Easter the zombie fest

Being in a Norwegian city during Easter is very similar to being in the opening scene of Danny Boyles "28 days later", the place is entirely abandoned. The streets are empty and there is an odd eerie silence. If you search long and hard you will find hungry, confused expat zombies wandering the streets looking for something to eat. Struggling to come to terms with a world in which everything has suddenly changed, where every shop, restaurant and cafe has suddenly closed for 5 days, the stagger bewildered through the town.

This is because Easter is a big holiday, in fact it is the biggest public holiday in Norway, more important and more seriously adhered to than Christmas. The official holiday starts on Thursday but most offices etc only work for half a day on Wednesday; because of that lots of people take off Monday and Tuesday and suddenly you have a 10 day holiday. Since the days are getting longer but there is still snow in the mountains the entire population decamps from the towns to their cabins in the mountains. The town is abandoned and everything is closed because "you couldn't possible expect anyone to work on a holiday".

Roy eloquently compared the atmosphere in his offices in the week leading up Easter to the week before half term in a junior school i.e. no work gets down because all the children are so excited about the impending break.

I used to think that it was a great tradition and a fantastic example of the Norwegian "work-life balance" because Easter is a good time to have a holiday and go to the mountains and actually the World does not stop turning if everyone takes a week off. But then I started thinking about the similarity to 28 days later and the whole zombie deal. Easter is about celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. Isn't somebody who comes back from the dead a zombie? This is ground breaking stuff, was Jesus a Zombie? A quick look on the internet confirmed it was true (see here for example) and also proved that once again a brilliant piece of original thinking by yours truly was not as original as I first thought and someone else had already done it better! They even made a movie about it - here (although its a bit slow).

Meanwhile back in Norway I found a documentary that offers an alternative zombie related reason which may explain why the town is so empty. You can see that here.

God Påske alle samen

Wednesday Movie - In the news

A guide to how making a BBC news item -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI

So spot on, especially the bit about the obligatory shot of fat people...

So all you media types - your secret is out! I never realised it was quite so formulaic

Crude - corporate scum polluting the jungle

I just watched the excellent documentary "Crude" which details the 15 year fight between the indigenous Amazonians of Ecuador and Chevron (Texaco). The back story is that while operating a series of of concessions in the 80s and early 90s, Texaco dumped millions of gallons of crude and other toxic crap straight into the jungle. This contaminated water supplies and destroyed the environment. We are not talking about a little spill here or a few drops there, we are talking the systematic, willful pollution of hundreds of sites, presumably because it was cheaper than doing things properly and because its in the jungle, nobody who really matters would care. Now thousands of people have cancer in their teens, skin disease is rife, their animals are dying and their lives have been destroyed.

While the film is clearly emotive, the company, it's lawyers, scientists and executives are given ample opportunity to present their case. Their first defence is initially to deny that it is happening at all and when that fails, they then try to deny that it is their fault. It is painfully obvious that they are stalling in an attempt to "deep pocket" the Indians, hoping they will run out of money and be forced to give up. "La la la not listening, if I ignore you, you will go away."

This post is not about the evils of the oil industry because while it definitely can be evil (Nigeria, Iraq, etc) it does not need to be. There are plenty of places where they industry has managed to work in a practical and responsible way. No the purpose of the post is to ask one simple question...

"How do these people sleep at night?"

From the scumbag lawyers in the jungle, standing next to open pits of crude oil, surrounded by little kids covered in sores, arguing that this is normal oil industry practice and when that fails trying to shift the blame. Right up to the cold, sanctimonious, bitch Sara McMillen, Chevron's principal environmental scientist who sits there and smugly tells bare faced lies, with absolutely no hint of feeling, compassion or remorse. These are horrible, horrible fuckin people. I wish that I believed there was a hell for them to go to. I wish I could make them live in a jungle that stinks of gas while their kids die of cancer, I wish I could even begin to understand how a human being can be so cold, callous and uncaring.

Texaco fought for 10 years to NOT have the case heard in the US. Presumably the thought they could bribe their way out of trouble more easily in South America. Now the Ecuadorian judge has made a non binding recommendation that they pay $27 billion (use billion with a B) in clean up costs and compensation. But the decision is non-binding and the case will probably drag on for another 10 years.

Its pretty simple. You would not shit in your own living room, so going around to someone's house and crapping on their coffee table just because they are poor and you think nobody cares, is not acceptable.

It's your fuckin mess, stop lying and start facing up to your responsibility!

Nerdy photo things for a wet weekend

Have been getting more and more interested in different forms of photography recently

Started out with High Dimensional Range (HDR) which is based on the concept that the dimensional range of a photo is much less than your eye, so that in any single photo a few bits are optimally exposed while while most of it is either too dark or too light. With HDR you take several photos of the same view, bracketed around the optimal exposure and then sample the best exposure from the set. This can be done manually but is best left to a piece of software. I use photmatix pro - details here and the results are awesome. There are lots of examples of the results at my flickr site such as these from Utah.

Then I got interested in timelapse - my first efforts were with a web cam pointing out the window. I captured a winter week outside the lair. The result can be seen here. The movie was made with a photo taken every 10 minutes and then combined into a movie using some free software at 15 frames per second. It was ok but the quality is pretty shitty.

Next stage was to try and get better quality, so I dug out an old Nikon D70 and started experimenting with that. To get the time lapse it needs to be linked to a laptop and have some controlling software. First I tried to use Nikon capture control which is apparently very good but is also rip-off expensive. When you have spent 2000 quid on a camera the least they could do is give you the software to run it! Anyway I tried to use the trail version but it kept bombing and I wasn't about to spend 120 quid on software that may not work, so back to the interweb.

Then I found DIYphotobits from here which does everything I wanted and is FREE - yes you tight arsed bastards at Nikon - take note! Its a great piece of software and I can't understand why it is not more widely known about.

So then I set up the D70 and experimented. The camera battery only lasts a couple of hours which is a major bummer because it means you need an external power source (another £85 from rip-off Nikon). That is on order.

Apart from that it works really well and it is possible to do time lapse and bracket as well, opening up possibilities for timelapse HDR. So yesterday morning (saturday) I set it all up on the window sill , to take 1 shot every two minutes, bracketed +/- 1 stop. So that is 30 shots per hour (with 90 exposures). This ran for a couple of hours before the battery ran out at lunch time.

Photomatix has an excellent batch process mode which combined the three exposures in to 1 shot, I then stacked them up into a movie at 10 frames per second. The result is here.

I am not super happy with the results. First of all the view was pretty crappy. It was a dull overcast day and not much happening. Secondly the software that has stacked the images into the AVI didn't do a particularly good job this time, it's jerky. I need to have another go at compiling it. When I was loading it up to youtube I realised, as with many great ideas, someone else had beaten me to it and done a better job. Check this and this out.

Finally photo-nerd of the decade must go to this guy who put an old canon into a box, wrapped it up in duct tape and sent it into space on a weather balloon. Awesome! Total respect and great results. Check out his website.

Now time lapse, HDR from space... pass the gaffer tape

Friday Joke - The wisdom of the ancient Greeks

In ancient Greece (469 - 399 BC), Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom.

One day an acquaintance ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about Diogenes?"
"Wait a moment," Socrates replied, "Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."
'Triple filter?" asked the acquaintance.
"That's right," Socrates continued, "Before you talk to me about Diogenes let's take a moment to filter what you're going to say.
The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"
"No," the man said, "Actually I just heard about it.
"All right," said Socrates, "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about Diogenes something good?"
"No, on the contrary..."
"So," Socrates continued, "You want to tell me something about Diogenes that may be bad, even though you're not certain it's true?"
The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued, "You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter, the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about Diogenes going to be useful to me?"
"No, not really."
"Well," concluded Socrates, "If what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even useful, why tell it to me or anyone at all?"
The man was bewildered and ashamed and he decided not to tell his story.

This is an example of why Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.

It also explains why Socrates never found out that Diogenes was shagging his wife.

Thursday Fashion

This is the first of a new, weekly post on Fashion, including tips, advice and comments from yours truly. There is of course a mild degree of irony assocaited with a geologist providing fashion tips.

This week - "Head bands"

What would possibly possess an adult woman to wear a thin plaited strip of leather around her head. A latent desire to play and being a Squaw? A vague attempt to recycle the 70s and get in touch with your inner hippy? Well it looks ridiculous, especially when you wear it to work. In fact the only thing that looks more ridiculous than a grown woman playing at cowboys and indians is the bloke I saw wearing one in a restaurant last week. Utter Wanker

Wednesday Movie - Not quite AC/DC

Two unrelated movies this week.

The first from Roy Fitz - its not quite AC/DC but its pretty damned good...

The second is related to a NASA study of the impact of various drugs on spiders and the webs they spin. This was a real study and its worth looking at this website before you watch the movie here.