I am … unhindered by talent

Regular readers here will likely remember various past posts extolling the virtues of Dagstuhl, this really wonderful computing research facility in Germany. I’ve been lucky enough to attend several seminars on the Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms in the past, and have taken (and posted) quite a few photos from those trips.

A few months ago I had the (totally) unexpected pleasure of being contacted by Christian Lindig, a member of Dagstuhl’s scientific staff, and asked if I would be willing to return to Dagstuhl for the specific purpose of taking photographs for them. They’re apparently in the process of re-doing all their brochures and such, and liked what they’d seen on Flickr.

As a result I’ve spent a very pleasant few days back at Dagstuhl in some gorgeous spring weather (I’ve only every been here in the winter before), enjoying the company of a fine group studying the Design and Analysis of Randomized and Approximation Algorithms. (They’ve been very patient with an intruder who always seemed to be waving a camera about, and for this I am grateful.)

I’ve taken something over 1,000 photos, with a few more planned for tomorrow morning before I leave. Some of the participants have asked if the photos will be made available. I have uploaded everything I’ve taken this week to my “events” account on Flickr, all under a Creative Commons license, which means that participants are welcome to download and use any that they wish, as long as they provide attribution. (Note that I am not, and can not, provide any sort of permissions from individuals photographed - that’s their right and prerogative. If you want to use someone here in a beer ad, you need to get their permission first.)

Where are they all?

• Everything I’ve taken this week is on my “events” account.
• I also have a Dagstuhl set on my “real” Flickr account that has some of my favorites (with cleaning, cropping, etc.) from my various visits to Dagstuhl. At the moment this set is heavy on shots from previous trips, but I hope to add more from this visit as time allows.
• Earlier this year I posted everything (without cleaning or editing) from the Jan/Feb seminar on Evolutionary Algorithms to my “events” account.

It’s not yet clear what all Dagstuhl may do with these, but they will contact anyone who is recognizable in a photograph for permission before using your image in any of their materials. If anyone objects to being included in these vast oceans of photos, please let me know and I’d be happy to remove the photo in question.

Thanks again to Christian for inviting me out to Dagstuhl, and to the Randomized and Approximate Algorithms group for being patient “hosts”. Enjoy the photos!

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We’ve dodged a fairly serious winter back in Minnesota while on sabbatical this year, and we’ve had no snow and very little cold weather over here in Colchester. In a fit of weird timing, however, we had something like an inch of big Bing Crosby stuff today. I’ve not actually be out of the house all day (trying to get ready for EuroGP), but WeatherGirl walked into town and back this morning, and took a ton of cool photos (including the one above, and lots of neat self-portraits).

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We all arrive at Dagstuhl on Sunday night for the week’s workshop. After a long day of traveling we enjoy some of Dagstuhl’s exceptional food, meet with folks, and catch up.

Above is the conversation during dinner tonight. It’s not the sharpest photo I’ve ever taken, but I think it captures the spirit of the room quite nicely.

And then we (at least quite a few of us) get to work. The photo below was taken at 9:30pm (probably 2.5 hours after the previous one), and there were quite a few people in this lab at the time. And there’s another lab elsewhere in the facility, and the library, and people’s rooms. I’m sure that lots of folks were also hanging out in the coffee room or playing pool, but there were a lot of people working on a Sunday night as well.

It helps if you enjoy your work, and most of these folks are extraordinarily interested in what they’re studying.

While I’m at Dagstuhl this year I’m going to try (amidst all the “real” work) to capture something of what the workshop is like and, more generally, what it is to do (computer) science. This is hard because it’s not flashy high-action bull-riding kind of work, but it’s important, significant work and deserves to be documented. I’m just going to have work harder at it.

I’m also probably going to take more people pictures than I would be naturally inclined to. If anyone finds them self in a photo here and objects, let me know and I’d be happy to remove it.

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I can’t really imagine that anyone’s going to want one of these, but just in case…

As a Xmas present for our various family members we used Blurb.com to create a photo book of some of our images from 2007. But hey, you can join the family by purchasing one as well :-). It’s 127 photos on 38 pages, and they have a PDF preview so you can see what you’re getting into before you put your money down.

This was our first use of Blurb, and their software was pretty decent. Amazing, really, how easy it is these days to publish books that no one really cares about. It used to be hard to publish books no one cared about; they regularly gave people degrees for it.

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I wish I could say I’d taken this gem, but Imago gets all the credit.

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I first noticed this sign yesterday walking home after my morning walk with Sub-Evil Boy. Presumably they’ve had some big lorries follow their sat nav system and get stuck down the end of this little road. Can’t quite decide whether I think this is hilarious or sad. Perhaps both. (Geotagging it on Flickr was a pleasantly ironic experience as well.)

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To quote the photographer:

This is the Perris, Ca, 215 northbound south of perris blvd during the morning commute. This would normally be a bright time of the day, but this morning, traffic was a little stop and go due to the smoke from the local fires here in southern california.

A little understated, perhaps?

As awful as all this was, I have to wonder if this is what it will take to get people to take climate change seriously. Unfortunately even people who realize that we have a major problem on our hands are often overwhelmed by the thing, and tend to add it to the long list of Bad Things That Mostly Affect Someone Else (AIDS in Africa, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, even Shrub’s fiasco in Iraq) and change the channel.

This is particularly sad because climate change is one of those things that Americans can do something about quite directly. It’s pretty hard for me to make a major difference in a lot of situations (although that’s no excuse for not trying), but climate change is all about my behavior. I can drive less (or not at all). I can replace incandescent bulbs with CFs and turn them off when I leave the room. I can turn down the thermostat. I can support alternative energy programs. I can purchase carbon offsets. I can avoid buying produce that flew half way around the world. I can reduce, reuse, recycle. And if even some of the rest of you do the same, we make a significant difference. We probably won’t solve the problem by ourselves, but we can start the ball rolling, proving that there is support for change at the consumer (and voter) level.

It’s arguably one of the best examples of where “Think Globally, Act Locally” can really make a profound difference.

Unfortunately important things like not driving and skipping the raspberries flown in from remote lands comes at a personal inconvenience. This requires will which, sadly, is typically driven by fear. So maybe we need a few scares like this (along with tragedies like Katrina) to generate the kind of immediacy and fear necessary to get us out of our single-occupant SUVs.

Best hope we turn things around before the tragedy comes to your home, though.

Thanks to TonyGman for the great photo.

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This is a detail of an old public water fountain set in the wall of a “great house” here in Colchester. Apparently something like 9 houses were destroyed to make room for this monster, so perhaps the fountain was an attempt to assuage some guilt?

For those who would like a little context, WeatherGirl posted a nice shot of the whole fountain.

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Paul Rand is responsible for a number of iconic pieces of graphic design (e.g., the classic IBM logo), and this is a nice short film combining examples of his work with short snippets that I assume came from interviews with him. Some great quotes include

A work of art is realized
when form and content are indistinguishable.
When form predominates, meaning is blunted,
but when content predominates, interest lags.
But the genius comes in when both of these things fuse.

and

Don’t try to be original, just try to be good. That might sound naive, but it’s true.

There’s a neat bit where he goes over the “language of form”, listing important concepts like texture, shape, balance, and tension. It would be fun to sift through my photographs and look for a good examples of each of these. And probably revealing as well, since I strongly suspect some of his terms would be much better represented in my images than others.

Tip o’ the cap to Panopticist for the pointer via 37Signals.

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I just finished a long overdue upgrade of all the UnhinderedByTalent.com WordPress installs, so everyone’s all spiffy and shiny now.

The photo (from the Green Fair where we met the River Nene folks) is just there to fool you into believing this post actually had content :-).

Someone asked over on Flickr if I knew who this was. I didn’t have a clue who he was until the question prompted me to do my homework. You’re looking at Bob Breeks, the guitarist and singer for The Bad Terrorists, a band here in Colchester. They were played with (I’m assuming) reduced amplification at the fair, so you really couldn’t hear the vocals for crap, but the playing was quite fun.

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