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Main > Photoblog

September 30, 2005

Pariah Puppy Nap

I have commented before on how living as a dog in India does not share the same connotation of having an easy life as it does in the West. It was an interesting sociological phenomenon in itself to watch most Indians either not pay these pups any mind or perhaps even go out of their way to avoid them as it was to watch the tourists fawn over them.

When I entered the Qutb Minar complex, all five these dogs were all suckling on their mother. When I was walking out of the complex they had broken off into groups and fallen asleep on one another, their bellies full for the time being. Everyone looked happy, except for the runt who appeared to be the sacrificial lamb to the fleas. He was so flea bitten and scabby, truthfully he didn't look like he was going to make it.

The dogs didn't even so much as twitch when I got near them. I squatted, found the eye focus and manually set the aperture up to f/5.6. I had learned from looking at some of my other photos that I was having a hard time placing the focus where I wanted with shallower values. Of course, later I found out that my camera was shipped out of calibration.

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Main > Diary

A Haiku for This Morning

Awake sleepy eyed,
No milk for my cereal.
Time to go to work.

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Main > Photoblog

September 29, 2005

An Archway, Tree, and Two Friends

If you have been a patient visitor to this site and have found yourself saying, "I swore this guy had some good stuff every now and again," I am really proud of the next few images. So, I am hoping if you've been patiently waiting by the sidelines you'll give me a tip of your hat and toss in a vote over at photoblogs.org.

It's been awfully quiet around here the past week and your feedback means a lot to me. Thank you for all of your support!

Strolling off by myself around the Qutb Minar Complex, I saw these two guys just enjoying the sunset under a tree. The lighting and framing were excellent. All I needed was the patience to wait for other people to move from the frame, set the aperture, and shoot.

It's a simple composition and a simple oft-repeated, almost cliché meaning: friendship is wonderful, isn't it?

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Main > Photoblog

September 28, 2005

New Delhi - People around the Alai Minar

The 25.5 meter high unfinished base of the Alai Minar was started to rival the Qutb Minar before being abandoned for being too expensive, ambitious, and technically impossible.

It is a testament to failure. I love it.

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Main > Photoblog

September 27, 2005

New Delhi - Iron Pillar and the Qutb Minar

The Qutb Minar is really impressive in person. It is unfathomable how something that big (72.5 meters) and made of stone could be built in 1368 (and started in 1193!)

The Iron Pillar (at left) is also genuinely amazing. Manufactured and installed circa 4th century A.C.E. The pillar is constructed of such pure iron that it is visually completely rust free. The pillar has often been the source of much discussion amongst scientists.

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Main > Photoblog

September 26, 2005

New Delhi - Colonnaded Walk Around Qutb Minar Complex

The center of New Delhi really does have an odd colonial feel to it. On top of that, it is full of the hustle and bustle of Indian urban life. It was really nice to break out of that and check out the Qutb Minar complex right in town.

Park space is at a premium in urban India. Nice walks through world heritage architecture? That's priceless.

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Main > Diary > Development

September 25, 2005

The Love Affair and the Hate Campaign

My love affair with Ruby continues. I wrote a small piece of software to perform numerical integration estimates. I learned that the development process in Ruby generally goes something like this:

• Have a clear idea of what you want to do.
• Have things not go as planned.
• Suspect something in Ruby to have an underlying wart or bit of complexity.
• Slap forehead due to own stupid mistake.
• Repeat.

I'm digging it.

I'm also grooving on a simple Vim plugin I went searching for. I had always wanted the ability to yank lines directly out of a shell buffer in order to be able to manipulate them within Vim. Well, I found exactly what I was looking for here.

It seems every time I wish to change something simple here on this blog of mine that I run into horrible cross-browser compatibility problems. It is silly the shear amount of infrastructure I have to put in to divide the universe into "standards-compliant" and "IE" realms. Today's problem dealt with wanting to finally solve my problem with displaying text within <pre> tags.

When I had originally published this site, I knew that pre data was getting clipped. I left it as a problem to solve on a rainy day. Well, today was rainy and I had just published and entry that I had wished to use a lot of preformatted text within.

The easy fix for Firefox is allow content in the content div to overflow. Sadly, this causes the sidebar on the right side to drop. Although I found this article on dropped div tags to be extremely useful, the JavaScript solutions presented were too much dinging around for me to bear.

I ended up allowing overflow in the standards-based stylesheet and then overriding this later in the IE-specific one. Also in the IE stylesheet pre elements are set to overflow:auto so they will get ugly little scrollbars if they overflow.

One wonders how much of this will be "fixed" in the new version of IE.

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Main > Software > ruby_integrator

ruby_integrator

What is ruby_integrator?

ruby_integrator is a set of Ruby classes that provide numeric integration estimates using a variety of methods. The software was authored as a means of learning and demonstrating OO-design using Ruby.

ruby_integrator implements the following features:

• A few integration techniques:
  • Right Endpoint Integral Estimation
  • Left Endpoint Integral Estimation
  • Midpoint Integral Estimation
  • Trapezoid Integral Estimation
  • Simpson's Rule Integral Estimation
• A mathematical function definition and evaluation class.
  • Allows one to define a string function such as "f(x) = pi*sin(x^2)^(x/2)", check its syntax and repeatedly evaluate it for differing values of x.
• A built-in inheritable terminal interface.

Implemation & Usage

There are two ways to use the estimator classes. You may use them either by the class construtor interface or by the terminal interaction interface, as demonstrated by the included test.rb program.

Here is an example usage of the class interface for the estimation of the function sin(x) over the interval [0,π] using n = 100:

    require 'right_integral_estimator'
    r = RightIntegralEstimator.new(0, "pi", 100, Function.new("x","sin(x)"))
    print "Right: " + r.calculate.to_s + "\n"
    

ruby_integrator can also interact on the user's terminal:

    require 'right_integral_estimator'
    r = RightIntegralEstimator.new
    r.interact
    print r.inspect + "\n"  # completely optional
    print "Right: " + r.calculate.to_s + "\n"
    

The terminal session would look like:

    Please enter a function in terms of the variable x on the line below.
    For example: (pi*(sin(x^2)))^2

    You may use the constants e and pi in your function.

    Enter f(x) (type q to quit): sin(x^2)
    Enter start bound (type q to quit): 0
    Enter stop bound (type q to quit): 2*pi
    Enter number of sub-intervals (type q to quit): 100
    Shall I show evaluations (y/n) (type q to quit): n

    Using:

        a: 0.0
        b: 6.28318530717959
        n: 100
        function: f(x) = sin(x**2)

    Right: 0.672010534481375
    

Extending ruby_integrator

It's easy to define and use new integration estimation techniques. Here is the implementation for Simpson's Rule:

    class SimpsonIntegralEstimator < IntegralEstimator
        def calculate()
            d_x = delta_x()
            sum = (delta_x / 3.0) * (@f.evaluate(get_ith_x(0,d_x)) +
                ((1..(@n-1)).to_a.inject(0) { |s,i|
                    coeff = ((i & 0x1) == 0x1) ? 4.0 : 2.0
                    s += coeff * @f.evaluate(get_ith_x(i,d_x))
                    }) + @f.evaluate(get_ith_x(@n,d_x)))
        end
    end
    

All one needs to do is define the summing function. Functions for calculating Δx, x_i, and evalating the given integrand function at f(x_i) are given for you.

Copyright Information

ruby_integrator is freely distributable Copyright (C) 2005 Jordan Husney

ruby_integrator may be used by public or private entities for any purpose. ruby_integrator may be distributed in source or binary form.

If changes are made to ruby_integrator I will accept patches via e-mail but this is not required.

Obtaining the Software

Latest release:

Version	Date	Filename	Change Log	README
1.0	9/25/2005	ruby_integrator-1.0.tar.gz	CHANGELOG	README

Latest, and other releases:

Version	Date	Filename	Change Log	README
1.0	9/25/2005	ruby_integrator-1.0.tar.gz	CHANGELOG	README

Posted by jordanh at 11:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Main > Software

Software

The following is software that I have written over the years.

Some of its good, some of its bad. Feel free to write me to let me know what you think!

Name	Description	Initial Release Date	Last Release Date	Current Version
euc2html	euc2html is a simple application that converts any double-byte EUC-encoded characters into HTML unicode entities.	12/01/2001	12/01/2001	1.01
jFlash	jFlash is a multilingual, web-based flashcard system based on open web standards, PHP, and XML.	2/5/2004	2/5/2004	1.0
putmarks	putmarks is a quick-n-dirty solution for use with an XBEL bookmark synchronizing package such as the wonderful "Bookmarks Synchronizer" Firefox extension by Torisugari.	11/8/2004	2/9/2005	1.1
ruby_integrator	ruby_integrator is a set of Ruby classes for performing numerical integration estimates using a variety of techniques.	9/25/2005	9/25/2005	1.0

Posted by jordanh at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

Main > Photoblog

September 23, 2005

Jaipur - In a Speeding Three Wheeler

As we sped along back towards the hotel in our three wheeler I took about half a dozen shots to try and record the lights, sound, and vibration or the trip. This is one of my favorites. It really hits a lot of the essence of the experience.

A couple of months later into my trip in India, I found myself hooked on taking them everywhere. They were cheap, fast, and did well in traffic. Some tourists would steer clear of them for fear of their corporeal being or perhaps even being cheated by the driver. But, if it has a meter, a headlight, and a horn I say go for it!

This is another fine example of the Konica Minolta 7d's anti-shake system excelling at its job. When I experimented turning the system off at this moment using the same exposure values the man was nothing but a dark blur in the center of the frame. With the system enabled he is distinctly more a human shaped silhouette.

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Main > Photoblog

September 22, 2005

Jaipur - In a Stopped Three Wheeler

Sorry for the late post today. It's getting busy again with school back in session!

After an afternoon of roaming around the markets in Jaipur we decided to take a three-wheeler back to the hotel. Our prerequisite: have a working headlight. When the driver pulled up, he wreaked of pot like a granola dorm room. That didn't matter, our headlight prerequisite had been met. As I got in the three-wheeler I asked, "ganja?" and the driver cackled wildly as he stepped on it...

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Main > Photoblog

September 21, 2005

Jaipur - Ghosts in the Palace Courtyard

Here is a long exposure of the courtyard of the palace at night. Some people were walking across the frame as I was taking it.

I must have forgot to convert this image to sRGB before I posted it because the colors look desaturated and the contrast is way off. I will repost it later this evening.

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Main > Photoblog

September 20, 2005

04 India - Jaipur - Rambagh Palace Corridor

This was one of the many marble lined corridors of the palace. The acoustics of the place were very interesting. It was hard and cold yet visually interesting.

How could somebody ever dream to call this place home? I like my home to be full of softness and warmth; a sheltered spot to have a sit and invite people into.

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Main > Photoblog

September 19, 2005

Jaipur - My Bedroom at the Rambagh Palace

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I thought the Rambagh Palace was just about the nicest places one could stay in the world. Although not incredibly interesting photography; people who are interested in travel might find these photos valuable.

Our staying at the Rambagh was planned last-minute. I had no idea what to expect of our accommodations until after we arrived. It was such a peculiar feeling to stay in such over-the-top extravagance when you knew there were legions of unfed people right outside the palace wall. I had never lived inside of a functional wall before. This was the sadness outside.

Everywhere it was clear this suite was designed for two: two robes, two pairs of slippers, two glasses. A four poster bed. It was lonely. This was the sadness within.

Photographically speaking, I was thankful for having the technical means to record where I was staying. All I had to do was crank up the ISO to push the shutter rate to something > 1/15 so the anti-shake system would reliably give me good, crisp exposures. I was also very glad I took along my 15mm fish eye.

This shot is not perspective corrected; but I didn't think it looked too lousy for coming straight out of the camera.

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Main > Photoblog

September 16, 2005

Jaipur - Me Wranglin' People in Front of Man Sagar

When we pulled over the car to take a photo of the building from the shore of the lake, we were instantly inundated by a half-dozen beggar women with babies (theirs?) and three adolescent children. Our agenda was very clear: they wanted money and I wanted a picture of the fortress.

Jim popped in for a quick photo of the building and then dashed off to the relative quiet and safety of the truck. I wanted a more controlled shot of the Jal Mahal, but I found it impossible to take with people tugging and jumping in front of the lens. I needed to make a deal. I needed to bargain for order.

Communicating that I would trade money for photographs, I separated the people into two groups: adolescents and ladies with babies. I then took three shots: the one you saw yesteday, the one of the building from the day before, and finally the ladies with babies. While this was all happening, Jim found it rather funny and documented this rather unflattering photograph of me lining up to take the first shot (thanks Jim!)

In the sphere of travel photography, this is probably just about as opposite as you can be to the style of someone like Raul Gutierrez of Mexican Pictures wherein you introduce yourself, make yourself and others comfortable and forget the camera, and take a shot before leaving. If I had seen the body of his work before traveling, I would have approached things much differently.

Is this possible to do with people who only want money or food from you? Probably. I'll hold the belief it's possible to connect on a human level with anybody given enough time and patience. Hopefully, the transformation will manifest into an ultimate change of my photography. Hopefully it will not stop there.

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Main > Photoblog

September 15, 2005

Jaipur - Three Girls in Front of Man Sagar

These girls (sisters?) had a funny sense of humor. I think they thought it was funny that I made light of their pestering me for money and instead ordered them rather comically (but sternly) into position for taking their picture in front of the Jal Mahal.

There will definitely be more about this tomorrow.

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Main > Photoblog

September 14, 2005

Jaipur - Jal Mahal

In my oppinion, the Jal Mahal is one of the more spectacular sites you can see in Rajasthan if not all of India if you are lucky enough to be there when the lake is flooded. Built by Sawai Jai Singh I, is it is set at the centre of the Man Sagar Lake which I am told is usually dry.

It was built as a water fowl hunting palace for the Maharajah in the mid 18th century. There are no tours to the building, but I have hear rumors of it being turned into a fancy hotel of tourists.

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Main > Photoblog

September 13, 2005

Jaipur - Nahargarh Fort Painted Walls and Ceiling

Constructed I believe towards the beginning of the 19th century, many of the paintings and adornments within the apartments of this fortress still look fresh.

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Main > Photoblog

September 12, 2005

Jaipur - Nahargarh Fort Courtyard

This is a photograph of the courtyard at Nahargarh Fortress in Jaipur. Around the courtyard are the doorways to all of the apartments kept by the wives of the Maharajah.

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Main > Photoblog

September 11, 2005

Opus Two - Drainage Pit

This is a continuation of the computer color-corrected E-6 crossed-processed shot from yesterday. This is a wide angle view of the drainage pit filled with an exquisitely green river of muck.

I like the school textbook-esq reduction of the color gamut from the cross processing. Not a fabulously interesting shot, but I had fun taking it!

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Main > Photoblog

September 10, 2005

Opus Two - Muck

I work in the office park of the future. At least, that is what I have been told. Opus Two built by Opus Development Corp. was promised to be the new design template for office parks in the Midwest and mostly turned out to be a dud: however it is a dud that I enjoyable work within at least five days out of every week.

Based upon integrating nature trails and recreation along with an innovative cum confusing one-way road system, Opus Two ended up mostly languishing after the dot-com bubble burst circa 2000-2001. Now, office buildings are being turned into luxury condominiums which are called "SkyFlats" (I'm not being sarcastic!) and most of the less attractive low brick and block buildings are sitting empty or underutilized.

At least there are still all of those nature trails, wetlands, and exercise stations. Did I mention the one-way road system was designed and named after the color of the rings from the Olympic Games?

This photo is a macro shot down into the muck that has grown on the surface of a well concealed drainage pit off of of the walking trails. A wide angle shot will be coming tomorrow.

This shot has been cross-processed from E-6 Provia to C-41, scanned using the cheap Kodak film scanner at Walgreen's then color corrected by eye. I didn't like the over-cyan appearance of the shot right of the mini lab printer, so I decided to go for a more natural albeit high contrast look.

For examples of photos I did not "color correct" from the same role: see here and here.

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Main > Photoblog

September 8, 2005

Jaipur - Jaigarh Fort Battlement Flying Maharaja's Flag

When you see the colored flag of the royal family flying in Jaipur, it means the Maharaja is in town. It was hot but beautiful up on the battlements of the Jaigarh fortress.

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Main > Photoblog

Jaipur - Jaigarh Fort Battlement

Our next stop up the hill was Jaigarh Fort. Here is a simple picture of a battlement which after the wars have been over has been subject to its own war against teenage defacers.

I post-processed this shot to have the funk. It had been awhile since I had pulled out this relatively simple technique and thought it brought some more character into this relatively boring picture.

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Main > Photoblog

September 7, 2005

Jaipur - Amber Fort View Down to Hillside Abode

Stepping out onto a veranda of sorts at Amber Fort I saw dwellings on the hillside. We were on the move so I raised the camera rather quickly and fired this shot.

The real tragedy of this picture is how poorly I've framed it. The interest in this photo really is further down and to the left. However, I still find it slightly visually interesting and anthropologically certainly so and so I've decided to share it with you anyhow.

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Main > Photoblog

September 6, 2005

Jaipur - Amber Fort View Downwards Framed by Filigree

After taking pictures of the interior of the Sheesh Mahal I left the camera set to 3200 when I took this shot. All the same I still liked the composition enough to try and work with it and despite some loss of resolution, saturation, and some added grain I really think that this photo turned out nicely.

I think my favorite part about this image is the hard side-light illuminating only slivers of the filigree work. I think it adds an extra dimension to where the window would normally only act as a rather one-dimensional silhouette.

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Main > Photoblog

September 5, 2005

Jaipur - Amber Fort the Sheesh Mahal Ceiling Detail

Walking through the Sheesh Mahal at Amber Fortress evoked my imagination to try and guess how things room might have been decorated when it was in use. Tiny mirrors encrust every wall, a tiny candle would create a tiny point of light and a small reflection in each and every of the thousands and thousands of mirrors. It must have been a romantic place.

I wanted to capture just a piece of it to show a detail of how the mirrors were inlaid. This image was hard to produce, but eventually through trail and error and playing with the metering I came away with something I am happy with. I also happen to think this makes a nice transition from yesterday's signage piece from Minnesota.

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Main > Photoblog

September 4, 2005

Sign of Minnesota

This is the second of two in the series of cross-processed signage.

This shot was taken on an afternoon walk around the nature trails and commercial wreckage near my office. The trail winds its way past several beautiful marshlands and serveral vapid parkinglots. I saw this sign, a landmarker for finding your car during happier economic times, and thought it looked really kitchy.

There is nothing fancy about this shot. I simply point and shot and only added a touch of perspective correction. All the style is a given from the cross-processing. I really happen to like this one.

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Main > Photoblog

September 3, 2005

Milwaukee - Kelly's Lounge on Van Buren

This picture is dedicated to the Kellys, the both of them. Both, for Kelly is my co-worker who married a woman named also named Kelly. They could only be distinguished by their middle initial as both of their last names begun with F. Ah, the Kellys. Here's to ya!

Recently, my Minolta 7d had to be sent in for a warranty repair. It seems that it was conquered by the humidity of Japan and the AS system kept failing to initialize and thus rendering the camera into a very expensive hunk of plastic, glass, and medal.

Luckily the camera is now fixed. While it was away, I had the urge to get out the film camera again. I took it along to Milwaukee and shot this picture out of the passenger side of the car.

I shot on Provia 100 and had it cross-processed and scanned at Walgreen's—I love how they don't notice that it's E-6 process! The poor girl thought that she ruined my photos. I cleaned up the scan and cropped the image and this is the result.

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Main > Photoblog

September 2, 2005

Jaipur - View Downwards from Amber Fort

The view down from Amber fort was really breathtaking, and quite literally so: the air pollution makes just as well for dramatic landscapes as it does for burning lungs. Visible in this picture is the gate from which the elephants enter the fortress from below, the continuation of the battlements of Amber upwards along the hill, and a view of the city below.

I had some problems with this lens focusing at infinity. This picture is a good indicator of that. It seems the focus ring goes all soft and "wiggly" towards the end of the focus range and it's very easy for it to slip out of focus.

In post processing I applied the "Smart Sharpening..." filter as well as a levels adjustment. The funny thing is the "Smart Sharpening..." filter seems to have sharpened the building while leaving the foreground and the background relatively out of focus. To me this artificial and nonsensical depth of field makes things seem like miniatures of what they really are.

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