Baby Island Lodge

PHOTOS & FUN
at the
WEDDING of TINA YUSHAN GOURD
and
LORRIN HANNAY NELSON
Baby Island Lodge & Freeland Hall
Whidbey Island, 21-25 July 2004

INTRO / HOME
BABY ISLAND LODGE
FREELAND HALL & CEREMONY

BABY ISLAND LODGE
mostly before the wedding

Hanging around the kitchen in Baby Island Lodge
Views of Lodge
Great people! great portraits
Games: Sunroom, Settlers of Catan
Girls' Night Out: mudfaces
Get the flowers, deck the hall.
Wedding plans on Friday, & set to go on Saturday

HANGING AROUND THE KITCHEN

Friday VeggieBBQ. KatieG, LorrinN, GeoffA, SeanB, Arlene&DavidN,
Florence & LydiaN, ? blur, RobinN, Brad Stevens, MattS. Photo: JerryNelson.

;

Kitchen. Dusk out the door. Jessic, Lydia, Erin, Rob

JessicaB, LydiaN, ErinH, RobS. Photo: JerryNelson.
Take me back.

Left: Back of Robin's head, Chad Saselik & Janet Lee, Joel Hartel, Eric Miller, Eric Freedman (rear), Chuck Groom, Jennifer McGuire,
Lisa Gourd Goold, David Gourd. Right: Lorrin Nelson, Emily Peterson Stephens. Photos: Rob Starling.

Left: deviled eggs for Saturday lunch. Right: Thursday pizza after Capture the Flag at Fort Casey and Admiralty Point.

Lorrin Nelson, Eric Freedman, Janet Lee. Photo: Rob Starling. Right: GeoffA, RobinN. Friday BBQ. Photo: JN.

Left: Matt Svoboda and Katie Gourd, Warren Menzer.
L-background: Geoff A, ArleneN, SeanB, Florence & Lydia N, GeorgeM. (Phogo: JN)
Right: Janet, Katie & Matt are in the kitchen, so it must be Friday BBQ dinner. (Photo: JN)

Friday VegBBQ. (Photo: Jerry Nelson.)

FLASHTUBE TIRADE
original --------------------------------- fixed
Lodge kitchen - original flash - Lorrin & Sean

Robin (back), Sean Brennan, Lorrin Nelson, Eric Freedman, Janet Lee. The Sunday Intellectual Property Conference.
Photo: Rob Starling. L: original flash photo. R: fixed.

I hate flash pictures (left), and a lot of photo fuss was expended to disguise them (right). We can do better.

The flash beam on the digicams Rob and I have does not spread wide enough to cover the field of view, never mind the usual Flash Blast Pasty Face of anyone caught in the foreground. Since nearly all cameras have zoom lenses for the image, cameras must also have zoom optics for the flash. Widen the beam, even though that weakens it. Or else, consume some battery power and leave the beam wide all the time. Or else, consume some computational time between snapshots and run an algorithm that's the inverse of your Evil Flash Profile to flatten out image luminance.

To cope with darkness due to distance even when the beam is perfect, the accepted technique is bounce flash. So give us a few more tubes aimed at the ceiling and walls for fill-in, not just that single Big One poked into the subject's face.

I find it interesting that music (mp3s) and photo quality have gone backwards in the recent decade. Amazed that people all around me use artifacts of civilization they cannot understand, I have often thought such ignorance would produce alienation and emotional breakdown. So far, though, all we're getting is crummy gadgets. Also, user manual authors have concluded that, since no one will understand what they have created, there is no point in trying to explain how to use the stuff or why. In the world of technology, people accept helplessness. This is not good training for the world of politics.

Everyone "knows" they cannot understand technology. Scientists themselves stick to a narrow specialty.

Are there untested assumptions here?

As the principles upon which scientific civilization is based become more powerful, their greater generality makes comprehension of the world around us easier, not harder. Principles of Nature are true for all time; complex human artifacts come and go. Most people say you'll be left ever further behind by an ever-increasing rate of information flow, and then cite the peripheral, the ephemeral and the transient as proof. Think for yourself. There are only four forces of nature. Most active devices we touch or use in a lifetime depend on only a single force, electromagnetism -- doesn't sound like overload to me. Those people who taught us that understanding the world around us was futile -- were they adventurers who sallied forth and fell back in failure, or were those social creatures transmitting the received wisdom of the group? OK, your turn; here's the soapbox.

THE LODGE

Views of Baby Island from the Lodge. A wade out at low tide revealed that the white "beach" was centuries of accumulated shells dropped by birds. (Photos: Rob Starling.)

Photo: Rob Starling. Photo: Jerry Nelson.
Left: Some found the décor of our former artists' colony inspiring (OK, let's add the hi-res graphics for your 8x10).

Right: A major flare shot electrified gas -- mostly protons -- from the sun's corona towards the Earth at 3 to 4 million miles per hour on 16 and 17 July. They arrived the next day (92 million miles / 4 million mph = 23 hrs). The speediest particles got here in about an hour (light itself takes 8 1/4 minutes). Disturbances on Earth can last a week after a strong X-class coronal ejection. Not having kept up to date on Internet Solar Activity Reports, we were all surprised by two nights of Northern Lights ca. Thursday, 22 July 04. Above is a sunset photo -- I think someone captured the Northern Lights so I can add a shot eventually.

All the light we see comes from electrons changing their quantized orbitals. Bashing the atmosphere's gas molecules hard enough changes the relationship between orbiting electrons and their nucleus (to the point of completely separating the two sometimes). The atoms/molecules emit light (give back the energy) as electrons and nuclei settle back into their "ground state". A Northern Lights forecast modeled from solar flare data is here; the map shows how far south current solar flares are expected to drive north-polar lights.

GREAT PEOPLE

Lorrin's cousin Jessica Beecher, and Jessica with my sister Lydia Nelson. Photos: Rob Starling.

Jennifer McGuire (Photo: Rob Starling; cropped, so fewer pixels, but the aspect ratio (shape) is still OK for a stnd print).
Rob with Jenn (photo from Rob). Baby Island Lodge deck, and dining room w/sun room and kitchen in bkgnd.

Geoff Anisman, Jerry Nelson on rear Lodge swing

Virginia Nguyen, Warren and Mandy Menzer. Geoff Anisman, Jerry Nelson on the rear porch swing. (Photos: Rob Starling.)
Right: Erics Miller & Freedman. How could I ever have confused them, foolish me.

Eric Freedman & Lorrin Nelson (photo: Rob Starling). Warren Menzer (photo: Jerry Nelson).

Left: Ferry time to Whidbey is not as long as to the San Juans farther north -- about 1/2 hr including load & loadout.
Right: Warren, composed and thoughtful. "A clean enough cut won't trigger enzymatic reactions and droplet dispersal, and I'll get all these Friday kabob onions done without crying."

Brad Stevens, Emily Peters, David and Arlene Nelson. (Photos: Jerry Nelson)

Left: George Meaders, Marlene Heller. Middle: Katie Gourd and Luna, world's sweetest puppy. Right: Florence Nelson. (Photos: Jerry Nelson.)

Mom (Florence) loved being surrounded by bright people with something to say, and talked her way into a date with Geoff Annisman at the Hirschhorn [Modern Art] Museum in DC (part of the Smithsonian family), where she is a docent.

Sean Brennan (above), Lydia & Lorrin "No-really-it's-non-alcholic" Nelson. (Photos: Jerry Nelson).
Ben Goold, your photo is coming.

Rob Starling and Jen McGuire, Sunday. (Photos: JN)

L: Geoff Annisman. R: Sean Brennan. (Photos: JN.)

GAMES

Left, starting top left: LorrinN, RobS, Mandy is that you?, EricF, ErinH, JennM, Eric Miller. (Photo: Jerry Nelson.)
Right, starting top: Jessica Beecher, Eric Miller, Lorrin Nelson, Mandy Menzer. (Photo: Rob Starling.)

Hash3 - but sometimes you gotta fold 'em.

Hash (Brian Hashimi; photos: Jerry Nelson)

"This takes more brains than most people think, and it's fun !! But sometimes you just gotta fold 'em."

Lisa Goold, playing with Anita Chikkatur. Jen McGuire and David Gourd (Geoff Annisman in bkgnd).
(Photos: JN)

Yes, water in the background, and for the next 4,700 miles. Sun and breeze and NO ALLERGIES.

GIRLS' NIGHT OUT

Hope to get some of David & Karen's great pictures here.

GET THE FLOWERS, DECK THE HALL

Chad Saselik and Janet Lee deck out Freeland Hall. (Photos: Rob Starling.)

How many Ph.D.s does it take to . . .

Chad Saselik and Janet Lee were our chief gaffers on the lighting crew. The AC plugs were the snap-on type -- you just cut the wire length you need and slip the wire into the hole, then push down two levers and you're done. The lamp sockets were the twist-lock type: you just insert the separated wires, twist the lever and you're done. Yeah, sure. The insulation needed to be shaved with a sharp razor and lubricated with wax to fit the plug hole. As for the lamp sockets, the insulation around the separated wire makes a "D" pattern in cross-section, with only the straight side of the "D" thin enough to be punctured by the contact pins. Besides careful rotational alignment, leaving excess length protruding on the far side, and pulling the wire down hard onto the contact with your teeth also helps. Eventually, everything lit.

Chad, Janet and I are all lab rats. We marveled how it doesn't matter whether you're plugging together hundreds of thousands of dollars of lab gear from multiple crates and cartons, or just wiring a light bulb. "Success inheres not so much in the technology as in the art with which it is practiced."

For you humanists and social scientists out there, the computer that wrote this and the one you're reading it on contain ribbon cables with 34, 40, 80 wires each, not just two for a lightbulb, and they all use the same "just press the wire on" technology that Chad and Janet wrestled with, and every single wire connects perfectly every time. This mature technology is called IDC, Insulation Displacement Connectors, and it works, period. So the problem with the plugs that 100 million families buy in hardware stores across the country is not technology, it is the lack of standardization (wire must fit plug, lightbulb socket, or other attachment), and the problem is also lack of quality. Standardization and quality problems arise from poor social organization within industries (weak or absent trade organizations, professional organizations and even, yes, political lobbying organizations) and market forces unshaped by societal norms or regulations ("level playing field", "rules of the game", regulations shaped by lobby groups that know industry realities). So you guys go out and rationalize that, and meanwhile we lab rats will turn the lights on.

There was no problem coming up with sharp razor blades, since I always fly with several, and the Transportation Safety Administration does not look for them. I started doing this decades ago, because a razor blade is a more versatile tool than a scissors and weighs less. Now I absolutely have to keep doing it, because the TSA will take away my scissors. (There is no handle on a single-edged razor blade, so my blades would not be a weapon in another's hands. Please explain this to the FBI if you can find out where they are holding me.)

Chad Saselik, Janet Lee (Photo: Rob Starling.)

Janet met Lorrin on a BBS. Lorrin invited her to join the bulletin board that he ran ("The Hangout", Washington DC), and she invited him to join her for lunch in the cafeteria, because it turned out they went to the same high school, but were a year apart and so hadn't met in any regular classes. BBSs were like Webservers that you reached directly by phone. This kept the BBSs and their users specific to a single metro dialing area, and real live picnics and parties during vacation time became traditional among the communities created by the technology. Slick methods arose for aggregating messages and getting the BBS software to pass them around robotically at night, when phone rates were low. Traffic hopped across the nation, hot-potato-like, from BBS to BBS. But the local community was king, and globalization did not come until the "packets to anywhere" Internet arose, and services were invented to run on the Internet which were as good as the BBS systems run by high school kids. The first service to equal and surpass the BBS was the Web browser and the HTTP communications protocol; these together constitute the World Wide Web. WWW replaced BBS. Ask Janet.

Paradoxically from a technical point of view (or, not surprisingly, from a humanist point of view) "locality" is now a hot topic in the evolution of the Internet and networks generally. Many groups are trying to put the "local" back into the "global" by enabling networks to determine, track, and record the physical location of users, including those with cellphones, navigation systems and toll-paying cars who would not think of themselves as "logged onto the Internet". From a civil liberties point of view, this will be anything but a picnic. Figure out with Lorrin what worked (or didn't) for the BBSs in the past if you want to have a better idea where to take the Internet in the future. Rob will tell you that IPv6 (version 6 of the Internet Protocol, which runs the "packets to anywhere") is coming, and that this moment of change is precisely the opportunity that society must not squander. My generation had the atomic bomb; yours has the Internet.

FINAL PLANS FRIDAY, & DRESSED TO GO SATURDAY

Windowwall all, cropped 800x128

What can you do with the 8x24" image? If you want to make a print, try the two 4x9.85" halves below. Minus overlap, that's 4x18".

1st half: RobinN, JenM, RobS, GeoffA, MattS??, can't see piano alcove, Dave&KarenG, WarrenM, VirginiaN, Hash (BrianH), GeorgeM, MarleneH, Brad&EmilyS, CarolV, EricF, Louis Armstrong Nelson. (Photo: Jerry Nelson, sitting beside Robin.)

You have to be crazy to try this without a tripod. Jen, I spliced a couple inches into your femur to make room for Rob. I'm sure nobody will notice if you don't tell them.

2nd half: CarolV & EricF again (overlap), EricM, ErinH, JessicaB, AnitaC, KatieG & Luna, LisaG, TinaG, SeanB. Knightly Hartel is at Erin's feet. (Photo: Jerry Nelson.)

A bit of LisaG, SeanB taking notes, LorrinN looking at Tina off-camera, RobinN, RobS, JenM, GeoffA, you can see the piano alcove from the other side of the room with ChadS and JanetL, MattS ? (Photo: Jerry Nelson.)

Friday wedding planning at Baby Island Lodge.

My generation scattered to colleges, then everyone went to grad school it seemed, with postdocs for the scientists after that. I don't remember going to weddings. Erin and Joel's may have been the first I ever attended with all the people and rituals you read about. I watched everyone -- where they stood, with whom they walked -- and waited for Lorrin and Tina to make their move. Time passed. I couldn't remember a thing, but my part turned out fine. Mostly what I had to do was sort the garbage -- clear, brown, green. It went OK. By now the bins must have been picked up and I haven't heard anything.

George Meaders & Marlene Heller, Brad & Emily Stephens, Carol Vu, Eric Freedman & Eric Miller, Erin Hartel,
Jessica Beecher, Anita Chikkatur, Katie Gourd, Louis Armstrong Nelson. (Photo: Rob Starling).

Dressed to go on Saturday: Jessica Beecher and Carol Vu on the front porch swing. (Photos: JN.)

(Photo: Jerry Nelson)

Wedding Day! The photographer is here!

Hania Surowiec Photography
206/632-0467
haniasurowiec@earthlink.net

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