It Shipped!

Today was something of a red-letter day; Mike Bailey and I sent most of our book on computer graphics shaders off to our publisher, AK Peters. We've been working on it for close to a year, and at this point we have something like 340 pages in Word format, with three chapters left to go. Now we have some time to work on the remaining material while we're getting reviews, but we'll have to work pretty furiously in another month or so if we're going to get it in print (or near print...) by the SIGGRAPH conference in August. Sooner or later I'll probably put some of the examples up in this blog; they're really fun to see.

This sure beats the seven years it took me to get my introductory graphics text written; it helps a lot to work with someone like Mike who really knows the field.

Deanne's Teaching

Deanne Brown, our daughter on Judy's side, was with the Joffrey ballet company for ten years. She now is studying physical therapy and teaching dance when her studies permit. She's had several interesting teaching gigs, including teaching ballet to the Celine Dion dancers in Las Vegas. But last week she started a truly remarkable teaching assignment -- teaching ballet to Maria Tallchief's granddaughter. It's sort of like teaching Mario Andretti's grandson to drive. Congratulations, Deanne!

Happy Birthday, Wolfgang Amadeus!

Yesterday, Sunday, January 27, was Mozart's 252nd birthday. I hope everyone celebrated it in some appropriate way. We've been in Washington for the weekend after my NSF panels, and we went to a chamber music concert at the Kennedy Center that had two pieces by Mozart on the program. (There were also two pieces by Stravinsky, but it isn't his birthday.)

We went to the concert with my longtime friend, Tim Fossum. Tim's doing a rotator year at NSF in the same area I did, and it was great to spend the day with him on Saturday, visiting the National Building Museum and the National Gallery and then going to a movie in the evening. I think that contributing to the NSF review process and seeing really good ideas is only half the value of doing panels; the other half is getting to Washington to see the city. And the third half is meeting new people and seeing old friends on panels.

NSF panels

I'm in Arlington, Virginia for some National Science Foundation panels. I won't mention the program, but it's always interesting to read people's ideas and discuss them with a group of very skilled and knowledgeable people, and then give an assessment of the value of the ideas for funding. I've also come to know many people and make a number of friends through panels. The NSF policy of peer review is the most equitable way I've ever seen for making professional decisions. It is a very human process and panels (and program officers) can make mistakes, but I'm very proud to have been involved with it over the years.

Snow

Those who live in the high Arctic have, it is said, many words for snow. For a good description of that -- much better than I could give -- read "Smilla's Sense of Snow" by Peter Hoeg, an excellent book that is a thriller, a character study of a young woman from Greenland living in Denmark, and a sociological study of Greenlanders and Danes.

Here in Iowa we have fewer words for snow, but we do have a number of different kinds of it. At the moment the snow that is falling is almost a frozen mist, with tiny, drifting crystals. (I cleaned off our sidewalk this afternoon with a broom instead of a snow shovel.) Earlier today we had big, fat dry flakes; when it's warmer we get big, fat wet flakes. We get light, grainy, dry snow that drifts easily in the wind. We get snow that you can make snowballs and snow forts out of; we get snow that will not form into snowballs unless you make them bare-handed and your hands' heat melts them enough to stick together. But snow is not really a negative; you can drive on snowy streets and walk on snowy sidewalks and sled down snowy hills. No, it's when you have ice below the snow that things get tough, or when you get sleet or raindrops with sleet in them, or getting freezing rain and the dreaded "wintry mix". We have very little of that for now and are just enjoying being warm and dry.

Brrrrrrr.......

We've had snow on the ground for six weeks, but it really hadn't been very cold -- until today. It was -7F this morning when we took Rob to the airport, and the forecast said it wouldn't break zero all day...one of those clear, sunny, frigid Iowa days. We'll probably have colder weather before the winter is over, but this was the first time I really, really felt cold.

The photo shows the ice on the inside of our windows and makes me glad we have some waffle-pattern shades that give us some window insulation. But we don't have to be out again today, so we're a lot more fortunate than those who have outdoor work!

Let it snow...

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...


After our January thaw, it wasn't clear that we'd have snow for Rob to enjoy while he's here. Yesterday's photo shows that we certainly didn't have any then. But it snowed last night, not the big winter storm that was forecast but a couple of inches of nice, light powder -- and it got a lot colder. Rob and I went out walking this afternoon on the path behind the house (the one shown in the January thaw photos) and were out perhaps a half hour, walking about a mile but looking at tracks in the snow (rabbit, deer, people, dogs), the way the snow was blowing, and everything. It felt pretty cold, especially for a current Californian. If you look closely, you can see Rob's glasses behind the Cunningham tartan scarf...

Visiting Dignitary

Rob is visiting us here this week. He brought a bit of freelance work that occupied him most of the first day he was here, but today we got out to downtown Iowa City to have lunch at the Hamburg Inn #2 and stop by Prairie Lights Bookstore, two basic Iowa institutions. It's a local tradition that visiting dignitaries stop by the Hamburg Inn, so I insisted on having lunch there.

Flight delays

Ah, yes. the joys of an airport served by commuter airlines. Over 20 years flying out of Modesto, and now out of Cedar Rapids...

Rob came in this evening to visit for a few days. The day was sunny and EVERY flight from Chicago to Cedar Rapids was on time today -- except for the last one, the one that he was on. As CID goes it wasn't too bad, but it was about a half hour late. So he had a classical tradeoff: he took a bump from a flight that was on time and came in on the late flight, but he got a free ticket for his trouble. I think he found the tradeoff worthwhile, and we're glad he's here, even late.

Writing

Although we are retired, there are days when it feels as though we work as hard as when we were being paid. Much of that work is in writing or editing. In the last couple of days we have been asked to review and edit the guidelines for judging a digital science arts competition and to write a Foreword for a conference proceedings. Judy has been asked to write a recommendation for a professional colleague whose performance review is coming up. And I continue to work with Mike Bailey of Oregon State University on our Computer Graphics Shaders textbook that is due at MK Peters, our publisher, at the end of this month. The photo shows my "writing corner" in our living room that Judy puts up with.

Of course, this writing is far from as much work as we used to do, but it does keep us busy and involved with our many professional friends. As our friend Cai Yiyu from Singapore's National Technical University tells us, the former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew says "the biggest mistake one can make is to retire and not stay mentally and physically active." We're doing our best to live up to that!

A January thaw

After 25-ish years in California, it's nice to experience real weather here in Iowa. (Yeah, right, I hear you say -- if you say that three times fast, you'll believe it!) But after having snow on the ground for the whole month of December, we've been having a January thaw. The picture shows the city hiking/cycling path behind our house in late December (left) and today (right), after several days of above-freezing temperatures. We've been looking forward to having enough snow on the ground for some sledding when Rob (our older son on Steve's side) visits next week -- but what do you know, there is some snow forecast for later this week. I do like a real winter, and an Iowa winter is certainly real, but not really too bad. We can run errands or do business whenever we can get out, and with few exceptions we can get out only when we want -- retirement has its advantages!

Good friends

Good friends are a wonderful part of life, and Judy loves to give dinner parties for ours. Last night we had Jun Ni, Qi Hua, and their family over (the left-hand picture shows them, their sons Charles and Jonathan, and Qi's father) as well as Ping Wang, a visiting scholar from China (right-hand picture with Judy). Jun worked with Judy for several years as both student and research staff. We did a traditional turkey because we did not know if Qi's father or Ping had ever seen one. It was a big hit -- with me too.

Back to normal

The caucuses are over, and life's getting back to normal. We're putting away the Christmas decorations and dealing with minor car repairs, and I got a couple of chapters of the new book project updated and had some email conversations about conference topics.

There are still a few echos of the caucuses, though. The turnouts suggest that there is going to be a lot more voter interest this year than in the past. The Republican caucuses had 25% more attendees than ever; the Democratic caucuses had over twice as many. We can sit back and watch for a while, but it looks like a very interesting year!

Our local caucus

We're back from the caucus this evening, and it was an interesting event. It was held in the gym of a local elementary school, and each candidate's representatives staked out an area where his or her supporters gathered. However, as you can see in the photo, the areas quickly overflowed into each other, and it was a grand and glorious confusion. (You can see Judy toward the right side of the picture with a slight highlight.) We were told that no Democratic caucus in Iowa had ever had over some 550 attendees, and our little precinct had 762. This looks like a big year for the Democratic party turnout.

With that number of attendees, each candidate had to have 115 supporters to be viable in the caucus. We caucused for Richardson, who had the largest number of supporters outside the big three, but he only had 57 in the first round. His precinct chair worked really hard to gather people from Biden and Dodd, the only others who had supporters, but in the end only the top three got enough support in the second round even though some still stuck with Richardson. We supported Richardson for the first round and would have liked to see the other minor candidates' supporters join us, but they didn't, so we eventually switched to Obama for the second round. We were disappointed that such a good candidate got so little attention and support, but hope for a Democratic victory in November and hope that the Governor can find a worthwhile way to bring his considerable skills into the government.

So -- in the second round of votes, the final tallies were Obama 341, Clinton 208, and Edwards 153. This translates into 5 delegates for Obama, 3 for Clinton, and 2 for Edwards. We've not turned on the TV yet to see how things turned out statewide, but our precinct looks like Obama may just come away from Iowa with an awfully lot of momentum!

We're caucusing for Richardson

Tonight's rally with Governor Richardson was at The Mill, a fairly small restaurant and bar downtown. We got there an hour early and got a seat, but by the time the event started it was totally packed without even room to add standees. Tom Udall, a Senate candidate from New Mexico, spoke, as did the Red Cross pilot he got out of Sudan, and then Richardson gave a good talk. In spite of the crowd, we were able to get to a place where we could shake hands with him. We've been very close to committing to Richardson for the caucus, and we've now decided to do that. I'll write more about the caucuses tomorrow!

It's an election year!

Well, 2008 is divisible by four, so it's leap year -- and election year. And an election year in Iowa is something to see! We have been bombarded with campaign ads for the last year on TV and in print (everyone is for the environment, but they've sure been killing trees!) The ads have sometimes been informative, but they've sometimes been downright scary; it you like Dick Cheney, you'll LOVE Mitt Romney.

Johnson County, Iowa, is a pretty Democratic area so, in generally pretty conservative Iowa, it's sometimes called "The People's Republic of Johnson County." Clearly they've never seen The People's Republic of Berkeley! There is probably a difference in the way the parties handle caucuses, but with six precincts in Coralville there are six different Democratic caucus sites but only one Republican site.

We've done our part to try to understand the issues and the (Democratic) candidates. We attended the Johnson County Democratic Picnic, went to an Obama rally at UI, and are going to a Richardson meeting tonight. I've never seen "retail politics" before -- politics where the candidate really makes an effort to talk with individuals instead of just using mass media -- except for local races; if all politics were done this way we'd have a lot smaller chance of electing hypocrits like the Current Occupant. The value of the Iowa process is that it forces candidates to communicate at the personal level, and it shouldn't be lost.

Tomorrow night we may walk over to our caucus at an elementary school about a half mile away. It should be very interesting, and I'll write about it here.

But even though almost all our Presidential election years have been leap years (pop quiz: in what years were Presidential election years NOT leap years?), at least we have the actual election on the first Tuesday in November so it can never fall on Sadie Hawkins Day...

The year begins

2008 begins by supporting the stereotype of an Iowa winter. It's cold, about 13 F, there's nearly a foot of snow on the ground, and it's snowing lightly. I can see why the Eskimo are said to have many words for snow because we see several kinds here, but that may be a topic for a future note.

Life is typical for winter at this time of year. The Christmas decorations aren't down yet but will be soon. We're always conscious of the state of the streets and driveway; at the moment they're snow-covered but in good shape. The "old car" -- our 95 Nissan -- has developed the same kind of fuel line problem it seemed to have in January so it needs to go into the shop. We have plenty of bird food for the time being. As I said, just ordinary things.

But winter can be very pretty here. We have snow on top of the Christmas lights so they make a kind of diffused light, and the city park path through the woods at the bottom of the back yard is a winter delight. So I'll leave you for the day with a picture of the Christmas lights and with our very best wishes for a wonderful 2008!