“I picked up the camera because I had discovered a world in Yosemite so much more beautiful than I’d ever seen. This prompted me to take pictures. Rock came first, the pictures second. I love taking pictures, in part because it is an impossible challenge, like riding the perfect wave, but also because it is inspired by nature. Photography helps me look deeper.”
/
"I’m a climber with a camera who loved bein’ up on the walls." -Tom Frost
/
“The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work.”
Lone Peak /
Polly got the 4th of July off this year, and we decided to use the extended weekend to backpack up to the Lone Peak cirque. Staying local, but getting out and away. I day-tripped up there last year, and was really looking forward to climbing up there with Polly and camping up out of the heat. Turns out it was an unusually cool weekend for Utah this time of year and so we got mid-fifties and sixties during the day and just freezing temperatures up there at night (while SLC got highs in the mid-seventies during the day.)
The hike in is not for the faint of heart… five miles and 5000’+ elevation gain. After having both backpacked and day-tripped, I recommend the day trip method. Hurts the same the next day, but much easier mid-effort.
After getting up the cirque, we dropped packs, set up the tent and refilled on water (Polly also took a nap). Then we set off for an afternoon ascent of the Lowe Route and got back to camp in time for a late dinner.
The alpenglow in the cirque that evening was spectacular! And we were definitely excited to climb the next day.
However the next morning it was overcast, windy and cold. We stayed in the tent for until pretty close to noon. The clouds and wind put a pretty big damper on getting after it because we needed the sun or some warm air to soften up the snow to allow us to easily kick steps up the base of the wall. No crampons or axes on this trip, which would have helped, but also been a lot of extra weight for a few hundred feet of snow.
Around 2pm the clouds finally burned off and the sun came out. We let things warm up for a bit longer and then headed up. The snow was at least soft enough for me to kick a path for Polly and I to get up to the wall. The Center Thumb. Potentially, one of the best routes I’ve ever done. Polly got to lead the crux pitch which involves an overhung 5.9 hand crack. The traverse out from the top of the thumb formation to the main wall and then into another crack system for the last pitch is decidedly airy (watch out for loose rock towards the top!).
Topping out the South Summit was a lot of fun, and then we got to descend back to camp. The views from that side of Lone Peak are some of the best in the Wasatch. You can see everything from the Great Salt Lake and the U of U all the way around and down to the Spanish Fork wind farm.
Looking forward to more alpine adventures this summer!
The rest of the photos are here on Flickr
on the iPhone 4's design /
Very interesting interview of Jonathan Ive on the design of the iPhone 4 at Core77.com:
One of the interesting quotes:
Some of the digital rendering tools are impressive, but it’s important that people still really try and figure out a way of gaining direct experience with the materials
Part of the discussion is on how the extremely tight tolerances were achieved. Which were achieved with a final griding after assembly and the tolerances were one of the design goals that were set at the beginning:
I’ve never seen that kind of tolerance on something I could actually afford to buy.
As another example besides the iPhone, when you read camera or lens reviews, “build qualilty” get thrown around a lot. Built Quality: Sturdy is good, a weighty feel that this lens or camera will hold together and perform. This discussion of tolerances, materials, feel, finish, etc is how you get there.
Getting the fit and finish right has been the most challenging part of the work I’m currently doing. Having a plastic part audibly snap just right into a metal tray is harder than one would think. Getting a satisfying “click!” that lets the user know both by feel and by what they hear that the parts are now correctly assembled is balance between the MIN and MAX conditions which depend on the materials and tolerances that you can hold with machining those materials.
It is the polar opposite of working virtually in CAD to create an arbitrary form that you then render as a particular material, annotating a part and saying ‘that’s wood’ and so on. Because when an object’s materials, the materials’ processes and the form are all perfectly aligned, that object has a very real resonance on lots of levels.
Ive’s comments on not being able to divorce the material from the form and CAD producing isolated, arbitrary forms is spot on. Its easy to make it look like its going to work, but until you have a part in your hands, its so hard to know.
Rapid prototypes both the SLA, plastic type, and DMLS metal have been key to my work for the past year. I couldn’t iterate anywhere near fast enough without being able to see, test and show real physical things.
Core77 speaks with Jonathan Ive on the design of the iPhone 4: Material Matters
Return to form /
Last weekend Polly & I got to spend an extended weekend climbing in the City of Rocks in southern Idaho. Significantly, this weekend was the one-year-later mark post-surgery, and she got to re-climb Bloody Fingers, a solid 5.10, and even felt better about it this time around. She also got to tick of a nice onsight of Double Cracks as well as a repeat of Thin Slice.
Polly found a brand new size 4 Black Diamond Camalot in a crack at the top of Elephant Rock and she was super psyched! But we gave it back to the folks who had just rappelled off, who were very grateful. Its always better to do the right thing. However, not to be disappointed, we also later found a Trango MaxCam on Snakes and Ladders, this one we kept. Don’t know how much it’ll get placed, the main wire is a little bent and it appears that these are no longer for sale …never a good sign.
In the last several climbing trips Polly has perfected some quick, tasty camp meals:
note the salt in mid flight
Chad, on belay. It was still pretty chilly in the shade.
I took all the photos this weekend with just a 35mm prime lens, and I’m really happy with the way they turned out. 35mm may not be quite wide enough for multi-pitch photos (cramped belays and such), but this was just about the right lens for cragging.
The rest of the photos are on the Summer 2010 set on Flickr
/
“Waiting for Superman" …the importance of Education
Negativity Kills. /
…but where it counts – where it really counts – to get where you most want to go involves risk. If it didn’t you’d already be there. Some of us will take that risk, some will shy away from it. The people on the shore always outnumber the ones willing to brave the water. And they almost always desperately wish they had the courage to take that first step. There’s no guarantee of success, even if we risk it all, but there’s no surer way to failure than not trying.
From Art and Risk by @pixelatedimage
Risk.
Risk Tolerance.
Art.
Climbing.
Work.
Photography.
Success.
Failure.
Negativity kills.
Risk and Reward.
Negativity kills creativity, motivation and takes the joy out of trying. Don’t mix risks with negativity, and don’t inflict it on other people.
Soccer in the park /
What do you do when the weather for the foreseeable future looks like this?
Didn’t go climbing…
But recently, last two months or so, when the weather’s not good or the mountains are socked in, its been great to bust out the cleats and get pick-up games of soccer going in Liberty Park.
I don’t normally bring the camera, but this time were only going to have 5 folks, and that means 2v2 and whoever scores subs out. This leaves time for photos. I’m currently trying to run up the learning curve to switching to prime lenses for the majority of my shooting. Moving targets made for good practice!
First half of a high-five…
Several of us have played competitively before, some haven’t. But in the two months the passes have now gotten quicker and more accurate for everyone. Yesterday we had a group of four join in and we were able to put together a 5v5 match that was pretty lively. Good lighthearted competition.
Timing is everything…
Summer /
It was almost 90°F today.
And we got our first summer evening lightning storm (only a token amount of rain)
Fresh salad dinner’s on the back porch are back:
Learn useful things /
The inside of my company’s new SolidWorks PDM server (had to add a firewire card to be able to use a Drobo FS for backups).
Learning to install operating systems, upgrading and building PC’s (windows or linux) has been one of the most useful skills I learned growing up. The best thing I could recommend someone coming out of highschool or in college would be to get familiar with the inter workings of a computer, learn a programming language and HTML regardless of their vocational field.
As an aside, knowing what I’ve wanted to do and knowing what I don’t like doing has made all the difference in learning to enjoy my job. You don’t find out what you like or don’t like until you try something new, even programming.
A few things I wished I’d learned along the way: tuning a carburator, how to develop black & white film, and some more carpentry.
/
“For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing its opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox.”
Depth of Field: Marco Ryan /
Great interview by Matt Brandon (@digitaltrekker) of Marco Ryan covering photography and using the web to further one’s brand. Very easy to understand explanation of Google ranking without talking about SEO.
/
“Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyze so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance.”
/
Because the light is there.
Because picking up the camera and filling the viewfinder is fun.
Because time passes more pleasantly on a front porch.
Because new angles are interesting.
Just Because.
community /
Got together with some friends and ran into other friends unexpectedly at the SLC Living Traditions festival yesterday. Good food and music and an interesting cross-section of SLC, much more diverse than you find in the Sugarhouse area, and that’s a good thing.
The Sierra Leone All Stars
Mark. (though not expecting the camera)
Mmmm. Churros.
Running into folks we didn’t expect to see at this festival (I hadn’t heard about before Thursday) reinforced how much I like living here and that SLC isn’t that big of a city. It might seem like its harder to have a community around you in a larger city, but so far that’s not what we’ve experienced here. Yeah, it took a year to break into things, but I imagine that would pretty similar anywhere. We’ve seen a lot of people come and go and within a month or three some more will go, and some of those will come back.
First self-replicating synthetic bacterial cell /
If this is legit, it feels straight out of science fiction, and likely will have a large impact on what’s possible. I would like to read a non-lawyered expansion of this line:
Throughout the course of this work, the team contemplated, discussed, and engaged in outside review of the ethical and societal implications of their work.
The .pdf they provide to expand the ethical consideration only summarizes that Synthetic Genomics and JCVI have been in contact with the appropriate governmental agencies. The results of those contacts and reviews are given in linked .pdf’s.
The summary of their press release:
The ability to routinely write the software of life will usher in a new era in science, and with it, new products and applications such as advanced biofuels, clean water technology, and new vaccines and medicines. The field is already having an impact in some of these areas and will continue to do so as long as this powerful new area of science is used wisely. Continued and intensive review and dialogue with all areas of society, from Congress to bioethicists to laypeople, is necessary for this field to prosper.
[emphasis mine]
This may not be news to folks in the genomics field, but I had no idea that something like this was even close to possible.
just because /
The details you notice are what matter, even if other people don’t see them too.
not really one for tripods, but... /
Sometimes it can’t be helped.
A few more on Flickr
edit: [these shots inspired by Camera is there.'s photostream]
How David Beats Goliath When: underdogs break the rules. /
"If a businessman waits until the end of the month to collect and count his receipts, he’s “batch processing.” There is a gap between the events in the company—sales—and his understanding of those events[…] Everything in the world is now real time[…] The world runs in real time, but government runs in batch."
We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It’s the other way around. Effort can trump ability […] because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination.
From finance, to basketball to Lawrence in Arabia and back again. Great article.