OK Go in Zero G

2016-02-29.

Alt rock band OK Go — already known for conceptually daring and technically complex music videos involving things like treadmills, self-stabilizing unicycles, optical-illusion installations, stunt driving courses, marching bands, and massive Rube Goldberg machines — has now shot a zero-gravity video aboard a cosmonaut training aircraft in Russia for their song Upside Down and Inside Out.

It’s an impressive feat of logistics and choreography, with the song slowed down and split into zero-G-parabola-timed segments to be sped up, stitched, and synced in editing later; plus a grand finale of piñatas, paint balloons, and disco balls termed “Thunderdome.” The extensive Behind the Scenes documentation show just how much work went into this production.

(All this of course makes me want to try a zero G flight, though I doubt I’ll have the thousands of dollars necessary to spare for the experience any time soon.)

Power & Pathos Weekend

2016-02-15.

Some photos from the weekend when Jacquelyn came to visit:

It was a singular joy to be able to see the NGA’s Power and Pathos bronzes with her expert perspective as a professional archaeologist on the Getty team that organized the exhibit. We also saw the art deco Bolger Center, and had fish and chips at Eamonn’s where I finally got to try some Irn Bru.

World’s First Crowd Sourced 3D-Printed QR Code Live Streamed Via Go Pro To A Smart Phone Or Tablet Device Drone Delivery Ticket System Project

2016-02-12.

At various times my job has involved editing motivational videos and interviews. To get a feel for the inspirational cadence of such videos my go-to reference is this satire of innovative cutting-edge gimmickry by Australian ad agency Creative Fuel in 2014:

Even two years later it hits all the right technological buzzword bullet points. Really a game-changer.

Update: On a related note, stock footage site Dissolve’s “Generic Brand Video” also works great:

Blizzard 2016

2016-01-31.

The January 2016 blizzard dumped 2 feet of blowing snow on us over the weekend, blanketing our world in white, canceling classes and delaying work for days afterward.

Fortunately water, power, gas, internet, and TV all stayed on, and we had lots of food and time to cook, so we lacked for no creature comforts through the storm. With Amy working on Project Wallaby I was on sole shovel duty and got a good workout clearing the stairs, walkway, deck, and local hydrant.

The nearby marsh and forest turned picturesque.

Neighborhood snow banks piled up considerably with plowing and shoveling.

Based on an NPR story about eating snow I found a bit of powder to be a good addition to some Laphroaig.

In DC I lent my necktie to a snowman.

Snow-related road backups made Metro parking a nightmare, and my video of the line to exit a Metro parking garage made it to WTOP and Washington Post.

The weather’s a lot warmer a week later, so the giant snow banks are melting, and the sunsets have been spectacular. There’s still a lot of winter left, so this may not be the last snowstorm we see before spring, even as warm as it’s been.

More photos from the January 2016 Blizzard in the Flickr photoset.

Baby FAQ

2016-01-24.

With the announcement of Project Wallaby, here are a few questions that various people have asked — added to the introspective voices in my head:

Continue reading Baby FAQ

2015 in review (Baby Edition)

2016-01-20.

2015 was quite a year. Biggest news of the year first: we successfully formed a baby! Amy is dealing with pregnancy admirably, now with a definite bump. Sonograms show a boy, healthy and moving. While we don’t have a name picked yet, I have code-named him “Project Wallaby.” Tentative due date is June 2016.

Other stuff that happened in 2015: in space, New Horizons flew by Pluto, while on Earth, Leonard Nimoy passed on.

We bought a townhouse, moved into it, and sold our old condo. (We did wish to wait till we were in a house before trying for a baby.) In the summer we visited Paris and Amsterdam. I was a creeper for Halloween. In December I went to Kennedy Space Center for work and visited the Atlas V launch pad, but I missed the launch itself.

Best selfie of the year: an impromptu NASA HQ shot with Deputy Admin Dava Newman and senior photographer Bill Ingalls.

First Artsy Weekend of 2016

2016-01-04.

Had a very artsy Saturday at the National Gallery to see a bunch of exhibitions and works that had recently piqued our interest:

Power and Pathos: a traveling collection of extremely rare Hellenistic bronzes from the 4th Century BC to the 1st Century AD.

The Serial Impulse at Gemini G.E.L.: collection of multi-part print series by 20th Century artists at the Los Angeles print studio Gemini G.E.L. (Graphic Editions Limited).

Louise Bourgeois: No Exit: the late Louise Bourgeois died in 2010 at the age of 99, leaving an amazing corpus of existentialist art. I also learned her marble sculpture Germinal was once redone in chocolate.

Celebrating Photography: recent acquisitions for the museum’s photography collection, including Richard Avedon’s The Family.

17th Century Dutch painter Jacob Ochtervelt’s A Nurse and a Child in the Foyer of an Elegant Townhouse. Yes, that’s a 5 year old boy in a dress, as was the style at the time.

Over in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum we checked out the Windland Smith Nature’s Best Photography exhibit. (I’d entered a few of my scuba photos into this juried show but ey obviously did not make the cut.)

On Sunday we also dropped by the National Geographic Explorers Hall to see Pristine Seas, photos from marine conservation expeditions led by NGS Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala around the world.

Turtle Back Zoo

2015-12-31.

Good way to spend a relatively warm (if somewhat drizzly) day after Christmas: a visit to New Jersey’s Turtle Back Zoo.

There was a komodo dragon.

There were penguins.

There was a yawning fox.

There were running wolves.

There were pygmy goats.

And a nosy sheep.

More photos from the zoo and the long Christmas weekend in general here in the NJ Christmas 2015 photoset.

Music for Christmas

2015-12-25.

We’re up in New Jersey to spend Christmas with Amy’s family this long weekend, and my mother-in-law asked me what my favorite Christmas carols were. This was my answer, although I guess none of these are really carols:

From American composer Morten Lauridsen, his Grammy-nominated setting of O Magnum Mysterium, which I sang for Candlelight Carols in 2006.

Somewhat less religious and much more forceful, Lauridsen’s setting of Robert Graves’s Lament for Pasiphaë — a melody I would love to see as a setting for “Silent Night”:

One of the songs we sang for this year’s Candlelight Carols was The Work of Christmas, Dan Forrest’s setting of a poem by Howard Thurman:

And from the mists of history, a medieval chant of a legend of Saint Nicholas, Reno Erat Rudolphus:

Merry Christmas!

OA-4 Prelaunch

2015-12-21.

Early December I went down to Kennedy Space Center to shoot some video for work, and got a chance to do remote camera setup at the Atlas V launch pad for Orbital Cygnus CRS-4. (Unfortunately bad weather delayed the launch so much that I had to leave before the successful fourth attempt.) This was a replacement craft for the one that was lost in an explosion last year, launching on an Atlas V rocket while the Antares is redesigned with new engines.

Continue reading OA-4 Prelaunch

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