Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.

Siblings

Me, sister and brother

Yummy

A monkfish at the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, WA. Ugly, but very tasty.

Thundering water

Snoqualmie Falls near Seattle, WA

More yumminess

Dim sum round 1

Even more yumminess

Dim sum at Top Gun

Tranquility

Seattle week in review

Had an excellent trip up to the Seattle area last week to visit my sister and brother. The day after I arrived in Seattle, we took off on a road trip to BC to visit my brother. I got to meet baby Jocelyn, the newest addition to the family

I also got to meet my other niece, Vivian for the first time.

It was nice seeing all the kids together again

We spent a couple of days there, then came back and did touristy things in Seattle, like visiting Pike Place Market. Even got to see some of the fish flinging that goes on at the Pike Place Fish Co.

.

Saw cheese being made at Beechers

and visited the Seattle Aquarium

Here's a sea star getting ready to make a meal of a big clam

Went hiking down to Snoqualmie Falls

A short but sometimes steep hiking trail takes you past a small power generating plant to an observation deck near the bottom of the falls

We visited the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery where I learned all about the life cycle of salmon and got to see a bunch of little salmon growing up in holding tanks

and went out to dim sum a couple of times (you've already seen those pictures). Found time to visit a little zoo, the Cougar Mountain Zoological Park where we saw lots of interesting animals

And then after what seemed like no time at all, it was time to head back home. Even managed to make it all the way back home without getting stuck in Memphis this time.

Cutting the cable

A grand experiment.

Inspired by my sister, who got rid of their cable TV service a while ago, I thought I'd try something similar although not quite as drastic. I'm just going to leave the TV off for the rest of the month.

Aside from a few hours of watching the kids watch cartoons while visiting my brother, I've already been TV-less for a week now. I have plenty of books to read, the dogs to play with and a steady stream of movies coming in from Blockbuster.com (which I have to watch on my computer now because the DVD player is flaking out) to keep me occupied.

Except for a few shows like Mythbusters, Stargate and Battlestar Galactica, I wasn't watching a whole lot of TV anyway. When it was on, it mostly provided background noise and a lot of times I was just watching reruns.

It's been pretty easy so far and I haven't missed the TV yet. Resisting the temptation to watch Battlestar Galactica on Fridays will be the biggest challenge.

Maybe the TV will stay off even longer!

Gotcha Simba

My calendar says today is Simba's Gotcha day. Two years ago today, we brought him home. Yay Simba!

Goings-ons

Anybody know what's going on at the Jabers store on Rutledge Ave? The last few days I've been past there (heading to and from the dog park) the lot's been cordoned off and filled with large trailers. Some of them have markings on them implying some kind of film shoot going on there. Traffic is a pain with people slowing down to rubberneck and see what's going on. I've also noticed a higher than usual number of people just hanging out across the street.

Update: Heard from some dog park people that Kevin Costner was filming part of a movie in the area.

Mel

This is Mel, my newest foster.

She's a pretty sweet dog who was a little bit timid at first. When I first met her, I was told she was fine around women, but didn't like to be around men. Took her a little while to warm up to me, but once she did she pretty much became Velcro® dog, so I ended up becoming her foster dad.

When I got her home, she integrated into the pack pretty much right away. Simba didn't even give me a hard time about it either.

(VELCRO® is a registered trademark of Velcro Industries B. V.)

WHLR Meet and Greet

While most of my geek comrades were out at the CREATE South conference, I was at the WHLR meet and greet over at Palmetto Paws in Mt. Pleasant.

We had about 9 of the adoptable dogs stop by to meet people.

Naturally some of the puppies were there too

Thanks to some great weather, we had a lot of people stop by to meet the dogs. Even better were the 4 or so people who asked to fill out adoption applications and the 3 who wanted to foster.

All in all, a very successful event.

Velcro dog

Mel's favourite spot when I'm working on the computer: underneath the desk

TV free - 2 weeks

Starting my third week TV-less and so far so good. Haven't really missed the TV and discovered I can catch episodes of BG online.

The stack of books on my to-read list has a couple less books on it now and the dogs get to spend a few more hours at the dog park. The dogs' crazy antics are proving far more entertaining than some of the crap on TV.

I've been spending a little more time on the computer, but it's ended up being more productive. Things like getting started on some programming projects left on the back burner, reading journal articles and listening to recorded lectures from conferences to get CE credits.

Mel is such a spaz

She's hyper, can't stay still for any length of time, and always has to check something out. Then she'll stop and fixate on something for a while and dash off again. From a standing position she can jump up almost 1 m high. Her tail and butt wiggle non-stop if she thinks you've got something for her and she's always 'smiling'. Always have to keep an eye on her, otherwise you're liable to get smacked in the face by her snout or clobbered with her tail.

But you'll never see it if you're not part of her trusted circle. Getting there isn't hard, but takes some patience. Food helps a lot with this but it needs a lot of patience.

I think it must be the sight hound part of her. Looking at her, I see more whippet/greyhound than lab. A fat hairy whippet (not that she's fat or anything) is what she makes me think of. She definitely has the food drive of a lab though.

Mel's a pretty good dog, but she needs some work before she'll be ready to go to a forever home. Definitely needs more obedience training to reinforce what she knows. She'll be the dominant dog given the opportunity. Don't be fooled into thinking she's trying to be cute when she puts her paw up on you or nudges her head underneath your hand for some petting. That's just her trying to manipulate you.

If I can get her more people-socialized and past her fear/nervousness issues I think she'll make a great dog for someone. I have a feeling she might do well with agility work.

Chewing

Running with the big dogs

Mel running with the big dogs

She's starting to get more comfortable at the dog park. Still stays away from people, but she's starting to get a little closer to them when she thinks they're not looking.

Bloggers at the Riverdogs

And Tweeters too

Had a good showing of people at the Riverdogs game tonight. We all had a good time watching the game and chatting.

Took lots of pictures, including this one of a foul ball being hit

Vera continues to amaze me with her ability to wield those knitting needles without stabbing herself. And she even does it without looking! Here she is working on her Carolina Panthers beanie.

There's also footage of Jared rocking out at the karaoke tent to some Fuel. Once I figure out what to do with it I'll post it somewhere.

Awesome time had tonight. And the Riverdogs won too!

The natural state of an Imabug

Don Lewis snapped this picture of me taking a picture of the group last night.

I think I also have a picture of him taking this picture.

Baseball geekiness

So looking at this photo from yesterday got me wondering: can I calculate how fast that ball is going?

Sure, piece of cake.

First we need some way to get a distance calibration. Jared tells me that a regulation baseball is 3" (76.2 mm) in diameter so if I measure the width of the baseball track from the image, I can get a mm/pixel calibration. I got 5.4 mm/pixel.

Then the length of the baseball track needs to be measured. Since part of it blends into the concrete of the dugout, measuring the track is only approximate, but I got 144 pixels. Using the previous pixel calibration this gives me a track length of 0.78 m.

The EXIF information stored with the photo tells me the exposure time was 1/49 s which gives the baseball a velocity of 38.4 m/s (86 mph for you non-metric people out there).

Extending this a little further, I think I can also calculate how much time there was between when the ball was hit and when the picture was taken.

If I draw a line from where the ball track starts back to where the bat would have been at impact, I get about 68 pixels. If an exposure time of 1/49 s (0.02 s) results in a track length of 144 pixels, then 68 pixels should correspond to a time of 0.02s*(68/144) or 0.0096 s. In other words, this picture was taken a mere 9.6 ms (millisecond) after the ball was hit (give or take a few 0.1 ms), assuming no significant change in ball speed between impact and when the picture was taken.

Of course this depends on where the estimated point of impact is placed, but should at least be within a couple of milliseconds.

Photo recursion

Don Lewis taking that picture of me taking a picture of the group

At the Aquarium

This morning's volunteer shift at the Aquarium was much fun.

Got some training on handling this guy

And these two are just totally awesome. They're a mated pair of barn owls on exhibit in the Aquarium's Camp Carolina exhibit.

Sadly, I had to say good bye to this guy, who's leaving to go replace a retiring hawk at a raptor center somewhere.

Watch Dog

Nala keeping an eye out on the back yard