The Space Shuttle Convergence

I suppose some would say blogging is easy to do if you can get yourself in the habit of slicing out the time for it each day. I've heard novelists say the same thing about their books.

While I've been busy on a project I hope to reveal to you soon, it's really no excuse to stop sharing my ideas and discoveries with you - and here's one right now.

Massive Data
I ran across a demo of Microsoft's Photosynth displaying the Endeavor launch preparations (you'd think I'd be more plugged into this stuff than having to hear it on MSNBC.com; still, it's a big company). The convergence of several flavors of technology spread across several organizations has come up with something rather inspired - a 3D walkthrough of notable places created using a photo scanning algorithm that picks out notable "points" of an image - a technique that produces a 3D feature called a "point cloud". See how they do it here.

Early speculation on the "how" of this project had me and CarlJParker (hey, after that Zippies post, I had to get you one back) wondering just how it might work.

The Nerds Talk It Over
Special cameras, we figured, might have been able to combine GPS location data with laser rangefinding to approximate the 3D points, then tie them to the photograph using metadata that specified the viewport of the camera (focal length, direction the camera was pointed, etc).

As it turns out, Photosynth doesn't even need that data - it extracts the point cloud directly from the image itself. Any camera can be used - no special hardware required. I continue to be amazed at the human capacity to extract meaningful information out of seemingly incomprehensible data.

Charles Makes a Discovery
The Photosynth site had me looking around the space shuttle Endeavor from multiple angles for quite some time. Not simply looking, or analyzing, I found myself marvelling at it.

The Space Shuttle is an amazing feat of engineering. I remember an old post from about two years ago marvelling at the Shuttle's SRB separation procedure.

About the time I realized I'd been hooked on this Space Shuttle thing for some time (remembering, too, that I was a Space Camp kid), I realized this: I have never been to a Space Shuttle launch.

Fortunately, I had discovered just the place to start the remedy - 43things.com. At this site, you can list your own personal goals and desires, as well as your accomplishments - perfect for a listmaker like myself. In fact, here's my list.

It's a site that works on multiple levels; the gamut of human achievements listed on the site runs from my own rather academic desire to build a dyson sphere, to my buddy Tyler's more grounded goal of wanting to have sex on a pool table. (Whatever works for you, man.)

But I knew that my dream of seeing a launch couldn't go unheeded, so down on the list it went.

Watch a space shuttle launch

There. Step one completed. The rest should be easy - you can find out the launch schedule here, and buy tickets here. I'm thinking about going in either October or December of this year.

So the only question remains - who's with me?