Travel – Page 3 – The Curious Canuck

May 15, 2010

STS-132 Video coming

Just before I went to bed last night, I remembered that I had shot a video of the entire Atlantis launch.

Before I traveled down to Florida, I searched the video-sphere for very wide-angle shots of a shuttle launch. I wanted a video that captures what a person would actually see from the causeway. All of the videos I found were zoomed in to track the shuttle (which is great to see). I wanted a non-zoomed video that does not track the launch, but instead shows the entire launch sequence from a fixed zoom.

As a last-minute thought as I was packing, I brought my GoPro HD Motorsports Hero, which I had just purchased for in-car camera for racing. Before that, I was thinking about using my Canon 7D to record the video in 1080p HD, but as noted previously that would mean using only 2 megapixels of the 18 megapixels available. The HD Motorsport Hero does 1080p HD video, but is not zoomed. It is designed for in-car video. It has a very wide field of view.

Around T-5 minutes, I took out the HD Hero and snuck up to the security rope. I put down a book I brought for reading, and set up the camera on top. The HD Hero does not have a rear video screen, so I had no way to be sure that it was going to work. I worked out the left and right angle of view, as I could hold my hands at 90-degrees to line it up. But the vertical was complete guesswork.

Once I remembered about the video last night, I connected it up to my MacBook Pro and imported the video.

It was perfect!

It exactly captures what I wanted – the full launch to SRB separation all in one continuous view. It captures how fast the shuttle climbs. The video is not useful after SRB separation, as the camera could not pick up the SSMEs which do not produce a smoke trail.

I will need to crop down the video and clean up the audio, and then I will post the video later in the week.

May 15, 2010

Visiting Cocoa Beach

The day after the launch and I decided to stay in Cocoa Beach with Janice and Richard and relax.

Janice and Richard on their pontoon boat

In the morning, they took me out in their pontoon boat. It was really nice to be out on the water. It reminded me of being back in Nova Scotia. We motored past some really nice homes along the waterways. Along one of the waterways, we saw some dolphins swimming along! It was awesome! I asked Janice if people can swim in the water, but she advised against it because of the alligators. Oh, right. I forgot about that. It’s so strange to live in a place where you are at risk of being eaten.

As we cruised along, we saw a few pelicans, although not as many as Janice and Richard expected. Later, as we were returning home, we came across a grove of trees that were full of brown pelicans. They look so odd roosting like that – perched up on the branches but with big webbed feet.

Once we docked back home, we went out to the beach, eating lunch at Coconuts on the Beach.

Later in the afternoon, I went out on my own to do some more sightseeing. First I drove to the famous Ron Jon Surf Shop. It’s open 24-hours, although I can’t see that there is much business for selling surf boards at 2:43AM.

Janice suggested I go to the Dinosaur Store. I’m not much of a shopper, and don’t have a huge interest in dinosaurs, but it was close to Ron Jon’s so I went. I am very glad I did go. They had many fossils for sale, ranging from recent post-Ice Age artifacts stretching back into the unimaginable past. They had plant, animal and sea creature fossils. After looking around for at least 30 minutes, I finally decided to buy a fossil. It’s a 280 million year old fossil fern. I just stared at it, trying to imagine what it was like then (Permian Period), and then what it would be like in another 280 million years. It occurred to me that humans would not be around then – our species would evolve just as much as we evolved from the animals who would have feasted on this fern.

I bought the fossil because it really made me think. And also as a tool to think about my own life. Work has been so incredibly stressful in the past few months, it occurred to me that no matter what decisions I make, good and bad, none of it will matter in 300 million years. So why should I get so stressed?

Finally, I went to Lori Wilson Park, a maritime hammock. It’s a 32-acre area of what this part of Florida looked like before people started building. It was also very relaxing, and deep in the walking paths it is much cooler than the hot Florida sun on the nearby beach.

Janice, Richard and I finished the day having BBQ Ribs at Sonny’s Real Pit Bar-B-Q.

May 14, 2010

STS-132 Atlantis Launch

It’s all over and I’m in the 4-hour traffic jam leaving the causeway for Cocoa Beach. I’m overwhelmed and even a little melancholy – it all happened so fast did I miss anything?

I woke up at 5:00am. I was nervous about the traffic, so to be cautious, I left 90 minutes before the pick-up time in Titusville. I arrived with time to spare, so I went to a McDonald’s for pancakes. It wasn’t much, but it was all I could take. I was nervous and excited. I stopped and talked with some people who were working a 2-hour shift to keep people off private property with a view of the NASA facility. Miles of the roads through Titusville were lined with tape, parking areas and vendors setting up for the launch day. The radio was reporting they expected 300,000 people to view the launch – double the normal number.

I arrived at the pick-up point early, but there was already a very long line. It moved quickly and in 20 minutes I was on-board the bus.

Traffic to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) was slow. We were dropped off at 8:30am at the Visitors Center and had to be back in another line by 9:30 to board the same bus that would take us to the causeway viewing area. This strange drop-off and pick-up seemed to be so that the KSC Visitors Center security could check everyone before we were bussed to the causeway.

We arrived at the causeway around 11:30 – about 3 hours before launch. I got off the bus and all but ran to the rope to set up my chair. I was getting hungry so I chanced it that no one wold take my chair and ran to buy a hamburger, banana and a drink. I got my food before the 100+ foot line formed behind me.

The next 2.5 hours were spent baking in the Florida sunshine, testing out the lenses I rented from Lens Rentals Canada. When the count picked up at T-5 minutes, the crowd behind me stood up and everyone got very quiet. There were possibly as many as 17,000 people on the causeway and no one was talking.

At T-2 minutes, my heart was pounding – I was so excited.

T-1 minute – Oh My God, this is it.

T-11 seconds and I start the camera, trying to take some good photos without filling the buffer of the camera too soon. The buffer is only 14 full-size RAW photos, and I am shooting full-out at 8-frames per second. I wanted the better quality of the RAW, and the trade off was the small buffer.

Space Shuttle Main Engine Start. T-4 seconds

T-5 seconds and I can see the SSME – main engines starting. The view through the Canon 100-400mm L IS lens is amazing.

T-1, T-0 seconds and the shuttle disappears in the steam cloud from the sound suppression system. I paused shooting for a second to allow the buffer to clear while the shuttle was obscured.

When the vehicle climbed above the cloud, I held down the shutter button again for the most picturesque moments.

I was so engrossed in everything, I could not hear the NASA PA announcing the “Tower Clear” and “Roll Program” or the “Throttle Up” calls. I do remember hearing “Negative Return” – the point where the shuttle can no longer glide back to Kennedy for landing due to the height and velocity attained.

Space Shuttle clearing the tower. T+7 seconds

I was alternating between watching over the camera (watching and experiencing the event) and looking through the eye piece to take pictures. Once the shuttle was far enough away, it made more sense to focus on using the camera with the zoom lens as I could not see as much without binoculars.

It took a number of seconds for the sound to arrive from the launch. It started low, and not so loud. I guess that is because of the sound suppression system and because the thrust was focused at the ground. As the shuttle rose, the sound grew very loud with that crackling and popping noise you hear in good videos, but much stronger. The deep rumble of 7.4 million pounds of thrust lifting a 4.47 million pound (2000 ton) vehicle pounds the air – the forces at work are immense. The flames are so bright, even in the direct Florida sun – much brighter than I expected.

Solid Rocket Booster Separation. T+2 minutes 16 seconds

At T+2 minutes, I knew the Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) separation was moments away. I focused again (the lens was hunting a little for focus at this range), and was terrified I would miss it. Take some pictures, look up, take some pictures, look up. I could see the SRB separation with my own eyes, even though they were already at 150,000ft/46km. I could see them flame out and tumble through space; the vehicle was already above the standard definition for the edge of space. After that it was harder to focus the camera as the SSMEs do not produce smoke – only water vapour. All that was visible was the very bright dot of the vehicle accelerating away down-range.

After SRB separation, I was very disappointed that almost everyone around me started to pack up. It was only 2.5 minutes into an 8 minute climb to orbit, and I could still clearly see the bright light from the shuttle as it moved down-range. I could still see the light as the NASA PA announced Atlantis was already 290 km away. When else could one see a vehicle that is 290 km away and over 300,000 feet in altitude? Amazing!

I stayed in place trying to listen for the MECO (main engine cut-off) call, but the noise of everyone folding their chairs meant that I missed that important announcement – that the Atlantis climb was complete. I did hear the External Tank separation call right after MECO. At that point, they make only a minor adjustment to place Atlantis in orbit.

Today was so amazing, and overwhelming. And fleeting. All this preparation work to travel to see about 4 minutes of the climb to orbit.

There is no truly complete way to capture such a moment. Today is something I will treasure always.

May 12, 2010

Preparing for STS-132

On Friday, I will be attending the STS-132 Space Shuttle launch, the final scheduled flight of Shuttle Atlantis.

Over Christmas, Rosa and I talked about following our desires. Too often, I miss opportunities to do what I want to do because I don’t take the steps necessary to secure them. Out of inertia, I miss life passing by.

So I decided that I have wanted to watch a manned space launch. This desire has grown over the last year as I started reading more and more about the Apollo program. In North America, this means the Space Shuttle, as it is the only man-rated launch vehicle. Looking at the schedule, the STS-132 mission to the International Space Station was the best fit for my schedule and racing activities.

Once decided that I would go, I began to make plans.

There was a seat sale on Air Canada that covered the May launch window, so I immediately booked for May 13-17. That provides me more time to see the launch on the 14th, visit the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), and also account for any postponements or scrubs due to weather or other minor issues.

Next, I began to research how to get tickets for viewing. It turns out, there are three ways. The first way is to Twitter, which will enter my name into a lottery pool for the VIP viewing area that is not open to the public. Alas, I did not win a VIP ticket. Next, there is a tour operator that was accepting bookings. Third, tickets are also available from Kennedy Space Center.

The tour operator, Central Florida Tours (CFT) has exclusive access to a set number of tickets, and they start selling them before the KSC ticket sales start. CFT will pick you up at a designated spot, bus you to KSC, then bus you out to the causeway viewing area and return you at the end of the day. Other tour operators apparently get their tickets from CFT.

I bought tickets for the causeway (the nearest public viewing area – about 6 miles away from the launch) from CFT, which meant I was guaranteed to have a seat. The price is higher that directly from KSC. And the pick up for me is 7:00am in Titusville, which is very early, but others are being picked up in Orlando as early as 5:30am. The launch is 2:20pm.

I also waited to buy a ticket directly from KSC. It costs less and is more flexible from a timing point of view. Both include a 2-day pass to Kennedy Space Center, so I can see the museums.

The KSC tickets went on sale on a Thursday in April. However, the KSC ticket web page was not ready for the influx of people. On the day of the ticket sales, their web servers crashed. The sales were postponed from Thursday to Monday, and they moved to another server cluster would be able to handle the traffic. Everyone wants to get to see one of the final three launches. It is not likely that anyone will be getting in to see the final flight, as it will mostly be VIPs. It will be the end of the nearly 30-year flight program.

On following Monday, I tried again, but was not successful. There are only about 5,000 tickets for the causeway, and they were sold out in 20 minutes. So I will stay with the ticket I bought from CFT.

Next, I needed a place to stay. I waited too long and many of the hotels were already booked. I managed to get a room at the Super-8 in Titusville. I also contacted some dear friends that Rosa and I met during our trip to Eastern Europe over Christmas. They live in Cocoa Beach, about 30 minutes south. They were very amenable to have me stay with them in their guest suite. I am really looking forward to meeting them again – they were so good to talk with in December. I cancelled my Super-8 room. I also rented a car. Strangely, the price was higher when I tried to book through Ericsson‘s travel agency. I had assumed that there would be a corporate discount.

Now comes the part that I spent a lot of time thinking about and investigating. I want to capture this very special day somehow. I starting thinking about photography, but I also considered video. If I wanted to record video, then I would need a Canon 7D instead of my current Canon 40D. I spent hours and hours and hours investigating renting the 7D, lenses, microphones and tripods. I investigated rental agencies in Orlando, by mail in the US and also the Canadian alternatives.

After much consideration and playing with the finance numbers, I decided to buy the Canon 7D and sell some older equipment, such as the 40D. This will allow me to either take great photos or shoot full 1080p HD video. If I rented the 7D instead, then that money would be wasted as I did assume I would eventually move to the 7D. The money I would have spent on the rental of the 7D body instead could be spent on the purchase.

For the rest of the equipment, I continued to investigate all the options for rentals. In the end, the best price and convienence was through Lens Rentals Canada. I ordered a Canon EF 100-400mm L IS USM lens. According to the extensive research I’ve done on the web, lens that are longer risk being impacted by the turbulent, hot air of a sunny Florida afternoon. I rented a Canon EF-S 10-22mm wide angle zoom too. I have been thinking about this lens for some time now, but it is expensive – about $1000. By renting the lens, I can see if I like it. Unlike renting the 7D body, I am not sure about this lens, so renting first was a good idea. I was 100% sure I would eventually get the 7D.

I also rented a Gitzo aluminum tripod and video head. I am torn between wanting to video record the launch with the 7D (the reason I bought it in the first place), or taking still photos. A video would be a great record and I would not need to keep the camera to my eye. HD video is only about 2 megapixels. Stills will be higher quality (the 7D is 18 megapixels) but would mean I watch the launch through the video finder (or the back of the camera). With video, I would keep use the Live View feature and only need to glance over to just track the action.

I still don’t know what I will do.

The two lenses and the tripod arrived on Friday. On Monday, I bought an external microphone and a Kata backpack camera bag at Henrys.

To keep track of what to do and where to go, I joined the Facebook groups for the Kennedy Space Center and for the Attendees of Launch of ATLANTIS STS-132 May 14th 2010.

I also signed up for Twitter to follow information about ticket sales from KSC.

Looking today at the weather, NASA indicates that the weather is 70% for a launch. And the count-down clock has started.

I am so amazingly excited about this trip. I hope I don’t forget something. For our trips, Rosa has been there as a backup “fact-checker” to double check. This time, I’ll be alone as Rosa will be in ballet classes.

December 18, 2009

Last Work Day of the Decade

Today is the last work day of the decade for me. I’m still working in the office in Lab 9, as I have some work to complete before I leave on vacation. I end the decade only feet from the exact point where I started the decade.

Jan 1, 2000, at 12:00:01, I was here at work, in Lab 6, as part of Nortel’s Y2K task force. We were all carrying pagers, waiting by the phone and basically doing nothing. For me, it was a non-event, as our software had been updated in the months before, and patches sent out to all of our customers. At the exact moment of the new millennia, I was in the cafeteria, where Nortel had brought in some light snacks and (secretly) handed out glasses of champagne to anyone working to celebrate. I did wish I was downtown though – I’m sure it would have been quite a party.

At the start of the decade, the US elections were in full swing. I told anyone who would listen that Bush would set the US back by decades. Never did I expect that his performance after becoming president without winning the election would have been worse than I anticipated. Of course, no one could have expected 9/11, except for the US agents who specifically told Bush 4 weeks before that an attack against the US was being prepared. And who would have guessed that the US would have invaded a country who had nothing to do with the 9/11 tragedy, other than Donald Rumsfeld who said on 9/12 that the US should attack Iraq because “there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan“.

The year 2000 was also the start of the layoffs at Nortel. The earliest reference I can find is that they started in October 2000. This was my life for the next 9.5 years. I made it through the first year of layoffs before my entire team was cut 2 months after 9/11. I returned and worked for CDMA, dodging more than a dozen layoff rounds before being picked up in the Ericsson purchase a few months ago.

The time at Nortel was good in one respect. I was introduced to the love of my life at Nortel: a blind date over lunch in the Lab 6 cafeteria. Rosa and I talked for 2 hours that day, and we knew immediately that we had found who we were both looking for. Seven months later we got engaged in Paris, and on Jan 3, 2007, we married in Rome.

I’ve traveled more in the last 5 years than I had in my entire life. Rosa and I have visited Halifax, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Naples, Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice, Istanbul, Ankara, Athens, Warsaw, Krakow, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Jerusalem, Amman and London. In 2 days, we leave for our next trip: Berlin, Prague, Budapest and Vienna. Before Rosa and I met, I had also visited New York, Toronto, Montreal, Dallas. 2 years ago I had a business trip to Bangalore.

I seems like I have been racing for so long, but it was only in 2001 that I became a licensed marshal and 2003 before I received my race licence. I have raced in a 1971 Datsun 510 (“The Pumpkin”), 1991 Nissan NX2000, Nissan Sentra, Honda Civic, Formula-1600 and this year multiple Acura Integra Type-R’s. I also became a Secretary of the meet for 5 MCO Race Schools and 5 Ted Powell Memorial Race Weekends, including the first full race weekend at the new Calabogie Motorsports Park.

I’ve starting learning French, so I may become a bi-lingual Canadian. And I started to kayak.

I wonder what December 2019 will bring?

November 13, 2009

Added Germany trip details

I’ve finished writing the story of our trip to Germany.

Our trip story: http://myredbmw.net/travel/germany-july-2006/

Our gallery (protected): http://gallery.myredbmw.net/v/Travel/Germany2006/

I’ve finished writing the story of our trip to Germany.

Our trip story: http://myredbmw.net/travel/germany-july-2006/

Our gallery: http://gallery.myredbmw.net/v/Travel/Germany2006/

The Google Earth file from the trip: Germany 2006.kmz.

This was our last trip using a film camera. Later trips used a D-SLR, and the photos started to improve.

August 3, 2009

Added Spain trip details

I’ve finished writing the story of our trip to Madrid and Barcelona, Spain. All of the photos in our travel gallery are now captioned (don’t know how I missed doing that before).

Our trip story: http://myredbmw.net/travel/spain-2005/

Our gallery: http://gallery.myredbmw.net/v/Travel/Spain2005/

The Google Earth file showing our travels: Spain 2005.kmz.

I’ll add the Gallery links to the Google Maps later. I need to do some programming to allow me to add that data (as a CustomField) later.

Looking back at the photos I took during the trip, I am overall disappointed. I can see that I was very new at using the SLR (Canon Rebel 2000); often I did not know how to correctly set an exposure and ran on full-auto mode. The sensor in the camera had a hard time with the bright Spanish sky and a dark foreground. The film was then scanned and corrected as much as possible in Adobe Photoshop. The only pictures that I really like are the ones we took in Plaça de Catalunya. I sometimes wish I could retake the photos with the experience I have now.

July 31, 2009

Added England Trip details

I have completed the uploading of all of the London trip details. For each trip we have taken, I want to add some of the stories about what we saw, and what happened, plus our photos (protected gallery), and also I want to give a sense of where we were using Google Maps and Google Earth. I don’t have the Google Maps working on the gallery yet, but the GPS data is there in the metadata. I’ll have to write a tool in PHP or some other scripting language to allow me to convert the GPS data into Google Maps URLs. Maps are so fascinating to me.

Our trip story: http://myredbmw.net/travel/england-july-2009/

Our gallery: http://gallery.myredbmw.net/v/Travel/London2009/

Our Google Earth file: England 2009.kmz

June 22, 2009

Updated Paris Travel page

It’s taken a lot of effort, but I’ve completed the travel log for our trip to Paris in July 2005. It was our first trip together. In the evening of our first day, we got engaged while on the upper viewing platform of the Eiffel Tower.

I’ve added photos to show some of the locations; the photos are linked back to the Gallery. In the Gallery itself, I’ve added a new CustomField that holds the link to Google Maps, which shows where the pictures were taken. More about that change later; I had to do some source code editing.

I’ve also added links to the web sites for most of the major sites, or links to the wikipedia for more information.

Finally, I used Google Earth to create a downloadable map showing all of the sites we visited, as well as our hotel location and so forth.

I will eventually do all of the trips, but it took over a month for Paris, so it will be a long time to complete all of the other travel logs.

March 21, 2009

Things to See 1

Someday I will visit Japan and see: