I'm finally getting around to catching up on my photos! Here are my favorites from Seattle's Seafair, August 1st and 2nd:

THE RULES: Once you have been tagged, you are supposed to write down the top 20 songs you can listen to over and over and of which you never get tired; they should be songs that have struck a chord with you on some level. They don't have to be in any particular order. At the end, choose a bunch of people to be tagged, including the person who tagged you. (If you were tagged, it's because I'm nosy about your musical tastes. If you weren't tagged, it's probably because I figure that you loathe things like this.) Go to "notes" under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 20 songs, tag some people, then click publish. Also, even if you weren't tagged, you can still make your own list if you like the idea.

(These probably aren't really my top 20... just the first 20 I could think of.)

1. The Allman Brothers Band - "Jessica"
2. B'z - "ZERO"
3. J. S. Bach - the fugue from "Toccata and Fugue in d minor," BMW 565
4. Black Sabbath - "War Pigs"
5. Blue Öyster Cult - "Burnin' For You"
6. Calexico (or anyone else) - "Cascabel"
7. Cast Iron Filter - "Running Free" (live)
8. Daft Punk - "Digital Love"
9. Dave Matthews Band - "Two Step"
10. Flogging Molly - "Black Friday Rule"
11. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - "Der Holle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" (the aria of the Queen of the Night) from Die Zauberflöte
12. Guns N' Roses - "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
13. Jethro Tull - "Bourée"
14. Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Free Bird"
15. The Marshall Tucker Band - "24 Hours At A Time" (the 14-minute live one with Charlie Daniels from Where We All Belong!)
16. New Order - "Bizarre Love Triangle"
17. Pearl Jam - "Alive"
18. Queen - "Bohemian Rhapsody"
19. Smash Mouth - "Flo"
20. Weezer - "Only in Dreams"

I've been thinking of a lot of things to write in here, but I haven't been spending that much time at internet cafes. Maybe when I get back I'll write a lot.

Anyway I'm in Mumbai now - my last stop in India before I leave tomorrow night for Malaysia. I'm really surprised how different Mumbai is than everywhere else I've been in India - I didn't realize any place like this existed in India. For example, the streets are not covered in dirt, mud, trash, and excrement, and in the 90+ min taxi ride from the airport to my hotel, I didn't see a single cow wander across the road (nor did I see any cycle rickshaws or horse- or camel-drawn carts).

And in what will probably be the craziest turn of events of my entire trip, I was hired to act in a small (speaking) role in a Bollywood movie, as a NYPD cop named "Farnandis John" (where the heck did they get that name?? The other cop - perhaps my partner - was named "Sam Anderson"). Tragically, my Future Bollywood Star ambitions were dashed (for the time being) when the director judged my face to be "too thin" for a cop.

Anyway, the lady who hired me gave me her contact info and told me to contact her next time I was in Mumbai if I wanted to act in another movie... so if you're ever in Mumbai and want to be in a Bollywood movie, let me know and I'll give you her info.

A brief conversation between my waiter at lunch today and me:
Waiter: You are an outsider.
Me: Um.... yes. Right.
Waiter: Which side are you from?
Me: Uh...
He came back later and showed me a postcard to him from George Bush and "Dick Chaney," telling me that George Bush was his friend and a good man.

Man I've been doing so much, it's hard to believe my trip is only half over!

Overview: India->Malaysia->Singapore->Hong Kong!

Let me know if you want postcards!
I've got all my plane tickets, I think, but I still need to find places to stay in India, Singapore, and Hong Kong. And I don't think you can easily buy train tickets outside India, so I'll have to do that when I arrive.
Oh and let me know if you know anyone where I'm going in India who would want to show me around! =)

In detail:

1. Washington -> Bay Area

At some point after August 18th and before August 23rd I'm going to drive back down to California. I still need to find a place to stay there and a place to put my stuff while I'm in Asia, though, since I'm subletting my apartment.

2. San Francisco -> Delhi

Singapore Airlines
777-300ER, San Francisco-Seoul-Singapore; 777-200, Singapore-New Delhi
23 August, 2:10 p.m. - 25 August, 5:20 a.m.

This will be awesome flying a fancy Asian airline, which I've never done before - I think Singapore Airlines is one of the best airlines in the world too. And being on a 777-300ER should be pretty awesome too (as well as seeing Korea, if only from the air and airport). What won't be awesome will be the 26 hours I'll be spending on this (including two one-hour layovers). Hopefully I'll still be sane when I arrive.

3. Delhi -> Himachal Pradesh

Kingfisher Red
ATR-42/72, New Delhi-Shimla
26 August, 7:45 a.m. - 26 August, 8:55 a.m.

So after about 24 hours in Delhi I'll head up to the cooler Himalayas =). Then I have about a week up there to explore different places.

4. Himachal Pradesh -> Delhi

MDLR Airlines
Avro RJ70, Kullu-New Delhi
2 September, 7:50 a.m. - 2 September, 8:30 a.m.

Back to the plains! Hopefully it will have cooled off a little by now. I've never been on an Avro RJ (or BAe 146) before, so that should be cool.

5. Delhi -> Agra

India Railways
Bhopal Shatabdi Express, New Delhi-Agra
3 September, 6:15 a.m. - 3 September, 8:12 a.m.

More places to see! Can't stay too long in Delhi!

6. Agra -> Jaipur

India Railways
Gwalior-Udaipur City Train, Agra-Jaipur
4 September, 6:20 p.m. - 4 September, 10:20 p.m.

Time to see some of Rajasthan!

7. Jaipur -> Mumbai

GoAir
A320, Jaipur-Mumbai
6 September, 5:00 p.m. - 6 September, 6:30 p.m.

Going to see some of south India too!

8. Mumbai -> Malaysia

Air India
A320, Mumbai-Bangalore; A319, Bangalore-Singapore
8 September, 8:35 p.m. - 9 September, 6:55 a.m.

After a couple days in Mumbai I'm heading to Malaysia via Singapore!

9. Malaysia -> Singapore

13 September

Somehow, I'm returning to Singapore on September 13th.

10. Singapore -> Hong Kong

Jetstar Asia
A320, Singapore-Hong Kong
17 September, 6:40 a.m. - 17 September, 10:25 a.m.

A few days in Singapore - and then Hong Kong!! I've been wanting to go back to Hong Kong for years, but I didn't think it was going to happen anytime soon. But it turns out it was less expensive (in terms of airline tickets) to stop in Hong Kong than fly directly back!

11. Hong Kong -> Bay Area

Air China
A321, Hong Kong-Beijing; 747-400M, Hong Kong-San Francisco
22 September, 10:30 a.m. - 22 September, 12:40 p.m.

And back just in time for the fall quarter! Well actually I'm missing the first day and a half, but it was either that or sacrifice a couple days of Hong Kong. I'm on a 747 combi on the last leg, which could be interesting - I've never flown on a combi before.

Earlier this month we went to the Museum of Flight, and I tried out the 0.42x fisheye converter I'm borrowing from Kristina. I think she got it for $20 on eBay. It screws onto the front of my kit lens, and turns it from 18-55mm to 8-23mm (11-35mm with the crop factor). Zoomed all the way out, you only get a circle of image in the middle of the frame (the rest of the frame is just the inside of the converter), but that can be kind of a cool effect. I'm certainly not getting the same effect I would with a real 8mm fisheye, though. The quality isn't that great - the edges are blurry with plenty of chromatic aberration - but I certainly wasn't expecting much either. The effect is a lot of fun, so I'll probably buy one of these for myself. An actual lens that can do this well is $500+, so that'll probably wait until I have a full-time job.

Concorde wing!

Old Air Force One cockpit (VC-137, used in the 60s for JFK, LBJ, etc.)! Cool to be able to get pretty much the whole cockpit in one shot.

Blackbird nose! (M-21 actually!)

MiG-15bis

For the 4th of July weekend we went backpacking in the Olympic Mountains, to Buckhorn Mountain, which was only a couple hours away.

It was somewhat hazy, especially on Friday, but the haze kinda looks cool in this shot I think.

Sun halo!

Panorama from the summit (a composite of 9 exposures)

Mount Rainier! We're at about 7,000 feet here (and we started at 2500).

On one of the days when it was actually clear enough to see Mount Rainier, we went up to Queen Anne Hill and Kerry Park for that standard Seattle postcard view.

Man parts of this area are just so scenic. We woulda caught a great sunset here if we'd been maybe 10 minutes earlier.

Submarine! Never seen that before.

Woulda been nice if it were a little less cloudy and a little more sunsetty.

I like this one a lot, even though you can't see Mount Rainier anymore.

At the end of May our department got a tour of NASA Ames - I'd already seen some of the things on the tour when I worked there last summer, but there were some things I hadn't seen yet too.

The test section of the Unitary Plan wind tunnel

NASA's most ridiculous visualization system, hyperwall-2

Part of Pleiades, one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world

Some sort of data storage machine. Hard to get a picture of, but the reflections look kinda cool, I think.

I think the IBM supercomputers look much nicer than the SGIs. The reflections of lights in the blue strip remind me of something out of 2001. "Oh my God! It's full of stars!"

NASA's got a control tower simulator too, so they can test out new air traffic control systems, or new airport configurations. Here's their simulation of the Ivanpah Airport which will be build outside of Las Vegas in about 10 years.

I flew to Houston last month for Clark's wedding, and my flight there left SFO at 6 a.m. I ended up taking the last bus to SFO, which got me there about 4 a.m., when SFO is almost empty, which is a weird sight for an airport that's normally so busy.

Since I didn't have to worry about getting in people's way, I tried some time exposures on the moving sidewalks, but they were too bumpy to get a good clear shot.

Empty departure hall...

Went up to the top of Garage A to get this shot... one day I'll have to get to SFO earlier in the night, because then there'll be a Qantas 747 here instead of this guy. I think there were no international widebodies at SFO at all at 4 a.m., which was a little disappointing but also an interesting contrast to how SFO usually looks.

Sunrise on takeoff, looking towards Marin... it's hard to get good sunrise shots at SFO because it's usually overcast that time of day, but that does make for interesting takeoff shots, with the mountains in Marin poking up through the sea of clouds.

Rice! On my way into Hobby I got the best aerial view of Rice I've ever had.

Zooming out... the Museum District, Hermann Park, the Med Center, and Rice.

On my flight back to SFO I got a good view of Moffett Field/NASA Ames... sitting on the wrong side of the plane to see Stanford or San Francisco, though.

This quarter I'm taking:
AA 210A: Fundamentals of Compressible Flow
AA 241A: Introduction to Aircraft Design, Synthesis, and Analysis
AA 297: Seminar in Guidance, Navigation, and Control
ENGR 205: Introduction to Control Design Techniques
MUSIC 157: Introduction to Mariachi Ensemble

11 units total. Should be pretty manageable. Next quarter I'm going to try taking 15 units. At this rate, I'll be able to graduate with my MS in December 2009.

(Night at Point Reyes National Park, August 2008)

Updated Schedule: I'll be in the Bay Area until August 15th, then I'll be in Lubbock until around September 7th or so, and then I'll be moving up to Palo Alto.

I had a dream Wednesday night where I was at some building in Russia for an aerospace class I was taking. I'm not sure if the entire class was held in that building, or if we were there for a field trip or something. It was a large government building, with a big square courtyard in the middle. The ground outside and in the courtyard was covered with snow. I was taking a timed midterm on aircraft performance for the course, and one of the questions asked to sketch a Su-27 with a FLIR pod. I remembered seeing a picture of a a Su-27 with a FLIR pod on one of the walls in the building, so since I couldn't remember what it looked like, I went around the building trying to find it again. I found the room where the picture was, but I realized I had to push this button on the wall which would change the wallpaper and the pictures on the wall to display the picture I wanted. However, there were some people in the room from the US government talking with some of the Russians on business, so I didn't want to disrupt them. I remember another one of the questions on the midterm asked to calculate some aspect of the performance of the An-225 with the Buran from given parameters. At one point, I was outside the building and I happened to see the Russians do an engine test (with full afterburner) on a Tu-160 that was outside the building - it had been sitting there for years, and was more of a museum piece. However, the Americans were looking into paying the Russians to restart their space shuttle program, presumably to fill in the gap between the retirement of the American space shuttle and the Orion, and that Tu-160 had been used to ferry the Russian space shuttle, so they were looking into the feasibility of reactivating it.