Hoodie March at Google

After a variety of similar "Hoodie Marches" around the country, a group of Googlers came together last week to march through campus. According to one of the organizers, the group wore hoodies in an effort to raise awareness of and start a discussion about the Trayvon Martin case, as well as the larger issue of injustice.

David Drummond, Google's Chief Legal Officer and Senior V.P. of Corporate Development, speaks to the contingent after they had gathered for the march.

Rachel Spivey, one of the organizers, carries a megaphone as the group marches through the Google campus.

The march continues along Charleston Road, en route to the entrance of Google's weekly all-hands meeting, "TGIF." Drummond would then take the TGIF stage to speak to the Googlers both in attendance and watching from around the world.

Long Day in the Studio

Yesterday, my Lovely assistant and I spent all day in the studio, working through the majority of the remaining images for my Photos of Prints project. We finally finished the last one (the snail, 24"x36") at 11:00 in the evening, and that's when things started getting a little silly.

I was really happy with how things turned out. I had only just finished the second version of the print hanging fixture that morning, and it worked fantastically. Which is nice, because those framed 24"x36" prints are heavy. We managed to get through 20 images — the 17 from my Music at Google exhibition, Mondrian Salt Flats, ENDIKA, and Keep Calm, Carry On (aka the snail :o).

Beyond that, I had an opportunity to use the amazing Coastal Optics UV-VIS-IR 60mm f/4 Apo Macro lens. As mentioned in the prior post, I had noticed some color fringing and optical distortion that I wanted to try to fix. Aligning things more carefully helped a lot with the keystoning, and the Coastal Optics did a number on the other problems. This is probably the only opportunity I'll have to shoot with one, so I'm glad everything came together. Thank you to the anonymous benefactor who let me borrow the lens.

M35 Zeppelin: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Sometimes, when you think you've seen it all, you haven't seen it all. Our truck is like that. A recent work day started out pretty reasonably, and by the end of it, I was even more amazed at how well our truck was running, despite its actual condition.

The Good: The day started out with some paint prep, followed by two coats of paint. Here, a person uses a wire wheel to knock off surface rust, and to generally rough the surface of the old paint to provide better adhesion for the new coat of paint.

After the prep, other folks hit the truck with a first coat of dark brown.

One of the painters finishes the dark brown as another person mixes up a bucket of the desert-camo tan that would become the truck's top coat of paint. Including the paint already on the truck, I believe this brings us to five coats for the areas that were painted that day.

The Bad: Randy and I pulled off the front wheels and removed the front brake drums to inspect the brakes. A combination of missing parts and cracked slave cylinder seals inspired us to just pull everything apart to figure out how much refurbishment might be warranted. Here, Randy pressure-washes the driver-side brake drum as paint prep continues in the background.

As an aside (heh), you can see the original bumper off to the right (currently housing my tools). We removed the bumper in order to weld the frame for the roof-deck directly to the chassis using all-new square tubing (top-left of the image).

The Ugly: We were already aware that the inboard dust seals were in pretty bad shape. Actually, they were in tatters. But sure, how bad could it be?

Turns out: pretty dang ugly. As far as I'm aware, Playa Dust is widely considered to be a pretty poor lubricant. So when we unbolted the front hub to find them mostly full of Playa dust (most of which has already been removed... just think about that...). Anyway, when we found them full of Playa dust, a half-crazed laugh was all I could muster. At least the truck has big enough (CV joint) balls to deal with the situation.

Next step: hub rebuilds, yay!

Inertia Keeps MoMS at Google, if Only for a Moment

I grew up watching Bill Nye the Science Guy, and seeing Miracles of Modern Science perform at Google brought back some of that magic. Every good episode of Bill Nye included a few soul-crushing puns, some folks in weird costumes, and a solid discussion of a couple scientific fundamentals. In short, they combined humor with a novel perspective on the actual technical aspects of science.

Miracles of Modern Science does the same thing, and their song The Singularity is a prime example. The staccato sound of their unique instrumentation is somehow reminiscent of the 100 billion stars of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, and the lyrics of the music manage to reflect some of Sagan's sense of wonderment about the nature of the universe.

More specifically, though, the song is Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near, but with an addictive melody and a catchy-yet-still-technically-precise hook.

Evan Younger, one of the two co-founders of the group, plays double-bass and sings lead vocals.

Josh Hirshfeld, the other co-founder, plays mandolin and sings backing vocals (as does the rest of the band). He and Younger started the group as students at Princeton University in 2004.

Geoff McDonald is on cello.

Kieran Ledwidge plays violin.

And finally, Tyler Pines plays the drums.

Folks from the audience chat with the members of the band after their performance.

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