice 1.2 mile walk up to the Tri-State Peak located inside the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, it's a bit of a disappointing hike: trees and other vegetation block any chance of a scenic view.

Nestled in a clearing lower down, however, is the surprisingly photogenic (almost Mayan temple-like) remains of an Iron Furnace:

Given my recent interest in 360° spherical panorama photography (see recent blog entry tech and subjects: The Stata Center and The Getty Museum Los Angeles), I couldn't resist the opportunity to make a panorama at this spot. Download here. (Warning: 12.1MB file. You can view this using Quicktime player.)

Anyway, I was here to visit my good friend Jim Montgomery who has recently moved to this hilly and very rural - let's just say dining-opportunity-limited - corner of southwestern Virigina bordering Kentucky and Tennessee. The upsides are the gorgeous scenery and almost empty roads in pristine condition (a consequence of the lack of real winter, population and truck traffic I reckon). In short, a perfect "secret" location for bike training. On Jim's porch:

jim led me on a perfect 25 mile training loop from his home in Rose Hill VA with about 1700 ft of climbing. The GPS tracklog recorded on my Garmin eTrex Vista Cx:

I wish I had more time to explore the region on my bike but the start of a new semester in Tucson cannot be delayed. For example, the Cumberland Gap tunnel "crosses" - or is it also appropriate to use the semantically-bleached terms "bridge" or "thread"? - the mountain ridge that can be seen in the background. In particular, I'd like to try the (presumably abandoned) mountain road it replaced. Another Wikipedia entry states:

The tunnel replaced a 2.3-mile (3.7 km) stretch of U.S. 25E between Middlesboro, Kentucky and Cumberland Gap, Tennessee that became known as "Massacre Mountain" due to the large number of travelers killed on the twisting mountain road over the Cumberland Gap pass.

Anyway, some pictures from the ride are shown below - I'd have to rate the route as equal or better to my favorite Valley Forge PA area hill route I used to ride but without the traffic and with far better roads.

Swim milestone for real

I keep trying but I truly suck as a swimmer. (Previous entry: swim: freestyle.)

Finally, I feel I've achieved something tangible in the pool: I mile continuous. To help you understand why I'm so enormously proud of this tiny achievement, here is an underwater picture taken with my Olympus 720SW:

(Link to the video clip at the end of this entry.)

I am as horizontal as I can get. But my entire body is under water! I'm a sinker. As a sinker, I have to overcome a lot of extra water resistance. (Compare with a normal swimmer - who, when lying flat, has their butt and head poking up above water. Obviously, water resistance trumps air resistance.)

Another efficiency disadvantage of having to swim underwater (instead of normally) is that to be able to breathe I need to over-rotate and tilt my head a bit to get my mouth above water to suck in air. Basically looking at the ceiling instead of horizontally at the divider.

I only learned to swim a few years and have had trouble banging out the laps ever since.

Technique-wise, I've benefited enormously from advice since my first adult-learn-to-swim class. But progress has been painful slow. Definitely my worst "sport".

Some chronology of my sorry battle with the pool:

1. Needing to breathe every half stroke. Basically thrashing.
2. Swim noseclip era.
   Embarassed to say it took a while until I could swim without it.
3. Wearing neoprene long shorts to aid buoyancy.
   Hey, I was desperate!
   Managed my first 20 laps this way. Only years later, could I manage 20 laps unaided.
4. Bilateral breathing. Every 1.5 strokes.
   A breakthrough. No more thrashing but limited me to 100 meters max at a time before I ran out of breath.
   Managed my first sorta "swimmer's mile" this way with breathing breaks every 100 meters. (See previous post swim milestone.)
   Doesn't really count...
5. Breathing on the right side only.
   Another breathrough. 20 laps unaided finally.

That brings me to this past weekend. I finally achieved my milestone, i.e. 1 mile continuously. I swam 38 laps (76 lengths) or 1900 yds sans breaks. A mile is 1760 yds but I did extra to make sure I didn't miscount.

It was done in a 25 yard pool though. (Theoretically, I should be able to repeat the feat in the main 50 meter pool as well.)

Here is the previously mentioned clip from which the stlll was taken. (Warning: 640x480, 27.5MB.)

My next goal? To swim 1 mile without having the lifeguard come around and ask me if I'm okay :-)

iPhone 3G experience

I bought an iPhone 3G this morning to replace my broken Verizon Wireless (VZW) Motorola E-815.

Here it is sitting next to a 9.5mm 2.5" 320GB (laptop) portable hard drive and my defunct Motorola phone.

I ported my number over from Verizon. It took a few hours and a support call to ATT Wireless. I've been a Verizon customer for probably 15 years plus. So long Verizon.

I checked the iPhone 3G availability table last night. I wanted the 16GB model in black.

Felt it was a bit ridiculous to be standing in line at 8:30am at the Cambridgeside Apple store just to buy a phone that wasn't even on sale. The lady behind me in the line reassured me it was okay: nothing to be embarassed about, nobody's around in the mall this early. She was waiting in line to get the iPhone 3G 16GB in black for her husband. Same one I had my eye on. I wasn't the only one in line wondering just how many they had left.

Anyway, I got the phone around 9:30am. ATT Wireless handled the porting, without me having to contact VZW directly, once I gave them my VZW account and SS numbers. But I didn't get the "port completed" text message on my new phone (allowing me to receive calls) until noon. When I called ATT at 11:30am, I was told the delay was because I hadn't turned off my old phone.

Setup

Since I had a .mac (now MobileMe) account already, the setup was incredibly slick. It grabbed my contact information, iCal, Mail server settings and browser bookmarks sans intervention. I also synced my iTunes library. One reason I paid more for the 16GB model was that it could store more albums than my 8GB (Gen2) Nano.

I get all my email just like on my Macbook. Viewable PDF attachments and everything. It's set up to Push sync rather than poll with my .mac mail but the other two mail servers I use at Arizona and MIT are Fetch (poll) only.

If I add a new event to my calendar it's transparently and automaticaly synchronized with my computer. For appointments, this is handy and great.

The level of integration from just these two features make the phone truly useful for me. The $299+tax price tag means it's not inexpensive by any means but the humble cellphone has taken a huge step in usability for me.

There are other bells and whistles. As far as I can tell, A-GPS is cool and fast too. I wonder if it's better than my little Garmin Etrex Vista CX (which has all the roads in the US preloaded).

The iPhone 3G experience with ATT isn't completely seamless though. For example, they sent me an email:

Unfortunately, you can't redeem the ringtone coupon since the iPhone is not a listed phone on ATT mediamall! (That saved me from downloading Abba's Dancing Queen as my ringtone.)

I called ATT to point this out. They gave me a $2.49 credit on the account to facilitate buying a ringtone on iTunes.

Unfortunately, since I'm in Boston for a few more weeks, I can't check the ATT Wireless coverage back in Tucson. That's a risk I have to take. From the maps below, I'm hoping it's as good as VZW. Nothing would be more frustrating than a state-of-the-art phone that works everywhere except between home and work.

Voice coverage (darker is better):

3G data coverage (in blue):

Running in Washington DC

I just had the chance to visit Washington DC in the heat of July for a conference. Don't know the city at all. And I was only there for a few days. In sum, I love DC. Two reasons for that sentiment were two gorgeous 6:30am runs. It's very hot and humid in DC in summer. I went out early to try to beat the heat but still ended up absolutely drenched in sweat each time due to the omnipresent humidity. Still, I'd love to spend time here. DC has vaulted over SanFran as my #1 favorite US city.

Run #1. Rock Creek Park

Right next to the conference hotel (Omni Shoreham) is this thin ribbon of a park that cuts north-south through DC following a creek.

I could scarcely believe I was in the middle of a major US city. I ran out and back for a total of 5 miles (thereby justifying a trip to the hotel breakfast buffet).

The running path next to the creek near the National Zoo:

The water is remarkably clear for inner city water/drainage:

On a later day, I saw runners training for the upcoming Marine Corps Marathon in this park.

Run #2. The Mall

For the second run, at 6am I hopped onto the DC Metro Red line down to Union Station.

Then, with the sun slowly rising on a beautiful summer's day, and almost no traffic, I ran from Union Station to the Capitol, past the Smithsonian museums, around the Washington Monument, onto the World War II memorial, past the Reflecting Pool with the trees lined the dirt trail, up the Lincoln Memorial steps, turn around and look back across the Reflecting Pool to the Washington Monument and the rising sun. Said good morning to a guard, down the steps and retraced my steps back to Union Station. Under 6 miles total. Most beautiful urban run I've ever done.

The monuments are stunning beautiful in the morning light. Their layout is gorgeous. M. l'Enfant did a great job.

Details. The route I took is in blue:

I took some pictures on the previous day.
(The first two below (as well as the Metro escalator pic above) were taken using an 8mm fisheye lens on a friend's Olympus DSLR: hence the exaggerated, non-rectilinear perspective.)
The Washington Monument:

At the World War II Memorial looking towards the Lincoln Memorial.
(Those trees line the paths I ran on both sides of the Reflecting Pool.)

The Lincoln Memorial:

Getty Museum Los Angeles

One of my favorite places in Los Angeles is the Getty Museum.

Generally, museums are built to hold artwork like this [Irises by Vincent Van Gogh, Getty Museum, Los Angeles.] One reason why I like the Getty is that it's a destination in itself.

Cool architecture:

Out of the LA basin:

with a panoramic view of LA:

A stitched panorama of LA. (Only time I managed to use a tripod. More on that in a moment.) Air pollution (haze) limited the clarity of the image.
You can see the how sprawled out LA is (hard to believe 10 million people live here), the Pacific Ocean, downtown, UCLA and so on.)

A cooler place to hang out than down in LA - well, except it can still get very hot in the sun...

Anyway, I wanted to take some 360° spherical panoramas while I was there.

I usually take these using a panoramic head and tripod for precise rotation and image stitching. (See my equipment and a previous project MIT Stata Center.)

Unfortunately, the Getty museum doesn't allow the use of tripods, inside or OUTSIDE.

Museum staff quickly descended on me each time I tried to take my tripod out. So unfortunately, I had to shoot these handheld using a laser pointer and a spirit level to approximate the precision of a panoramic head. (I'll cover handheld equipment in a future entry.)

You'll need Quicktime to view the 360° movie files.

I shot 7 pictures around, overlapping a bit more than my usual 60° per picture. One zenith and one nadir. (I masked out my feet in postprocessing using Photoshop Elements.)

I used Autopano Pro to stitch them together into this equirectangular projection:

Pano2vr then produces a Quicktime Movie file that you can scroll around in. Click picture on the right to load the .mov file (10MB). Take a look up at the ceiling.

Since no features were close to the camera, stitching errors are not apparent despite being handheld. No such luck in the next shot (click on picture to get the10.8MB .mov file):

As a result, I was surprised to get good stitching on this room shot (click to see 7.7MB .mov file):

Assembled from 6 shots around plus zenith and edited nadir:

Nodal Ninja 3 Mk II setup

See previous blog entry where I described my first spherical panorama project.

This entry is about setting up the panorama head to rotate about the entrance pupil point on the lens to avoid parallax errors. The panorama head is a Nodal Ninja 3 Mk II. Costs about $200. The setup described here is specific to the camera body (Olympus E-510) and lens (Olympus Digital Zuiko 8mm fisheye) shown.

Since we're shooting with a fisheye, it's not necessary to get things pixel perfect accurate to give good stitching. However, the closer one can get, obviously the less work software has to do. One can spend over $1000 to get a custom-made precision head designed for a specific camera/lens combination. However, I don't think the $200 panohead is capable of repeatable (sub-)pixel accuracy when repeatedly assembled and disassembled (without calibrating afresh each time).

Step 1

The first step involves pointing the lens straight down at the rotation point on the panorama head. We try to get the center of the camera sensor on the center of rotation.

For this, there is only one adjustment, sliding the vertical arm along the horizonal piece.

This means one must hope the tripod socket is properly (left-right) centered over the camera sensor. On the E-510, I eyeballed all of this using the 10x liveview mode on the lcd display. To check: took a picture. Rotated the pano head 180° and took another picture. Download and paste one picture (rotated 180°) with 50% transparency over the other one to check how closely they match. Overlay shown:

Close-up of previous picture: Pretty good registration: about a pixel or so difference. Not bad for liveview eyeballing. Not much point in trying to do better, each time the apparatus is set up, there could be easily that much variation in it.

Note the value on the scale on the horizontal arm. (Washer/bolts are supplied for setting stops.) Or never diassemble it.

I also secure the rubber-backed plate that mounts to the camera tripod. And leave it attached to the camera.

(I settled on having the plate rotated 180° from what is shown above.)

Since the tripod socket is a single mounting point, there's no way to determine if the plate is truly parallel to the camera body/sensor. This is a potential setup problem.

(There'd have to be a grid printed on the bottom of the camera in order to have a reference point for the marking on the plate.)

Step 2

Next part involves setting the position of the camera body along the vertical arm to make sure we're rotating about the entrance pupil.

This can be determined by various methods to the pixel level, some involving grids, other laser beams at proposed stitching angles. Fortunately, someone has done this for the Olympus Fisheye already.

From Georges Lagarde's webpage on the lens: "Using the focusing ring external groove location gives excellent results for six shots panos." So I borrowed his setting.

(I've added a red horizontal line to this picture to indicate the position.)

Seems to give good enough results for me even when tested in a small room (smaller distances = bigger parallax errors). Again, note the value from the mark on the camera plate on the scale printed on the arm. For minimum setup time, I carry the camera body with plate attached, and the Nodal Ninja 3 Mk II assembled as shown below:

Spherical panorama photography

I've recently become interested in taking 360° x 180° spherical panoramas. These are pictures that can be rotated in any direction. (Zooming in and out is also permitted.) Apple's free Quicktime player works well for this purpose.

I'm actually interested in both handheld and tripod-based setups.
This blog entry will just cover using a tripod.
(The handheld part will come later.)

Here are the components:

• A tripod. I use an ultralightweight carbon fiber/magnesium Gitzo 1155T (relevant blog entry).
  Its compactness and light weight are big plusses for hiking. However, you can use any tripod.
• A camera. I borrowed an Olympus E-510 DSLR from a friend. (Previous blog entry on the camera here.)
• A offset rotating bracket that places the axis of rotation around the entrance pupil of the lens to avoid parallax. The panohead I bought was the Nodal Ninja 3 Mk II. $200.

Oh, I nearly forgot. I also bought an Olympus Digital Zuiko 8mm lens. $660. Weighs about 1lb. The most expensive component here. But this allows one to cover 360° of rotation comfortably in just 6 shots.

Assembled:

Although the camera is level here, I tilt to point the lens down nearly 15° when shooting for better coverage. Rotate and shoot every 60°. Add one zenith shot (for the ceiling). And zero or more nadir shots (for the floor). That's a total of 7 shots minimum.

Some details:

• You can get fancier and rotate the camera as well to get the longest side, i.e. the diagonal, vertical. As a result, some people can get away with 4 shots but that's for another time when I describe the handheld setup.
• The number of nadir shots depends on how hard it is to patch the location of the tripod.
• Shoot aperture priority (i.e. fixed aperture), let shutter speed fall where it may. Let stitching software normalize exposure.
• Let autofocus do its job. A fisheye typically has a large depth of field. (I haven't measured this one.)

Good software exists for arranging and stitching the shots together.

I use autopano pro. Its virtue is that it's almost completely automated. (Some tricky cases will require manual intervention.)

It produces equirectangular projections of the sort shown above. To prepare the image for Quicktime Player, I run it through pano2vr, which maps the image onto the six sides of a cube that the player needs:

Since I'm currently spending time at an architecturally distinguished building, I thought that'd make a good subject for my first panorama project.

See my webpage here for the pictures.

Also see my more recent blog entry on panorama head setup.