how to turn your gps data into a 3d movie

for all you out there with some sort of mobile gps device that you either take hiking, biking, running or other form of adventuring here are some quick and easy (relatively painless) steps to make a movie in google earth to visualize your data and show the world where you went.

record a track using an gps enabled device. (note: there are many gps file formats – the one you want is .gpx, if your device stores a different file type, there are many online file converters such as http://www.gpsies.com/convert.do)

if you’re using an android device using the mytracks app, make sure to export your tracks in .gpx format (in mytracks click > menu > tracks):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

now we’re ready for the google earth part (note: the following steps are done in google earth for mac os x although I think they should be the same for windows & linux)

open up google earth. file > open > click one of your .gpx files

 

 

 

 

 

i clicked >create KML Tracks & Adjust altitudes to ground height but im not exactly what these do.

 

 

 

 

earth should load your file and zoom to show your entire track

 

 

 

 

 

 

now we will spend some time messing around with the time toolbar (technical term?) at the top left of the screen. make sure the scroll bar is all the way over to right as pictured (the most recent point in time)

 

 

 

now click the zoom button on the toolbar (**pitfall prevention: this time bar is extremely finicky and can lead to much annoyance because it can zoom out to priors months and then to only the last hour and everything in between, all of which will prevent your track from being visible – play around with it – you’ll see what I mean)

you want zoom until the time lapse spans about 24 hours.

 

 

 

drag the cursor backwards in time until the blue line of your run disappears. when you press play, your run will play in real time PLAY is the 4th button (next to the zoom buttons on the slider bar)

click play and you should see something like this: (note – if you dont, be patient and play around with the time lapse span – your file is there – you just have find the right zone)

if you’ve made it this far now its time to play around with the zoom/angle settings to highlight the altitude and location of the run.

start by clicking up on the “eye” dongle. then left and right, zoom around etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

to record your run and make a movie out of it simply get rid of the unnecessary toolbars by going view > unclick Toolbar & > unclick Sidebar

then make a screencast of your track. on a mac just open QuickTime Player and go File > New Screen Recording. for windows, download a screencast program.

you may want to click the settings button on the time lapse bar and make sure the animation speed is set the slowest possible:

 

 

 

 

 

get your time bar ready in google earth, hit record in quicktime and there you go!!!!

check out my youtube channel for more videos (of slightly more epic runs…) – http://www.youtube.com/user/sakotturi

hope this helps!

font finder!

ever read a paper or article online and wonder what font they used? if so and yet you did not feel like spending hours scrolling through the a-z font list in your natural wordprocessor?

the bad news: you may be ocd

the good news: WhatTheFont! is just for you

the better news: it really fonting works

just take a snapshot of the text you wish to uncover the name of. (note: you will need to zoom in to make the letters at least 100 pixels all (a rough est. is ~70pixels = 1 inch). On a mac use cmd + “+” to zoom in. Then cmd+shift+4 to turn on snapshot, drag and release over the text. Then submit your photo here:  http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

It then parses each character out and guesses what character it is, if it didn’t fill in the boxes below, go ahead and do it yourself. incomplete characters leave blank. then continue and scroll down till you got your match

I thought I was using ‘garamond’ but no, this is actually apple courier! oh, life is just that much sweeter now.

(WhatTheFont does not know that I am mentioning them or endorsing them. They did not pay me to say this )

Save your day old rice!

If I had a nickel for every time I cooked too much rice I’d be able to pay my way through college. Instead I normally end up tosing the rice cause I know it won’t taste anything like it does fresh tomorrow…

Now I’ve heard of ways to reconstitute or rather rehydrate rice but to be honest it still wasn’t worth keeping around.

Tonight, however, I found a way that actually works and I think makes it better in ways you couldn’t make rice the day of. Allow me to explain.

I bought a pack of potstickers at trader joes (tjs) tonight after swim practice and realized that the process of browning the frozen pieces of asian goodness and then steaming them in a couple tablespoons of water perfectly revives day old rice. Throw on some soyu, salsa, shallots and sundried tomatoes and you’ve got a 10 min meal worth sharing with friends. It’s an asian-mexican ‘paella’  fusion meal in no time. And what’s better is that the thickness of day old rice actually works better for this meal than freshly made rice would because it would be too sticky and moist.

Hope this helps a hungry college stomach somewhere

the lorax

 

the lorax – by Dr. Seuss (1st published in 1971)

things haven’t much changed in the last 39 years for scientists or business men or people of all shapes, colors and sizes.

My Cellular Neurobio. Professor i.e. the lorax moustache in real life I think i would need to rogaine my upper lip for 10 years before to make my own.

 

i never thought pokemon would help me understand life until today…

today i learned how to analyse brain data in AFNI. by that i mean that for the first time i successfully managed to take a giant binary file and run a bunch of scripts on it to the point where I could overlay the functional data on top of the structural brain data. This allows me to see where certain brain areas were active during an emotional face processing task.

in accomplishing this task i feel like i increased my claim to being a neuroscientist from 0.1 to 0.5 (i know its still very low but knowing what some people can do, i’ve still got a very long ways to go, but its progress none-the-less).

what i’ve done is that through recent increases in experience, i’ve learned a new task. This new task will then enable me to learn higher tasks and so on and so forth. I will eventually graduate from UCSD with a bachelors of science degree and then go on to get a masters, doctorate or minor deity degree.

so what? how did i learn all of this by age 10 playing pokemon on my gameboy? wandering through the grass in some enchanted land i would encounter problems (attacking pokemon) and have to battle them. if i overcame the conflict i would gain experience points which would eventually accumulate to my pokemon learning a new attack or skill. after accumulating more experience points i would level-up and then after reaching a pre-determined threshold i would evolve into a higher being. make your way from freshmen – sophomore – junior – senior; you graduate and evolve into an M.S., PhD, or M.D. being. some creatures only evolve once, maybe from high school to bachelors, like magikarp into gyarados. Or some go all the way up three levels like charmander to charmeleon to charizard.

there’s nothing wrong with being a 2-step being over a 3-step being. A gyarados could beat a charizard (water beats fire…) [if you disagree with this do NOT post a comment on my blog, this will not become a pokemon debate..!]

the point is that success is not dependent on path and what works for one person may not work for others. in certain situations for certain people water is better than fire, but psychic beats just about everything except itself

when you start a new pokemon game you get to choose grass, fire or water. the first couple bosses you have to beat in the game are rock, water and electricity so by choosing fire you’re immediately disadvantaged until later in the game when fire becomes helpful. choices early on in life may effect temporary success but are not the sole determining factor in your ability to ‘beat the game’

for me, it’s back to data analysis i.e. experience point gathering. soon I will begin the process of writing a paper which will ensure many more experience points. one level-up, one step closer to evolving.

thanks for reading. Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers” has certainly influenced this writing. i most certainly recommend reading it.

oh google

Well, I can’t believe this is too far from reality. Maybe through face or voice recognition software it could map cues highlighting blunt jealously, burried enmity, or burgeoning love. Hopefully ill live to see that day, maybe even be a part of it.

But would that be a good thing, being able to tell what people are thinking and how they really feel about you? What would we humans do with information? My guess is that we would do nothing we don’t already do – if the information fits what we want to believe we would accept it, if not then we would reject it. When a couple pieces fit we feel happy and accomplished. When enough don’t fit we are finally forced to take a step back and reevaluate our current state.

noteworthy Catch 22 quote(s)

a quote from Mr. Heller from last night’s reading:

“I don’t want to be in the war any more. There are 10 million men in uniform who could replace me. Let somebody else get killed.”

“But suppose everyone on our side felt that way.”

“Then I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn’t I?” -129