Linifying pictures

 I ran acrross an interesting website called linify.  You upload a picture, and it tries to automatically recreate it with nothing but colored straight lines.  I decided to give it a try with a picture I took of delicate arch in Utah.

 For the first pass I took the defaults, the picture recreated with 2,500 lines.  It looks pretty good, but looses a lot of the detail.

Next up I went all the way, 10,000 lines, trying the 500 times for each line to find the best one.  It showed up with lots of detail, but it is way too dark and too red.

 For the final picture I used a pretty common cheat.  I took the first 2,500 line picture and overlayed it on the original, letting about 30% of the original show through.  This gives me the detail of the actual picture but with the straight lines from the redrawing.  I like how the lines are clearly related to the picture and not randomly placed around it.  I like the final picture, but not as much as I like the original.  Non-the-less, it is a neat effect.

Concrete Construction

Concrete Construction is great, but I'm more into Abstract Construction.

From the Miller & Long building on the Corner of Rugby Avenue and Del Ray Avenue.  This building is being demolished for a new residential tower called "The Rugby".

More rail road remanants

 A couple of years ago I posted about some interesting un-identified track equipment along the Capital Cresent Trail that seems to have been part of a rail road car.  I was walking through the same area the other day and noticed that just on the other side of the trail down the embankment is what appears to be the rest of the railroad car.

  Here is one side of it, you can see the coupling where it would connect to the next car.  There are plants growing in the bed of the car and the whole area is completely overgrown, which is why I haven't noticed it before.  In another month or two this probably won't be visible from the trail (until next winter anyway).

 This is the back half of the above car.  Since there is no coupling and now sidewall, I surmise that there is only one railroad car that was intentionally cut in half and left behind.

this is the other part of the car, again you can see the coupling for connecting it to the rest of the train. The Capital Crescent Trail is at the top of the hill to the right.

The bed of the car was made of wood planks.  many of them have rotted away, especially in this area.

The Capital Crescent Trail runs along what was the Georgetown Branch rail road line, there are many small reminders of this that you can find if you look hard enough.  I have written about many of them.

No more paper farecards

As of this Sunday, March 6th, metro will stop accepting paper farecards for for travel within the metrorail system.  Metro has been preparing for this change for a while, and all the blue fare machines in metro stations have been dispensing smart trip cards instead of paper farecards since last December.

If you have a paper farecard (or a pile of them) you can still turn them in until June 30th and add the value to a smart trip card at any brown fare machine at a metro station (the blue ones don't have a spot to accept paper farecards).  I tried it out earlier this week and had about a 50% success rate with the cards I had.  (Admittedly though, some of my farecards are pretty old.) You can also take them to any Metro sales office.  For more information see the Metro press release.

The future may be riding on Metro, but the future isn't riding on Metro using paper farecards.

What to expect on the roads in Bethesda this morning

I saved some images from the traffic cameras so that you can see how many lanes are open on the roads leading in to downtown Bethesda.  I saved these pictures at 7 this morning.  You can see that most roads are only one or two lanes each direction.  Even heavily used roads like Old Georgetown Road and East-West Highway are only one lane each way.

Wisconsin Ave and Bradley Blvd,  looks like two lanes each direction are open

MD-355 at Ceder Ln, heading towards NIH and downtown.  Two lanes open

Bradley Blvd at Arlington Rd, one lane open each direction

East-West Hwy at Montgomery Ave.  Looks to me like there is about one and a half lanes open

Old Georgetown Rd at Arlington Rd.  One lane each direction

Old Georgetown Rd at Cedar Ln One lane plus two half lanes.

Woodmont Ave and Norfolk Ave. One lane each way plus the turn lane

Are Bethesda roads ready for you?

Arlington Road and Bethesda Avenue

 So you've been cooped up in your house/apartment for the past 3 days, your neighborhood road just got plowed and you are ready to get out and get to work first thing in the morning.  But are the roads ready for you?  I drove around downtown Bethesda, MD this evening and the answer is "probably not".  Most of the roads were wet and plowed down to the pavement, but only for one lane each direction.  Even Old Georgetown Road is one lane each way (plus the suicide turn lane in the middle), there doesn't seem to be any place to put the snow.  Even places where it is two lanes don't last long before being filled with piles of snow again.

As more people head back to work on roads that can handle significantly fewer cars than usual, be prepared for delays.

Bethesda Avenue sidewalk near Uncle Julios

  

Even the sidewalks are narrowed if they are clear at all.

Bethesda Avenue at the parking garage

Snow, wonderful snow

We now have well over a foot of snow here in Bethesda, MD and it much more to come.  I went out this morning to take a look around.  The state and county are doing a pretty good job keeping the roads passable (at least for 4-wheel drive vehicles) and this is helped by almost no one being out on them.  With few exceptions, the only vehicles on the road are state/county plows and private plowing contractors going from job to job.

Snow is still coming down hard and there is over a foot on the ground.  Interstate 495 has been plowed but is mostly deserted, only a single car drives on it.

A front-end loader equipped with a plow clears snow on Old Georgetown Road

A John Deere tractor, equipped with a plow clears snow on Old Georgetown Road

The county is pulling out all the stops, even putting a plow on the front of this full-size tractor

The intersection of Old Georgetown Rd and Democracy Blvd. Both roads have been plowed, but there are a couple of inches of packed snow on them, and the intersection itself has small mounds of snow in it.

Sign for Interstate 495 in the snow.

Prepping for the Impending Doom snow

It is getting close to time for the snow to start and everyone is doing last minute preparations I went to Giant and Balducci's around noon today to see how they were coping.  Balducci's was busy but not much worse than the average weekend, all the registers were open with 2 or 3 people in line for each.  I didn't notice anything out of stock and there were several employees stocking shelves.

Giant was a bit of a different story.  Again, they had a bunch of people stocking shelves, especially in the dairy area, but it looks like they have run out of milk, eggs are almost gone, and other areas of the store (such as the soup aisle) had limited selection available.

The place was also packed.  The line for the self checkout was well over half way down the aisle behind it, the express lane had a similar number of people in it.

The gas station across the street was busy, with all pumps being used, but not more than one car waiting in line.

I didn't see many plows out in Bethesda, but towards Silver Spring they were starting to stack them up on the side of the road to be ready.

Traffic calming structures in Montgomery County, MD

I was recently involved in a discussion about how to make traffic go slower on neighborhood streets.  The main options people put forward were 1) speed bumps, and 2) speed cameras.  I'm not a big fan of either, speed bumps can do damage to your suspension and it makes it harder for emergency vehicles to get around.  Montgomery County also has limits on where and when speed cameras can operate.

It struck me that most people, me included, don't know what the options are for traffic calming and knowing the options might help people decide which ones are most appropriate for a given situation.  There are several general classes, including laws (speed limits), signage, and physical modifications to the road.  I decided to look around Bethesda and start inventorying different physical traffic calming structures I found.

Concrete islands are placed on the sides of the road to artificially narrow Ewig Drive near Fernwood Road.

Cars have to slow down to go around the traffic circle.  This reduces speeds without making people come to a complete stop at an intersection like a stop sign would. Traffic circles are generally used at intersections.  This one is on Ewig Drive near Greentree Road.

Not only does a pedestrian refuge slow traffic down by constricting the road, it also provides a safe place for a pedestrian to stand if traffic is heavy and they can't make it all the way across the street.  I think this one is flawed because cars coming towards the camera can't see if someone is standing in the refuge because of how large the plants are. This one is on Ewig Drive near Greentree Road.

One of the many ways the county tries to slow traffic down is by artificially making the street narrow in places.  This bump in is at the corner of Greentree and Hempstead.

A raised crosswalk is bit like a speed bump but much longer.  It makes crosswalks stand out a bit more to cars. This is on Beech Avenue near the YMCA.

 If you know of any others, let me know in the comments.  Include a street name if possible so people can see for themselves how they work.

A small change you can hardly notice

Sometimes you don't notice the little things, small, subtle changes that can pass you by without you even realizing it.   Here is one of those things.  Before Capital One Bank bought Chevy Chase bank, the name above the door said "Chevy Chase Bank",  For a long time after, even when Capital One changed the name of the branches, the sign remained.  At some point, without me noticing, they changed the sign above the door to read "Chevy Chase Trust"  Anyone know when this happened?

I dug through my old pictures and came across this one from 2008 which has the old name on it.