Happy Holidays! Rae and I drove down to San Diego yesterday. The traffic down the I-5 was pretty light all the way. We’ll be relaxing here for a few days before heading back up to the Bay Area for New Year’s.
Rae and I are listening right now to Pacific Time on KQED (88.5 FM). I was excited to hear my voice used in the intro as the hook (in bold below)! They have posted a RealMedia stream and an MP3 of the show.
Here’s the text of my commentary tonight’s Pacific Time:
It was great seeing Yul win on Survivor because it’s so rare that we get to see images of Asian Americans as strong, capable leaders in the mainstream media. Especially for Asian American men, who are often shown as weak and effeminate or nerdy and socially awkward. Yul demonstrated that he has the intelligence, physical prowess, and social adeptness not only to stand toe-to-toe with The Man but to be The Man. And because Survivor is such a hugely popular show—you know that everyone around the water cooler on Monday was talking about who won—it’s important to have that kind of high media visibility to help change people’s misconceptions.
That said, Survivor is just a TV show. A true test of a person’s worth is often found when their decisions have real-life consequences. When Yul and I were both sophomores at Stanford eleven years ago, his best friend, Evan Chen, was diagnosed with leukemia. Evan needed a bone marrow transplant, and his best chance was to find a donor of the same ethnicity. Unfortunately, there weren’t many Asian-American donors in the database. I remember so well how Yul curtailed his studies that quarter, and put his energies into organizing bone marrow drives to find a potential match for Evan. His efforts went a long way towards raising awareness of this issue within both the Asian-American and mainstream communities.
Yul’s victory in Survivor was well-deserved and helped introduce a positive Asian-American role model to millions nationwide. For sheer entertainment value, it’s hard to forget his accomplishments on the island. But I’d rather remember his compassionate and tireless work in trying to save his best friend’s life. For Pacific Time, I’m Adam Tow in Santa Clara, California.
I drove up to San Francisco this morning to record a short segment for KQED’s Pacific Time (88.5 FM). Part of Thursday’s show at 6:30 pm will talk about Yul Kwon’s victory on Survivor. I was contacted by the producers on Monday after they had read my post on Yul. Over the next two days, I collected and developed my thoughts about his win and its significance to the Asian-American community. Thanks to Rae, Daniel, Felix, Mike, and Joon-Mo for their great comments and suggestions!
The recording went without a hitch, and I was in-and-out in about 30 minutes. If I sound a little nasally on the radio tomorrow, it’s because I’ve been fighting a cold for the past few days!
I’ll post a transcript of my commentary after the show airs. Check your local listings to see when Pacific Time broadcasts in your neighborhood. Otherwise, the KQED website will eventually post a link to the podcast for the show.
I’ve had some memorable radio experiences in the past. In 1990, I won tickets to the Festival of Animation at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Arts for being caller number eleven on B100 (now Star 100.7 in San Diego). A few years earlier, I had won the soundtrack to Good Morning Vietnam — on vinyl no less — along with four movie tickets. I even tried my hand at on-the-air singing! 91X was giving away tix to a Billy Bragg concert to the caller who could best sing Bragg’s 1991 single Sexuality. Anyone who has ever heard me sing would know this, but suffice it to say, I didn’t win the tickets. I just might have broken a few radios in San Diego along the way!
Another radio moment came in 1998, right after the Newton’s cancellation by Apple. I was interviewed by John Gordon from Minnesota Public Radio, and I think I came across as being level-headed and intelligent, not a raving Newton lunatic as others have humorously described me. Finally, when I was a Digital Vision Fellow, a group of us went to do a Tech Nation segment with Dr. Moira Gunn. However, there were six of us but only five seats in the recording room. I was the odd man out, and I spent the show photographing Stuart, Steve, Tino, Segeni, and Brij as they discussed their fellowship projects. I’ll have to say that after today, I think I like being in front of the microphone better!
Dr. Ren Ng of Refocus Imaging gave a tremendous talk at last week’s COBA meeting, the final one for 2006. I’ve been following his research for quite some time, but until last night, I hadn’t seen a first-hand demonstration of his technology. Suffice it to say, I left extremely impressed. The prototype camera — a medium format digital camera that was fitted with a custom microlens array sitting on top of the imaging sensor — allow Ng to set the focus point in the image after the fact. A photo of a flower, for instance, could be refocused to isolate the buds in the foreground or the pedals in the background. A portrait where the ears are nice and sharp could be fixed instantly so that the eyes are in focus.
As he slid the refocus slider, he explained that his Digital Lens allowed for offset depth focus, per pixel focus, and six stops of better sensitivity.
One COBA member called this a disruptive technology, and I couldn’t have agreed more. The biggest hurdle that I can see is getting enough resolution from the modified sensor. From what I understand, the microlens array projects an image onto the imaging sensor that contains more light information about the subject at the expense of resolution. The resulting image is physically smaller — think 10 sensor pixels for every Digital Lens pixel — but has information that allows for refocusing after the fact. I believe Dr. Ng was using a 22MP digital back on his camera, meaning his images were at most 2MP in resolution. For this to be commercially viable, I think the sweet spot for a Digital Lens sensor would have to be at least in the 6-8MP range.
Congratulations go out to the three finalists, Yul Kwon, Becky Lee, and Ozzy Lusth, for surviving thirty-nine days on Cook Islands in the thirteenth installment of Survivor! Prior to this season, I had only watched one episode of Survivor. This year was different, since I knew Yul from Stanford. He and I were both Symbolic Systems students in the Class of 1997 — our ten-year reunion is coming up in 2007!
My strongest memory of Yul from school was when he organized bone marrow drives across the Bay Area to find a suitable donor for his high-school friend, Evan Chen. Evan had been diagnosed with leukemia in the early part of 1995. I remember Yul dropping most of his classes that quarter to be with Evan and to coordinate the drive. Evan’s illness and eventual death a year later struck a chord in me. When you’re twenty years old, you don’t think of death as being something in the near future — it’s always beyond the horizon.
After college, I lost track of Yul, but frequently heard about his exploits from common friends. When I heard that he was going to be on Survivor, I knew that he stood an excellent chance of winning. I was a little scared watching the votes being read off from Probst during the live finale reunion, thinking that the nine-member jury would surely vote a majority towards Ozzy. Ozzy was a beast in all of the immunity and rewards challenges; it was remarkable to see someone so in tune with nature and himself while swimming, fishing, standing on a postcard sized platform, etc.! It was a big surprise when he showed Yul’s name on the final vote. Ozzy and Yul were the strongest players in Survivor this year, and I would have been happy for both of them to win. That said, I think that Yul will ultimately make the best use of the money in the long-term (just pay your taxes, Yul, unlike Richard Hatch!).
I’m putting the finishing touches on WP-SmugMug, a plugin for WordPress that integrates — you guessed it — SmugMug RSS feeds into your WordPress Posts and Pages. Activate the plugin, specify the RSS feed url for your SmugMug album, and your images appear as thumbnails at the bottom of your post!
By default the images will be sorted according to their EXIF capture dates — thankfully this information is embedded in the album RSS feed. If you don’t want your images sorted, you can specify a custom field to prevent this on a post-by-post basis. Finally, the CSS and HTML is fairly customizable from within WordPress’s Administrative Panel, meaning you don’t have to dicker in the plugin code if you don’t want to.
The genesis of this plugin goes way back to 2000 when I remade tow.com from a site feature made mobile computing software into a personal website. The word blog hadn’t become mainstream, and I was calling the site a digital journal. Up until now, I had a variety of PHP scripts to display images that I had manually processed using iView and Photoshop. It wasn’t the most efficient way of getting things done, but it was something I was familiar and comfortable with. Nearly two years ago, I migrated much of the site content to WordPress. One of the holdovers from the old site was the photo gallery code.
With this plugin, things are much easier. Numerous applications exist to get my photos uploaded easily to SmugMug, including PictureSync, SmugExport (Aperture Plugin), and SmugMug’s new web-based uploader. WordPress, of course, makes it a snap to blog. Now, with WP-SmugMug, I have the best of both worlds!
You can find some more information about WP-SmugMug in my new WordPress Projects page.
Hours before Eric got on a plane heading for Japan, his friends took him out to dinner at the Gordon Biersch in Palo Alto. Present along with the birthday boy were Mandy, Elliot, Bill, Warren, Elaine, Vienna, Geoff, Livia, Rae and me.
For most of my friends, 2007 will be the first decade post graduation. With everyone traveling these days, working hard, having kids, or getting engaged, it’s important to cherish the rare times when we can all get together. I have a feeling in the next decade, these times are going to become more and more rare.
Several months ago, I shot Facing East Dance & Music during the Third Annual Trolley Dances, a “freewheeling San Francisco festival of modern dance!” Four dance companies, Kunst-Stoff, Facing East Dance and Music, Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton, and Epiphany Productions performed at four different locations along the Embarcadero on the N-Judah MUNI line.
Facing East’s performance was called Sea Wall. The movements are based on the elements of the sea, including rocks, tides, and waves. Rae and company performed Sea Wall sixteen times over the course of just three days! Every forty minutes, the MUNI train arrived with a new audience, giving the dance group about twenty minutes to rest, relax, and eat yummy snacks.
Having multiple performances in one day meant that I could be a little more experimental in my photography. I was also able to use a 400/DO lens for some of the shots. That’s a beast of a lens, and I must admit that I have much practice to do before I get comfortable shooting with such a long lens.
The December 2006 of the Camera Owners of the Bay Area (COBA) user group will be held on Wednesday, December 13, 2006 in Cordura Hall 100 at Stanford University from 7:30-10:00 pm.
NOTE: Due to scheduling conflicts, Uwe Steinmueller will not be able to present his findings of the Leica M8. We hope to have this rescheduled for a date in 2007.
Every photographer is familiar with the frustration of losing a shot because the camera focused too slowly, or focused on the wrong thing. Recent camera technology innovations at Stanford University provide a new solution to this old problem. The idea is to capture extra information at the sensor, which is missing in conventional cameras. Special processing enables physical functions of the lens to be implemented in software.
This approach provides unprecedented photographic features, such as the ability to refocus photographs after the image is taken. The underlying technology also enables dramatic improvements in lighting and sensitivity. For the novice, this means a more reliable camera that makes it easier to take great-looking pictures. For aficionados and professionals, this technology means unprecedented control over the quality of each image pixel.
In this talk, Ren Ng of Refocus Imaging, Inc. will present photographs taken with a prototype camera, discuss how it works and how he believes it will affect photographic science and art.
His research has been featured in the press, including Wired, Popular Science, Digital Photography Review, KNTV-NBC11 TechNow, KTVU-TV Fox 5 News, Photonics Spectra, MIT Tech Review, Stanford Review, slashdot, engadget, and more.
Ren Ng recently graduated with his PhD from the Computer Science department at Stanford University, and founded Refocus Imaging to commercialize his research. His PhD dissertation won the Arthur Samuel Thesis Award for the best dissertation in Computer Science at Stanford, and was nominated for the Association of Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Dissertation Award. Ren’s interests are in digital imaging systems, computer graphics, optics and applied mathematics. He holds an MS in Computer Science and BS in Mathematical and Computational Science from Stanford University.
Since this is the last COBA meeting of the year, we will be celebrating the end of 2006 with refreshments, snacks, and hearty conversation! I’ll be bringing some snacks and drinks to the party, but COBA members are encouraged to bring additional items to the celebration.
I’ll be showing a slideshow retrospective of the past year of COBA, and we will discuss topics for next year’s slate of meetings.
The Low-Key Hillclimbs Awards Night was held earlier this week at the AMC 14 in Saratoga/San Jose. I must say that everyone looks very different when dressed in normal clothes. People should have brought their helmets with them for easier identification!
It was great to see a lot of the riders from the series come to the end-of-the-year event. The cookies by Ingrid were fantastic as ever, though I must watch myself lest I regain all the weight I must have lost while riding my way up to the Endurance Award. Next year, I have my eyes set on faster times and losing weight; this means I’m going to have to ride myself into shape before the series starts up on September 29, 2007.
Next year’s slate of climbs looks very intimidating, I must say. Kevin and Dan must have been feeling especially sadistic when they came up with the schedule:
Anyone have any experience climbing Welch Creek or the Metcalf Mauler?
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