It’s been nearly a month since my last post. School is consuming a ton of my time. So much of my time that I’ve not logged any miles on my road bike since the 9th. That won’t stop me from my trip to Little Rock this weekend to ride a 68mi event with my younger brother. Before I leave, I’ve got a dynamics exam to face. Here’s to hoping all the studying pays off.
The rides through George Bush Park, and Terry Hershey Park, combine quite nicely. It is not quite as far as I thought it would be, but 45 miles is a good ride. I may look for a way to add a dozen or so more miles to that ride on Fridays.
A friend talked me into going downtown for another ride on Friday, even though I’d already done my 45 mile ride in the morning, with a ton of people for “Critical Mass.” While I am sure much of the automobile-bound traffic in and around Houston while we were doing this ride were far less than appreciative of the traffic hold up it was a good time. It was not until after the ride ended that anyone tried to run over me. When I was with 100+ cyclists ignoring red-lights and everything else there were no close calls. The moment I went off on my own to ride back to my car, and thus started obeying all traffic lights, I got to exercise my reflexes and halt myself just before an SUV tried to make me its hood ornament. There were probably fewer than five inches between the Ford and my front wheel when I stopped. Reflective strips and a headlight did nothing for me.
One thing that became readily apparent on the Critical Mass ride was that I need to carry some tools on my bike. The Fens does not weigh much, and I could quite probably manage to carry it home on my back if I break anything on a ride. Why I would want to do that when it is pretty easy to fix a flat or replace a tube is beyond me. Last night, I went ahead and ordered a seat bag, tire patch kit, some emergency boots, a CO2 inflator, and a headlight/tail-light combo pack. I’ve already got a cyclometer and a multi-tool on the way. At some point I might actually add a spare tube or two to the list.
It would be inaccurate to say I had no summer break, the two weeks I spent in Scotland certainly counted as a vacation. The time after was more than enough to almost make me forget I did any sort of relaxing during the summer months. A few short days after I landed back in Houston my engineering internship with Compressor Products International started. One week later it was time to start my short summer semester of studying partial differential equations.
The internship was great. I learned a lot in a very short period of time about reciprocating compressors and the parts that keep them running. Since the university does not see it fit to make absolutely certain its engineering graduates actually know how to use any 3-D modeling software, I picked up some SolidWorks skills while I was with CPI.
PDE in the summer? Well, that was just insane. If you asked me to explain anything about solving partial differential equations I would have no choice but to direct you towards the internet. The trend where miserably failing grades on a majority of exams somehow turns into a passing grade is fairly alarming, but that trend seems to be growing more common the longer I go to UH. Regardless of the illogical grading system, I will take that C and run with it. Just four more semesters to go.
Over the break, I picked up a new hobby (or means of aerobic exercise). I’ve created a page to track my bicycle rides here. Next month, I’ll be heading up to Arkansas to ride around Little Rock with my brother. My next big ride plan is to ride the MS150 in 2012.
Photography kind of took a back seat once I returned from Scotland. Some of the negatives I made across the Atlantic will absolutely be printed and hung on my wall, but as of yet I have not made a single print this summer. My digital timer is mostly finished, but I managed to break the relay for the 120V side and will have to wait to order another one. I did buy trays to develop 11×14″ paper, since I have quite a lot of that, but I have not used them yet. Over this coming weekend I intend to read “The Print” by Ansel Adams to familiarize myself with a more archival process for developing fiber paper. Once I have digested that it will be time to work on printing some new negatives.
A few Tuesdays ago, my youngest sister and I took a ride to IAH to board the first of three flights that would take us to our parents in Aberdeen, Scotland. In the interest of not missing our flight, we arrived several hours early. Security was easy enough since we were flying out of Terminal E. No need to wait in the mammoth line typical of Terminal C. This proved to be a good thing. With more than thirty rolls of film to hand check someone would have surely been irritated had I been at a different terminal. The TSA folks were happy to scan the film. I suspect that’s because doing something unusual breaks up the monotony of their job.
Our first flight was uneventful. IAH to EWR. When we landed someone else was still parked at the gate, but we made the connection still so it wasn’t a huge problem. At EWR we boarded a demon aircraft. Some pump/compressor/generator used during taxiing was not mechanically sound and made the most terrible cyclic noise I’ve had the displeasure of hearing in quite a while. Of course with a busy airport we spent a long time sitting on the jetway waiting, and that damned noise was with us the entire time. It was loud, and clearly caused several of the people on the plane physical pain. When we finally landed in the UK we got to deal with the same racket again. Continental/United ought to get out of the practice of flying aircraft with an obviously failing system on board. The only part of the trip that was a real nightmare was our short hop from Heathrow to Aberdeen. There was an infant, a cute baby even, seated directly behind me. What a set of lungs – for the entire flight.
The first thing I noticed about Scotland was how green everything was. The buildings? All grey and dreary. The surroundings? As green as green gets. For a moment, I almost wished I’d gone heavy on the color film instead of bringing a ton of B&W film.
My Mom did a good job getting us to our parents’ flat in one piece. She’s never paid much attention to lanes so driving on the wrong side of the road didn’t phase her. I’m sure our time in Malaysia helped. Where my folks live is awesome. There’s a view of rolling hills right out the front windows, maybe 20 yards from their front door is a trail that goes for more miles than I could have run even at my most fit, and maybe a 1000 yards or so beyond that is a river. Excellent.
Jetlag wasn’t as much of a problem as the fact that Aberdeen is way further north than I’ve ever been before. As such, during the summer the sun never really goes down. Dark like we know dark here just does not happen. 1am? Still looks like twilight. 4am? Full on sunrise. Either way, the trip was great. I’m not going to go into great detail about everywhere we went, but we saw several castles and drove all over the island. A few notable bits below:
Coming home was fairly trouble free aside from the cab driver that took us to the wrong hotel in London. The plane was unusually hot inside so instead of sleeping the entire flight I just stayed up the majority of the time. On the return jetlag still wasn’t a problem. I’ve kept myself busy developing film and running errands.
Since I’ve finished scanning and uploading all of my 35mm film from the trip, I’ll go ahead and post my favorites as well as a slideshow to the set of everything on Flickr. I’ve also finished developing all of my B&W medium format film, but I haven’t scanned any of it yet – check back in a week or so for new favorites from that camera. Two weeks from now I should have the color medium format film back as well, so check back again then too.
A few hours ago my sister and I landed at IAH. My two weeks in Scotland has come to an end. Now, I’ve got real life to tend to while also working in the development of many, many, many rolls of film. My color film will be heading off to different labs in an attempt to not spend a ton of money. The C-41 120 rolls are going to Fuji via Wal-Mart. It will take two weeks but there is not a cheaper option anywhere by any metric. The C-41 135 rolls are off for Aker Imaging tomorrow morning, I’ll have them back tomorrow afternoon. The B&W fun will start tonight. I need to mix up some fresh chemistry, but I’m getting started tonight for sure.
Anyway, these will tide you over until I can start posting photos taken with better cameras.
A few more cell pics.
This was shot just before 0100.
Castle Edinburgh
Loch Ness
Moray Firth
Mamiya C3 and Kodak Retina IIa @ Moray Firth
In unrelated news, I got the internship I applied for just before my trip. I’ll take the weekend of Independence Day to get back into the swing of life closer to the equator, and start the internship immediately thereafter.
I’ve only been here a few hours and I’ve already exposed three full rolls of film and finished the two I’d started yesterday. Impressive views everywhere are making me wish I’d brought more color film with me. The castle here is awesome.
The only digital camera with me on this trip is in the back of my increasingly annoying HTC Aria. Two of my film cameras have done the bulk of my shooting, which has totaled something like 9 rolls of film so far (with the 10th and 11th in progress). Good thing I brought 38 rolls with me. Anyway, it’s too gorgeous here not to share so here are a few cellpics.
These are the cameras tasked with really capturing my vacation.
A few weeks ago I bought myself copies of Ansel Adams’ instructional books on photography. “The Camera” was a quick read and contained little information with which I was not already familiar. As of right now, I am about two thirds of the way through “The Negative” and I’ve learned quite a lot. Several sources I’ve read attempted to explain the Zone System in summary. None of them ever made as much sense as the chapter dedicated to the Zone System in “The Negative.” Today, I took a trip into the back yard to try my hand a visualizing the values I wanted to see, deciding how to expose my film after carefully using my light meter, and then actually exposing the film. The results are quite encouraging. Quick scans are below, but next week I will be enlarging these negatives in the darkroom.
Update: No maybe about it, the diode was backwards. Resoldered that part of the circuit and all is well.
I’ll be the first to admit that I have little to no idea what I’m doing when electrons are involved. I’m a mechanical engineering major for a reason. Forces, heat, work, and power? That all makes sense. EMF, circuits, and all of that jazz? Voodoo magic.
That said, I’ve embarked on a project to build a digital timer. It’s definitely not my design, as I wouldn’t have even known where to start, but I found it here. I’ve made a few small changes to where I’m running the power, but nothing has changed (intentionally) with the circuits on the PCB. Sparkfun shipped me the wrong LCD, so I really don’t even know if there’s anything going on at all. I suspect something isn’t wired properly though, as no combination of button pressing will close the relay. If I power up the microcontroller, and then touch the wire connected to the base of the transistor to the end of the diode with the stripe on it the relay closes. If I touch the opposite end of the diode I get nothing. So that makes sense, I’ve scribbled on some photos to identify what’s going on.
