SciFoo 2008: Panoramic Images

I took a decent num­ber of pic­tures at Sci­Foo.  Luck­ily, I had the fore­sight to take a few series of shots – and, even luck­ier, I have a girl­friend who is a Pho­to­shop Wizard.

It’s not always pos­si­ble to merge images per­fectly since the cam­era is chang­ing posi­tion for each shot, but the results are pretty cool.  In fact, the arti­facts of the merg­ing process are fas­ci­nat­ing, too.  Look for the seams.

The first image is from the open­ing ses­sion.  Tim O’Reilly, Timo Han­nay, Sara Winge, and Chris DiBona can be seen up front, address­ing the crowd.  Also promi­nent, to my eye, are Gar­rett Lisi’s bald head on the far right and Simon Quellen Field’s well-appointed head in semi-profile left of center.

Click through for big­ger versions…

The next image is Google’s large indoor open space referred to as Charlie’s, if I’m not mis­taken.  Paul Davies and Chris Patil are promi­nent and the cafe­te­ria area is in the background…

The final image is from the Sci­Foo clos­ing ses­sion.  Once again, Sara, Tim, Chris, and Timo are up front.  Aniruddh Patel is near-center because he was sit­ting next to me before I stood to take these pics.

Jim Hardy – as promised, the wait­ing is over, here is your prize – you have the dis­tinc­tion of appear­ing not once, but twice in this image.  Yes, by virtue of your rest­less­ness, you have been cloned.  In fact, there were orig­i­nally three of you but one was removed.  To speak to you in your own lan­guage:  like pluripo­tent stem cells, you dif­fer­en­ti­ated into three dif­fer­ent germ Pho­to­shop lay­ers.  But only two were harvested…

Thank you, Tara.   :)

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Discussion

  • Jim H

    5:09 am
    Sep-17-2008
    Reply

    Ha, that’s great, but I want my third clone back, please. He’s the smart one.

    Also, I noticed a guy next to me with a Boston Red Sox hat on. One thing I for­got to men­tion through­out was that I was always wear­ing a ball cap. Not always my Indi­ans hat, but always had a cap on to cover my bald spot.

    I never saw any­one else wear­ing a base­ball cap. Maybe that’s a Cal­i­for­nia thing?

    Great pic­ture. I hope you don’t mind me shar­ing it on my blog..

  • Brian Malow

    9:26 am
    Sep-17-2008
    Reply

    Jim,

    We did a cost-benefits analy­sis and set­tled on a max­i­mum of two clones per Sci­Foo camper. If the one we elim­i­nated was the only one with viable neural tis­sue, we accept no responsibility.

    Also, Gar­rett Lisi wears his bald head with appar­ent pride. Per­haps you should focus on the advan­tages – such as improved aerodynamics.

    And your blog posts are the most “press” I’ve received in one place since my mom’s scrap­book, so keep it up!

  • Simon Quellen Field

    7:12 pm
    Jun-28-2009
    Reply

    Sit­ting to my left in the first photo is Antony Williams, of Chem­SPI­DER
    fame. In the sec­ond photo Vic­to­ria Stod­dard is talk­ing to Chris Patil. To the
    left I see the white hair of Peter Norvig.

    Obvi­ously we need cam­eras with more megapix­els, so we could read
    nametags.

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