Lena Sjööblom, Miss November 1972

In the process of getting images to demonstrate image sampling techniques I found myself reading, once again, about Lena Sjööblom, the most Mona Lisa of computer imaging.

From: electronicimaging.spiedigitallibrary.org/article.aspx?articleid=1100033
Nonadaptive sampling:	quasirandom	farthest point	importance-driven farthest point
Adaptive sampling:	bandwidth	coverage	importance-driven coverage

The May/June 2001 editions of the IEEE Professional Communications Society Newsletter had a nice write up of the origin of the original and subsequent use (www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/pcs_mirror/may_june01.pdf):

Lena Sjööblom, a Swedish native working as a model in Chicago in 1972, was Playboy’s Miss November that year. She would return to her native country, marry, and raise children before learning that her centerfold picture had become the ultimate laboratory rat. Not only that: Lena became for the engineers something like what Rita Hayworth was for U.S. soldiers in the trenches of World War II.

What I didn't find find was a link to the legal arrangement by which Playboy allowed Lena's copyrighted image to be used by graphics researchers.

The same newsletter issue provided this: You know it’s a “No Frills” airline when:

• They don’t sell tickets, they sell chances.
• All the insurance machines in the terminal are sold out.
• Before the flight, the passengers get together and elect a pilot.
• You cannot board the plane unless you have the exact change.
• Before you take off, the flight attendant tells you to fasten your Velcro.

Brazil, Home of the $30 Cheese Pizza

"In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could." ~Rudiger Dornbusch, an economist who spent his last 27 years at MIT.

I was led to the quote from a NY Times article about the high cost of living in Brazil, "Prices Fuel Outrage in Brazil, Home of the $30 Cheese Pizza" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/world/americas/prices-fuel-outrage-in-brazil-home-of-the-30-cheese-pizza.html), then through an English translation of a Braziliam economics blog (The Drunkeynesian: thedrunkeynesian.blogspot.com/)

I imagine that when someone waxes lyrical about Ipanema, its sparkling beaches and heavenly weather, I'll be prompted to add, "And the $30 pizza."  Consumer anger has been fueled by a law requiring retailers to detail on receipts how much tax customers were charged.  The article cites one $92 grocery bill, $25 of which was tax.

Joanie and Johnny Together

I owe a small debt of gratitude to Doonesbury's video of the day.  Today's video linked to Johnny Cash and Joanie Mitchell singing "The Long Black Veil".  Joannie added a high pitched part to the chorus that I don't believe I've heard before.  She does it the first about the 1 minute mark.  Enchanting. 

How Old is Too Old? - When to Refresh Student & Facutly PCs

It does not give one confidence when an educational bulletin doesn't know how to use a spell checker.

I know it happens.  I know that I notice typos more than most, but it is still annoying.

In the past, when I spotted a typo I'd send a message to an editor suggesting that if they put someone's liver on a pike I'd bring the fava beans and a nice chianti.  I used to paraphrase Dick the Butcher in ''Henry VI" (Let's kill all the proofreaders) until I realized that few proofreaders were left.

Typesetting is gone.  A piece is written electronically, sent, and then posted without the mediation of experience.  It impresses me that mistakes, obvious mistakes, mistakes underlined in red get through.  I've seen it myself in my PowerPoint presentations.

I'll be in front of the class when -- Ooop!  I stop the presentation, fix the spelling error, save the file, and continue where I left off.  Sometimes its worse: a real error of fact gets through.  Ooop.  That's wrong.  Very embarrassing.  I take time to tell the class that they should pay attention and try to think about what they're being told because some of what they'll be told may be wrong.  The instructor may misspeak.  In editing, a "not" gets misplaced.

One of my PowerPoint techniques is to duplicate a slide or group of slides and then edit them.  Occasionally stuff gets left lying around: stray text, an extra slide, or the wrong reference in the notes.  I would have thought I'd learn my lesson, but I don't.

(This might be the appropriate point to quote someone to the effect that education is the process by which knowledge is passed from the notebook of the instructor to the notebook of the student without passing through the mind of either.  Unfortunately the provenance is unclear (quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/17/lecture-minds/).  An updated version might say that knowledge flows seamlessly from the publisher's PowerPoint presentation to handouts stuffed into student Trapper™ portfolios.)

Installation Blues

Another instructor lent me a PC, a Dell Optiplex 745 with Vista installed.  Not a problem.  I have a genuine Windows 7 SP 1 DVD to install a newer operating systems.  Rushing right ahead into the update routine, I became reacquainted with the Microsoft installation nonsense.

 I'll let others bash Microsoft.  All I need to say is that when installing Linux, I'm presented with a whole bunch of screens and choices up front.  Once I click the Install button I don't have to do anything other than wait and then install the 300 or so updates required, but it's essentially painless.

Microsoft reboots several times and ask for user input.  The most annoying part of the installation is that the screen will go black.  Because I wasn't playing close attention, I would think that the computer was in the process of rebooting.  It was only when I tapped a key the screen would light up and display a dialog box giving me the choice of continuing or cancelling.  Sigh.

It was more annoying than stressful, but then the installation rejected my product key.   I figured I'd do something to get a Genuine Windows seal of approval or contact the Dream Spark people to get an alternate key later.

The first order of business was to install newer browsers etc.  Oh simple soul.  Internet Explorer gave me a few raspberries in the form of DLL exceptions in DLL's as did MSPaint.  The Dell site displayed updates for the hardware up to Vista.  Sigh.

As I write I've reinstalled Vista and am waiting for the 102 updates to install.  Sigh.