Ferry Terminal

It’s a region defined by a fractal of water ways that weave amongst the land. There is an openness and freedom to expansive navigable waterways like these. Ferries are a constant here; part of the built environment using the natural environment in an invisible way that highways and railroads do not. The constant operations of the ferry system plainly reveals the maintenance required of all built infrastructure.

It was summer on Bainbridge Island, Washington, so the sun was still high in the sky at six in the afternoon. Standing at the ferry terminal I was emersed in an aura of practiced calm, reinforced by the bright stratus-filled sky illuminating the world with that soft light that this region is known for. The water was gray, but the sky was not claustrophobic that day, the blue sky revealed itself in strips.

Cars accumulated slowly, like a parking lot, but really, as a special road built for queuing. Most people waited in their cars with engines off and windows cracked. Some wandered afar through their own smoke. Some had conversations in secluded seating areas. There was no dominant noise. I walked up to the half open cafe. It showed signs of former action — many menu items gone for the day. These auxiliary services have integrated themselves into the flow as much as the toll booths and queuing areas.

I had just missed the already late ferry, the whole cycle was behind, but there was a matter-of-factness to the wait. It permeated the social air. How cashiers treated you, the nonchalance of fellow travelers (fellow waiters), the practiced routine of the crew once they arrived, and ultimately yourself. There is no better way to get back to Seattle. The ferry comes when it comes, it might be twenty minutes late, but there’s an implicit trust that it will come. As much as one trusts that the same highway will exist the next morning. There’s no announcement to say otherwise, just a hand written sign tapped to the small ceiling mounted clock informing: “Ferries behind today”. No one is giving up. And you immediately get into this state yourself as soon as the sound of your own car’s engine turns off.

All of this calm is not to say that the ferry was empty. The floating road eventually showed up –the MV Tacoma– and the area crackled with anticipation. Cars packed (at least in an 8 by 20 grid) on the lower deck nonetheless led to plenty of space for people above. I felt openness on the passenger decks too. The benches and tables were low and wide, the seating options were almost excessively varied. The low ceilings enforced a hush when inside. How many trips does it take for this to become routine? How many until it’s mundane?

It’s a place designed to be moved through, yes, but to accompany and provide comfort to those who must pause to pass through.

On Closing Time

I like watching closing time.

The thrum begins to lull as the instrumental pop music pretends it’s still accompanying a bustle of activity. Tables and chairs squeak across the ground as they are re-gridded by cleaning staff. Lowering chain-link barriers resonate through a space no longer crowded with bodies to absorb the sound. Garbage bins roll roughly on those cheap castors, bags pulled from within. A large set of keys jangle from a guard’s waist walking by, anticipating their use before long. Otherwise hidden infrastructure is made alive.

Groups are sitting at the food court common tables, empty paper plates strewn in front of them, continuing their spirited conversations. New folks trickle in (to shelter from the rain if anything). Some people still rush: select food workers hammering out orders at the popular joint yet to close. Many of their competitors are long dark. Most people move slowly, workers and visitors alike, worn out from the day, taking it easy.

The light around me becomes more sharp as window and sky light fade. In a public place, closing time is singular, but an extended moment. This place still has a while until it truly closes for the night.

Nutrition versus Water Footprint

I came upon the paper Water-indexed benefits and impacts of California almonds, and wanted more visualizations to understand the absolutes, not just a ranking. I was also interested in the total nutritional value as the resource instead of market value.

See more images, full code, and raw data extracted from their supplemental PDF in this GitHub repo.

Further work may include graphing with respect to recommended daily value or including Kilocalories in the dataset.

On Indoor Lighting

Designing my lighting environment for mental wellbeing and subconscious separation of activities.

Lighting design is spatial and temporal. Throughout my day I employ different color temperatures at different lighting sources around my living and working environment.

Wakeup

I am able to awake with natural sun light. The blinds are usually closed but sunlight still gets through. Once conscious and out of bed, I rotate the vertical blinds to an open position. The window is on the west, so the sunrise and early daylight is diffuse.

When I cannot rise to the sunrise, be it appointment or schedule, I first turn on a bedside lamp to a warm white (~3000K ), then the half-covered brighter soft white (~4000K ) disk ceiling fixture over the course of a few minutes as I get dressed.

Morning

Mornings involve simply opening the east facing vertical blinds and letting the sunlight pour in. On the rare cloudy day, I may use a soft white corner desk lamp for a few hours before the next transition.

Late Morning to Early Afternoon

On work-from-home mornings and early afternoons, I turn on a 4 foot(122 cm) long daylight (6500 K ) diffused LED fixture that I have stuffed into the “head jamb” of the window. This maintains the illusion of sunlight in my desk area once the sun passes overhead; especially during the winter season. I often find that it completely tricks my brain when I look outside and see a dark cloudy day.

When I’m off or it’s the peak of summer, I may or may not use the daylight strip. I think of it as my “productivity light”.

Late afternoon

When I feel that the work day’s end is in an hour or so, I turn off my “sunlight simulator” and turn on a similarly colored, but slightly lower temperature ceiling light in the kitchen (if it’s not on already). The source from several meters behind me smooths the room’s illuminance. As sunset begins, the soft white table lamp turns on too.

Evening

The light in the kitchen provides a smooth transition to making dinner if it is dark outside. The next lighting change is a 2 meter floor lamp with a tall amber (< 2400K ) bulb sitting in an inverted conical shade for diffusion off the ceiling. It starts at full brightness, then I slowly bring the tabletop dimmer it to it’s minimum as my evening progresses. And eventually, off. The soft white table lamp is turned off with the first dim of the floor lamp.

Night

Amber nightlights , all placed below chest level and some further dimmed with tape, provide very subtle light around the flat during sleep time. No lights are on in the bedroom.

Computers and Transitions

My various computer screens have some version of time-based blue removing color shift enabled.

Nothing about this lighting design is computerized, everything is on some kind of standard mechanical switch. It would be neat to automate these transitions, but the times of the transitions often are based on season, cloud cover, and personal feeling. The manual strategy is simple and flexible.

Outdoors

A surrounding environment without outdoor light trespass is important. See the following for information about light pollution. Luckily, it’s fix provides instantaneous benefit.

• Adverse Health Effects of Nighttime Lighting (American-Medical-Association-2012)
• Outdoor Lighting Basics
• Correlated color temperature reference

On Episodic Storytelling

A story is not about the characters, it is about the characters in the world: how they experience it, and how they affect it.

The episodes of a serialized television series tell small stories that act as the needles, weaving threads of substance and existence all around and throughout the program.

This essay is an exploration of how, when done well, episodic storytelling is brilliantly unique.

Read in entirety here

Concept network design for a young Mars science station and Trans-planetary communication (Paper)

From an open ended networking course project during the spring semester of 2017, I wrote a paper describing (in part) a multi-user communication protocol for dealing with the long delays and for providing a high-level interface for multi-team scientific control and data transfer. With the help of one of my professors, Dr.Kanwal Gagneja, it has been published in the Proceedings of MobiSecServ 2018 – a part of IEEE Xplore Digital Library. It was a small conference (no more than 25 people). On February 25 I presented the paper in Miami, FL.

Read the final draft here.

IEEE Xplore publication here
DOI: 10.1109/MOBISECSERV.2018.8311448

I’m very happy to have it published and contribute a small amount to the conversation of how near-future people will be using extraterrestrial computer networks. There are some things I’d probably adjust a year later, though I am proud of the work, had a fun time writing it, and have tremendous gratitude toward Dr.Gagnegja for making this happen.

Abstract

This paper presents a high-level networking design to provide high bandwidth for a young and growing Mars settlement and science station. A physical network topology is described consisting of a high power ground station to communicate with orbiters. Different parts and devices of the station are connected with network infrastructure. Some examples are given for various non-obvious use cases of the network.

Additionally, an upper level networking protocol is described to handle reliable communication between planets. This Transplanetary Data Mailing Protocol (TDMP) operates three processes working together: a database of retrievable files and user inbox files; a ‘parcel’ structure for data to be contained; and parcel piece fragmenting for asynchronous pipelined transmission and loss handling. Together, these systems allow ease of connection between people, scientists, and experiments.

FL Polytech's 2017 Autonomous Vehicle Course

I was part of the inaugural Autonomous Vehicle class started by Dr.Dean Bushey at FL Polytechnic based off MIT’s down-scale R.A.C.E.C.A.R. It was an essentially independent study where three teams of students would work though milestone labs. I was the head programmer of my team. A few of us students also gave talks and demos to outside groups. I gave a 30 minute introduction to autonomous vehicle workshop at PolyHacks 2017. This one of the most fun and exciting courses/projects I’ve been a part of.

The cars have a TX1 computer running ROS along with a variety of sensors. After building the car on a stripped down RC chassis, we started with basic lane/wall following using the LiDAR – “stay middle” as I called it. We then continued to visual servoing and shape detection with the ZED color stereo camera, mapping, localization, and finally path finding. The course concluded with a final ’engineering brief’ and demonstration from each team.

All code written and used at various points is in this git repo. It also includes a course log that I started putting together due to limited practical documentation of getting started with each of the milestones.

I recorded many videos of our progress though the semester and edited them into a single video (below). I also cut that down further into an additional one minute summary video. My team’s car is the one with blue camera ’nose'.

Pictures of People Taking Pictures

I had a thought, I looked it up, and it did not exist (as a tld), until now. I am the proud owner of PicturesOfPeopleTaking.Pictures. It is exactly that. Pictures, of people, taking pictures. It is also open for public submissions. It uses Django as a backend and built on a Bootstrap front-end.

Edit, 2024: The toy project site was short lived and is now down. I still enjoy the domain name.