Adventures of an inquiring mind

Tesla Model 3

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Sep 2018 09:29:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to drive a Model 3. It was my first close-up experience with an all-electric car, and I would like to share my impressions. While I have been following Tesla from a high level update point of view, I have never looked into details.

Keep in mind that, albeit I consider myself technologically adept (borderline geek), I am not into cars. At all. So, I came into this as a normal person that wants to use a car. I can also evaluate it technologically.

1. Gadget. Having 20+ years of experience with computers came handy. When the iPhone did not pair with the car via bluetooth, a restart of the car's system fixed it. When the voice commands to start playing a song did nothing, an overnight software update fixed it. And there seem to be different charging port standards (the one at home; a community one; a Nissan Leaf one at the mall; Tesla superchargers) that do require certain familiarity with adaptors and handling different standards.

2. Interface. With the exception of blinker lights and wipers (managed by levers on either side of the steering wheel), and opening the doors, pretty much everything else is operated by the large touch screen at the center. Lights, windows, A/C, etc. This requires some getting used to, but it is fine at the end of the day.

3. Internet. Having always-on LTE connection is great for streaming music. I had not realized that Tesla is supplying their own music service. Not sure why they don't license something like Spotify for that. Control I guess, but then again it's just something adjustable via software if Spotify went wrong.

4. Charging. Experience is still so so, even in California. When going around to find a charging station, one was not working well, one was not working at all, one was incompatible, and one was occupied in a busy cinema. Considering that these were not supercharging stations and it would take hours to fully charge, you kinda have to install a charging solution at home to feel safe. I think the situation is manageable, it just requires some more planning to understand the options in your neighborhood and the travel route. It is definitely not mindless though. This is a point where I expect large improvements in the coming years as electric cars become more common. Car charging points should be everywhere, like phone charging points are in most crowded public spaces today.

5. Driving. Not many comments here as I do not have perspective. The car is a joy to drive, and having instant torque while accelerating from 0-60mph in nearly 4 seconds is a great feeling. It does not feel like you are driving a cheap car, so absolutely no complaints here.

6. Self-driving. This model was light in self-driving features, so I did not have enough experience with it. The topic deserves its own post, but I am

Overall, this feels like a car from the future arrived in our time. If you are into gadgets, this is as one of the top things you can buy to enjoy yourself in 2018. If in the next 10-20 years most cars followed this route, the world would be a better place. Tesla has done great design work, and I hope they can release a truly affordable sub-$30k car in the coming decade.

Finally, charging from the electricity grid to day is not enough, and it is still mostly a fossil-fuel-burning process. The cars need to be charged by solar power, which is not common today. All these charging stations to be installed are no good if they don't eventually get their power from solar. So, we have still a long way for our planet to enjoy the true benefits of solar-power electric motion.

Totality

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 23:01:00 +0000

If there is one thing I would like to say about experiencing a totality, it is this: a total solar eclipse is one of the very few things in life that no matter how overhyped they are, they provide an intense, emotionally satisfying experience.

I believe that the reason for this is the following. The most exciting experiences in life for me have been the ones that I find myself slightly outside my comfort zone. For example: working on a new project at work; trying to understand a concept about how the world works; tasting something unexpected at a good restaurant; conversing with differently-minded people; visiting a new culture; learning a new skill; and so on. I like being challenged.

The sun is the ultimate comfort zone. There is nothing that works more clockwork than the sun. Every day since we are born, we know the sun will rise and set (even behind clouds), independently of where we are in time and space (on earth). It’s a settled phenomenon that we never bother to challenge: the sun is always there and usually looks the same. It’s the floor we always stand on.

A total solar eclipse makes that floor collapse for a few brief minutes. It violently forces us outside this ultimate comfort zone – making the sun disappear.

Last October, my friend Andreas asked me if I was interested in travelling to the US to watch the August 21, 2017 eclipse. Even though I initially hesitated, I thought it was a good opportunity to reach the path of totality with relative ease. I also decided to attempt to take photos of it.

Over the next 10 months I spent a couple of hours every week preparing for the event. I booked flights and hotels; I read about other people’s experiences; I studied books and weather maps; I looked at photos; I planned my photographic setup; I bought gear; I tested over and over.

On August 19, I flew do Denver, CO from London, with two suitcases – one full of eclipse gear, and one half-full of clothes. The next day we drove to Rock Springs, WY, about 6 hours north from Denver. At 2am on the morning of the 21^st , to avoid traffic, we began the final 3-hour drive towards the path of totality. The moon’s shadow was only going to be 70 miles wide, and to maximize its duration (140 seconds for this case) we really had to be within a thin 10-mile strip.

We started setting up the equipment at 6am, expecting the eclipse to begin at 10:20 and totality to occur at 11:39.

These few hours between 6am and 11:39am were some of the most stressful in my life. The issue: clouds. While you can watch the eclipse on a cloudy day, to admire its full detail and beauty such as the sun’s corona, you do need clear skies.

While Wyoming had some of the best chances in the country for clear skies during eclipse day, it had rained the night before, and the last-minute weather predictions were not ideal for our chosen location. When the sun rose at 6:30am the sky was hazy with about half of the sky covered in clouds. We kept watching the cloud movements, hoping for a clear morning – but nothing.

The stress levels went up as the day went on. As I was setting up the gear I couldn’t stop thinking that all this 10-month preparation would be in vain due to the clouds. By 10:30am, as the eclipse had started and I had started taking the first few shots, a heavy layer of hazy fog was between us and the sun. I could still see the sun’s disc, but without any detail.

By 11am the stress had become disappointment and acceptance. While half of the sky was clear, many clouds covering the area were totality would occur.

And then, 10 minutes before totality, as if by magic, the clouds went away. There was a large blue area in the sky, with the sun right in the middle of it. The eclipsed sun became crystal clear, with a bright blue sky background. As this eclipse was going to happen high in the sky (around 50 degrees above the horizon), the sun and the moon were far away from the hazy regions of the sky near the horizon.

At that point, we realized that not only we would experience a cloud-free eclipse: we would experience a spectacular eclipse.

Disappointment quickly became excitement. In the last few minutes before totality, I did a final check on all 3 of my cameras (one telephoto for the sun, one wide angle for timelapse, and one for video) and started recording. Everything was computer controlled (thanks Xavier) so that I would only have to worry about watching the totality during these 140 seconds. I then grabbed my binoculars and waited.

At 11:39:19, totality happened.

Now, this is the part of the story that words and pictures do not do justice. The human eye is equivalent to a 160 MP camera that can observe 10 orders of magnitude difference in brightness. Even on a typical modern computer monitor, you can – at best – watch a 20 MP photo of the eclipse with 256 brightness levels.

In the first few seconds after totality, there was a lot of screaming and shock from the crowds. Then there was silence, and I observed all the unique totality features that I had read about. They were all there: The black hole in the sky instead of the sun; the spectacular corona, sun’s streamers, extending in space multiple times the sun’s diameter; the dark sky; Venus and the star Regulus; the 360-degree sunset.

About 30 seconds in, I sat on the ground, always staring at the sun, thinking that it was very like what I had imagined based on the photos I had seen – albeit at higher clarity.

Over the next 60 seconds, the visual experience became an emotional one. My brain was trying to comprehend what my eyes were witnessing. It was weird. Weird in a “I’ve never seen anything like that I my life” way. Weird in a “How can the sun possibly look like that” way. Weird in a “I am exposed to the solar system” way. It was intense – even if I didn’t realize it at the time. I was way, way outside my comfort zone. It was like floating in space, looking at the eye of God.

At about 90 seconds in, I was overtaken by the emotions and started crying. I just sat there, on the ground, still, not even looking at the sun, as totality ended and the sunlight returned.

Looking back, I now realize why eclipse chasing is so popular. You get to travel to new places, it requires months-long preparation, it brings people together, it offers a lot of drama until the last minute, and it has a beautiful climax. For me, I would place that emotional experience of that eclipse second only to the birth of my daughters.

There exists is a full-scale replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, TN. However, the experience when you visit it is nothing like the experience of visiting the original one that is built atop the Acropolis in Athens. It’s not as emotional. This is partly due to knowing that the Nashville Parthenon is a replica; but I think a stronger reason is because it’s built on a flat field. It just sits there. There is no climbing the Acropolis; there is no effort involved. In contrast, when you reach the Athens Parthenon you have this feeling that you “earned” it: you did the effort of climbing the Acropolis, and the Parthenon is your reward.

This combination of effort and reward is what makes total solar eclipses such a satisfying experience.

Travelling on a Backpack

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 21:03:00 +0000

Last month I went on a 10-day trip to Asia (Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong). I wanted to test whether it was possible to have only a carry-on backpack with me instead of a suitcase, in order to minimize hassle and airport delays.

I've been using for a few years now a backpack that also has wheels, so that I can either have it on my back or wheel it around. It has worked beautifully.

For this trip, here are the items I carried inside that backpack:

Electric Toothbrush (no need for toothpaste – abrasion is enough to clean the teeth)
Electric Shaver (so that is passes through airport security)
Bath sponge (can't shower without one)
Plastic bag (for dirty laundry)
Pen
Sunglasses
Printed book (you know, for reading)
Mini-backpack (ultralight, holds the camera and basic gear throughout the day)

iPhone 5 + USB charger + cable
iPhone 4 + cable (backup phone as I regularly use sim cards from 3 countries)
iPad + USB charger + cable
MacBook Air 13” + charger
2x Headphones (earpods for walking + sound isolating, to help with aircraft noise)
Fitbit + charging cable
iPhone 5 case battery + its USB charger + cable (holds an extra iPhone charge and gets me through the day)
External USB battery + its charger + cable (holds 5 iPhone charges or 1 iPad charge, great for long flights, airports, and usage throughout the day)
dSLR Camera (Canon 500D) + remote shooting cable
3 camera batteries + charger
2 lenses (10-22mm & 18-55mm) + polarizer
Gorillapod (amazing mini tripod that grabs anywhere but can be folded for travel)
4-socket power strip + adapter (so that I only need a single available wall socket and a single adapter to charge all my gear)

5x boxers
5x socks
5x t-shirts
1x short pants
1x long pants

Plus whatever I am wearing at the time.

With this stuff inside the backpack, it weighs 12kg and I have about 4 liters of space left for some gifts to bring back home.

Finally, I will rely on local amenities on my destination. For example, I will buy sunscreen from local shops, and use the hotel facilities to do laundry every 4 days, or iron the clothes.

The Case for Scientific Skepticism

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 17 May 2014 11:15:00 +0000

The reason scientific skepticism developed is that the world is complicated. It’s subtle.

Everybody’s first idea isn’t necessary right. Also, people are capable of self-deception. Scientists make mistakes, theologians make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes. It’s part of being human.

So the way to avoid mistakes, or at least reduce the chance you’ll make one, is to be skeptical. You test the ideas. You check them out by rigorous standards of evidence.

I don't think there is such a thing as a received truth. But when you let the different opinions debate, when any skeptic can perform his or her own experiment to check some contention out, the truth tends to emerge. That’s the experience of the whole history of science.

It isn't a perfect approach, but it’s the only one that seems to work.

Except from Carl Sagan's Contact

A Brief History of Painting

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 23 Feb 2014 12:13:00 +0000

In this post I try to decipher the seemingly inexplicable art of painting, by identifying the original ideas used by the artists. For the purposes of this discussion, by “painting” in this text I refer to western painting between 1200 and 1900 AD.

As an electrical engineer I know next to nothing about art history. I was never educated in art beyond high school classes, my own reading on the subject, and discussions with more knowledgeable friends.

For over 10 years I was visiting art museums, ever since I left Greece in 2003 for the US. In my travels I got to visit many major museums in the US and Europe. While I was admiring the aesthetics of what I was seeing, I never bothered to explain it in a scientific manner, i.e. attempting to establish rules and patterns that would explain the creative choices made by the artists. I had assumed it couldn't be done.

A couple of years ago I got to read Ernst Gombrich’s “The Story of Art”. It was a revelation for me, because suddenly all the art I had been witnessing in the past few years suddenly made sense. It turns out that aesthetics had not been the main worry of the painters at the time. Rather, they were problems solvers in a similar way that scientists today are problem solvers: They were faced with immense challenges and the artists tried for centuries to tackle them.

This post attempts to explain why painting evolved the way it did. How did we start from the religious paintings of the 12th and 13th century and how did we progress through the Renaissance and into the Impressionists?

I spent the last few months researching more books and finding the right paintings that exhibit the reasonable progression I was looking for. I did not find it. I believe this happened mostly for two reasons. First, as with any complex subject, the evolution of painting is nonlinear. Second, I have yet to come across an art history book that is written for an engineering audience (i.e. in a clear, objective manner). This is why I never found that the museum labels attempting to provide information next to paintings ever provided any useful insight to me.

Had I picked paintings from all around the world, it wouldn’t have be much help since most people (including myself) do not have access to multiple museums. However, there are a handful of museums around the world with collections so vast that they have almost every aspect of the history of painting I was looking for.

The 19 paintings I have picked to go through the story of painting can all be found in the National Gallery in London. Note that these are not necessarily the most famous works of art of the museum, just the ones that are most relevant to our story.

So, let’s begin our journey in time.

Forget every painting you’ve ever seen in your life.

Tabula rasa.

If you were an alien visiting earth around 1200 AD, this is typical of what you would see painted around Europe:

1. Virgin and Child enthroned by Margarito d’Arezzo (1262), Rm51

At the time the church was triumphant in people’s lives. They rule the social gatherings; they are one of the main activities in the everyday life. A church was usually the only stone building in the town. And renaissance hasn’t kicked in yet, so science is still in the dark ages. God is almighty and the Bible is a holy book by which everyone abides.

The paintings at the time reflect this reality. They are writing, in pictures. They are two-dimensional cartoon caricatures, transferring almost word-for-word the stories in the Bible. People are afraid to mess with God, and they try to convert to images as faithfully as possible whatever they read. Everything is carefully placed, telling the same biblical stories, and everything is 2D.

Things start changing for the first time with the appearance of Giotto:

2. Pentecost by Giotto di Bondone (1310), Rm51

Giotto was one of the first artists that attempted to infuse some realism into his work. While that painting looks mostly flat, notice the ceiling: Giotto is trying to include perspective in his work, resembling how a real ceiling would look like. Giotto tries to represent depth on a flat surface.

Artists are now striving to improve the sense of depth on paintings. While this three-dimensionality is something we are used to it today, back then it was not obvious at all how one could achieve that effect.

3. The Wilton Diptych (1395), Rm53

Around the year 1400 artists started being able to handle depth better. In order to achieve perspective, two main effects must be present: First, objects should get smaller the farther they are away from the observer. Second, for an object at a given distance, lengths along the line of sight should be shorter than the lengths perpendicular to the line of sight. This is called foreshortening, and it is displayed in the above painting beautifully in the sitting angels next to the Madonna. It provides a 3D feeling of the person, breaking away from the 2D images of the past.

This change did not happen by accident – it was led by a big technological advance of the era: optics. People started to master geometry, light rays and lenses. The first eyesight correction lenses appear in Europe around that time, and this is also evident in paintings such as the Wilton Diptych. We are getting closer to solving the problem of depth on a flat surface.

At the same time, artists realize that in order to break away from the tradition of the church, they need to find new themes. The painters, armed with the tools of perspective geometry, start to paint fragments of the real world. Painting is no longer just for bringing the Bible into life, but displaying life.

4. The Battle of San Romano by Paolo Ucello (1438), Rm54

Uccello was obsessed with perspective. In the above work (which consists of two more parts), depicting a battle between the Florentine and Sienese forces in 1432, he spent days to succeed in foreshortening the man on the ground on the bottom left. He occupies as much vertical space as horizontal, despite that he should appear twice as long from head to toes than along his arms. Also notice the dropped pieces of weapons on the ground, all pointing in the same vanishing point, as well as the smaller people and horses in the background. This one of the first paintings that depict perspective so strongly.

Now take a look at this next painting:

5. The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck (1434), Rm56

You should immediately observe a vast difference in the style, and a much more realistic depiction of people and environments compared to the previous paintings. This was caused by another technological advance: oil painting. Up until that point in time artists (mainly in the Italians) were using eggs as the main ingredient of their paint (Egg Tempera). They would mix eggs with colored pigments to create the different colors. The method, used by almost everybody up to that point, has two major drawbacks. First, Egg Tempera dries fast and there is no time to waste when painting. Second, it is thick and does not allow fine details on the canvas.

Van Eyck, coming from the Netherlands, discovered a method for using oil to paint on wood. This has dramatic effects in the types of paintings that are possible. In the Arnolfini Portrait, the slow drying oil allows Van Eyck plenty of time to meticulously paint every detail of the couple, capturing as much of reality as possible, In addition, the thin structure of oil allows him to painting minute details, particularly the hair of the dog in front of the couple. Van Eyck has also mastered the technique of perspective, creating a very realistic painting, a “hole in the wall”. (If you zoom into the mirror in the wall behind the couple, you can even see Van Eyck’s reflection painting the couple).

By Van Eyck’s time, the mid-15^th century, the problem of depth was pretty much resolved. However, the challenge of depicting realistic people on a canvas remains unsolved. Looking at the Arnolfini Portrait, the people look detailed but not realistic. They are more like wooden statues rather than breathing and living people. Furthermore, there is the problem of harmony: how do you place people and objects in a canvas so that the overall impressive is aesthetically pleasing and doesn’t look awkward?

The next painting illustrates the challenging nature of these problems.

6. Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian by Piero del Pollaiolo,(1475), Rm57

This painting handles perspective well. But, there are significant issues with the realism of the people and their placement. The people (Pollaiolo probably used the same person painted in different positions) still look like wooden statues. While their bodies are more realistic than what we’ve seen until now, they feel fake. Also, Pollaiolo, like most of his contemporaries, is struggling to place them in the frame in a harmonious manner. He is trying to form a pyramid, and in order to provide some complexity he flips the orientation of the two corner-most archers (one is facing forward, the other backward). He does the same with the two archers in the front and middle, who reload their bows. However the final result is less than satisfying. Furthermore, the background feels disconnected with the foreground action.

The problem of the realistic human body and the problem of their harmonious placement were obsessing the artists of the time. Year after year, the artists would sit down and discuss with each other in their workshops, trying different things, struggling to find solutions to these issues that prevented painting from reaching perfection. Yet these problems would remain unsolvable for another 30 years.

In their attempts to reach perfection, the Italians wanted to break away of the old traditions of the church themes. They wanted to be more like the ancient Romans and Greeks, which achieved perfection in sculpture almost 2,000 years before. “We should be as good as the ancients”. And so the themes start shifting away from the church try to gain inspiration from the ancients.

This is the renaissance, the rediscovery of the ancient perfection. The first famous proponent of this shift is Botticelli.

7. Venus and Mars by Sandro Botticelli (1485), Rm58

Botticelli was the first to solve the harmony problem, by carefully placing the people in the canvas, His most famous work that exhibits this effect is the Birth of Venus, but it is also evident in the painting above. The position of Mars and Venus along the canvas feels natural, filling the space without awkward spots. Their arms feel naturally placed. Botticelli has also improved the anatomy of the bodies, bringing them closer to reality.

And yet, even Botticelli cannot solve the wooden statue problem. The people still don’t look real, even though Botticelli tries to tackle the problem by the exquisite details in the drapery of Venus’ dress and the curly hair in both lovers. He sacrifices some accuracy in favor of life-likeness, but despite his attention to detail, just like Van Eyck and Pollaiolo, he doesn’t succeed.

The solution to the realism problem though was just around the corner.

The 16^th century is considered by many to be the greatest period in the history of art. Driven by scientific advances (mastering geometry and the science of perspective, as well as the anatomy of the human body), for the first time humans succeeded in portraying other humans on a flat surface in a realistic manner.

The man who solved the problem was Leonardo da Vinci.

8. Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci (1508), Rm57

Leonardo barely completed 10 paintings in his lifetime. He painted the Virgin of the Rocks twice though: one painting can be found in the Louvre in Paris and the other in the National Gallery in London.

Hundreds of people attempted to solve the wooden statue problem for human figures. Van Eyck in his Arnolfini portrait spent huge amount of time attempting to replicate every little detail of the real world onto his canvas. Botticelli in his Venus and Mars work tried to make more anatomically accurate bodies, and by adding wavy hair in his subjects and draperies in their clothing. But none of these ideas worked. The more they attempted to mimic reality, the more they failed.

And here lies Leonardo’s genius: he realized that in order for a human body to appear more realistic, you must paint it less accurately. You have to leave something for the imagination. If you add too many details, it feels more fake.

The most critical elements in a human face are the eyes and the mouth. Leonardo introduced his sfumato technique, whereby he didn't draw these elements with clear lines, but with a foggy style, introducing shadows around the edges. This is very apparent in the Mona Lisa, but also in the Virgin of the Rocks:

Unlike Botticelli and van Eyck, Leonardo painted the eyes and mouth of the Madonna with foggy edges instead of clear outlines. This lets our mind add a sense of realism and motion: it is just enough detail our brains to make it real.

The Virgin of the Rocks is a prime example of solving all the major problems that plagued painters for centuries: it has a harmonic placement of bodies; it adds a natural third dimension via mastering the laws of perspective; and it includes realistic human bodies that look and feel like real people.

(It is interesting that the ancient Greeks utilized similar logic when building the Parthenon, the so-called optical refinements. They realized that for a building to appear perfect, it has to be slightly imperfect. That’s why the Parthenon has subtle curves, such as the columns being thicker in their middle and the floor being concave in the center of the building. As with Leonardo, to achieve perfection, one has to take into consideration the physiological effects of human brain perception).

Once Leonardo’s method appeared, it gained immediate acceptance and was copied successfully by numerous artists.

9. The Garvagh Madonna by Raphael (1510), Rm8

Raphael arrived in Florence when the titans Leonardo and Michelangelo reigned supreme, and yet he developed his own style and produced works on par with theirs. He perfected the placement of bodies, the harmony in a painting, and he put together the most astonishing compilations. His Madonna paintings defined her face for the ages to come (much like Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam defined the face of God as an old bearded man). He also dared to break away from the tradition of static, strict religious paintings and arranged them in playful and more complicated ways, something that was unimaginable until a few years before.

10. Ariadne and Bacchus by Titian (1520), Rm12

This is another example of the perfected painting techniques that appeared in the first half of the 16^th century. It depicts the scene when Ariadne, being abandoned by Theseus on the island after helping him getting through the Minotaur’s maze (his ship is seen in the left edge sailing away), wakes up to find Bacchus (the God Dionysus) jumping off his chariot, having fallen in love with her. The painting is divided in two parts, the top left triangle with the sky and the sea, and the bottom right that shows Bacchus’ company. The painting is alive, natural, harmonious, and pleasing.

11. Adoration of the Kings by Jan Gossaert (1515), Rm14

This is again a Northern painter, as indicated by the cleaner lines compared to the Italian artists. However this painting is a true “hole in the wall”, with incredible 3D perspective and vibrant colors. Harmony is again achieved in the placement of the people, angels and animals, creating a spectacular arrangement.

By the year 1520 people thought that painting had peaked. It had solved all the major problems, mastering perspective, harmony, and realism. People thought that art was finished. How could one surpass the achievements of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and the other masters?

Now artists were faced with a new problem. Is there anything that they could differently to create the next generation of paintings?

Here are a few ideas that people attempted.

12. St. George and the Dragon by Tintoretto (1555), Rm9

Tintoretto took the much-painted story of St. George killing the dragon, and twisted it by having the dragon fight in the background and the fleeing princess dominant in the foreground, also adding a spectacular apocalyptic sky.

13. Virgin and Child with Saints by Parmigianino (1540), Rm2

Parmigianino decided to take further liberty (almost heretical) with the concept of the Madonna and Jesus. He painted a strange Madonna, with elongated neck and arms, while Christ and St. John are playing and disrespectfully ignoring her. These decisions would have been unthinkable in the pre-Leonardo era.

14. The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger (1533), Rm4

This is one of my favorite paintings. Holbein decided to create photorealistic portraits, and his original idea was to infuse them with personality, providing information to the beholder. He also chose non-religious themes and unconventional placement of his subjects. In the Ambassadors he added numerous clues, including scientific instruments, a globe of the earth and another globe of the skies, books and notes, and a cross to signify the people’s mortal nature hidden in the top left corner. Most impressive of all is the anamorphic skull in the bottom part that only looks correct when the painting is viewed from a bottom right location.

15. A Windmill by the River by Jan van Goyen (1642), Rm16

Van Goyen tried something even more radical: he completely removed human subjects from his paintings, depicting landscapes and the complex Dutch skies. This is one of the first paintings that does not include any people.

16. Self portrait at the age of 63 by Rembrant (1640), Rm23

Here we have Rembrandt, who, armed with Leonardo’s fuzziness idea, took it to the next level by sacrificing even more accuracy for life-likeness. His portraits are by no means photorealistic, and yet they are warm and natural, creating the impression that we know these people very well.

17. A Young Woman Seated by Johannes Vermeer (1670), Rm26

Vermeer chose yet another path: instead of painting religious topics or impressive scenes, he opted to paint everyday life moments. In this work it’s just a young lady playing her piano. Almost all of his paintings show the same two rooms and the same people.

18. The Experiment with the bird in the air pump (1768), Rm34

As I've mentioned before, this is my favorite painting in the museum. Notice that the year is 1768, well into an era that science and technology started entering normal people’s lives. This is the middle of the 18th century. Newton, the founder of modern science, had lived the century before. Galileo, too. This is the era that marks the beginnings of science, which will lead to the industrial revolution and then onto the modern world.

The painting depicts a scientific experiment. These air pump devices were common in the 18th century. Scientists would use them to demonstrate that a candle's fire goes off after the air is removed, or that it is impossible to hear a ringing bell in vacuum. Joseph Wright chooses here a much more powerful experiment: a bird is placed in the chamber, and as the air is removed the bird starts suffocating, flapping around. The operator is looking at us, as if he needs our opinion: "Should I go ahead and remove all the air and see the air dying, or should I put the air back?"

This is an era where the physicists are still called natural philosophers, because physics is just starting to form as a science. It is the first time that science starts affecting people's lives, pulling them out of the middle ages.

How to communicate science though? Most people are still illiterate, and they can barely read. Communication media are extremely limited. Thus, Joseph Wright chooses to prepare a painting about science.

This painting is one of the earliest depictions of modern science in art.

These last few examples demonstrate that for the next 300 years after the “peak” of the early 1500s, artists were afraid to break from the tradition of the masters. This period lasted way too long, and it posed a new problem: was there another new way to paint, or should the artists be satisfied with minor tweaks upon the perfection that was achieved earlier?

The movement that finally broke the tradition was impressionism.

19. Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh (1888), Rm45

Impressionists painted not an actual, realistic image of the real world, but rather its impression, i.e. how it feels to the beholder. The shapes depicted resemble real world objects more loosely than ever before. The artists paint the idea of an object, rather than the object itself.

Today we are used to the existence of the impressionist paintings. However back in the 19^th century impressionists were considered crazy and were disrespected because they dared to break away from the traditional rules of painting set in the renaissance. Van Gogh, famously enough, never managed to sell a single painting in his lifetime.

Today, however, impressionism is regarded as one of the finest moments in human art history, exactly because it is the culmination of multiple unconventional ideas about painting. No one before the impressionists dared to paint something that deviated from reality, as the purpose of painting was to replicate the realism of the world around us.

This, of course, begs the question: why did impressionism arise all the sudden in the 19^th century? Why that particular period in time? What triggered its explosion?

The answer is, once again, a technological one:

Photography.

Photography was invented and developed in the first half of the 19^th century. Suddenly, painting was in a huge crisis: photographs captured the real world in perfect detail and with great ease. There seemed no reason to paint anymore. If the purpose of painting was to capture the real world, photography could do that much better.

Only after photography replaced painting as the recording medium of the visual world did the artists finally break free from the traditional rules and purposes of painting. There was no pressure anymore to try to paint a realistic vision of the world. And thus, impressionism naturally sprung as a new direction of painting, driven by the idea that an artist no longer had to be realistic.

Our journey concludes with this fine example on how technology affects art.

Epilogue.

Painting continued well into the 20^th century, entering the modern era. However I cannot make sense of modern art. It is much more random, driven by impulses rather than from reason. I have not found a coherent explanation yet.

The history of painting is a tremendously complex endeavor. All I have done in this story is to illustrate a pattern that permeates some major works of art. It is nowhere near being a complete explanation of the history of all painting around the world, something that is probably impossible. Painting (or any expression of human intellect, for that matter) is as complex as the human nature itself.

All images retrieved from Wikipedia,

BBC's Sherlock

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 23:14:00 +0000

BBC's Sherlock, a modern re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes, is probably the best British series out right now. It just completed its third season, and there are only 3 movie-long episodes per season.

The series in itself is excellently produced, and appeals to people that have never had any interaction with the original Sherlock Holmes canon from Conan Doyle's stories. However, there is a hidden layer underneath the series - a level of information visible to the original Sherlock readers.

The genius of the series is that it echoes the original stories, without trying to copy them, but always being respectful of them. This is apparent in the first episode of the series, "A Study in Pink", which echoes the very first Sherlock story "A Study in Scarlet".

In the original Conan Doyle story (set around 1880), Watson hands his watch over to Sherlock, who deduces the following information just by looking at the watch:

SHERLOCK: There are hardly any data. The watch has been recently cleaned, which robs me of my most suggestive facts. Subject to your correction, I should judge that the watch belonged to your elder brother, who inherited it from your father.

JOHN: That you gather, no doubt, from the H. W. upon the back?

SHERLOCK: Quite so. The W. suggests your own name. The date of the watch is nearly fifty years back, and the initials are as old as the watch: so it was made for the last generation. Jewellery usually descends to the eldest son, and he is most likely to have the same name as the father. Your father has, if I remember right, been dead many years. It has, therefore, been in the hands of your eldest brother.

JOHN: Right, so far. Anything else?

SHERLOCK: He was a man of untidy habits,--very untidy and careless. He was left with good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some time in poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally, taking to drink, he died. That is all I can gather.

Here is how Sherlock explains his deduction to the surprised Watson. This is some of Conan Doyle's finest work:

When you observe the lower part of that watch-case you notice that it is not only dinted in two places, but it is cut and marked all over from the habit of keeping other hard objects, such as coins or keys, in the same pocket. Surely it is no great feat to assume that a man who treats a fifty-guinea watch so cavalierly must be a careless man. Neither is it a very far-fetched inference that a man who inherits one article of such value is pretty well provided for in other respects.

It is very customary for pawnbrokers in England, when they take a watch, to scratch the number of the ticket with a pin-point upon the inside of the case. It is more handy than a label, as there is no risk of the number being lost or transposed. There are no less than four such numbers visible to my lens on the inside of this case. Inference,--that your brother was often at low water. Secondary inference,--that he had occasional bursts of prosperity, or he could not have redeemed the pledge. Finally, I ask you to look at the inner plate, which contains the key-hole. Look at the thousands of scratches all round the hole,--marks where the key has slipped. What sober man’s key could have scored those grooves? But you will never see a drunkard’s watch without them. He winds it at night, and he leaves these traces of his unsteady hand.

Now, in the modern Sherlock setting, Watson hands him over his cell phone instead of a watch. Here are Sherlock's deductions, echoing the original story:

I know you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him – possibly because he’s an alcoholic; more likely because he recently walked out on his wife.

When the time comes to explain how he figured this out, Sherlock explains later in the episode:

SHERLOCK: Your phone. It’s expensive, e-mail enabled, MP3 player, but you’re looking for a flatshare – you wouldn’t waste money on this. It’s a gift, then. Scratches. Not one, many over time. It’s been in the same pocket as keys and coins. The man sitting next to me wouldn’t treat his one luxury item like this, so it’s had a previous owner. Next bit’s easy. You know it already.

JOHN: The engraving.

Harry Watson
From Clara
xxx

SHERLOCK: Harry Watson: clearly a family member who’s given you his old phone. Not your father, this is a young man’s gadget. Could be a cousin, but you’re a war hero who can’t find a place to live. Unlikely you’ve got an extended family, certainly not one you’re close to, so brother it is. Now, Clara. Who’s Clara? Three kisses says it’s a romantic attachment. The expense of the phone says wife, not girlfriend. She must have given it to him recently – this model’s only six months old. Marriage in trouble then – six months on he’s just given it away. If she’d left him, he would have kept it. People do – sentiment. But no, he wanted rid of it. He left her. He gave the phone to you: that says he wants you to stay in touch. You’re looking for cheap accommodation, but you’re not going to your brother for help: that says you’ve got problems with him. Maybe you liked his wife; maybe you don’t like his drinking.

JOHN: How can you possibly know about the drinking?

SHERLOCK: Power connection: tiny little scuff marks around the edge of it. Every night he goes to plug it in to charge but his hands are shaking. You never see those marks on a sober man’s phone; never see a drunk’s without them.

The watch/phone analogy here is one of the most glaring examples. However, every episode is filled with dozens of little details that have been pulled from the canon.The genius of the series is that they choose the more interesting and relevant stuff from the original stories and adapt them to the modern world.

We all change

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 17:05:00 +0000

We all change.
When you think about it, we are all different people, all through our lives.
And that's OK, that's good, so long as you remember all the people you used to be.

These are the final words of the latest Doctor in Doctor Who, the TV show about the humanoid alien that every so often regenerates instead of dying, changing body, face, and character, but retaining the memories of all his previous incarnations.

The words fit perfectly in the context of the story of the show, spoken right before the Doctor's latest regeneration.

But they resonated deep within me, because I can view the various phases of my life in a similar fashion.

We often talk with the Wife about our experience in the US, where we lived in California for 5 years. We have the photos, the videos, the memories. And yet it often feels like these were the lives of different people. We know it was us - but it was a different us.

Just like the Doctor, we seem to have been different people back then. Different habits, different jobs, different friends. Most notably, different characters.

When I move cities, countries, jobs, I change. I am becoming a slightly different person, but keeping all the memories of the past experiences. I was too young to realize that earlier. But now, almost 10 years since I left Greece for the first time, I have a much better perspective.

And that's OK. Change is good. I don't mind being a different person every so often. But now, more than ever, I realize the importance of remembering all the people I used to be.

Η Ελληνική κουλτούρα της Τιμής

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 22:30:00 +0000

Στο πιο σημαντικό βιβλίο που ίσως έχω διαβάσει, το Guns Germs and Steel, ο Jared Diamond αναφέρει πως η εξέλιξη μιας χώρας είναι άρρηκτα συνδεδεμένη με το γεωγραφικό της περιβάλλον, ώστε η τωρινή της κατάσταση να μπορεί να ερμηνευθεί με βάση τη γεωγραφία της.

Την Ελλάδα συγκεκριμένα δεν την αναφέρει. Εδώ και αρκετά χρόνια έψαχνα αυτό το συνδετικό κρίκο μεταξύ της γεωγραφίας της Ελλάδας και της σημερινής της θέσης και κουλτούρας.

Έτυχε να διαβάσω αυτό το απόσμασμα από το νέο βιβλίο του Αρίστου Δοξιάδη, Μισή Μεσαία Τάξη, όπου αναφέρει για τα στελέχη επιχειρήσεων σε αντίθεση με τους ελεύθερους επαγγελματίες:

"Σημαντικό, όμως, είναι αυτό που λείπει από την ελληνική διαδικασία σχηματισμού της μεσαίας τάξης. Λείπουν οι εταιρείες, που απασχολούν στελέχη σε ιεραρχίες που όλο και βαθαίνουν, απαιτούν νέες δεξιότητες, γίνονται πιο παραγωγικές και δίνουν καλύτερες αμοιβές. Σε όλο τον αναπτυγμένο καπιταλισμό αυτά τα στελέχη ήταν η κατεξοχήν μεσαία τάξη, και όχι μόνον αριθμητικά. Ο τρόπος εργασίας και σταδιοδρομίας τους αποτελούσε το πρότυπο της τάξης.

Αντίθετα, στην Ελλάδα το πρότυπο της τάξης ήταν ο δικηγόρος: ανεξάρτητος, σ’ ένα δικό του μικρό γραφείο, κυνηγά μόνος τον πελάτη, τη βγάζει το πρωί στα καφενεία των δικαστηρίων. Δεν δίνει λογαριασμό σε κανέναν, εκτός από το λογαριασμό του στην τράπεζα, που κυμαίνεται χρόνο με το χρόνο ανάλογα με τις δουλειές."

Γιατί όμως στην Ελλάδα επικράτησε η δεύτερη μερίδα της μεσαίας τάξης (του αυτόνομου), και όχι της εταρείας (της συνεργασίας)?

Η απάντηση σε αυτό το ερώτημα, αλλά ταυτόχρονα και η εξήγηση πολλών ιδιοτροπιών της ελληνικής κουλτούρας, δίνεται από τον Malcolm Gladwell στο Outliers. Το ονομάζει "Κουλτούρα της Τιμής" (Culture of honor):

“Cultures of honor tend to take root in highlands and other marginally fertile areas. If you live on some rocky mountainside, the explanation goes, you can't farm. You probably raise goats or sheep, and the kind of culture that grows up around being a herdsman is very different from the culture that grows up around growing crops. The survival of a farmer depends on the cooperation of others in the community. But a herdsman is off by himself. Farmers also don't have to worry that their livelihood will be stolen in the night, because crops can’t easily be stolen unless, of course, a thief wants to go to the trouble of harvesting an entire field on his own. But a herdsman does have to worry. He’s under constant threat of ruin through the loss of his animals. So he has to be aggressive: he has to make it clear, through his words and deeds, that he is not weak. He has to be willing to fight in response to even the slightest challenge to his reputation—and that’s what a “culture of honor” means. “It’s a world where a man’s reputation is at the center of his livelihood and self-worth.”

Δεν ξέρω αν υπήρχαν ιδανικότερες συνθήκες για να αναπτυχθεί μια τέτοια κουλτούρα κάπου αλλού εκτός από την τουρκοκρατημένη Ελλάδα των περασμένων αιώνων.

Organizing and preserving 10 years of digital photography

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 17:01:00 +0000

In the next month, it will be 10 year since I got my first digital camera, an Olympus C750UZ. Since then I went through a Canon S2 in 2007 and a dSLR Canon 500D/T1i in 2009. In 2008 I also introduced iPhone to my digital photography: first the 3G, then the 4, and now the 5.

I have always been organizing my photos using a nested file system, with folders inside folders. As long as it is done meticulously, such an hierarchical system is the best way for me to keep track of the photos (or any other type of digital media). Solutions like Everpix or simply a timelined photostream (like Dropbox) do not work for me, neither do keywords or tags. I need to be seeing a physical hierarchy.

My Photos folder has 170,000 files in it, and includes photos from the digital cameras and the iPhones. My root folders are organized by the period of my life: 2003-2008 US, 2008-2010 UK, 2010-2011 Greece, 2011-now UK. Inside each period I have event subfolders: Party at Mike's house, Walk in the Houses of Parliament, Parents visit, etc. All folders start with an ISO format date, e.g. 20130816 - Wife's Birthday, so that the alphabetical order automatically results in chronological order.

In addition, since I travel a lot, I have a separate root folder called Trips. In there I organize all the trips by location: USA, Europe, Exotic, etc., and then the (dated) event subfolders might be New York City, Florida, Chicago, etc.

Each event subfolder has a "Best of" folder in it. After each event, I go through all the photos and pick the best ones, typically 10% of the total number of photos. If it's a major event like my wedding or the trip to Maui, where I have 5000+ original photos per event, I might create another folder "best of best of" with the absolutely 1% best pictures.

Because of the 10 year anniversary, I decided to print 10 photo albums, one for each year, with my favorite pictures. I figured that if I don't do that now, I won't be doing it again due to the sheer amount of data collected. So, in the past couple of weeks I went through my whole photo library, all 170,000 photos, one by one, to pick the best ones. I picked about 2,000 of them. And after seeing my library with such a perspective, I reached some interesting conclusions.

The hierarchical folder system I curated in the past 10 years has served me extremely well: If I want to find a specific photo from a certain time, city or event, I can browse to it in a reasonable amount of time. I will stick to that system.
Almost none of the hand-picked photos are iPhone photos. Maybe 30 or 40, max, from 1,500 iPhone photos I captured per year in the last 6 years. Smartphone photos look great on the small smartphone screens, but as soon as you blow them up (I have a 27" monitor) the magic goes away. In the short term, they are good reminders of how I spent my time, but in the long term they are irrelevant, with a few notable exceptions.
I realized I want to print two types of photos: i) The "Artistic" ones, where I put the effort into taking a quality, artsy photograph. These are typically photos of landmarks, landscapes, objects, and more rarely people (which I may not even know well). ii) The "Candid" ones, which are not necessarily of great quality, but include memorable moments and people. These trigger feelings of past moment to me.
My plan to geotag and facetag all of my library failed. However, it *is* possible to manually tag the selected 2,000 photos. It still took me some time, but it was manageable.
I had to import my "best of" photos to Aperture for editing. The main reason is that some photos fall under more than one category (e.g. both candids and artistic), and also in original folder. It is hard to keep track and edit 3 or more files in the same way. I export everything out when I am finished though. I also LOVE seeing my photos on a map.

Then there is the issue of future-proofing my photos. They've been around for 10 years already. How can I make sure they'll be around for another 50 years?

There is a new Greek startup called longaccess that aims at preserving our digital lives. One of the founders has a nice post on how he migrated his photo library from iPhoto to Dropbox. I am not sure exactly how they plan to handle the photo archive issue, but here is what I will be doing.

First, I need a feature-rich application to edit and organize my photos and also to have features like geotagging and editing the same photo existing in multiple locations. That being said, I will simultaneously keep storing jpgs on the filesystem level while having an encrypted backup online.

I do not expect the jpg compatibility to be dropped from computers anytime soon (and by soon I mean decades). It is simple enough to be implemented everywhere, and its already been around for more than 20 years. (The same holds true for MP3).
Backing up is absolutely essential. The more time goes by, the more precious the photos become. They are irreplaceable if they get lost. I currently backup all my personal files to a NAS in the house and to an online backup service (in this case, my own FTP server at the office).

What I am missing right now is an automated way to link the two processes: having my photos in the feature-rich software, and then automatically exporting them at a filesystem level which can be backed up and accessed by the iPhotos and Lightrooms of year 2040.

Kids, revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 02:45:00 +0000

There is a not-so-visited spot along the river Thames that has majestic views of the Houses of Parliament. You get there by crossing the Westminster bridge right in front of Big Ben, and then, instead of turning left towards the London Eye where most tourists go, just make a right. There are about 100 times less people on that side.

We first visited London with the Wife in the summer of 2004 (little did we know at the time that we would return as residents to London 4 years later). We discovered that spot and took some really nice photographs with the Big Ben in the background, such as the one below.

I will return to that in a bit.

------

I got my first digital camera in 2003. When I got my first dSLR camera in 2009, I wanted to go back and revisit all my favorite places so that I had them in high-quality pictures.

When I got a subwoofer for the first time in 2011, I went back and re-listened to all my favorite songs. The added richness of the sound made me to want and re-experience the feeling of listening to a song right.

The same thing happened when I started to have access to HD content, sometime in 2007. As soon as some of my favorite movies were re-released in HD, I watched them again to experience them more fully.

When our twin girls were born last month, something happened that I never expected. That same urge of re-visiting experiences came back, only this time for life moments. I want to go back to my favorite places and re-live the experiences, but this time I want to do this with my kids. They enhance my experiences. It is a very strange, more real form of excitement.

And so, on the first "major" trip with the kids outside our home, we decided to revisit that spot on the Thames where we took one of our first photos in the city that our kids would be born. This time we had a much better camera and few more years and pounds on our backs.

9 years had passed.

It felt AWESOME.