Pictures from my Digital Camera
Introduction
In the spring of 1999 I bought a Toshiba
PDR-M1 digital camera. It is compact. I can take up
to 60 pictures before having to upload the JPEG images or change the
memory card. All of the pictures are near 35mm quality according to
Toshiba. You will have to decide if you agree with them. It has
a 2X zoom. Most
pictures are 1280x1024 pixels or 640x480 pixels. I still use this
camera.
In the fall of 2001 I bought a Kodak DX3600 after I
discovered how much it costs to replace the flash on my Toshiba. The
Kodak is 35mm quality, can take QuickTime videos with audio, has 2/3/6-X zoom, wide angle, and
can record sound. Most pictures are 1800x1200 or 900x600 pixels.
The camera has been a real headache from early on. I have learned to
bring a HP Jornado (a PocketPC) along so that I can pull out the camera's
compact flash card, put it in the Jornado, delete zero length pictures, and
put the card back in the camera. Otherwise the camera eventually gets
so corrupted that it has to have its e-eprom reflashed. The drawbacks
of this camera are a real shame since it has so many features that I really
like (assuming that the camera is actually operating correctly).
I now use primarily a HP 812 four megapixel camera that HP
gave me in the fall of 2002 (thank you very much). It has up to 21X zoom
(3X analog, 7X digital) and can produce up to 60 second MPEG movies. The battery life
is great, it is small, and it works flawlessly. I routinely capture
100+ pictures and 1-2 movies with a 128MB memory card.
I can even write out a lecture on a pad of paper on an airplane
and include them right away into PowerPoint presentations just by
taking pictures of the pages and uploading them to a laptop. Be warned
that if you do this trick that you may well have quite an audience almost
immediately asking all sorts of questions.
I also have a habit of cutting off the top or bottom
of whatever I am trying to photograph. Now I can look at what I just
photographed and delete what I do not want and retake what I need to.
I have no qualms about taking too many pictures thanks to the delete
feature.
This is a new page. The old one can still be
accessed here. I will incorporate it
into the new page eventually.
Family and Pets
How could I pass up a collection of pictures of my family
and pets? This section changes whenever I feel like it and is
somewhat of a hobby. Pictures disappear and sometimes re-appear.
You have to check. Latest highlights include pictures from
David's 2002
birthday.
Marietta is always making some piece of needlework...
Always. It never ends. However, the pieces are always very
nice. This collection of pictures changes often... really.
Christmas, 2000 and New Years, 2001 were somewhat of a surprise.
Instead of visitng my parents for New Year's, we were snowed in at
home. Oh, well. It could have been worse: we could have had
global warming and had to go swimming at the beach instead (snow is a lot
more fun).
In April, 2001, my parents sold their Chicago home
after 34 years there. They shipped some things to us. David's
room got a major makeover on May 6th.
Travels
I go all over the place. I love spreading
multigrid philosophy. My friend John Connolly says I need to learn to say
no to travel. Actually, I have, but he does not realize how often I
say no. However, here are some samples of places I have been to.
| Australia |
| |
Canberra |
2003 |
| |
Melbourne |
2003 |
| Austria |
| |
Bad Ischl |
2003 |
| |
Dagstein |
2003 |
|
Linz |
2000, 2001, 2003 |
|
Strobl,
St. Wolfgang, and
Schafberg |
2000, 2003 |
| Belgium |
|
Brugge |
1999 |
|
Ghent |
1999 |
| Brazil |
|
Rio de Janeiro |
2001 |
| Finland |
|
Jyväskylä |
1999 |
| Germany |
|
Heidelberg,
EMG02 ,
Maulbronn |
2002 |
| |
Schloss Dagstuhl |
2003 |
| Hong Kong |
|
Various |
1999, 2000, 2003 |
| Ireland |
|
Galway and
nearby |
2002 |
| Japan |
|
Various |
1999 |
| P. R. China |
|
Beijing |
1999, 2001 |
|
Xi'an |
2002 |
| Sweden |
|
Stockholm |
1999 |
| Taiwan (R. O. China) |
|
Various |
1998, 2000, and 2001 |
| Tibet |
|
Aerial view |
1999 |
| United States of America |
|
Alaska |
1999 |
|
Maui |
2000 |
This is taking a lot longer to organize than I thought it would... :-)
Around the World in 14 Days
I finally did it! The trip was from July 24 to
August 6, 1999. The trip was 22,052 flight miles according to United
Airlines and involved three overnight segments. Luckily, none of the
red eyes were consecutive nights.
First I flew from Newark to Stockholm.
I spent a day there changing time zones and seeing the central part of
Stockholm, which is mostly the old, elegant part.
Then it was on to Helsinki and Jyväskylä, Finland for the ENUMATH
99 conference. This conference is what led to the whole trip since
I had to give a lecture in Finland one week followed by a lecture in Beijing
the next. While I could have gone home between the two conferences, it
seemed like the wrong way (19 time zones versus only 5) to go.
Then it was back to Helsinki and on to Frankfurt and Hong
Kong. The route from Frankfurt to Hong Kong took me over
Erlangen and Minsk, south of Moscow (its lights were clearly visible), north of
Almarta, across the southern part of the Gobi Desert and
along the northern and eastern edges of the Himalayan mountains and Tibet, over
Changdu, Guangzhou, Macao, and finally into the new Hong Kong airport.
After a day in Hong Kong, it was time to go to Narita
airport in Japan. The route took me over
Taiwan (right over Taichung, Hsinchu, and Taipei) to Japan and over South
Korea (right over Seoul) to Beijing. Mt. Fuji was clearly visible, but
was missing its ring of snow on its summit.
The visit to Beijing
for the International Workshop on Computational Physics:
Fluid Flow and Transport in Porous Media. This workshop was held
at the Institute for Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, which is
the equivalent of Los Alamos Laboratory in the United States. For
entertainment, we went to the Peking Opera one night and to the Great
Wall and one of the Ming
Tombs on another day.
After a final visit to Narita, I
flew nonstop home to JFK airport. The trip from Beijing to Narita took
us near North Korea. In fact, close enough that its capital,
Pyongyang, was just visible by the horizon. In contrast, there was too
much pollution over Seoul to see it. There was a
stark difference in the two Koreas that was quite visible from 41000 feet:
one was rural and the other was developed.
The weather ranged from incredibly hot (Newark) to an
ice storm (Jyväskylä). Scandinavia was mostly cold with
quick rain storms from time to time (by waiting 10 minutes, the inclement
weather was easily avoided). Hong Kong and Beijing were hot and
humid. The mountains north of Beijing were comfortably cool, however.