Thane Plambeck

Estimating the height of the Google Street View mapping camera

After¹ the mysterious Google Street View mapping vehicle went by our house on Tasso St in Palo Alto, it went by a PASCO garbage truck on N California Ave.

The top of the cab of the garbage truck is clearly visible in the second photo.

I think it's a van with a camera on a stick poking out the top.

Artist's Visualization

Footnotes:
¹ Or before? It's kind of fun to try to puzzle out the direction and trajectory of the mapping camera vans from the images in the Street Views. Several photos are taken between each intersection, and they're taken in multiple directions. Usually it's not too hard to decide which direction the mapping van was traveling—one locates a moving object in a photo (usually another vehicle, or person walking on the street), moves forward a bit on the map, and then turns around to see if it's moved in the time-positive direction or not. But at each intersection, the question arises: did the van go straight on through, turn, or what? Maybe more than one van was involved? If so, how to tell?

Another view from the Google Maps street sweeper

1) That thing is TALL. Must be a camera on a stick or something.

2) Because the garbage cans are out, I can tell the photo was taken on a Thursday morning. Also I can tell it was taken this year, and probably either in the last week of March or the second week in April, since the minivan is there (it was parked at the airport for the first week of April).

Cool

The new Google maps Street View thingy knows about our street!

Looks like Gloria was home when the van (or whatever it is) went by, but I wasn't.

Seemingly bottomless cavern entrance on Mars

From an article on a photo taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on 07-May-2007:

* * *

This image shows a very dark spot on an otherwise bright dusty lava plain to the northeast of Arsia Mons, one of the four giant Tharsis volcanoes.

This is not an impact crater as it lacks a raised rim or ejecta. What's amazing is that we cannot see any detail in the shadow! The cutout shows this dark spot and a version that is "stretched" to best see the darkest area, yet we still cannot see details except noise (1380x782, 1 MB).

The HiRISE camera is very sensitive and we can see details in almost any shadow on Mars, but not here. We also cannot see the deep walls of the pit. The best interpretation is that this is a collapse pit into a cavern or at least a pit with overhanging walls. We cannot see the walls because they are either perfectly vertical and extremely dark or, more likely, overhanging.

The pit must be very deep to prevent detection of the floor from skylight, which is quite bright on Mars.

* * *
Maybe it's a wormhole that connects up with the Guatemalan sinkhole?

Ideal Memorial Day

Doctor Thorne & Corona
Originally uploaded by thane

1) Trollope
2) Corona(s)
3) Air conditioning no longer mysteriously compromised by the bobcat that ripped up the ductwork.

From Mrs Battle's Opinions on Whist

She was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half and half who have no objection to take a hand, if you want one to make up a rubber: who affirm that they have no pleasure in winning; that they like to win one game, and lose another; that they can while away an hour very agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent whether they play or no; and will desire an adversary, who has slipt a wrong card, to take it up and lay another. These insufferable triflers are the curse of a table. One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be said, that they do not play at cards, but only play at playing at them.

—Charles Lamb (1821) link

Impostor II

"A university has a lot of weird people," Rajendran said. "Some of the faculty are weird, some of the grad students are weird. So you don't really know who's who. And you feel rather, I guess, rude asking them, 'What the hell are you doing?' I guess in that way it helps some strange people hang out without too many questions being raised."

Another impostor found out at Stanford

Fresno Dome

Fresno Dome 1
Originally uploaded by salveson_m

Atop Fresno Dome

Atop Fresno Dome
Originally uploaded by thane

Poison switch

Poison switch
Originally uploaded by thane

A bend in the Merced river near Ahwahnee, CA.

daredevil balloonist

daredevil balloonist
Originally uploaded by thane

We watched this balloonist take off from about 1000 feet off the left-hand side of the road, rapidly get blown over it, and just barely clear the road, lightpoles, and powerlines.

He touched down about 1000 feet on the other side of the road.

Total flight time: 120 seconds maybe.

bees-k2

bees-k2
Originally uploaded by thane

The bee hive in the oak tree across the street from our house is getting larger.

The Impostor

In today's San Jose Mercury News, Stanford Student was an Impostor:

What would you do to attend Stanford? An 18-year-old Fullerton woman spent the last eight months posing as a biology major, buying textbooks, sneaking into meals, even moving into a dorm with an unsuspecting roommate. Because she never had a Stanford ID or a school-issued dorm key, she got in and out of her dorm by climbing through the first-floor window. Her story started unraveling this month, and now the university—and her stunned circle of friends and dorm mates—are looking back on how a woman described as a sweet, bespectacled student could have pulled off such a ruse....

I'm amazed that someone could get away with this at Stanford. I can't even successfully sneak into the good seats at basketball games—one of the sharp-eyed retirees in the red coats always spots me.

They should at least find a way to give her an honorary degree or something.

[stanford daily]

Polynesian Adventure

Cole and I collaborated on this brief entertainment.

It's called Polynesian Adventure.

Credits:
Cole Plambeck (music)
Thane Plambeck (video)
Trader Joe's grocery bag (set)

Suitable for all audiences.

* * * *
Added later: The creators respond to critical appraisals of the film:

#1
"That's it? I mean, that's all?"
Yes.

#2
"I've just wasted 26 seconds of my life on this "adventure."
Right.

NSA: FROST FISH COVE

National security regulations do not permit me to reveal the identity of the person wearing this sweatshirt.

Spes phthisica

From a letter by Dermot Kennedy in the 12 May 2007 Economist:

[...] Your article on the unexpected improvement to patients' emotional health after they were injected with a bacterium recalls a similar effect that has been long identified in people suffering from tuberculosis ("Bad is good," April 7th). Known as Spes phthisica, or the euphoria of the consumptive, this partly explains the disease's impact on a long line of aesthetes, including George Orwell, D. H. Lawrence, Franz Kafka, and Amedeo Modigliani [...]

Those inventive Plambecks: The burning logs simulator

Almost 30 years ago:

This is the abstract to US Patent 4026544, issued May 31, 1977 to H. Robert Plambeck and H. Robert Plambeck, III [Q: What happened to Jr?]

A burning logs simulator comprises a burning logs replica illuminated internally and presenting to a front viewer or user the appearance of a pile of burning logs. Curtains of mechanically agitated flicker strips are located behind the front of the replica with a light source therebetween and produce flickering imparting a sensation of a fast burning, hot fire throughout the face of the burning logs. The noise or sounds of such a fire are simulated by the moving interaction of two pieces of material, one piece having looped fibers and the other having hooked fibers.

So—I've been been looking at these things in cheap restaurants and other generally crummy settings for over 25 years, suffering in their lame-ass fakery, all the time completely unaware that I could have turned to my companions in a self-satisfied tone and said,

"You know what, see that fake fire thing? Hey—I'm related to the guys who invented that."

What a bummer!

Vertigo

vertigo
Originally uploaded by thane.

I was sitting in my office a few days ago when suddenly the world started slipping off to the right. Then just as I started to catch up with it again, it snapped back to the left.

Then it slipped back to the right. And snapped back to the left. Et cetera. The whole episode lasted maybe 30 seconds.

It's never happened to me before. Local Medical Experts agree that it was

V-E-R-T-I-G-O

My trip to the doctor today revealed no ear infection.

Everything's holding steady now.

Think of the Impact You Could Make

Think of the Impact You Could Make
Originally uploaded by thane.

Reproduction of a Chinese step chest

17990
Originally uploaded by mohrmcpherson.

I guess I can live without this piece of furniture, but it would be nice to have it.