She’s moved since last time i saw her…
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Mona Lisa Overdrive
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Painted Ladies, San Francisco
Painted Ladies on Steiner Street in San Francisco, California.
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San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park Beach
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NOLS WOE Tetons Ski Mountaineering Expedition: Day 5 – Skinning and Field Gear Evaluation
Our final day in the front country. Today is a big gear gear and packing day, in preparation for our departure tomorrow morning.
- After breakfast, went over basic sled usage and packing technique. Since we’ll be skiing with these sleds both uphill and downhill, packing efficiency and balance is very important.
- After sled backing, moved on to daypack, and getting everything else sorted out.
- Skinning today was along Mail Cabin Creek. A short 2 mile skin in, and then we set up a mock campsite.
- I taught a quick class on winter stove usage, and Lindsey did one on setting up a backcountry snow shelter.
- Tonight, final gear preparations and sleep.
Tomorrow: Leaving for NOLS Winter Outdoor Educator Training in the Teton Mountains
Tomorrow on January 10th, 2012 I’ll be heading to the Driggs, Idaho base of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). I’m participating in the NOLS Winter Outdoor Educator Course, in which I’ll receive outdoor educator training from the leading outdoor training orginization in the United States. In addition to a small amount of classroom learning, we’ll also be living in the backcountry of the Teton Mountains for a while, ski mountaineering up and down the rugged mountains.
NOLS Winter Outdoor Educator Course Description:
Designed for practicing and aspiring winter outdoor educators, this course gives you the skills to teach in any winter wilderness.
We begin with five days of workshops, including a Recreational Level I Avalanche clinic and two days of professional ski instruction at Grand Targhee Resort.
Then we’ll move into the backcountry for miles of skiing in pristine powder. You’ll build elaborate snow shelters complete with kitchen counters, benches, and a cozy bedroom. With coaching from your instructors, you’ll teach classes of your own and be taught by fellow students.
For educators of all levels, teaching in the winter will polish your presentation skills and hone your class management. The longest of our winter courses, these 21 days provide some of the best expedition training at the school, preparing you to camp and lead well in any cold, snowy environment.
During the course, I’ll be almost completely out of contact, including out of contact with my SPOT Satellite Messenger – by orders from NOLS. However, I’ll be keeping daily logs, and will post them all upon my safe return.
This will be my third NOLS course. Previously, I’ve done the NOLS Alaska Backpacking backcountry course in the Talkeetna Mountain Range, as well as the NOLS-WMI Wilderness First Responder training course in Leadville, Colorado.
General promo video for NOLS Teton Valley Winter Courses:
Moving On From Idaho Falls
My single day in Idaho Falls was a relaxing one. After laptopping in a Starbucks for a bit, feeding the ducks, and walking around town, I found this abandoned trailer park..
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2012 West Travels Stop #1: Idaho Falls
A single day in Idaho Falls, Idaho. The actual falls wrap all the way around, and are peppered with ducks and geese, who don’t fly south for the winter anymore.
Next stop: Jackson, Wyoming
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Projection Mapping + Live Action Dynamic Projection Surfaces = Great Films Fill Rooms
This recently posted video for Sony Playstation Move highlights the power of projection mapping, combined with a dynamic projection environment. By moving the surfaces onto which light is projected, a completely new, flexible environment was created.
In this video, it seems like the actual projection was rendered beforehand, and projected from a normal projector. The performers had to synchronize their movements to match what was going to be projected. However, think of the possibilities of combining this type of projection mapping creativity with the real time environment and surface modeling of a system like the Microsoft Kinect, to create a live generated, projection mapped environment that responds to changes in the physical projection surfaces.. the possibilities are just starting to be realized.
The video is supporting the site Great Films Fill Rooms.
Scene 1:
A Freezing Start To 2012 – Coney Island Polar Bear Swim
Happy New Year! To start the new year right, I went down to Coney Island with a group of friends, and jumped in the frigid Atlantic Ocean for the annual Polar Bear Swim.
Yes, the water was extremely cold, but the energy of the thousands of people there kept us swimming.
Personally, being on the beach at Coney Island during the winter is my favorite time. It’s usually relatively quiet, the waves are still lapping at the shore, and the drama of the continuously rotting and renewing boardwalk is pronounced. I’m looking to making a few more visits out there this winter.. hopefully in the snow.
Happy 2012!
HTML5 Continues March Foraward: TeleNav Launches HTML5 Nav
As I’ve been pushing for literally years, HTML5 is a powerful new iteration of HTML, and can be combined with other associated new technologies like Javascript and CSS3 to make useful new apps. HTML5 came out right around the time that mobile apps started to get powerful, and I’ve continuously been tracking the rise of locally-installed mobile apps vs the use of web-apps powered by technologies such as HTML5.
Image from Engadget
Although I love my iPhone apps as much as any geek, I love the concept of web-apps. Powerful apps that exist “in the cloud”, taking up minimal local resources, and offering huge computing benefits. The lynchpin lately has been the speed and availability of reliable wireless networks, to allow consumers to have a smooth experience with web apps. For this reason, among others, local apps have become more popular.
So I’m glad to see that now TeleNav is using GPS navigation in the form of a web-app. Sure Google Maps has done this to an extent for a while, but I’m glad to see another company jump on as well. In 2012 I’m looking forward to much more powerful web apps running on faster handsets and more reliable wireless networks.
TeleNav launches browser-based turn-by-turn GPS navigation using HTML 5 — Engadget.
Rock Center Holiday Meltdown
I never thought it would happen to me, but today I finally found myself immersed deep in the Rockefeller Center holiday vortex. Masses of people all taking photos of the giant tree. Here’s to checking that off my list once and for all!
Photo was made with iOS app Autostitch from Cloudburst Research, which combines multiple images into one panorama. This app has made significant UI and UX improvements lately. And now that the camera app in iOS 5 supports AF/AE lock, exposure can remain even across the entire blended mosaic.
See this image in my Flickr Photostream.
Shooting with the Lytro Lightfield Camera
This past weekend friend Dave Surgan and I visited the Wired Holiday Store to demo the new Lytro lightfield camera. Although the workflow process for importing and manipulating images was a little buggy, the camera worked great. Form factor is very first generation, but apparently is necessary to accomodate the complex lens design. The square images are fun to shoot, and the control layout is simple – shutter button and touch sensitive zoom slider on the top, and power button on the bottom. Shooting pictures feels very “scientific”, on account of the long box form factor – kinda like looking through a toilet paper tube.
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Soho Beach House, Miami
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Across the Arctic Circle (An Idea…)
Bodø, Norway
A definite addition to my ongoing World Guide list is a grand tour of scandinavian and russian cities sitting north of the Arctic Circle. It’s incredible that there are so many large towns at such high latitudes – especially Murmansk, Russia. Someday, my ideal trip to experience all of these places may be to start in Iceland for the beginning of the spring, as the sun begins to rise. From Iceland, take a flight to the Faroe Islands. Another flight across to Norway, and then as the sun continues its rise, venture up by land north to the Arctic Circle. Once Arctic, with the sun fully risen, take the summer to travel by boat – fishing boats and the like, across the northern coast across Norway, Sweden, Finland. Then a major jump across the Barets Sea to the Kara Sea, and across the northern coast of Russia.
Who’s with me?! And who wants to sponsor me?
THE WORLD GEOGRAPHY: 10 Largest Cities Within the Arctic Circle.
Related: Crossing the Arctic Circle in Grimsey, Iceland
Related articles
- The Cold Arctic (trifter.com)
Image via Wikipedia
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Videoblog: Early Season Snowboarding in Telluride, Colorado
Today I got out on the slopes for a few very early season runs in Telluride, Colorado. Not much is open yet, but the snow was great!