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There have been rumors of snow in seattle. Predictions have been between zero and 30 inches. Who knows what will happen. Regardless, you can watch a live stream from a Thermal IR camera pointed at highway 99 South in SODO…

So, just before the holidays, some enterprising lab members (Phebe, Beth, Rob and Rich) put together an awesome pair of holiday craft nights.  There was sous vide cooking, conductive thread sewing, gingerbread construction and more.

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My friend Brett Beauregard has been working on this sweet open source PID controller.. and he’s finally published information online about it here.

A PID (proportional–integral–derivative) controller is a device which use hardware feedback with an algorithm; this allows the operator to maintain a target value (temp). Cruise control in car is the classic example: Set it at 60mph, and it will increase the accelerator until you hit 60. There are all sorts of things which can go wrong with closed-loop control systems – - overshoot, ringing, bias, etc. As this device is all open source, as it will make debugging these devices much easier.

It’s currently on “presale” for $85. I think this is a sweet deal. If you want to make your own Sous-vide cooker, this is the ticket. Go buy one, as I want to make sure this type of hardware is available to the masses. I’m excited to get mine.

This video shows the upper deck of the viaduct being demolished by massive jackhammers, while a brave construction worker sprays water to keep the dust down. It looks like we should expect an alien to come jumping out of this video at any moment.

I heard the viaduct was going to be closed for a week or so, but I wasn’t expecting them to demolish it. Oh well, it’s not like I was using that highway anyway?

Filmed in 1080p on a canon 5d mk II, 200mm, f2.8

This was my first try at doing a long exposure on a digital camera of the night sky. An external timer was used to keep the shutter open for 45 minutes.

Even after touch up post processing, the image is very, very noisy. The noise floor on most sensors has quite a bit to do with how warm they get. Folks go to extremes to get their sensors cold, the most typical solution is to use a TEC/Peltier junction. One issue with these chillers is that they only push heat to the other side of the plate – - you still need to get it out of the system somehow; this is typically done with large heatsinks and fans.

I found a company which will modify your stock DSLR to have a chiller, but it’s a very expensive prospect, on the order of 3 grand. I think I may try modifying a cheap point and shoot camera first to see what sort of results I can get… if I can find one which will let me take long exposures. For now, I’m going to make sure I get my camera to take a black reference first (doh*), but this effectively doubles the time it takes to do a shot, as the exposure time has to be the same for the black reference.

Anyway, here’s my first attempt at this:

.

This was shot on a 5d mark II, using a 24mm f1.4 prime lens. I’m happy with the result, but I crave less noise.

-3ric

Update: I’ve been revising this blog entry with additional information; they have blocked me two additional times and it looks like they just might delete me outright tomorrow, Oct 25th. See below for details

While I have a love/hate relationships with social networks, I do tend to try and keep up to date in that world by using whatever myspace clone is all of the rage. This year it turned out to be called google plus.

All social networks all have this concept of identity and trust to manage. Reputation, trust and security are important to users; if they get spammed or hacked, they will leave. At the same time, you can’t truly authenticate a user without showing up at their house to look at their photo ID. Combine that with XSS, sql injection and homograph identity spoofing – - and you’ve got a “tricky to meet” set of requirements. These are hard problems. At the same time, they are hard problems they decided they wanted to solve. Sadly, my name falls into this strange edge case of “looking funny” while also being my legal name: A judge signed my name change. That’s a bit stronger of a ruling than any community guidelines posted on a dot com.

So I’ve been working with google over the past 2 weeks regarding my google plus account. Moments after I signed up (using my legal name of 3ric Johanson), I was informed that my account was suspended for violation of community standards.

The really good news is that google has an appeal process – provide more information to them, and “We try to complete reviews within one business day.” This is the first social network which seemly provides a clear path for managing this problem. Go google, maybe that’s how you earned your plus. There’s an amusing back story in here how my name is hard coded into the core facebook application, but I’ll leave that story for another day.

I have sent all of the information google has requested 3 times now. I had a kind director at google also inform them it’s really my name. At this point they have not responded to a single message in a week. While I understand they may not agree with the judge who signed my name change, it is in fact my legal name. For anyone with root@google, feel free to see the thread on ticket number 83274326.

My hope was that google would provide a level of professionalism which includes responding to their own defined appeal process. Sadly, they have left me disappointed. While I could try phishing around for more contacts at google, my interest in further supporting their project has sadly diminished. Dearest google, if you’d like me to play in your sandbox, you’ll have to come to me. Finally, if you are really unsure of my name, please just google me.

Regards,
-3ric Johanson

---

Update: July 21st, 2011

Hi 3ric,
Thank you for contacting us with regard to the name you want to use with
your Google Profile. After further review, we have determined that your
name is within our Community Standards policy. Thank you for your patience
while we reviewed your profile name.

---

Update: Oct 18th, 2011

Hello,

After reviewing your profile, it appears that the name you entered does not comply
with the Google+ Names Policy. Please log in to Google+ and visit your profile to
learn more and take action.

The Names Policy requires that you use the name you are commonly referred to in real
life in your profile. Nicknames, previous names, and so on should be entered in the
Other Names section of the profile. Profiles are currently limited to individuals;
we will be launching profiles for businesses and other entities later this year.

If you do not edit your name to comply with our Names policy or appeal with
additional information within four days of receiving this message, your profile will
be suspended. While suspended, you will not be able to make full use of Google
services that require an active profile, such as Google+, Buzz, Reader and Picasa.
This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail.

The Google+ team.

---

Update: Oct 18th, 2011

 * Sent google a link to this blog entry.

---

Update: Oct 18th, 2011

Re: [#892287923] Google Profile Name Review
Hi 3ric,

Thank you for contacting us with regard to the name you want to use with
your Google Profile. After further review, we have determined that your
name complies with our Community Standards. Thank you for your patience
while we reviewed your profile name.

Sincerely,
Duyen
The Google Profiles Support Team

---

Update: Oct 21st, 2011

Hello,

After reviewing your profile, it appears that the name you entered does not comply
with the Google+ Names Policy. Please log in to Google+ and visit your profile to
learn more and take action.

The Names Policy requires that you use the name you are commonly referred to in
real life in your profile. Nicknames, previous names, and so on should be entered
in the Other Names section of the profile. Profiles are currently limited to
individuals; we will be launching profiles for businesses and other entities later
this year.

If you do not edit your name to comply with our Names policy or appeal with
additional information within four days of receiving this message, your profile
will be suspended. While suspended, you will not be able to make full use of Google
services that require an active profile, such as Google+, Buzz, Reader and Picasa.
This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail.

The Google+ team.

---

Update: Oct 22nd, 2011
Discovered my google page says the below text, but has some issue where it won’t let me submit an appeal (reports “error saving profile”)

---

Update: Oct 22nd, 2011

Re: [#892287923] Google Profile Name Review
Hi there,

4 days ago I received this email.   Yesterday I received notice that I'm suspended
again.

Any idea what's going on this time?   This makes the 3rd time you've blocked me for
my legal name. 

Thanks,
-3ric

---

Update: Oct 24st, 2011

 * zero response from google support department.
 * Sent google a link to this blog entry via the "submit additional information" process, again.
 * backed up all of my data from google.

Lots of ethernet switches!!! Used for things like gaming parties, so 50 of your closest friends can come over and play WoW. Or Quake. Maybe some StarCraft. You know, bring your tower and CRT. Perhaps your basement gold mining operation. Also for dorms, boarding houses, sweatshops, 419 scams, and other places where a multitude of unwashed masses are kept. Which is different than your aforementioned LAN party. Can buy as a set (if you have lots of friends) or as individual units (if you.. well.. don’t).

Contact HBL.stuff@gmail if you’re interested!

Specs:
12 x HP ProCurve Switch 4000M boxes each w/ one switch engine module with varying number of 10/100 ethernet modules and gigabit fiber modules.
Ethernet modules are 10/100 Base-T Module and come with 8 ethernet ports

6 ethernet modules + 1 “100Base-FX Module” ($55)
8 ethernet modules (0 fiber) ($70)
10 ethernet module (fan is missing) ($80)
5 ethernet modules + 1 “100Base-FX Module” ($50)
6 ethernet modules + 2 “100Base-FX Module” ($60)
1 ethernet modules + 1 “100Base-FX Module”+ 1 unidentified fiber module ($30)
1 ethernet modules + 1 “Gigabit-SX Module” ($30)
1 ethernet modules (no faceplates) ($20)

2 x 9 ethernet module + 1 “Gigabit-SX Module” ($80)
2 x 4 ethernet module + 1 “Gigabit-SX Module” ($40)

we have a box of HP ProCurve Switch 4000M switch engine modules (one free with each purchase)

we also have:
1 x HP ProCurve Switch 1600M
with a “1000Base-FX Module” and 16 x 10/100 ethernet ports
($30)

1 x HP ProCurve Switch 1600M
with 16 x 10/100 ethernet ports
($20)

and
1 x hp procurve switch 2512
12 Ethernet ports + holes for transceiver ports (nothing there)
($20)

and
1 x Cisco Systems Catalyst 5509 rack containing:
1 x WS-X5530
1 x WS-X5224, 4 ports of 1000 Base SX gigabit ethernet
6 x WS-X5012A
1 x 10/100 Mbsp ethernet, 12 ports
($50)

I’ve been playing around with time lapse photography… Here’s my first attempt at something. which came out pretty cool:

With thanks again to Intellectual Ventures, for use of their Phantom V12, here’s a bit of slow-motion video of a match striking. Playback speed varied to keep it to 30 seconds for a project I’m doing; the original was close to 7 1/2 minutes. Please excuse the clunky music. If anyone out there is a composer and wants to help me out, I’d love to hear from you — click through to my flickr stream and contact me from there. :) Anyway, here’s the video:

High-speed (near-)macro is neat, eh?

Just a little something I (ahem) whipped up, from a shoot we had with the Phantom back in Januaary:

Our thanks to Intellectual Ventures Lab for use of the camera!