Mon 1 Jun 2009
Posted by Ken Atherton under brazil
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I took a short walk through Sao Jose dos Campos this afternoon and took this picture of a church near the city center.
Location of the picture:
Fri 5 Jun 2009
Posted by Ken Atherton under brazil
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I spent yesterday afternoon visiting Azul Airlines, a new Brazilian domestic airline. While I was there, I snapped these pictures in the lobby. It’s a model of there key airplane, the Embraer E190.
Earlier in the week, I got to visit the production line where one of these planes is being built for Azul. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures there, so this will have to do.
Sat 13 Jun 2009
Posted by Ken Atherton under brazil
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One of the most interesting things I did on my recent trip to Brazil was to order this for dinner at a restaurant in São José dos Campos:
The main dish on this plate is a fish called a “tambaqui”. The long piece is a section of the fishes ribs. The dish has an excellent flavor — the fish has a light taste, and is slightly sweet. The texture is similar to salmon. The fish also seems to have a fair amount of natural fat, so while the dish was broiled, the fish was more or less fried in it’s own juices.
As you can see from the picture, the fish that those ribs came from must be very large. Apparently, 40 to 50 pound specimens are not unusual.
The tambaqui (also known as the pacu) grows in the Amazon and is a member of the piranha family. Unlike its more famous (and more terrifying) cousins, the tambaqui has a vegetarian diet, eating both fruits that grow on plants in the water and fruits that fall into the river. The fish does have some large, very human-looking teeth that it uses to crush its “prey.”
A Google search reveals that the tambaqui is a popular catch with amateur fisherman who trek to the Amazon. This has led to some concerns about overfishing, but it also appears that the fish can be successfully raised commercially.
There are some good pictures of the tambaqui here and here.
Mon 15 Jun 2009
Posted by Ken Atherton under Daily Life
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I’ve started a new project, which has slowed down my posting recently compared to the last few months: Our 2009 Christmas video.
Yes, already.
This year will be our 10th year making a Christmas video, so we’re trying to make it special. I want the main video to be mostly new material, but I want to remember Christmases past as well. Part of that effort means that I’m going back through old photos to find pictures of our kids that we might incorporate into the video.
As a side effect, I’ve noticed that some of the pictures among the 30,000 or so we’ve taken in the last ten years are of the same subjects from different angles, sometimes at very different times. The picture I posted from the Normandy American Cemetery the other day was made this way: The two shots are were taken at two different distances from the statue, so I zoomed one of the images and cropped it to make the picture. You can tell which image is zoomed, because it is clearly lower resolution than the other one.
So as I go through our old pictures, I’m pulling out other images that I can stitch together this way. Some of the ones I’ve found are striking in 3D, even though they were entirely accidental. Others, however, didn’t turn out so well, but the hits have been well worth dealing with the misses. I will be posting several of the best images over the next several days.
Tue 16 Jun 2009
Posted by Ken Atherton under Christmas, germany
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One of the most interesting things we did while we were living in Germany was attend various Weihnachtsmarkts (Christmas Markets) during the two Christmas seasons we were there. One of these markets we went to was in Ulm, Germany. This particular Weihnachtsmarkt was held in front of the Ulm Münster, which just happens to be the tallest church in the world.
The day we were there was bitterly cold, and we tried to warm up by going into the Münster, to no avail: it wasn’t heated. Inside, we found a very chilly choir huddling together and trying to keep too much vibrato from sneaking into their voices. The church was offering tours of its workshop though, which thankfully was heated.
Outside, we managed to find a little heat near the glass blowing exhibit where we also got a small ingot commemorating our visit.
Just before we left, I took two pictures of the church, rising up into the foggy night. The pictures were at enough of an angle that they make a pretty good stereogram. Here is the Ulm Münster in dead of winter:
Photos originally from December 7, 2002
Local Tags: carissa, celia, Christmas, germany, ken, muenster, sandi, stereogram, stereophotography, ulm, winter
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Thu 18 Jun 2009
Posted by Ken Atherton under germany
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Today’s stereogram comes from one of several trips we made to Meersburg. There’s not much to say about it, other than Meersburg was one of the most beautiful towns we visited during our entire time in Germany. It was also the place where we first discovered neuwein, which is a wonderful drink made from the partially fermented must of the year’s grape crop that tastes a bit like wine and a lot like sweet grape juice. It is available for roughly a 2 week period about 4 to 6 weeks after the harvest.
Meersburg is an excellent place to visit in the fall, and the neuwein makes the trip that much more worthwhile. I don’t think that the sign pictured below is located where we stopped for a glass of neuwein, but the craftsmanship of the sign and the early fall foliage are certainly representative of the town at that time of year.
This stereogram was put together from two shots taken at different zoom levels. It is definitely an accidental stereogram, but I love the way it turned out. The depth is outstanding. Click on the picture to see it full-size.
Photos originally from October 11, 2002
Local Tags: germany, ken, meersburg, neuwein, stereogram, stereophotography
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Mon 22 Jun 2009
Posted by Ken Atherton under Uncategorized, germany
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When we lived in Germany, we visited The Dachau concentration camp memorial a few times. I did not mind the return visits much, because as unpleasant as the history of the place is, it is worth remembering. Dachau affected me, in much the same way that seeing the death of the young woman named Neda in Iran has affected me as video has surfaced in the last few days.
I imagine that Neda’s assailant felt much the way that the guards at Dachau felt: that they were serving the greater good of their society even while causing untold misery on those who in no way deserved it.
On two of the trips to Dachau, once with Sandi and once with my parents, I took a picture of the statue of the unknown victim that stands in a garden in the back side of the camp, near the infirmary. As it happens, the two pictures were taken at just about the same distance, but at slightly different angles. On one day, it had recently rained. On the other, someone had lit a candle and placed it at the base of the statue. I didn’t alter either picture to try to make them look the same because I like the ghostly look that the differences cause.
Photos originally from June 16, 2002 and October 3, 2002
Thu 25 Jun 2009
Posted by Ken Atherton under germany
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It was, unfortunately, a very drab, cloudy day the day that we took the Seilbahn in Köln across the river. I did, however, manage to capture this accidental stereogram of the cathedral as we crossed.
This stereogram is definitely hyper-3D. The two shots were taken several seconds apart while riding in a moving tram, but the effect is pretty nice–it gives a lot of depth to the city.
I have found a few more accidental stereograms in our pictures from Köln from the interior of the church. I’ll post them later this week.
Local Tags: cologne, cologne cathedral, ken, seilbahn, stereogram, stereophotography
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Mon 29 Jun 2009
One of the problems that comes with travelling to a lot of places in a short time is that you don’t usually get to go back and do things that you missed the first time — no matter what it was.
This was certainly a problem on our trip to Italy in 2002. The trip overall was very good. We got to go places and see things that we would not have gotten a chance to see if we hadn’t been living in Germany at the time (and may never again). At the same time, we were travelling with 2 small children (and with a third on the way), we were visiting five major cities in two weeks, and travelling in an unfamiliar country without a guide can be stressful in itself.
We were constantly in motion, making changes at the last minute, and trying to cram in as much as possible. Naturally, a few things turned out less than ideally. We didn’t get to see all of Pompeii, for example, but it was almost 100 degrees outside. We didn’t get to see the Last Supper in Milan — we just couldn’t work it into the schedule (but we did get to see “The Kiss” instead.)
The one missed opportunity that Sandi and I still talk about, though, is that we didn’t go up to the top of the leaning tower of Pisa. There were some good reasons for this: first of all, it was fairly expensive — the Italians know a good tourist trap when they see one. The main problem, though, was that children under 8 are not allowed inside (Carissa was 4 and Celia was 2 at the time). So we talked about Sandi and I going up one at a time, but eventually we decided not to, and eventually left to go visit nearby Lucca instead.
I definitely feel some regret that we didn’t take the time and spend the money to go up into the tower. It is a one-of-a-kind landmark, and one that I can remember hearing about even as a young child and being fascinated by the picture of this strange cock-eyed building.
We definitely think about the tower now whenever we are on vacation somewhere else, encounter some unique opportunity and wonder if we should go or not.
Trust me, If I ever make it back to Pisa, I’m going up to the top of the tower, even if I have to scale the outside with my bare hands. 
The picture below is an accidental stereogram I made the day we were in Pisa. It’s not perfect quality, primarily because the tourists surrounding the tower moved in-between the two shots. (Why can’t people hold still when I’m taking photos — even though I didn’t tell them to — so that I could take two pictures that I would set side-by-side seven years later and notice that there is a 3D effect, then decide to post the pictures to our blog? I just don’t get it. People are so rude!)
Anyway, I decided to go ahead and post the stereogram anyway, since there seems to be a dearth of Pisa stereograms on the web… now there are two!
Stereogram of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Photos originally from August 29, 2002.
Local Tags: italy, ken, leaning tower of pisa, pisa, sandi, stereogram, stereophotography, vacation
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