Image from SOHO

Ooooh, how I love the sun at solar maximum. This morning a large sunspot erupted into another huge solar flare! This one is massive, and definetelly worth watching in the SOHO Movie Theater! Here are the specs you want:

SOHO Movie Theater

All the white flecks flying across the screen are from the satellite computers being blasted with solar particles. Woo hooo!

Screenshot of the SOHO Movie Theater webpage

The reason the ejection looks like it’s going in all directions is because it’s coming towards us. As a result of the flare, we can expect to see the northern lights in the northern hemisphere. Spaceweather.com is a good place to monitor the aurora activity. For my friends back in Illinois, keep your fingers crossed for a K-index of 7 or better. Right now it’s at 1, but as soon as the energy from the flare reaches Earth (which should happen tomorrow evening), it should spike. You can monitor the K-index by going to the Spaceweather website, and scrolling about half way down the column on the left side of the homepage.

Spaceweather.com

View from the top of the first hill.

This past weekend I went hiking with my coworker Sarah at St. Joseph’s Hill in Los Gatos. The trail leads up to the summit of St. Josephs – a 650 foot change in elevation. We didn’t make it to the summit, but we did complete a 2.4 mile loop on the trail. We went early in the morning so the trail was pretty empty, except for the crazy super Mom pushing her kid up the mountain in a stroller. We stopped to take a few photos, some of which are below. I’m already planning my next hiking trip for next weekend. I want to go to Uvas Canyon Park and see the multiple waterfalls along the trail. We are finally supposed to get some rain this week, so hopefully the falls will be roaring.

Foggy hills.

A wood fairy!!!

Eucalyptus Tree

The route we took

Jump Shot, Salt Flats of Utah

I can’t believe I’ve been living in Sunnyvale for almost four months now.

My first day in California alone was rough. The apartments I saw all turned out to be scary. One of them had a floor that was so slanted I was fairly certain one of the bedrooms was about to fall off the side of the building. So I was effectively without a place to live, staying at a terrible hotel in Berkeley. Early that morning, I had to drop Brendan off at the airport and say goodbye. I can’t even begin to explain how important it was to have him with me.  He drove through all the mountains, video blogged most of the trip, and we laughed so hard on the last day of driving when road delirium had set in. After leaving him at the airport, I was very much alone.

I had one last apartment to see later on that afternoon, but nothing to do in the meantime. I was more than a little jittery, and have never been good with idleness. So I went to the only place that made sense. I drove to Emeryville and parked outside the gates at Pixar.

There is a bench outside the front gates, placed there I like to imagine, for people like me. I sat there a while, and in the most wonderful way it reminded me why I had made this move. It was right there in front of me, and it grounded me and I didn’t feel anxious anymore. I went to see an apartment in Sunnyvale later that afternoon, and took it. It was only a bedroom in a single family home, but it was a beautiful/safe neighborhood and offered a month-to-moth lease, which is rare in Silicon Valley.

I unpacked. I got a temporary job at a Kohls store around the corner, not knowing how long it would take me to find a job in my industry. Fortunately, I was hired quickly by Stanford University as a biomedical artist in the School of Medicine. It is without a doubt the best job I’ve ever had. My coworkers are wonderful, and I feel really lucky to be a part of this team. I’m also about to start volunteer work at the Stanford Hospitals and Clinics. I’m really excited. I hope I enjoy it as much as I enjoyed volunteering at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

Both of my sisters had their babies – within four days of each other. I now have 4 nephews and 1 niece, and I’m living off the photos my sisters post on Facebook. I couldn’t afford a plane ticket home for Thanksgiving, but I could afford a ticket to L.A. where my best friend Kim lives. We cooked an entire Thanksgiving dinner together and afterwards watched Monte Python. I also got to observe her at her Aikido class, where she impressed me by flipping men twice her size over her shoulder.

I went home to Chicago for Christmas holidays. I saw my family, my friends, my dog. I went Christmas caroling at local nursing homes with some choir friends from high school. My three best friends, who all live in different parts of the country, were all home in northern Illinois too. For the first time ever, I was able to see all the three of them at the same time. I was over the moon happy.

I miss my family and friends, but I’m so happy living out here. I’m hunting for a regular apartment now, one that my friends can come stay the night at. I’m taking yoga classes on the weekend and thinking of taking up kickboxing. So that is my long overdue update. Having moved cross country, I could offer some good tips for planning a successful move. But I think the most valuable thing I’ve had is my family, Kim, Brendan, and Mandy.

Group Hug

Cheers all!

All these years film makers have been depicting Zombies as whole creatures, when in fact, we could equate them to our diet-starved brain cells turning against each other. This incredible discovery will very likely change the setting of all future zombie movies. Instead of chases through dark train yards and abandoned city streets, you can look forward to medical animations of brain cells engaged in life-or-death battles of autophagy.

Cheers all!

Dam Lake, WI

Spectacular! This streak of color is actually a “circumhorizontal arc”, a pretty rare atmospheric event. I took the photo in Sugar Camp, WI at 1pm in the afternoon. It lasted for about 2 hours, and continually changed shape and color. You can view more photos I took of it here on the WGN Weather Blog!

Click here for my YouTube Channel!

My model in the MoCap suit.

I used the Vicom “MoCap” system at the UIC Bat Cave (everything relating to motion capture technology has a fantastic name :p) to capture a walk and run cycle. Before the actual motion capture can begin, the stage and all 8 cameras must be calibrated. The human model must wear a close-fitting suit covered in strategically placed infrared markers. He/she must also perform a Range of Motion (ROM) to process the marker calibration. This setup process can take up to 1 hour.

Each complete movement must start and end in the “T-pose”, which is demonstrated in this post’s photograph. The MoCap system does have its limitations, however. Some positions, such as crouching down, block some of the markers so that they are not picked up by the cameras. When markers are occluded like this, the computer essentially looses communication with those markers and cannot record the movement of the the occluded marker(s). For motions such as walk cycles, however, none of the markers are lost, and the system can pick up very finite movements that would take hours to reproduce in keyframe animation.

Now that I have captured the motions I need, there is a still post-processing work to be done. I will be using Motion Builder to link up the MoCap movement with the skeleton from my research project. Soon enough, I will have my 9,500 year old skeleton walking around again!

Special thanks to Hiromi for assisting me with this process, and to my model David for coming all the way down to the city and for wearing the funny little MoCap hat!