Josef “Jeff” Sipek

Prague & IETF

This post is part of a series named “Europe 2017” where I share photos from my adventures in Europe during the summer 2017.

In mid-July 2017, I got to travel to Prague to participate in IETF’s 99th meeting.

The IETF meeting itself was great—lots of useful discussion about the next-generation email accessing protocol (called JMAP).

I stayed a couple of days extra to enjoy Prague, and Holly flew out from Helsinki to revisit Prague where she’s been once before—for our honeymoon.

I dragged my D750 and the two lenses with me and made to sure to take photos (almost) all the time. The gallery contains only a handful of the approximately 1100 raw files. Of those, I selected 11 for this blahg post.

Wikipedia article: Malá Strana Bridge Tower:

Wikipedia article: St. Nicholas Church with the Wikipedia article: Žižkov Television Tower in the background:

Wikipedia article: Matthias Gate with Wikipedia article: St. Vitus Cathedral peeking in the background:

The Wikipedia article: National Theatre:

Wikipedia article: Charles Bridge and a view of Wikipedia article: Old Town:

Wikipedia article: St. Vitus Cathedral from Wikipedia article: Petřín near sunset:

St. Nicholas Church again during sunset (and without the ugly Žižkov TV tower):

A gargoyle keeping the St. Nicholas Church’s masonry safe:

A view from the top of Wikipedia article: Old Town Bridge Tower with roofs and towers of (left to right):

Church of Saint Wikipedia article: Francis of Assisi, the left tower of Wikipedia article: Church of Our Lady before Týn, the clock tower and the Astronomical tower of Wikipedia article: Clementinum:

St. Nicholas Church yet again, this time from the Malá Strana Bridge Tower:

Wikipedia article: Charles Bridge, Wikipedia article: Old Town Bridge Tower, Church of Saint Wikipedia article: Francis of Assisi, and Wikipedia article: Žižkov Television Tower (from the Malá Strana Bridge Tower):

Prague offers a lot to see. The few photos I selected for this blahg post don’t show anywhere near enough of it. There are more photos in the gallery, but even those are merely highlights of what one can see in Prague. If you haven’t been to Prague yet, I highly recommend a trip.

Tallinn

This post is part of a series named “Europe 2017” where I share photos from my adventures in Europe during the summer 2017.

In late June 2017, Holly and I did a day trip to Wikipedia article: Tallinn. This wasn’t the first time I was in Tallinn, so I knew what the interesting parts of the old town were. As always, there is a gallery with more photos.

Tallinn’s old town is a medieval pocket in a otherwise modern city. In some of the photos you can see the modern civilization right behind a medieval tower.

A view of the Wikipedia article: Alexander Nevsky Cathedral from the tower of Wikipedia article: St. Mary’s Cathedral:

The tower of St. Mary’s Cathedral:

A section of the fortification wall that remains:

I’ve been to Tallinn twice and all my time there was spent in the old town. This makes me far from an expert about what there is to do. With that said, I enjoyed my time there and I recommend a day trip to anyone visiting nearby.

OH-LCD

This post is part of a series named “Europe 2017” where I share photos from my adventures in Europe during the summer 2017.

When I attended the Kaivopuisto Air Show in early June last year, I learned about the existence of the Finnish Aviation Museum. It took me a month and a half, but eventually I found a free day to go check it out.

The museum itself is packed with all sorts of aircraft on static display. While they were interesting (and I certainly took plenty of photos of them), they aren’t what this post is about. This post is about Lokki—a retired Wikipedia article: DC-3 (registration OH-LCD) on display outside of the museum.

As luck would have it, the folks from the DC Association were there that day trying to see if they could start up Lokki’s engines—after 12 years of inactivity. After a lot of preparation, they managed to start them!

Without further ado, here are a few photos of Lokki (more photos can be found in the gallery).

Wikipedia article: Aero OY was the original name of Finnair:

One of the mechanics working on the left engine:

One of the people from the DC Association, seeing that I was obviously excited about the plane, asked me if I’d like to climb inside. I said yes, of course.

The inside was pretty bare-bones (which is to be expected of a static display that’s normally closed to public). I took a couple of photos inside, but most weren’t that interesting.

Throttle quadrant (note: most of the instrument panel was removed long ago):

It runs!

The livery is pretty simple—polished aluminum with dark blue lettering and a stripe:

I’m not really sure why they wanted to see if they could start the engines, but I’m happy that it worked out. Radial engines just have a unique roar to them.

Anyway, that’s it about Lokki. Hopefully I’ll get around to post processing the photos from the museum itself soon.

Kaivopuisto Air Show 2017

This post is part of a series named “Europe 2017” where I share photos from my adventures in Europe during the summer 2017.

In early June 2017, we attended an air show in Wikipedia article: Kaivopuisto. Unfortunately, we found out about it last minute, and so we missed the beginning which included a Finnair Airbus A350 flyby. Pity.

The show included a number of trainers and combat aircraft performing various maneuvers. Here are the highlights (for more photos visit the gallery).

Wikipedia article: Red Arrows:

A seagull joining in:

Wikipedia article: Finnish Coast Guard’s Wikipedia article: Turva nearby with Wikipedia article: Suomenlinna visible behind it:

Wikipedia article: Eurofighter Typhoon:

Wikipedia article: Saab 35 Draken:

Wikipedia article: Saab Gripen:

During one of the passes, I took a burst of images and then assembled them into a Southwest 737 “Airportrait”-style image.

Finnish Air Force Wikipedia article: F-18 Hornet:

A Finnish aerobatics team Wikipedia article: Midnight Hawks flying Wikipedia article: BAE Systems Hawk:

Even though this post has more photos than I typically share, there are many more in the gallery. So, if you are into airplanes, I suggest you peruse it.

Juhannus 2017

This post is part of a series named “Europe 2017” where I share photos from my adventures in Europe during the summer 2017.

You may have noticed that I was a bit quiet during the last summer. I have a really good reason for it: I spent five months in Helsinki for work. On weekends, Holly and I got to explore, which led me to accumulate approximately 12000 photos. Sadly, I am quite behind on post processing them all, but I will get through them eventually.

This post is about how I spent Wikipedia article: Juhannus last year.

Juhannus is the name of the Finnish summer solstice holiday. It is a time to relax, spend time with friends and family, and enjoy oneself. Every year, a nearby island, Wikipedia article: Seurasaari, has an afternoon and evening with an assortment of traditional events and bonfires.

There is of course a gallery of my photos.

Every year, one couple is selected to have their wedding on Seurasaari during Juhannus. Here is 2017’s lucky couple:

Before about half a dozen bonfires are set ablaze, a number of “can fires” is lit:

The largest bonfire gets lit by the newlyweds—from a boat:

I’m not sure how exactly the big bonfire pile was constructed, but it didn’t take long for it to grow:

So, that was Juhannus on Seurasaari in 2017. It was a nice and relaxing afternoon and evening, and if I happen to be in Helsinki around Juhannus in the future, I’ll likely spend the day on Seurasaari.

I’m going to end this post with a bit of Finnish (from finland.fi) because languages can be fun:

– Kokoo koko kokko kokoon!
– Koko kokkoko?
– Koko kokko.

Meaning:

– Assemble the Midsummer bonfire!
– The whole Midsummer bonfire?
– Yes, the whole Midsummer bonfire.

(I’m told that kokoo is a dialect form of kokoa.)

2017-11-14

Doug Engelbart Institute — Online exhibits, historic videos, texts, archive photos, and stories about Doug Engelbart, the inventor of the mouse, hypertext, and GUIs…all in the 1960s

Flight recorders data inspection by Airbus

Parsing JSON is a Minefield

Completely Painless Programmer’s Guide to XYZ, RGB, ICC, xyY, and TRCs — Brain-hurting amount of information about color profiles, etc.

darktable — A Lightroom-like open source software

World plugs — Info about every electric plug form factor in the world

Visiting Helsinki

Back in July and August I got to visit Helsinki. Needless to say, I dragged my camera and lenses along and did some sightseeing. Helsinki is a relatively new but welcoming city.

July

My first trip there was in early July (7th-10th). This meant that I was there about two weeks after the summer solstice. At 60°10’ north, this has been the northernmost place I’ve ever been. (I’m not really counting the layover in Reykjavik at 63°59’ north, although I do have an interesting story about that for another time.) If you combine these two relatively boring facts (very far north and near solstice timing), you end up with nearly 19 hours of daylight! This gave me ample time to explore. Below are a couple of photos I took while there. There are more in the gallery.

Approaching Wikipedia article: Senate Square and the Wikipedia article: Helsinki Cathedral:

The cathedral:

Not far from this (Lutheran) cathedral is an Eastern Orthodox cathedral—Wikipedia article: Uspenski Cathedral.

And here is its interior:

Like a number of other cities in Europe, Helsinki is filled with bikes. Most sidewalks seem to be divided into two parts—one for walking and one for biking. The public transit seems to include bike rentals. These rental bikes are very…yellow.

Suomenlinna

On Saturday, July 9th, I took a ferry to the nearby sea fortress—Wikipedia article: Suomenlinna—where I spent the day.

Of course there is a (small) church there. (You can also see it in the above photo in the haze.) This one has a sea-fortress-inspired chain running around it.

The whole fortress is made up of six islands. This allows you to see some of the fortifications up close as well as at some distance.

There are plenty of small buildings of various types scattered around the islands. Some of them are still used as residences, while others got turned into a museum or some other public space.

August

The August trip was longer and consisted of more roaming around the city.

The Helsinki Cathedral in the distance.

There are a fair number of churches—here is the Wikipedia article: Kamppi Chapel.

Heading west of the city center (toward Wikipedia article: Länsisatama) one cannot miss the fact that Helsinki is a coastal city.

Finally, on the last day of my August trip I got to see some sea creatures right in front of the cathedral. They were made of various pieces of plastic. As far as I could tell, this art installation was about environmental awareness.

I took so long to finish writing this post that I’ve gotten to visit Helsinki again last month…but more about that in a separate post. Safe travels!

Biometrics

Last week I got to spend a bit of time in NYC with obiwan. He’s never been in New York, so he did the tourist thing. I got to tag along on Friday. We went to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and a pizza place.

You may have noticed that this post is titled “Biometrics,” so what’s NYC got to do with biometrics? Pretty simple. In order to get into the Statue of Liberty, you have to first surrender your bags to a locker and then you have to go through a metal detector. (This is the second time you go through a metal detector — the first is in Battery Park before you get on the boat to Liberty Island.) Once on Liberty Island, you go into a tent before the entrance where you get to leave your bags and $2. Among the maybe 500–600 lockers, there are two or three touch screen interfaces. You use these to rent a locker. After selecting the language you wish to communicate in and feeding in the money, a strobe light goes off blinding you — this is to indicate where you are supposed to place your finger to have your finger print scanned. Your desire to rent a locker aside, you want to put your finger on the scanner to make the strobe go away. Anyway, once the system is happy it pops a random (unused) locker open and tells you to use it.

What could possibly go wrong.

After visiting the statue, we got back to the tent to liberate the bags. At the same touch screen interface, we entered in the locker number and when prompted scanned the correct finger. The fingerprint did not get recognized. After repeating the process about a dozen times, it was time to talk to the people running the place about the malfunction. The person asked for the locker number, went to the same interface that we used, used what looked like a Wikipedia article: one-wire key fob near the top of the device to get an admin interface and then unlocked the locker. That’s it. No verification of if we actually owned the contents of the locker.

I suppose this is no different from a (physical) key operated locker for which you lost the key. The person in charge of renting the lockers has no way to verify your claim to the contents of the locker. Physical keys, however, are extremely durable compared to the rather finicky fingerprint scanners that won’t recognize you if you look at them the wrong way (or have oily or dirty fingers in a different way than they expect). My guess the reason the park service went with a fingerprint based solution instead of a more traditional physical key based solution is simple: people can’t lose the locker keys if you don’t use them. Now, are cheap fingerprint readers accurate enough to not malfunction like this often? Are the people supervising the locker system generally this apathetic about opening a locker without any questions? I do not know, but my observations so far are not very positive.

I suspect more expensive fingerprint readers will perform better. It just doesn’t make sense for something as cheap as a locker to use the more expensive readers.

Private Pilot, Honeymooning, etc.

Early September was a pretty busy time for me. First, I got my private pilot certificate. Then, three days later, Holly and I got married. We used this as an excuse to take four weeks off and have a nice long honeymoon in Europe (mostly in Prague).

Our flight to Prague (LKPR) had a layover at KJFK. While waiting at the gate at KDTW, I decided to talk to the pilots. They said I should stop by and say hi after we land at JFK. So I did. Holly tagged along.

A little jealous about the left seat

I am impressed with the types of displays they use. Even with direct sunlight you can easily read them.

After about a week in Prague, we rented a plane (a 1982 Cessna 172P) with an instructor and flew around Czech Republic looking at the castles.

OK-TUR

I did all the flying, but I let the instructor do all the radio work, and since he was way more familiar with the area he ended up acting sort of like a tour guide. Holly sat behind me and had a blast with the cameras. The flight took us over Wikipedia article: Bezděz, Wikipedia article: Ještěd, Wikipedia article: Bohemian Paradise, and Wikipedia article: Jičín where we stopped for tea. Then we took off again, and headed south over Wikipedia article: Konopiště, Wikipedia article: Karlštejn, and Wikipedia article: Křivoklát. Overall, I logged 3.1 hours in European airspace.

Saint Paul, Minnesota

Holly and I went to Minnesota four weeks ago. We stayed at Crowne Plaza in downtown Saint Paul and had enough free time to explore the city and its surroundings a bit. The weather was great, so the photos ended up pretty good looking. You can jump to the whole photo gallery or just look at the select few photos below.

The first day of exploring was pretty brief. We spent about two hours total exploring the other side of the Mississippi river. We found a place with a nice view of the whole downtown Saint Paul. Aside from the hotel from across the Mississippi river

and a bird of some sort (I have no idea what kind of bird this is) that was enjoying the updraft from the breeze hitting the river bank and turning up the steep hill side

I got enough shots to make a panorama of downtown. It is about 270 degree field of view! (I have a 14MB JPEG for those wishing to see all the details.)

On the way back to the hotel, we saw this old (and steep) stair case:

Here’s a shot of the bridge up close. Did I mention that the weather was great?

The next day, we didn’t explore since we didn’t have much time. However in the evening the Wikipedia article: mayflies took over the skies. It was amazing and annoying at the same time. The next morning, we went for breakfast and saw dead mayflies everywhere.

After breakfast we went on to explore the city a bit more. We immediately noticed that the whole city seemed deserted. Businesses just didn’t open on Sundays, after an hour of walking around we ran into maybe 5 people total.

Eventually, we asked a security guard what was going on. He said that downtown Saint Paul has enough government offices that the whole city more or less lives Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.

Eventually, we made it to the capitol hill — the capitol is on a hill. Again, I couldn’t resist the temptation to make a panorama. This time it is only 180 degrees wide. (17MB JPEG)

Then I climbed up the stairs, and took enough for a third (and final) panorama. Again, about 180 degrees wide. (9MB JPEG)

Afterwards, we mosied on toward the Saint Paul Cathedral. (Our last stop before going to the hotel to grab the bags and heading to the airport.)

There is a bunch of photos in the gallery that I didn’t include this post. That concludes this edition of “Travels with Jeff & Holly.”

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