-
Recent Posts
- Kuhio Beach and Ponds in November
- Life around Manhasset Bay
- Hanauma Bay for the chronically overprepared
- Kayak to Kaneohe Sandbar – sunken at high tide
- Why does my snorkel mask fog up?
- Waikiki & Honolulu landmarks seen from departing flight DL650
- Actual landing flight path of Delta 650 at JFK runway 22L
- Reign Ares as big-wheel skates for urban marathons
- What are carbon-fiber inline skates ?
- Big Wheels on Carbon Hockey Skates
- Where to Inline Skate on Long Island
- Check that your sunglasses block out all UV rays
Top Posts
- How to Inline Skate
- Asian-fit helmets are a lot of hot air
- What Exactly is a Peeled Extreme Beef Tenderloin from Costco?
- Ice Skating as a Sequence of Falling and Recovery Steps
- Geometric distortion in a triple-monitor setup for MSFS 2020, compared to XPlane 11
- Battlefield 1 Soldier Uniforms from all Factions
- Reign Ares as big-wheel skates for urban marathons
- Hanauma Bay for the chronically overprepared
Categories
- Classical Music (16)
- Cello (11)
- Composition (6)
- Free Sheet Music (16)
- Fun (83)
- Being a Wikipedian (44)
- Drawings and Paintings (7)
- Gourmet (3)
- Hawaii (6)
- Ice Skating (4)
- Inline Skating (23)
- Photography (30)
- Travel (29)
- Planes (32)
- Flight Simulations (7)
- HHAMS (18)
- RC Planes (12)
- Real Planes (3)
- Science (11)
- Atheism (3)
- Debuking Pseudoscience (2)
- Evolution (6)
- Short Stories (3)
- 中文 (14)
- Classical Music (16)
Archives
- January 2026 (1)
- December 2025 (4)
- November 2025 (2)
- November 2024 (1)
- October 2024 (2)
- August 2024 (1)
- June 2024 (1)
- March 2024 (1)
- January 2024 (1)
- August 2022 (3)
- July 2022 (2)
- June 2022 (1)
- May 2022 (1)
- April 2022 (2)
- March 2022 (2)
- November 2021 (1)
- October 2021 (9)
- September 2021 (1)
- October 2020 (1)
- August 2020 (1)
- June 2019 (4)
- April 2019 (1)
- March 2019 (1)
- January 2019 (1)
- December 2018 (5)
- November 2018 (1)
- May 2018 (1)
- April 2018 (1)
- January 2018 (1)
- December 2017 (5)
- November 2017 (2)
- October 2017 (3)
- June 2017 (3)
- April 2017 (6)
- March 2017 (2)
- February 2017 (9)
- December 2016 (10)
- November 2016 (3)
- September 2016 (1)
- August 2016 (2)
- July 2016 (1)
- May 2016 (4)
- April 2016 (3)
- March 2016 (2)
- December 2015 (1)
- October 2015 (1)
- September 2015 (1)
- August 2015 (1)
- December 2014 (1)
- July 2013 (4)
- June 2013 (6)
- May 2012 (1)
- March 2012 (1)
- February 2012 (2)
Meta
-
-
Author Archives: Xinhai Dude 辛亥生
2018 XiSheng RC Extravaganza 西盛遙控飛行嘉年華
New Taipei RC Flying Extravaganza (西盛遙控飛行嘉年華會慶) organized by NTAMA (新北市航空模型協會) took place on Sunday, Nov 4th, 2018. It was joined by flying enthusiasts from all over Taiwan. I went with friends from the RC club from Kaohsiung 高雄市遙控運動協會, courtesy of 陳振國.
This article hosts pictures I took and edited of this event. Perhaps I’ll come back and finish it with additional descriptions. Perhaps I won’t. It exists for now as a place for enthusiasts to browse and download pictures I took of them, or their planes. I compiled two YouTube videos: a shorter one comprising video clips I took that day, as well as a longer slideshow highlighting some of the many exciting moments I captured in still pictures. As usual, some of the best pictures will eventually end up on Wikimedia. Continue reading
Posted in Being a Wikipedian, Fun, RC Planes, Travel
Tagged 3D Model Airplane, Boeing 747, Booth Babes, Bronze Tiger, Carf Eurosport, Change Fei, ChangFei, Dassault Rafale, Eagle ornithopter, Eurofighter Typhoon, Eva Air, 西盛遙控飛行嘉年華, 西盛遙控飛行機場, 西盛飛場, 高雄市遙控運動協會, F16 Fighting Falcon, F4U Corsair, F8F-2 Bearcat, Firecrackers, Flight Simulators, Fokker Triplane, Freewing Mirage 2000, Gee Bee, Kaohsiung, model airplane, New Taipei, NTAMA, ornithopter, P-47G Thunderbolt, P-51D Mustang, RC Flying Field, RC Flying Site, RC Turbine Jet, Reb Baron, sailplane, SBD-5 Dauntless, T-One Models, T1 Sport Jet, Tamsui, V2 Tiger Meet, XiSheng, XiSheng RC Extravaganza, Zero Fighter, 張菲, 新北市航空模型協會, 三重西盛環保公園
Leave a comment
NorCal for the model aeronautically-inclined
This is a guide and a preview to upcoming articles I’ll be publishing, on Northern California through the eyes of a New Yorker, with an inclination to see things from a model aeronautic perspective. It is similar to my model-aeronautic take on Ogunquit and its bipolar beach. Here I’ll examine various Napa Valley and Sonoma vineyards on their applicability to flying, while accompanied by my brother’s family. I’ll show you where to find legitimate flying fields manned by AMA chartered clubs, as well as secret flying places that fanatics frequent. We toured San Francisco, Golden Gate Park, Half Moon Bay, Point Lobos, Fort Ord Dunes State Park and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Continue reading
Posted in Being a Wikipedian, Photography, RC Planes, Travel
Tagged 360° panoramic photos, AMA Chartered Clubs, Artesa Vineyards & Winery, Bay Area, beaches, Bigfin reef squid, birds, Black-crowned Night Heron, Blue Wing Inn, Castello di Amorosa, Common starling, Conservatory of Flowers, Daiso Clay, Din Tai Fung, drone, Flying Fields, Fort Ord Dunes State Park, Foster City, Fundemonium, Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Park, Gondola lift, Half Moon Bay, Inner Parkside, Kennedy Park, Lollipot, Metal Sculptures, mimetoliths, Mission San Francisco, Model airplanes, Monterey Bay, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Napa Valley, Nightfall, NorCal, Northern California, oceanside bluffs, Peninsula Channel Commanders, Point Lobos, radio-controlled, sailplane, San Francisco, Sardine tank, Shells Dirt Jumps, Sonoma, St. Francis Winery & Vineyards, Sterling Vineyards, Sunset, T. rex, Tyrannosaurus rex, UMX Radian, Vineyards, West Coast RC Flyers, Western gull, Wine Country, Wine Tasting, Wineries
1 Comment
Cello sheet music: Adagio from Bach Organ Toccata
Folks, more free Bach cello music can be found in this new article. This is part of the Clean and Free Sheet Music initiative I’ve undertaken.
I took a detour from my usual Bach cello suite transcriptions this time. A few weeks ago someone on Reddit posted a question asking for identification of music. It was a recording of Mstislav Rostropovich playing the cello for the Emperor of Japan, at the White House in 1994. The first piece at 0:37 caught my attention. I swore that I knew this music well – I could hum along ahead of Rostropovich. But I could not recall what this was. The music stuck in my head for days. The mystery drove me crazy.
I tried all sorts of “find the music” magics online, including by singing, by humming, by audio file, by playing on a on-screen keyboard, by entering notes explicitly, and by typing in the contour (shape). Nothing worked. Clearly this was a famous cello piece, but I just could not find it.
Not until I randomly searched for “Rostropovich” and various terms, that I hit the right combination of words. In hindsight, I could have found it in a few minutes, with just “Rostropovich adagio”. So, it turned out that this piece was actually Bach’s organ toccata, BWV 564. Pablo Casals transcribed it for the cello, and apparently it was one of Rostropovich’s favorite piece. Continue reading
What is a Doob 3D Selfie?
Last year my family visited the miniature park, Madurodam. We had ourselves scanned at the Fantasitron, and subsequently our 3D selfies printed by Shapeways. I was so impressed that I wrote an entire article about 3D scanning, stereophotogrammetry and gypsum-based 3D color printing. We have since found another venue for making 3D selfies, this time in New York City. The company, Doob, delivers an impeccable service, starting from the first moment we made an appointment online. This smooth and professional experience extends to email reminders, in-store consulting, and actual 3D scanning. It concludes with flawless 3D-printed figurines delivered to our house.
However, Doob as a company is rather secretive about its scanning process and 3D-reconstruction software. It is almost impossible to find any information about its 3D printing process. Unlike Madurodam and Shapeways, Doob offers no technical details on either its American website, or the English version of its main German website.
Hopefully this article will help answer some of most frequently-asked questions folks may raise, concerning Doob 3D selfies. If you come across this article, make sure you first read the one about Madurodam 3D selfies, to understand the basic concepts. Continue reading
Posted in Being a Wikipedian, Drawings and Paintings, Photography
Tagged 1:13 scale model, 3D Figurine, 3D photo booth, 3D Portraits, 3D printing, 3D Selfie, 4-inch model, acrylic varnish, Doob3D, Fantasitron, Full Color Sandstone, Gypsum, Madurodam, Mini-me, Shapeways, The Hague, Varnish
7 Comments
Allemande from Bach Cello Suite 1 (BWV 1007)
This is one of the free and clean Bach cello music I am making available, as I transcribe them. See the parent article for context.
Here is a clean sheet showing only notes. You can print it out and add your own bowing and fingering marks. Click on the image to go to the PDF file. Continue reading
Prelude from Bach Cello Suite 1 (BWV 1007)
This is one of the free and clean Bach cello music I am making available, as I transcribe them. See the parent article for context. This is one of the most well-known piece, and as a result was the first I played. But it is the last one I entered into Sibelius.
Here is a clean sheet showing only notes. You can print it out and add your own bowing and fingering marks. Click on the image to go to the PDF file. Continue reading
3D selfies made in Fantasitron at Madurodam
Writing a computer program to map 2-dimensional drawings to 3-dimensional models had once been my obsession. This stemmed from the endless hours I spent drawing, by hand, orthographic projections of 3D models, and vice versa. While this was condemned as a chore universally by my classmates at Escuela Técnica No. 28 in Buenos Aires, I quite enjoyed it. After my family moved to New York, I no longer had to make these homework drawings. Instead I wrote a C program to generate 3D polyhedrons from 2D polygonal views. The long paper I wrote alongside this program won the gold medal at the New York Math Fair.
That seemed like a lifetime ago. In between then and now, algorithms had been invented to generate 3D models of people in color and with great details, all from simple 2D photos. But it is only in recent years that such technologies started to become commoditized. Just a month ago, Elisha and I stepped into, for a few seconds, a photo booth the size of a restroom, at the miniature park Madurodam. Three weeks later we received an exquisite 3D selfie printed by Shapeways.
Continue reading
Posted in Being a Wikipedian, Drawings and Paintings, Photography, Travel
Tagged 1:20 scale model, 1:25 scale model, 3D Figurine, 3D photo booth, 3D Portraits, 3D printing, 3D Selfie, acrylic varnish, Amsterdam, Anne Frank Museum, Corsair, Fantasitron, Full Color Sandstone, Gypsum, Kasteel Nijenrode, Madurodam, Mini-me, Miniature Park, Miniature world, Muiden Castle, National Maritime Museum, Neverlands, Prinsengracht canal, Rijksmuseum, Shapeways, The Hague, Varnish
Leave a comment
Minuet 2 from Bach Cello Suite 1 (BWV 1007)
This is one of the free and clean Bach cello music I am making available, as I transcribe them. See the parent article for context.
Here is a clean sheet showing only notes. You can print it out and add your own bowing and fingering marks. Click on the image to go to the PDF file. Continue reading
Posted in Cello, Free Sheet Music
Tagged bach, BWV 1007, cello suites, Courante, Free Sheet Music, Johann Sebastian Bach, Menuet, Menuet 2, Minuet, music score, PDF, sheet music, solo cello, unaccompanied solo cello
Leave a comment
Gigue from Bach Cello Suite 1 (BWV 1007)
This is one of the free and clean Bach cello music I am making available, as I transcribe them. See the parent article for context.
Here is a clean sheet showing only notes. You can print it out and add your own bowing and fingering marks. Click on the image to go to the PDF file. Continue reading
Posted in Cello, Free Sheet Music
Tagged bach, BWV 1007, cello suites, Courante, Free Sheet Music, Gigue, Johann Sebastian Bach, music score, PDF, sheet music, solo cello, unaccompanied solo cello
Leave a comment
Droning at and around Ogunquit Beach
This article is a part of the Ogunquit in September Guide I am writing, for the model aeronautically-inclined. It is the main and the last installment in the series. Together with the modern beach equipment installment, it details everything you will ever need, before you head out to fly a drone or two in this beautiful beach town. Continue reading
Posted in Being a Wikipedian, Photography, RC Planes, Travel
Tagged 360° panoramic photos, Bald head Cliff, beach equipment, beaches, birds, Cape Neddick, Cliff House, Coast, Coastline, Drakes Island Beach, drone, Footbridge Beach, Gooch's Beach, Google Cardboard, great black-backed seagull, Kennebunkport, kites, Long Sands Beach, Main Beach, Maine, Marginal Way, Model airplanes, Moody Beach, Norsemen Resorts, North Beach, Ogunquit, Ogunquit beach, Perkins Cove, radio-controlled, Rock formations, sailplane, September, Short Sands Beach, Tidal Suites, UMX Radian, Wells, Wells Beach, York, York Beach
1 Comment
Xinhai Dude 