Sunday, June 8, 2014

Aoraki / Mt Cook Video

It's taken a couple of months, but I think I may actually have some time now to start posting video from New Zealand. Here, at least, is a first installment. It was taken from our day hike in Aoraki / Mt Cook national park. When we reached the end of the trail at the Hooker Glacier lake, there was this awesome continual cascade of clouds of the ridge and into the valley. Clouds formed and dissipated over Mt Cook itself, too. I caught it in a time lapse of stills using the GoPro. When I distilled the stills into a video it looked pretty neat, but I wanted to add a little context to it.

 
Hopefully Gaelic Storm won't be too upset that I pulled in one of their songs. These guys are great, and ought to make a southern swing sometime.

More Kickstarting

Two other projects have gotten a little nudge from me this past week: Everybody loves Reading Rainbow! Whether as the host of this show or a Giordi LaForge on Star trek, LeVaur Burton was a presence in my childhood. I applaud their goal of reviving the show and widening its distribution.

The PHD Movie 2. This could also be called "PhD Comics: The Movie: The Sequel". I started reading the web comic Piled Higher and Deeper back in college. I even met the author, Jorge Cham, at a robotics conference in Barcelona back in 2005 (we were both presenting on robotics). Amazingly enough, he's managed to make a go at a real living with this stuff, despite (in spite of?) having a doctorate from Stanford. It's funny stuff, and I enjoyed the first movie well enough to put some money towards the second. During the kickstarter campaign, you can check out the first movie for free.