The Photos I Took From Europe

When I am tourist, I try to take the pictures that the other tourists aren't taking.  Usually that means my attention is drawn away from the quintessential image of the sight that I am seeing, towards little unusual nugget of interest.

So at the end of the trip my photos do a rather poor job of telling a story about the vacation.  And in fact, most vacations lack a particularly intriguing story, being composed mostly of: airplane, train, bus, walk, hostel, eat, walk, hostel, eat, sight, walk, eat, bus, hostel, walk, bus, sight, museum, eat, eat, walk, shop, eat, hostel, walk, sight, hostel, bus, airplane.  The trip is literally thousands of small event which occur in foreign lands making them particularly interesting to experience first hand, but not compelling to hear about in series.

So here you will not find a set of photos that tell a cohesive story of the trip, but the photos, along with text which I hope explains why I took them.

The Eiffel tower is striking in person, in a way that is difficult to experience through low resolution photography due to the fractal nature of it's construction.  It's a lattice of beams which only seem to be constructed of a smaller lattices of beams.  It feels like there is no end to the detail.

For myself, half to fun of visiting another country is seeing their infrastructure.  They way they draw signs, construct side walks, hold up their electrical wires, fix there streets: these are things that vary between countries.  In a global market, so much of our merchandise is uniform across the globe, actually being able to see and think about these physical differences is compelling.

In one of my strokes of good travel luck, a contemporary prepare piano pianist that I particularly like was playing in Amsterdam while I was there: Hauschka.

Actually seeing the repaired damage of the war and all the different ways it affected Berlin, finally put the historical knowledge that I have into my personal cartographic conception of the world. Physically being in places made history feel like it took happened in the world I inhabit and not in a story that I had been told.

Right under this parking lot rest the bunker in which Hitler killed himself.

This plastic tie is all the memorial that can be found to Hitler, the remnants of a Neo-Nazi sign that had been put up and removed. 

I tried to get photos of paints I liked in ways that let me see what you can usually only see in person.

The toys that I saw at a toy museum in Munich were by far the most interesting artifacts that I saw on the whole trip.  They have to much peculiar life to them, and they all suggested wonderful backstories to their 

Little wooden cattle where scultped on a lathe and sliced off.

Neuschwanstein Castle is intriguing as it looks like a castle, but is actually a fairly modern building and serves as a remarkable precedent to the idea of a theme park such as Disney Land.

This is a map of the world.  If you look carefully on the right hand side, you can see the Mediterranean upside down.  It's amazing to see what humanity used to know about the world.

There are even more pictures available in the full album 

The trip itinerary was as follows:

Paris - Bruges - Amsterdam - Berlin - Prague - Vienna - Munich - Venice

All images are show chronologically, hopefully their location can be sorted out.

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Running

It's definitely something that I picked up from my parents.  They would go for a run every Sunday, and go on runs throughout the week.  It was something they were dedicated to.

Running is weird sport, in that you get better as you age.  I wasn't very good at running when I was a teenager. I don't think I ever feel like I got into a grove and just wanted to keep going.  It was always slog.  But running is an adventure.  You go outside and can go wherever you want.  Through fields. Up hills. Through construction sites, next to rivers, over bridges, down sidewalks.

I find it very contemplative.  Every step brings you new things to see and hear.

But it was always hard.

But then my mom lent me a book to read, called "Born to Run".  It's one of those trending books that slowly spreads like a virus until most people will have read it, or been told to read it.  Thankfully there is a very good reason for it.

The books is written as an adventure that will get you excited about running, but if you cut it down to the bare information there are a few main points that have drastically improved my ability to run.

The first, and most important revelation is that conventional running shoe design is about 40 years old and have no scientific basis.  There was no study to see whether cushioned shoes were better for running.  They just felt nice on your feet, and they seemed like a good idea.  They looked cool and they sold really well.

The next important piece of information is that humans evolved to be good at long distance running.  We evolved to be able to literally run animals to death over a 4 or 5 hour time period.  Our bodies are specifically designed to run well.

So I got rid of my running shoes, and got some Merell Trail Gloves.  They are shoes that have no cushioning, have great grip and will protect my feet.  I'm sure some people would suggest to go all the way barefoot, but I love running everywhere, and not having to worry about my feet makes running more fun.

The final piece of the puzzle is realizing that running is a skill.  There is a technique to it that is very precise.  If you get your running technique just right, it's like your body falls into a slipstream and everything feels so easy.  There are many videos and tutorials online about good running from, they aren't hard to find.

One very important fact that I learned was that our muscles have an optimal rhythm that they evolved to have.  For most people it is somewhere around 180 steps per minute.  This seems like a very fast rhythm to run at, but once you get to that rate, suddenly your muscles feel happy and bouncy.

And with all that information and good weather I have been out running in Montreal.

In the last 3 weeks I have covered probably almost 150 km.

What I have been finding is that running isn't about going fast or really getting places.  I think it's a form of meditation that really works for me.  It lets you be really aware of the world around you, yet at the same time be all alone, completely free.

So I'll keep running, and probably, I will only get better with age.

Kyler

Drawing Circles

An internet were nobody cares

I wish I knew what to do with the internet.

It's so fast.  It's so memetic.

Usually you need to believe it and disbelieve all of it at the same time.

You want to get information out of it instantaneously, in the moment when the bits are hot off the servers.

Those nascent bits are the most interesting bits in the world.  Fresh bits are inherently the most juicy part of the internet because you get to do something with them.

New bits on the internet have clout because you get to be their filter. Everything else on the internet has already been decided upon by other people, but for one little moment, it's your turn to make a decision about what other people are going to see.  You get to decide what is new, and they have to look at it just to keep up.

And for that micro cycle of the internet,having created "internet" for everyone else, you will be God.

"Likes", "Shares", "Upvotes", "reTweets" and "Shares" will flow up the karmic directed acyclic graph to you, the originator and decidor of the "good" internet.

So don't share things on the internet because of their freshness, only share them because of their quality.

Though that will mean that nobody will care about what you share.

So I guess I just won't care what other people think.  That is a probably a good idea.  And that is what a blog is for.  If they want my opinion, they have to come to me for it.

I think I like that better, it's quieter and keeps that rabble down.

Kyler

Quadrotors Play Music

Watch this video if you just want to see the best part.



And this video if you want the whole story



At first this almost seems silly, but this is probably one of the biggest leaps that has ever happened in robotics history.

Being able to make a bunch of robots perform a bunch of arbitrary tasks, in an arbitrary space, in only 3 days is revolutionary.

Nearly any task, no matter how large can be broken down into small tasks.  Computers thrive solely on this fact: that everything can be reduced into a small set of operations.

Consider that a nearly unlimited number of these robots could perform any small task in real physical space for an indefinite period of time.

I could imagine they could shovel a sidewalk clear of snow. Move two by fours. Fasten bolts.  Pick apples. Plant seeds. Deliver mail. Clean up trash.  Find recyclables in a landfill.  Weed nature of invasive species. Stock store shelves.  Provide mobile security. Create 3d models of interiors.

Robots will legs and wheels are desperately limited.  The air is so very consistent.  And the air is easier.

The first simulations video games were made for airplanes because the physics is actually simpler than the physics required to make a car drive.

Kyler


The only limit is the ability to reduce tasks into a very small manageable parts.

Blathering on About Technology

Often I feel that well meaning people try to make technology seem like a terrible idea.  It ruins our attention span, blends up our brains and causes carpal tunnel .

Those people are right.

Technology is a dangerous, pervasive thing that is being incorporated into every single part of our lives.  Systems and methods are being affected and changed.

Yet, in spite of this, I feel compelled to find and use new technology.  I can know that an advancement has all sorts of problems and dangers, but still feel an immense amount of joy in whatever the new thing might be.

Right now, I have a few examples of  new  technologies that have been feeling magical for months.

The kindle.

It's got me reading more because it makes reading better.

It makes millions of pages lightweight, searchable and customizable.

Words I don't understand become legible with a quick built in dictionary.

Bad reading conditions: on a bus, walking down the street, tired eyes, or low light are remedied by making the font as big as I want. 

Dropbox.

Soon, a character adventure game that I have been working on with my friend Mory is going to go online.  We live on opposites sides of the world, have never met personally, but have been able to make something very meaningful.

And it is the result of a few very simple web services.  Google docs, instant messaging and Dropbox.

Much of my time is spent creating things that exist in folder structures on  a computer.. Dropbox is like a magic box in my house that also exist at the same time in Mory's house.  This project we have been working on exists for both of us as one entity, even though we are worlds apart.

I suppose the idea of a physical dropbox is not particularly far off.  With a 3d scanner and printer in both of our houses you could have a magic box that would create a fold in space time.

Remote Desktop

Remote desktops are not new, but the possibilities that this technology opens up are very enticing.  I have my high powered computer at home, where I can do all of my rendering, and difficult digital work. I have my tablet computer, which lets me draw freely, but doesn't have the same muscle as my desktop.  I can take the tablet places though, it lets me take my art making out into the world.  By being able to link into a powerhouse computer, it makes me all the more powerful while still being able to be away.

The future I'm seeing is that the powerful computing that I need to do my work, is going to stop being computer power that I need to sit next to.  Perhaps I will connect into my computer from a distance, or perhaps I will simply rent out the computing power in a cloud computing service.

Tablet Computer

I have been pushing myself to work with a tablet computer.  Not because it is inherently better than pencil and paper, but because I believe it will be better than pencil and paper.  I want to figure it out, and want it to get better, and the only way for that to start is going to be by using it.  It is the same way that I feel about 3d computer animation.  It isn't better than hand drawn animation, but I feel like it can be.   Right now, computer animation is where the money is, I'm hoping that the art is going to be able to follow.

And just to voice my desires for the computer I want, the computer I want is this.

A double sided tablet, 17 inches diagonal.  One side e-ink display, one side full color lcd.  Both sides have pen (Wacom Intuos 4 quality) and multi-touch input. 8gb of ram, top of the line processor. Five to eight hour battery life.

The e-ink side lets it be a fantastic reading device, useful outside and capable of very extended battery life in certain modes.


And lastly a technology that I think is going to be huge in 10 years or less. Something that will change everything.  Self driving cars.  The implications for this are so huge that I won't even start to discuss it here.

Kyler