Driving to Portland

I spent this weekend helping a friend move to Portland. We packed the U-Haul Friday night then drove it up on Saturday. The drive took us about 14 hours, including stops for food and gas. We arrived in Portland around midnight, by which time exhaustion and caffeine had turned me into a jittery zombie. I slept fitfully.

We had professional movers unload the U-Haul on Sunday morning. While they navigated the two flights of stairs, I dozed like a cat near her apartment's bay windows. We spent the rest of the morning exploring the city, and had a snack at Backspace Cafe.

I took Amtrak's "coastal starlight" back to the bay. Slow (20 hours), but much more civilized than flying. I spent hours post-processing photos while sipping from a flask of tequila. Later I wandered the train, had dinner, and eventually found myself in a late-night conversation with a young graphic artist with dreams of working for Pixar. She showed me her work, and I showed her some of my photos. I wandered back to my seat and somehow managed to sleep in the tiny bunk, my face a few inches from the ceiling. I suppose submarines are like that, but worse.

It took until Thursday before my body regained its circadian rhythm and I felt like a normal human being again. Seeing my friend off properly was worth the lost sleep. I'd do it again.

What happens in Vegas...

...goes on my blog.



Kemi was in Las Vegas this week for a conference, and invited me to join her for the weekend. I had never been to Vegas. I was happy to finally have an excuse to make the trip.

People drive fast near Las Vegas. The speed limit goes up to 75, and "driving with traffic" can mean doing 100 in the left lane.

People drive like idiots on the Vegas strip. Someone in a pickup truck tried to take a right turn into my lane. While I was in it. Perhaps he expected traffic to stop while he merged, I'm not sure. Rather than slam on the brakes, I moved left as his car pulled adjacent to mine, half a car length ahead. Unfortunately, there was a car to my left, half a car length behind. Before things got too cozy, the car to my left slammed on its brakes, screeching loudly, making an exchange of insurance information unnecessary. My car narrowly escaped Las Vegas unscathed.

Everyone says Las Vegas is like Disneyland for grown-ups. The strip reminded me more of Times Square than Disneyland, but far less crowded. And people carried their booze openly, rather than in brown paper bags. And Times Square doesn't have stripper/escort/hooker cards:



Seeing posh casinos like The Bellagio in the movies didn't quite prepare me for the real thing. (Quelle surprise!) First of all, the movie casinos don't have a haggard-looking Latino cleaning staff. Second, the real casinos are much more welcoming than their movie counterparts. Sure, there are some trim and sexy people in swank suits and dresses. But there are many more ordinary folk. Women tottering ineptly around in heels they don't know how to wear. Overweight, poorly-dressed men with bad hair. Old women spending their social security checks on the slots. All equally welcome in a palace with an presumptuous name like "The Bellagio." Walking around uncomfortably in such glitz and splendor, I kept looking over my shoulder for the security guard who would tell me I was trespassing. He never appeared.

I'm very happy with my photos from the trip. I started with 300-400, and culled the set down to my favorite 30. This one is my favorite:



Narrow depth of field gives the feeling of depth. Repeating shapes
form lines of perspective into the distance. The babies, sure. But
also some neat triangles-within-triangles, from the seams in the glass
and the border between plastic bins. Reflections in the glass: the
mirror image of the babies, and the women looking into the display.
(Mother and daughter?) Little bokeh-balls floating in the top of the
frame. The racial mix of babies. And the uncanny-valley creepiness
of the whole scene.

Hrm. I think I'm repeating myself:


And I think I'm getting better at post-processing. I didn't get the
hang of manipulating contrast until a couple weeks ago. Makes a big
difference.

Macbook IO Benchmark

External RAID5 Enclosure:
Oyen Digital RS-M4QO
4x Seagate ST31500341AS Barracuda 7200.11

External SSD:
Oyen Digital EB2-S
1x Intel X25-M SSD

XBench benchmark results

Conclusions:

eSATA is ~50% faster than FW800 for large block size reads and writes on RAID5, and large block size reads on the SSD. It's worth picking up an eSATA card if you want peak performance from fast external storage.

A consumer-grade 4-disk RAID5 array can hold its own against an SSD for sequential access, but is much slower for random access. It's worth making your boot drive an SSD, but not worth paying for an SSD for (say) video editing.

If you RAID your SSDs, you have too much money.

GoogleServe - Science is Fun IV

On Thursday, 60 Google employees volunteer to help RAFT package science kits for schools. RAFT is Resource Area for Teachers, a Silicon Valley non-profit that provides K-12 teachers with materials to teach math, science, art, and technology in fun and creative ways.