Recommended Drinking

Hacker Pschorr Octoberfest. Not too fancy, not too hoppy. Not too exotic. Not too anything. Just delicious.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Bar Mitzvah

Translated from Hebrew, "bar mitzvah" means "man of good deeds". Little known fact: translated from the original Aramaic, it means "lazy cyclist with no self-discipline".

I have been working out. I have! A bunch of rides this week, a run, a gym day. Yesterday, my sore legs hauled my sorry ass around central Jersey, and believe it or not, I did an intervals workout.

Racing season is coming, inevitable as the tide, and I am going to suck. That's to be expected, after a summer of athletic torpor. However, it has occurred to me that I run the risk of sucking too much. Everyone in a 'cross race suffers, whether racing for first or for not-lapped. There exists an inflection point, though, where the suffering exceeds the fun, and I don't want to experience that abject misery.

Thus and therefore, I have been making a real effort to ride more. And when I do so, I ride hard. Because racing season is coming.

Yesterday, for the first time this year, I did one of my favorite fall workouts: two 20-minute periods of as-hard-as-sustainable, with a surge every minute. This workout is uncomfortable, frustrating, and as much mental as physical. It went about as well as could be expected.

Two minutes into the second interval, I was grinding along Canal Road when I spotted a cluster of cyclists hunched over a bike on the side of the road. It wasn't immediately clear what they were doing - whether they were taking a break, tending to a crash victim, who knows? - and there was a car behind me, so I didn't stop... at least not at first. But something didn't seem right.

When it was safe enough, I pulled a U-turn, rolled back to the group, and asked if they needed help. Their response was a chorus of heartfelt "oh, yes, thank you". Of the three, whose total age must have exceeded 200, one had flatted and none had spare tubes or tools. I found the offending staple lodged in her tire, popped in one of my spares, and reinflated. The whole process took maybe 4 minutes.

All the while, she expressed her gratitude and tried to compensate me. "Can I pay for your tube?" Don't even worry about it. "I have friends in the UK. If you ever want to watch the Tour, they could help you". Umm... no thank you. "Is there anything I could do?" Well, there is rutgerscycling.com, you could check it out, maybe wish us luck for our upcoming season, and oh by the way we sell jerseys like the one I'm wearing.

I am shameless.

Here's the thing with having someone rescue you after a mechanical, or a crash, or a bonk. The only debt you owe is to pay it forward. Carry extra tubes, get educated on emergency repairs and first aid, and offer to help the next stranded cyclist you see. We are, when all is said and done, a community.

Repayment was unnecessary. I stopped because I don't ever want a cyclist in need to be snubbed by a Rutgers cyclist. I stopped because the Flat-Tire Gods are vengeful deities.

Most of all, as I told the group when I first rolled up and offered assistance: Anything to get out of an intervals workout.

The power of a bagel and a coffee

I am generally okay with disliking everybody. On a case by case basis, I find the good in people - often, the awesome - and that's plenty. Everyone else, everyone I don't know, can talk a long walk off a short pier for all I care.

At its most benign, we can euphemism-ify my behavior as "people watching"; one of my favorite things to do is stand on the stairs at Karaoke and observe the dynamics of the crowd, always with a jaded perspective. Really, it's misanthropy. And I accept that.

Somewhat coincidentally, I had a post in mind about just how much I dislike people. I spent about 3 hours traveling to and from a Yankees game, including all the accouterments one would expect from Yankees traffic on the Major Deegan. Waiting your turn on an off-ramp, only to have a self-important schmo zoom by in the shoulder with inches to spare, really raises up the bile.

Also I have been riding a fixie through New Brunswick every day. While I don't mind the hassle of interacting with motor vehicles on a regular ride, my commutes force me to interact with pedestrians. I now understand the thrill of alleycat racing (which is an unofficial bike race through a city, cars and pedestrians and all). It should be in the X-games. People are either blissfully unaware or malevolently apathetic (think about that last one... it works as well as jumbo shrimp).

Just watching kids cross the street from the dorms to the quad, or walking through the grocery store, it's all the same: people move with Brownian motion, bouncing to and fro like ping pong balls, the epitome (if not the definition) of a "drunken walk". And that's discounting the text-walkers. It's as if they simply lack any survival instinct, or at least a sense of communal optimality.

Someday, I'm going to have an ulcer. Thanks, everyone.

Tonight's session in the Dunkin Donuts did not start off well. Not one, but two individuals occupied two tables each, not because they needed the extra room, but because... I don't know why. A baby was screaming (and, mind you, I didn't get to there until after the Patriots eeked out their win). That bitterness was welling up again in my gut.

And then, at midnight, everything turned around. A girl around my age, who had been sitting quietly in the corner at least as long as I had, got up from her table. She walked up to the counter, bought a bagel and coffee, and walked straight over to the exhausted-looking homeless man.

"Excuse me," she offered with the sort of politeness one does not normally reserve for such a ridiculously dirty person, "are you hungry?"

His face lit up, and he smiled a fantastically toothless smile. She left the coffee and the bagel on his table and went right back to work. As should I.

Turn

Ask any cyclist how to take a turn, and they'll tell you:

1. Start at the outside
2. Apex at the inside
3. Exit at the outside

Like so...

I know this because I asked. In a thoroughly unscientific poll conducted via Facebook chat and napkins, I polled a bunch of friends and relatives and asked how they would drive through a turn. Not surprisingly, those with cycling experience tended to get the question right.

What flabbergasted me was that the non-cyclists were so very, very wrong. Like, opposite-of-right wrong. Inside-outside-inside wrong.

The out-in-out corner is right because it's as straight a line as possible. Sharper turns require you to slow down, so... y'know, you don't do that.

Non-cyclists answered the opposite of right, which is of course would be the equivalent of parking-lot maneuvers at any reasonable speed. There should be rolled SUVs everywhere. There should be Jeeps littering the highway shoulders like so many empty Big Gulps.

So, polls, aside, I've been watching. I've observed drivers taking gentle curves, taking turns onto side streets, and so on. People turn properly. They start outside, apex inside, and exit outside.

One of my favorite places to observe the phenomenon of Drivers Not Wildly Careening Into One Another is on the exit ramp from Route 18 to Busch Campus. 18, you see, is Central Jersey's answer to the Autobahn, and the exit is a wide 270 degree turn.

People invariably start in the center of the lane while they're on 18, like the Driver's Ed teacher said to. As the turn begins, there's a seam down the middle. When you have a tire on this seam, the car shakes a bit, because it's a pretty gnarly seam.

Drivers have three options during the turn: straddle the seam, drive to the outside of it, or drive to the inside of it. Across the board, people drive to the inside, or sometimes they straddle the seam. When they reach the straight bit at the end of the ramp, they exit to the outside.

People can't explain the proper way to drive, but they drive properly. How do you explain that?

I've been mulling over that very question for a few weeks now. Maybe it's experience. Maybe it's a vestibular thing. Maybe it's a vistibular-visual interaction thing.

Honestly, I don't know, and I don't plan to know any time soon, because there are bigger things afoot. I really just wanted to make reference to 18 being the Autobahn.

How else could I set up this picture?

Not Photoshopped

Trappist Ale. Cycling. Frites.

and now, horribly offensive advertisements. You keep giving me reasons to love you, Belgium.

Except for that 9/11 one. Not cool.

Post something that I found on digg in lieu of real writing? B-b-but that doesn't sound like something Don would do!

ReTweet

I have started two blog posts this week, but I have discarded both. It turns out, you see, that I've already written them.

First was the recounting of my visits to the Cognitive Rehab Center where I conduct my research, and how emotionally taxing it is to work with impaired patients. How that human thing we do, where we sympathize with the less fortunate and imagine what it's like to be in their shoes, inevitably leads ruminations on the fragility of the human condition.

I would have written about how I need to toughen myself up, and how much stronger than me the therapists (and psychologists, and medical staff, and social workers) who do this day after day must be. But, well, I've already written that post.

And then I got interviewed by a high school kid for a school newspaper or project or something. Really not clear on what that was about, but I was asked and so I answered. In explaining my scientific contribution to her, I was reminded of how very hard it is to make science sound interesting, even when (or especially when) you find it exciting.

It occurred to me that it's very much easier to impart some pathos, or at least gravitas, to the explanation when your research is about fixing what's broken, as opposed to understanding how things work in a healthy body. The story of one's research is always more gripping when some dragon is slayed.

One of my colleagues is improving cancer research. Another is improving spinal surgery (like that guy from Lost, but without the daddy issues!). These are compelling foils for our heroes. So, while my preferred research is in elucidating the hidden layers of motor control, I usually just say that I help people regain function after stroke.

Except, crap. I already wrote that one, too.

The only thing worse than a blogger is a repetitive blogger. Although I guess a repetitive blogger whose posts are self-serving is the bottom of the barrel. So, enough of this.

Here's some new content. There was a shouting match in the Dunkin Donuts today. A customer let loose on an employee, angrily and with R-rated language. The former claimed that the latter had stared at his girlfriend's posterior, and he was more than willing to express his displeasure at this. The customer and his girlfriend stormed out, or rather the customer stormed out and his girlfriend followed.

Now, I can't decide what's funniest about this. The shouting match itself was pretty amusing, as the customer searched for words to adequately describe his outrage, most of which started with "f" and ended with "uckin'", and the employee stood behind the counter, his mouth agape with surprise.

Even better, though, was the fact that the girlfriend was objectively unattractive. Just gross. Gross enough to be ogled for non-sexual reasons. Call me uncouth, call me unenlightened and backwards, but that's the way it wa. This chick was sideshow ugly.

The best part of it all was that, ghastly aesthetics and all, the employee had totally been ogling the girlfriend. Leering at her, sexually. He's that creepy, and frankly, he totally had it coming to him.

And with that, I return to the thesis. Today's topic: Methods/Data Processing/Onset Identification.

Spotted (in the last moment) on my walk to the Dunkin Donuts

Note to self: Walk back on the other side of the road.

A send-up of things I love

There was a time, not too long ago, that I made a habit of popping in earplugs, descending into a dirty, dimly lit basement, and basking in the innard-pulsating tunes of basement rock.

Not quite punk, and not really grunge. You wouldn't call it a concert, although you generally pay to get in and stand in front of a band while they perform. It sort of defied a label, but I've heard it called "noise rock", where noise itself is an instrument. And of course you would drink beer, usually from a keg, usually in a red plastic cup, always cheap. It was beautiful.

When my basement-thriving friends moved - to Brooklyn, to Connecticut, to Milwaukee, and to Israel, because you were wondering - I lost my connection to their world. It wasn't my world, which was painfully clear at every show. But they let me know when and where the shows were, and they are good friends.

So when I was invited, by way of Facespace, to a show at the Court Tavern, I said hell yes. How could I not? Sure, I'd be missing Jay #1's birthday, but that's mostly because he hadn't picked up his phone when I dialed the wrong number. What a good friend I am.

The show was great, the triumphant return of the Milwaukee expat and an unexpected mini high school reunion. I drank, I chatted, I enjoyed. And, in my head, I blogged.

Thus and therefore, I submit to you, my esteemed readership, my thoughts on how noise rock shows and bike races are pretty much the same.

These guys were good at this whole music thing. They had clearly spent hours a day practicing, and their technique was impressive. It didn't matter if they were using knock-off Stradocasters or superfancy carbon-fiber gadgetry. Proficiency is hard-earned in this world, and cannot be bought.

Obviously, I'm excluding Time Trials from this comparison, but that's okay, because Time Trials are not at all rock and roll.

The sets were fantastic, building to a crescendo, and maybe with a softer denouement, if the band so chose. You could appreciate that, or you could enjoy the melody. Or the way the cacophony is woven into the melody. There are... nuances. Much in the same way as the rush of the pack rushing toward a prime, a team pulling their sprinter to the front, or a single rider's charge through the field are all worthy of attention. There's beauty in it, if you know what to look for.

Standing in the crowd, I looked around at a familiar sight. I saw faces I recognized, even if we'd never met, because people come and go, but the scene never really changes. Throw in some caution tape, and you'd have yourself a bike race. The crowd - mostly white, and mostly male - were sweating and happy. They were skinny, and they wore the t-shirts they'd gotten at previous events. Many had already performed earlier. As far as I could tell, nobody had wandered in... everybody knew someone who was playing, by blood or friendship, or they'd already played. They all seemed to aspire to bigger things, to hope to be discovered and turn their hobby into a profession, but none seemed to be delusional about it.

We were as close to the action as we dared stand, for fear of catching a broken drumstick or an errant guitar. We drank cheap beer. We heckled.

Which reminds me... 'cross is coming.

Side Project

Motion Capture systems cost a gazillion dollars. They have fancy infrared cameras, and lots of 'em. They have proprietary software. They are a big production, often with a kickin' soundtrack.

Screw that, says I.

Just because my lab doesn't have an expensive supersystem doesn't mean I'm not interested in a bit of motion capture. It just means that I have to put in a little bit of extra work to make it happen. And so I did, spending way too much time on the software, and then half-assing the hardware for the following demonstration.

Here is a simple video of me looking like a shmuck. Observe my incredibly slick dance moves and electric tape body markers. I am dancing. To "YMCA". By the Village People. Yes.



This video is two dimensional. So is the video that I recorded using another camera. Each point can only be located by left-right and up-down position, but we have no idea how far away it is from the camera. Using some trigonometry and some algebra, and a lot of programming, I reconstruct each point in a three dimensional space.

Each point. Every single one of them. In this video, that's 8 points at 320 frames for a grand total of 2560 points. And then I had to do it again, for the second camera. Oy.

And so here's the reconstruction, doing something that a real camera couldn't do...



If the angles look a little funky, it's because my choice of marker locations was bad, and also because I wasn't extremely precise in my marker identification. It's just a demo.

Here's another video, showing how the two cameras are used in making a 3-d stick figure. I think it looks like a dance class, like motion capture from a Richard Simmons exercise tape.


So there you have it. We've gone from two simple videos of movement to a completely digitized representation. It's nothing earth-shattering, more of a demonstration than a discovery. I'm reinventing the wheel here, but I'm doing it on the cheap, and the possibilities it allows are endless.

That was my Monday. And yes, YMCA looks RIDICULOUS, and by association, so do I.

UPDATE: Oh dear. I can create my own motion capture system, but I can't do the YMCA dance properly. Yes, I the C is backwards. Forgive me.

Carburated Beauty

A car guy has an ancient Chevy in his garage, which he fixes up on the weekends. A car guy has a subscription to automotive magazines and can compare and contrast the 2010 Mustang to the 1967 Mustang. A car guy can diagnose engine troubles by ear and changes his own oil.

I am not a car guy. But I kind of am a car guy. It's a conundrum.

In college, I took a class that started off as Kinematics and somehow became Automotive Engineering. We learned the principles of four-stroke internal combustion engines and how to design cam profiles for different performance parameters. The term project was to develop a customizable gearbox. I didn't know how to drive stick, but I could design a manual transmission from camshaft to differential. Which, in the grand scheme of things, seems pretty backwards.

Having an old car to rebuild, like in that Autozone commercial, seems wonderful... but I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to begin. And so on.

Recently, I came across an article about the 1912 Bugatti Type 18, a Grand Prix car that raced in Le Mans, the Indy 500, and up Mont Ventoux. The description of its pros and cons and of its engineering development by Ettore Bugatti himself were a good read. The pictures, though.

I mean, the modern Bugatti is a stunning machine, but its ancestor was, well...



It's like listening to a love song in another language and knowing that it would be beautiful, if only you could understand the words.