Re-scanning all my negatives

I've recently decided to embark on a large project to scan and/or re-scan all of my negatives, particularly those from some of the bigger vacations I've taken (which you'll find the travel journals of here). Now that I've learned a lot more about photo processing, I'm really looking forward to seeing how much better I can make these pictures. A test case is presented below. The top photo was scanned from the print that came from the photolab back when it was developed in 2000. The bottom photo was an experimental "blur overlay" version of the same photo, scanned from negative and with some extra grain reduction applied. HUGE difference!

Conwy Castle from Plas Mawr, Wales. Photo May 2000

Some of these photos have been scanned from the original negatives before, but I didn't do enough grain removal with the scanner software so now I'm doing it again. The photos from the 1998 UK trip in particular have a lot of grain which I think shows up more because of the hazy skies caused by an unusual weather pattern that was present during most of my vacation. Some of the negatives from my 2000 trip are going to require a lot of work because some of the negatives were badly processed and because the camera I was using was dying. I think I had a damaged lens too... pretty much anything that could go wrong with some of those photos did. Thankfully the photos from my 1997 Washington DC trip (some are grainy, but pretty good), 2002 in Italy (some were poorly cut) and 2003 in the UK are generally okay.

TWiT live show and meet-up at SXSW

As I sat down to watch This Week in Tech this Sunday, I realized that I had never written up anything or posted the pictures from the live show last month.

I got down to Momo's early enough to get a decent parking spot, but not early enough to get a table, so I ended up standing for about 6 hours. The whole experience was slightly surreal since I saw a lot of people in person that I'm used to seeing in a 640 x 480 window on my computer! After the Tech Guy radio show, Tech News Today and This Week in Tech live shows, I briefly went and chatted with Brian Brushwood, his wife, and Tom Merritt, all of whom were as nice in person as they come across on the net. :)



Leo Laporte creatively wearing his headphones during a break for the radio show. Full Flickr set here

A Day at the Faire

I've mentioned on the blog in the past that I go to the Texas Renaissance Festival every year, and occasionally make a trip up to the Dallas-Fort Worth area to Scarborough Faire, but this past weekend I visited the Sherwood Forest Faire that opened near Austin just last year. And for a faire only in its second year, I was pretty impressed with what they've accomplished already. And it was really nice to visit a faire that only required about a 30 minute car ride, as opposed to 2 to 3 hours!

I think it is a common staple of faires to have a Royal Mint where they do demonstrations and/or make custom coins and medallions, and this faire was no exception. I was just casually glancing through the available designs to have struck into a medallion when a familiar face caught my eye - Elizabeth I! I then noticed the Tudor rose design and decided I had to have one made. I opted for the bronze with antique patina (they dip it in sulfuric acid and then polish) and you can see the final product below. I'm still sorting through the 250 pictures I took (we had really good seats for the falconry show, so I snapped a lot of pics - I love digital cameras!) and I'll tweet out a link when I get them all uploaded to my Flickr account.

Updated 4-03-11: Flickr set is now up here!

Texas Renaissance Festival 2010

I finally got around to uploaded photos from this year's trip to the Texas Renaissance Festival. Flickr set here

16th Century Danish Astronomer Tycho Brahe Exhumed

Image of Tycho Brahe from the University of Texas at Austin Department of Astronomy image collection

This is another one of those stories that comes along every so often that allows me to geek out from both the history and science perspective (and in this case, my actual career science field - astronomy!). Tycho is one of those interesting characters of science that seems to cause endless fascination, so I'm not surprised to see this. And yes, he's the one who famously had a metal replacement nose after losing the flesh one in a duel!

From The BBC:

Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe exhumed to solve mystery

Tycho Brahe was a Danish nobleman who served as royal mathematician to the Bohemian Emperor Rudolf II.

He was thought to have died of a bladder infection, but a previous exhumation found traces of mercury in his hair.

A team of Danish and Czech scientists hope to solve the mystery by analysing bone, hair and clothing samples.

Tycho was born Tyge Ottesen Brahe in 1546 in Scania, which at the time was a Danish province, and studied astronomy at the University of Copenhagen, as well as German academic institutions.

He catalogued more than 1,000 new stars and his stellar and planetary observations helped lay the foundations of early modern astronomy.
...

Professor Jens Vellev, from Aarhus University, is leading the team of scientists and archaeologists which opened the tomb in Tyn Church on Monday.

He says he hopes to get better samples of hair and bones than were taken in 1901.

The use of the latest technology to test the samples may also help shed more light on the mystery of the astronomer's death, although Professor Vellev is not promising anything.

"Perhaps, we will be able to come close to an answer, but I don't think we will get a final answer to that question," he said.

The scientists also hope to determine what kind of metal Brahe's prosthesis was made of - it was commonly believed to have been gold and silver, but others suggested it might have contained copper.

Full article

More articles (all of the articles have interesting pictures):
NPR: Danish Astronomer's Remains Exhumed In Prague
Scientific American: Was Tycho Brahe poisoned? 16th-century astronomer exhumed--again

And finally, a bunch of photos and some video from the research are available on the Opening of Tycho Brahe's Tomb pages from Aarhus University

Five years!

I just remembered that today is the fifth anniversary of this blog! Yay!

W00tstock!

I first caught wind of the awesomeness that is W00tstock through following Wil Wheaton and Adam Savage on Twitter (@wilw and @donttrythis) and kept hoping they would find their way to Austin eventually. I would say that Austin can hold its own as a very geeky city and was deserving of this celebration of all things geek. It took a year, but they finally made it! I was disappointed that Wil couldn't be here (he's been filming The Big Bang Theory and Eureka - and since I love those shows, I forgive him), but boy did Austin hit the jackpot with our guest 'Wil Wheaton' - we had Neil Gaiman! Although I still haven't read the Sandman comics, I've been a fan of Neil Gaiman's for a while now. I've listened to several of his works on audiobooks, including several that he has read himself. Having an author read their own works is sometimes hit-or-miss, but Neil Gaiman is a wonderful reader so getting to hear him read a couple of short stories live was a real treat!

I also got a picture of him wearing a monkey hat. Yeah, a monkey hat (you had to be there to really understand...):


(click for a larger version and to see the amazing number of views the photo has had since Neil retweeted me when I posted it to Twitter - major fangirl geek out moment!!)

And a short video of Neil giving an unenthusiastic pirate "Arr" with the monkey hat on - again, you had to be there to understand (including why he was pretending to be very put out to have to wear the hat and say "Arr"):



And here's my full set of photos on Flickr

Needless to say, I had a wonderful time and I'm pretty sure I haven't laughed that hard and that long for quite a while! And it was sure a much better way to spend election night than sitting at home hearing the results come in.

RLM watermelon drop 2010

This year I was involved in the planning of the watermelon drop, so I had a good opportunity to figure out how I wanted to film it. I decided for the "top-down view" this time:

Help preserve the "Gone With the Wind" costumes

Related to my post below: The Harry Ransom Center has started a campaign to raise money to help preserve the five costumes from "Gone With the Wind" in their collection, including the Green Curtain Dress pictured above. They are planning an exhibition for 2014 to mark the 75th anniversary of the movie that I'm already looking forward to! I donated $10 to the fund since I would love to be able to see the original costumes as part of the exhibit.

Update August 30: They reached the goal in three weeks! They have a cool map of where all the donations came from - my $10 is part of the 174 in Texas. :)

Science Picture of the Week #98

The telescope at Painter Hall on the University of Texas campus, with the 2005 Football National Championship "1"