Lost at Vail

I'm a little embarrassed by this story but I'll tell it because maybe someone will learn from my mistake. At least maybe someone will be entertained.

We were riding out of bounds in Vail when I lost Dino and followed some tracks out to the wrong side of one of the peaks out in Blue Ridge Basin. It didn't take me too long to realize that I was off the map. I started cutting right as hard as I could but it just wasn't enough, I had to unstrap my bindings and start hiking.



It was difficult to hike, in my shape and at that altitude. I would go about 10 steps before I fell down and panted like a dog for a few seconds. I found that pushing my board along the snow with my hands helped take some weight off my feet so I didn't sink into the powder past my knees.



After hiking for almost an hour, I finally made it to the ridgeline where i could drop into the correct side of the bowl. My cell phone still didn't have service, which was too bad because I really wanted to let Dino know that I was OK so he didn't make an expensive call to the search and rescue team. There was good powder on the ride down but I couldn't quite enjoy it since I was still a little shaken up by the experience. I just got down to the lift before it closed for the day.

So take it from me... Even if there are tracks going someplace on the mountain, don't assume that will take you to a lift. You might end up following my snowboard track which will lead you on an excruciating hike and a race against time to get back to civilization. I won't make that mistake again.



The woods are a lot more fun when you have your friends with you.

Karl Pilkington

Gotta mention Karl Pilkington. I love the Ricky Gervais podcast. It is changing the world as we know it. They just started having random Channel 4 advertisements. It's getting annoying, but I guess you can only expect that someone would take advantage of this marketing opportunity.
I could eat a knob at night. Remix.

V-day

Happy Valentine's Day from Dwight Schrute and I.

I love this picture.

I wanted to take this moment to publicly* declare my love for Geena. As an example of how great she is; today she made me an amazing steak sandwich for lunch. Fluffy onion bread, juicy rare steak, cheddar cheese, lettuce... Brilliant.

* "public" is probably not accurate since nobody actually reads this blog.

Yay

Congratulations Shaun White and the US Snowboarding team. Shaun proved he could live up to the expectations and win the Gold Medal in the Halfpipe competition at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. Shaun is literally the best Snowboarder in the world. Thats quite an honor.

Detailed Results...

Props also go to Danny Kass of the US team. He won the Silver Medal. Mason Aguirre almost completed a US medal sweep for the competition but Finish rider Koski Markku beat him out for the Bronze.

Shralp!

Best Video podcast available. The Snowboard Podcast from Finland... Shralp! Check out #15, it is a great example of some of the sick snowboard footage that they record. Even if I didn't have a video iPod, I would watch it on my computer. They recently started speaking English so there is less Finish with subtitles.

Enhance

So I'm watching a lot of CSI lately. Primarily Las Vegas. The other night on the show, Nick Stokes was looking at a photograph on the computer. They were using one of those magic computers that they have over there at the lab so they were able to zoom in sooooo closely on the eye of the person in the picture that they could see the image in the the reflection on the eye.

Now something about that always bothered me because I just can't understand how you can keep turning these big pixels into sharp lines. "Thats Impossible!" I would shout at the television. How can they do it? I wonder if it's technology that is just beyond my understanding. Well, I guess I'm starting to understand how it might possibly work, under the right circumstances.

They seem to be using a method called Interpolation to enhance the image. It actually gives a more accurate representation of the image the camera was attempting to capture.

I learned a few things at Smart Guy's Website about the algorithms they use to process these images and enhance them.

" The various algorithm's then divide the original large pixel into a number of smaller pixels whoose new values are derived (interpolated) from the shared values of the original adjacent pixels. Bilinear Interpolation multiplies the original pixel into four, Dipietro and Molenaar's S.P.I.T. multiplies it into eight, and the "Cubic Spline" method used by Carlotto uses twelve surrounding pixels.

This is, in effect a statistical analysis of the data provided by the pixel relationships. "