What? Your grocery store doesn't have Motorcycles?

Yep, those are real bikes in the grocery store - and some pretty nice ones at that. Front one is a custom jobby, the black one is a Ducati (Italian for fast bike) and the back one is a blue version of mine.

The nuttyness of Bike week is almost upon us. I've seen people unloading trailers full of motorcycles all over the place. There's a 'famous' t-shirt from the event that says " I rode my Bike to trailer week". I suppose there's some macho thing against bringing your bike here on a trailer. I'd say it's not affecting about 50,000 people or more. You can get $200 a week for letting someone park their bike trailer (and I mean just one of thoses open "landscaping" trailers) in your yard.

My blog posts over the next 10 days or so should get interesting.

2nd week of great weather

I'm going to randomly post some photos throughout this blog post. They don't necessarily fit into the blog content.

I don't have anything specific to post about. The weather here is the epitome of why people live in Florida in the winter. Light jacket at night and morning - shorts and t shirt during the day. This is the 'normal' weather for us in the winter. Of course we have extremes on each side. During the week leading up to the Daytona 500, we had to cover our tropical plants 2 nights (with temps getting in the mid 30's). This week we actually have highs in the low 80's.

I'm putting in a 'little' effort to make our house look it's best. We're putting it on the market in the next 2 weeks and I'm putting mulch in all the flower/plant beds. I'll also touch up a few spots in the house with a paint brush. If the news that we're putting the house on the market is new to you, then I guess I'll give a few lines of explanation.


The cat at the marina sleeping in a tree

My philosophy on life is one that is a balance between work and play (or leisure - or 'non-work' - or 'life outside of work'). I'm just not sold on the whole ' go-to-work-all-the-time-for-someone-else' life. Jan and I have been very fortunate in that we've made some good decisions at the righ times and has put us in a resonable place finanacially.

We sold our house on the Outer Banks at exactly the right time to sell and when we moved here - we thought we had more of this figured out than we did. We got a tax estimate from the county tax assessor's office of $4400 a year property tax which was almost 4 times what it was in NC, but we have no income tax for FL, so I figured it would almost equal out. It turns out that our property tax is now $8400 a year due to some bad planning by politicians. Notice that $8400 a year is $700 a month - JUST FOR PROPERTY TAXES!!. What we also didn't plan on was all the other costs of living in a $400K house in FL. Our home insurance is more than double the price of NC. Our car insurance is more than double the insurance in NC and our electric bill is more than double the NC house. Gas prices here are noticably higher than the national average (yesterday's price at our normal filling spot is $2.47 for regular).

What all of this means is that our disposable income has shrunk. Less disposable income means a few things. Either we have to work more to have more money to do things with - or we have to do less fun things. I'm not liking either of those options. Working more - means less time to do the things we're working to do. Doing less fun things means - well, doing less fun things.


Mom and Dad with a new Boss Hoss motorcycle

So, for the time being our immediate plan is to sell "the house with it's own economy" and rent a condo or apartment semi short-term while we figure out what we want to do. We can rent a nice 2br condo for less than $1000 a month - which is about what we're paying in taxes and insurance on the house. OR, we can live on the boat while keeping our stuff in a storage unit.

Our long term plan varies a lot. We are considering moving back to the outer banks with a strict agreement to leave in the winters. I absolutely HATE the outer banks in the winter. We could buy or build a nice house there and pay for it right out, then Jan can work in a lot of different businesses during the spring/summer/fall (including the restaurant business - where she belongs) and we can take off on our boat from November - April and head to the little lattitudes. This is one consideration, but there are more.

The main thing that we both know is that even though we live in a really nice house - if we're not getting out of life what we want - then we're doing something wrong. We have the ability to change things - so - no different than anyone else out there - we can and will change things to try to make them the way we want them to be. The key is to not be afraid of making a mistake.

Probably our biggest disappointment about or decision to move to FL is how difficult it has been to create a 'family' of friends like we had on the outer banks. You can't 'force' quality friendships - they have to just happen and unfortunately, they're just not happening here. Jan and I both have HIGH quality friends on the outer banks and we're starting to miss them more and more.

Well, when I started this post, I wasn't going to write about anything in particular - but it turns out - I did. Anyway, maybe more later. I'm going to go hop on my motorcycle now and take a ride in the nice FL weather.

Mom and Dad come to visit.

Mom and Dad flew in on wednesday. They've come to visit for a few days. I think they are happy to be 'out of Dodge' for a little while. We went to have lunch on the beach yesterday and then to the boat. We'll see what we can get into today.

3D cam usage in the Big Race

They only took one of our 3D cam builds during the race on Sunday. There were several reasons for this. The biggest reason has to do with technology:

Since the virtual racing is all based on instantaneous data that we're getting from the cars that tells us WHERE on the track they are - if something goes wrong with that data - the computer does not know where the car is (that the data is linked to) and so the car simply does not appear on the screen. There's no other way to do that when you think about it. You can't just guess and then manually put into the computer where you think the race car is at that moment.

Well, if you're a big race fan, you'll know that the "in car" cameras for most of the top guys were switched from standard definition to High Definition for this this year. All of the information from that camera in the car has to be transmitted to a receiver via radio frequency. Of course, a high definition camera has more data to transmit than a standard definition camera.

The antenna that this is transmitted from is located close to the antenna that our data is transmitted from (and has been for years). In the past, we've worked with transmission filters that reduce or eliminate interferance from the camera transmission. When they changed cameras, they also changed the transmission hubs and frequency that they transmit on and we didn't find out until Saturday night that this was causing us to lose our data. You can imagine what a big deal this was to us. We had been there for almost 3 weeks preparing for the races (with the Daytona 500 being the grandpappy of them all) and then the very data that all of our products are based on is being squashed as it tries to leave the car.

Well, this is why Sportvision brought the Geniuses out for the first race. They were able to work a 'patched' plan that allowed for most of our data on most of the cars to make it to us - BUT still not all data from all the cars.

So when you consider that we never had data on Tony Steward (car 20) the whole night and we were intermittant on data with many of the other top guys, all of our attempts to build a good replay in 3D would be without a key car in the rendering.

The one build (clip) that did make it to air was acceptable, but I think far from exciting. I'm sure it'll improve at future races.

3D cam

Here's a computer screen shot of the 3d cam that we've developed. It's really cool to watch it get tweaked more and more every day. The software engineer is here at the race and making the changes that I and the other operator are suggesting. He has added 'global lighting' which allows you to set the time of day and the sun reflects on the car accordingly. The controls are getting much more fluid as well. It's super cool. Be sure to look for it on the race Sunday (if you watch it)

Daytona Speedway continues

This is one long project. In all, I will be working 20 days in a row - although it by no means is slave labor. Some days are very laid back with just being ready in case there's a problem that needs immediate attention and then some days are packed full. Yesterday (saturday) was a 16 hour day from 7 am to 11 pm. It wasn't a 'work,work, work' kinda day, but still - I was on my feet for 16 hours, so I was pretty tired when I got home.

Our unveiling of the 'virtual cam' was well received during the Bud Shootout. They showed a quick demo of it during the race and announced that it would be used this season and then they used it to show a wreck at the end of the race. The 'buzz' about it is pretty positive.

On a daily basis, we have to go to each of our 6 cameras (there are over 25 cameras being used in the show - but 6 of them have our sensors on them) and reset our data sensors. I've put some photos from some of our locations below:

This camera (camera 5) is in turn 2 and has a good view down the backstretch.


This camera is in turn 1 and is primarily used for the frontstretch and especially pit row.

One of the cameras is on a platform on a crane that is hoisted up before each race with the cameraman on it. I've been up it twice and it's pretty cool. You get a neat perspective of being 'over' the track. This crane/camera is in turn 3.

The view of the racetrack from the crane camera.


Me on the crane camera


Looking down at the crane truck

Cool, Cool Stuff

So on Thursday, I got some 'hands on' time on one of our new products that is going to blow away the viewer (well, maybe not - but if they knew how technologically cool it is - it would).

As you may know - if you've been reading my blog - our system allows us to know where each car is down to 3/4 of an inch on the actual track.

Now, imagine that you take that 'real time' knowlege and marry it to a virtual (animated) video of the cars on the track. What's been done by the geniuses in the Sportvison HOS (hall of science) is to make a program - that looks kinda like a video game. You make the world that the game exists in - to be the exact track that you're racing on. And when I say exact track - I mean the exact track. Every single inch is made to match the track - complete with the fence posts around the track being exactly in the same place and the banked turns being EXACT. I think you understand what I'm saying here - exact.

Then you make a model of each car that's dimensionally exact- and you make the 'skins' for that car look exactly like the real thing.

So, marrying our GPS location technology for EVERY car on the track - with this animated recreation - we can run the actual race in a virtual reality in REAL TIME. I hope this is making sense so far - it it's not let me know and I'll explain further.

Now, the question would be - so why would anyone want to watch the animated race instead of the real race? The answer is - you don't watch it instead of the real race - you watch it as PART of the real race. Not only does this REAL TIME animated race exist - but we can show animated (camera angles) from ANYWHERE along this race.

This means, that if a particular passing sequence is exciting (and I suppose they can be exicting - I'm not a Nascar fan), we can make an instant replay of the pass from any point of view we want. We can show the pass from inside one of the cars that's being passed, we can show it from a viewpoint 15 feet in front, behind, beside, under, above - ANYWHERE.

We unveiled this new product to the director and producer yesterday and they went bonkers for it. Here's a cool thing - I may be one of the 'back up' operators for it. The design of the program is much like a camera operator and a 'non-linear editor' combined. (A non-linear editor is a program you use to make video with and most people who know me know that I can make a mean video and pretty quickly and efficiently). So, I have some good skills that I think will lend to me operating this puppy in the future. The full time gig will go to someone who works the whole season.

Anyway, this new product alone may be worth checking out the Bud Shootout tomorrow.

Other than that, I did some camera registrations (getting things set up for the show basically) and I had to be on standby for a number of hours yestersday. The 'no see ums' (tiny little gnat style bugs) were really bad on the roof, so we found a place just below to wait on some technical stuff to happen before we went to the cameras. We had our radios and could be at the cameras in 2 minutes from the time called - but we ended up having to wait for hours due to some software and hardware bugs that were finallly ironed out by the geniuses.

The spot we found to wait was pretty posh. It's a skybox- and we just watched the cars go round and round the track during practice. Not a bad gig (although I prefer actually working rather than waiting - but hey, it's my job - I can handle it).

More Daytona 500 Preparation

This is pretty cool! My work credentials gives me total access to any where in any of the race tracks that we'll be going to. It allows for a lot of neat views of things that most people don't get to see. Of course, we have a responsibility to not abuse our privileges and such - and so for the most part - no one does.

Here's some photos and some explanations:

The TV compound is really filling up. It's amazing just how much equipment is being devoted to televising and other media outlets for this race week.

This first photo is of the TV compound on Friday the 2nd of Feb.



This photo is taken on the 7th. You can really see a difference



The track grounds and infield are starting to get a lot of attention as well:

In this first photo (from Sunday the 4th), you can see that there's not a lot of activity on the infield and they haven't yet started addressing the logos on the grass:


In this second photo, you can see (just 3 days later) that the infield is filling up with all the racer's crews' gigantic RV's and semi trucks. They've also started making the grounds look better.


My job has me all over the entire racetrack (I'll make a graphic in the next few days showing you what we do (in general terms). The following photos are just of the racetrack from several places:

Here's a photo from when I was driving on the track near pit road


Here's a photo of the Richard Petty Driving School Cars coming by at about 150mph. It's amazing how fast they seem to be going when you're this close


Here's a photo from one of our camera positions -going into the backstretch.

Tornados in FL

As you probably heard on the news - tornados ripped through central Florida early friday morning. The 2 most affected counties were Lake Co (the county that Quest Air Flight Park is in) and Volusia Co - the county where we live.

Jan woke me up at 4 am and I heard it thundering outside. She's not a thunderstorm lover to any degree. I'm sure she wasn't able to sleep at all while it was thundering, but I went right back to sleep.

This morning the news was full of tornado incidents. It turns out that one touchdown was just 2 and 1/2 miles from our house in New Smyrna Beach. The photo at the top shows some of the damage from this twister. I took the photo at the top from a local news website

The photo below shows the relationship of where this one touched down to where we live. I'm kinda glad I slept through it.


The following photo is one I took as I drove to New Smyrna Beach this afternoon after work. Most of the area was blocked off due to damage, but this was along US 1 (a major road).



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Regarding work, we continued setting up the truck and testing other items today. We set up a camera system and powered it as if it were out in the infield to make sure we were getting sufficient power to our data boxes and to make sure that our data signals were getting back to the truck.

ESPN brought in their brand new mobile broadcast studio. This thing is amazing. It's a broadcast booth that will be driven out into the infield and it has a scissors lift that will raise it up about 15 feet. The announcers will then have a mostly unrestricted view. I think maybe they just buy these things because they can.


The photo below is of the inside of the A unit.

Day 2 at the Daytona Speedway

So, here's the gig. They bring in 4 techs to start the process of getting all of our stuff ready for the race. The Sportvision truck has to be rewired for some of the new stuff we're doing so we spend much of the day wiring up the racks in the truck. It's hard to explain just what that entails. Here's photo or 2 to help with the explanation


The photo above shows the back of the main rack - actually just a portion of it. There's a walkway behind the racks so you can wire and rewire all of the components that are in the rack.


The photo above shows just one of the bays in the rack. You can see how there's an unbelievable number of wires just coming in and out of this one bay.

Today we also finished with the installation of 4 antennaes and base stations on top of the roof of the main grandstands. There's a little bit of seating up on the roof that's mainly for the spotters for each crew that's racing. The top of the roof will also be where approximately 6 TV cameras will be set up. We will have our equipment (the same equipment that we use in football) on 3 of those rooftop cameras.
You can see one of the camera platforms and the seating for the spotters in the photo below.


One of the things about all of these sports venues that I get to visit - that really appeals to me is the structure and architecture. Most of the football stadiums that I visited are made of concrete and steel. I'm not an engineer of any type, but the combination of concrete and steel is an amazing thing. Concrete has tremendous compression resistance and steel has tremendous tensile strength. When you combine the 2 together (like you see on an average interstate overpass) you get amazing strength. I've always thought it pretty cool the way they put this to use in stadiums so that they can allow for the combination of unobstucted views on the 'field' side and lots of room for people to walk on the 'outside and under' the stadium.
So, I find it interesting the way they decided to build the Daytona Raceway. It's all steel girders. This type of construction is plenty strong of course - but does not allow for lots of room for people to move around under the seating. I walked up the steps to the grandstands today and was amazed at the difference in feel compared to a football stadium.

It could be because of the year that the Daytona Speedway was built (1958) - this is simply the construction method of choice.

Here's a photo of the girders from ground level looking up.


Yesterday, I posted about the size of the television compound at this event. I took the photo below from the roof today and it does not have all the trucks in it. This is what it takes to get these races to television and the internet. Pretty amazing.