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Mobile M3forum
|E30 M3 (1986-1991) {Euro 86-892.3L: 200hp @ 6750} {1990 2.3L Evo2/Cecotto/Ravaglia: 220/215/215hp @ 6750}
{1991 2.5L Sport Evo: 238 @ 7000} {US -- 88-91 2.3L: 196hp @ 6750, 170tq @ 4750}
Total produced: 5,280 US, ~13,300 Europe/world
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|Thu, Dec-22-2011, 04:17:46 PM
2012 M3F Formula 1 Game Champion!
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Re: $6k paint job gone wrong !!!!
Let this be a lesson...this is what happens to you when you're a pushover: People take advantage of you. Imagine that!
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|Thu, Dec-22-2011, 04:46:55 PM
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Re: $6k paint job gone wrong !!!!
hey guys, my shop is the one that painted the car.
Few things I would like to point out before every one jumps on the band wagon.
1) http://mybuildgarage.com/author/carreraboy/
these are just some of the projects that we did recently, most of those cars if they were not customers cars were sold on ebay and I have 100% positive feedback on ebay
2) after the above mentioned car was painted it was brought to Sigfest2011, e30 m3 biggest gathering in US. The reason I mention that is because if I was not confident about the paint job on this car I would never show it to the group of people who are die hard e30 m3 enthusiasts
3) the owner arranged and shipped the car back and it was delayed in shipping by the shipping company because their truck broke somewhere. When the car arrived the owner immediately noticed the damaged that was not specified on the original bill of landing inspection sheet when the car was loaded on to the truck at my shop.
4) I offered the owner to bring the car to take care of the issues he was mentioning but asked him to refrain posting anything about it until we resolve the situation and I get the chance to look at the car with my own eyes. The owner agrees but then goes and creates threads about it that turn into hate threads and get locked-up
5) the owner brings the car to another e30 m3 show where the car is seen by the same people who saw the car at the first show after the paint job, these people notice that the paint on the rear trunk, bumper, rear spoiler doesn't match the rest of the car now, they hint that the car was possibly damaged in shipping and the rear section was repainted. I still offer the owner to bring the car back for me to take care of the problems.
The owner gets mad and now starts to demand half of his money back without letting me see pics, the car itself or letting me fix the problems.
6) 7 month after the paint job was completed the owner finally posts the pics (for the first time) and the forums go crazy. Some of the forums restore the order, delete all the hate comments and continue on, some forums lockup the threads, 1 forum ban me etc...
Your religion doesn't allow you you to go to court but it allows you to go undocumented with no proof, made up lies and start this kind of BS?
If the owner had the problem he should've made an effort to rectify the situation directly with me (which was offered to him on multiple occasions) or hire the lawyer and proceed in the court of law. Not come on the forums multiple times with this crying game.
I am open to hear any feedback or to answer any questions.
Please don't turn this into the hate thread
|Thu, Dec-22-2011, 04:53:24 PM
2012 M3F Formula 1 Game Champion!
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Re: $6k paint job gone wrong !!!!
I believe Vlad. This should go to People's Court.
|Thu, Dec-22-2011, 05:41:52 PM
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Re: $6k paint job gone wrong !!!!
I have been following the whole ordeal without picking any sides, here are some friendly observations.
First, you're a business man and I suspect you value your business, if this is true then some of your comments on forums (S14,r3v) toward your clientele is simply unacceptable, i understand you're angry, but you control your own actions, you click submit reply on every one of your posts, it would help you and your business to treat your customers with respect, they are after all paying your bills. The general population only knows you from how you present yourself in the public domain, you post pictures of your amazing cars and people think you're the E30 legend, you curse out your unsatisfied customers and most people will think twice before ever doing business with you. I'm sure you understand this as you are a grown mature person, but you certainly don't exercise any form of restraint. In instances where a customer isn't happy with you, its better to offer them some sort of kind explanation, receipt or whatever else they require from you. This isn't a 3rd world country, if your customer no longer wants to do business with you, you can't hold that against them and tell them to bring the car back so you can take care of it, you should understand that the customers trust in you and your shop has long been gone.
You say you took the car to SIGFest, im not really sure why you mention it as you certainly implicate yourself in theft, since the owner never allowed you to drive the car. Maybe i am wrong here legally, but certainly not morally.
I am not really sure why you never took pictures of the finished car and sent them over to the client who was overseas at the time. I would certainly love constant progress updates on my beloved E30M3. I understand that this maybe a little bit more of an overhead, but this is what differentiates a high-end shop from regular shops and if you're going to charge high-end prices you better act professionally. If you go to a 5 star resort you don't expect shotty service, do you? I'm sure you don't. Secondly the progress pictures would allow you to counteract the evidence that any client has. So far we've seen pictures of the terrible paint job, but you say the car was damaged during shipment, well do you have pictures of said car prior to shipment? Otherwise your case falls through.
You asked the client to bring the car back, under what circumstance do you think it is correct to tell him to not post anything on the forums? I am sorry, but this is public domain and you should expect this sort of outburst and you won't be able to control peoples behaviors, the world does not revolve around you. People are free to complain the way they see fit, it is not crying as you call it, just venting and you should accept that.
Bottom line is this, you or your shop may have the best paint jobs in the world and I am not denying that and this may have been a mistake. Perhaps you let someone inexperienced do the job and then just shipped the car or perhaps the job was perfect and was damaged.
It doesn't really matter, it's never about what happened, it's always about how you handle yourself after the fact. Things happen in life and mistakes occur and you can't change them or avoid them, but you can manage how you handle them.
You did not handle this gracefully, like an adult and a prominent business owner.
and that is why you are wrong.
|Thu, Dec-22-2011, 06:04:30 PM
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Re: $6k paint job gone wrong !!!!
this just shows you why I get upset - because I just mentioned some of the stuff above but it gets skipped, people make assumption and then post based on what they selectively read, I will reply once again and try to clear it up
Sigfest is the biggest e30 m3 gathering in US and you know it. To debut the car at sigfest means a lot, in addition knowing that people were anxious to see this car finished and completed since many were following the restoration thread. If I did not feel confident about the car 100% I would never bring it in front of the eyes of true e30 m3 enthusiasts.
The owner never specified anything about NOT driving the car. I contacted the owner on multiple occasions well before taking the car to sigfest and informed him of my intentions. I drove the car to sigfest with my dealer plates to insure full coverage. When the car is at my facility, we are fully responsible for the car no matter what happens to it inside, outside, during the test drive etc.. Lastly, to have your car debuted at the sigfest among other e30 m3s and enthusiast would make me happy even if I was not there.
So please stop bringing this argument because it has no validity at all and was only brought up when these threads started to pop up.
For some conspicuous reason the owner does not mention anywhere free 1 month storage inside the shop after the car was completed ($75 per day fee)
again, you failed to read that I constantly updated the owner with the progress pics and the finished car. We don't do it for our regular customers because it would be just 2 much but I treated the owner as a friend and fellow m3 enthusiast. I even took videos and emailed them to the owner.
The pics of the restoration thread are in the link I posted above
|Thu, Dec-22-2011, 06:20:37 PM
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Re: $6k paint job gone wrong !!!!
Vlad, I don't want to get into an argument with you, so we'll drop some things that I certainly don't have enough information on. Let's drop SIGFest argument entirely, I don't want to get into the politics of whether you should have driven your customers car or not.
I don't think I contradict myself at all, yes this is a public domain, and yes you can shout and curse and belittle your customers all day long if you see fit, but that doesn't mean you *should*. There is a big difference there and it wouldn't hurt to give that some thought next time you want to curse out an unsatisfied customer.
As far as pictures, many people on S14 have pointed out flaws in the restoration thread alone. I am not an expert so I can't comment on the pictures myself.
You claim there was no mistake, what you fail to realize is that you were paid for a service that guaranteed a certain quality of product and you failed to deliver this standard. Whether mistake or not, you never seemed like you cared for the customers car, more than the reputation of your work. You can make mistakes, admit mistakes and still stand behind your work. These are not mutually exclusive.
If you admitted a mistake that was not even yours, offered your apologies and offered your services (without pushing them down the customers throat)..gracefully agreed to reconcile differences and cooperated with the customers constant attempt at communication (text messages, voice mails, forums), you would have came out of this a better individual, a better business owner, and a better person.
I think you are more concerned about proving your case on every forum you get a chance at posting, instead i sincerely believe you should take some valuable lessons out of this ordeal, it's time to put down the guard and accept reality.
|Thu, Dec-22-2011, 06:36:10 PM
Join Date: Jul 2011
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Location: Philadelphia
Re: $6k paint job gone wrong !!!!
always two sides of this story. he shouldnt of writen the check (4000$) for the rest of job until really looking at it and accepting. hopefully it gets worked out
Photos of My ///M3
|Thu, Dec-22-2011, 07:12:29 PM
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Location: Denver
Re: $6k paint job gone wrong !!!!
That paint job speaks volumes about who to believe in this story. Nice try saving face Vlad, but your rep is already fooked
2005 BMW M3 ZCP 6spd, black on black
ENGINE: DINAN TBs | VAC Motorsport pulleys
EXHAUST: SS Stepped V1 Headers | SS race cats | SS resonated X-pipe
SUSPENSION/CHASSIS: Moton Street Sport S/A coilovers | Hyperco 450 front TCK 500 rear | GC Street camber plates (-2.4*F) | GC RSMs | RE weight jacks | TMS RTAB limiters | TMS RCAs (-1.4*R) | Mason Engineering Race FSTB | OEM front strut tower reinforcement plates | TMS rear subframe reinforcement
BRAKES: Brembo GT 6/4 monoblocks, 355 front 345 rear
WHEELS/TIRES: Volk TE37s in gloss white, 18x9.5 +22 (F) 18x10.5 +22 (R) | Michelin PSS 245/40 and 275/35
DRIVETRAIN: 3.91 BMW Motorsport
SHIFTING: AS 30% SSK | Illuminated ZHP | RE tranny mounts | GSP clutch pedal with UUC bushings | UUC "big boy" clutch stop | CDV delete | TMS SS clutch line
LIGHTING: Lightwerkz TFX retrofit | Digital 55w 4300K HIDs
INTERIOR: Euro first aid storage boxes
|Thu, Dec-22-2011, 07:12:43 PM
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Re: $6k paint job gone wrong !!!!
Lastly, you know me personally, have been to my shop and know how to reach me, however, you chose to express your opinion publicly on the forum behind my back
If I have an issue I resolve the issue, I don't go on the forums and cry a crying game.
|Thu, Dec-22-2011, 07:50:43 PM
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Posts: 9
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Re: $6k paint job gone wrong !!!!
I have not posted on any other forums about this issue. I posted here and I posted directly to you, beginning with "Hi Vlad" and "Vlad". I am not exactly sure how this is behind your back? Should I have called you and asked you for your permission to post my opinion? I am confused. Also I have not directly smeared your work, I have simply pointed out your conduct on the matter.
Your tone is accusatory, you publicly asked for feedback and questions. I publicly responded directly to you. Now you are implying that I should have contacted you? What reason do I have to contact you? I am just a bystander, like most of the people here.
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With so many different entertainment options out there for your children, we at PopcornBiz thought we'd take a moment each week to dissect one piece of family entertainment strictly from a parent's perspective, so that you know what parts are appropriate for your loved ones, and which are not. This week's COVER YOUR EYES subject: "Finding Nemo."
The Academy Award nominations went out today, and it may not surprise you to learn that Pixar, darling of the animation world, was finally shut out of the Best Animated Feature category. Pixar won this category for four straight years, and has won this category six out of the ten years it has existed. But "Cars 2" was lousy enough to put an end to that hot streak. However, I thought that now might be a good time to look back at one of the studio's Oscar-winning features, "Finding Nemo." And loogit that! "Nemo" stars Albert Brooks, who was just snubbed by the Academy for his work in "Drive." It's all coming full circle, gang. Is Pixar's smash fish movie okay to show your little ones? Let's consider a few factors.
The "Will Parents Be Able To Tolerate It?" Factor: Yes. "Finding Nemo" is one of the most beautiful animated movies ever made. Pixar spent a lot of time making sure the light and shadows underwater looked just right, and their efforts paid off. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that this is probably the least adult-friendly Pixar film of them all. The humor is exceedingly gentle (lots of fish puns), and I hated that stupid surfer dude turtle. There's not a lot of sophistication to be had in this script. But hey, it's a talking fish movie. It's not supposed to be Tarantino.
The Dead Parent Factor: Only THE BIGGEST MOST DEPRESSING HORRIBLE DEAD MOM FACTOR EVER. That opening sequence is just... guhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I mean really, did Nemo's mom have to be eaten by a barracuda? That's like Bambi's mom getting got times ten. It's awful. I can't bear to watch. I think I took it much harder than my child did. I was weeping over in the corner and she was like, "Did the mom die?" And I was like, "HOW COULD YOU BE SO BLUNT AT A TIME LIKE THIS?!"
The Sexy Sex Sex Factor: None, though it is Troy McClure's favorite soft-core film.
The Scare Factor: Did you see the part about the mom-eating barracuda? Not cool, man. Not cool at all. There are also toothy sharks, phosphorescent deep-sea fish with big fangs, and other creepy sea creatures. But of course, the biggest scares here are emotional. Nemo may never get back to his father, and that's the scariest part of all. Here comes those tears again! Gahhhhhh!
Age Range: 4 and up. Skip the dead mom if you must.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Okay, I saw V for Vendetta last week and started to rewite the bio for MR. Here it is: Milisc Ronew was an aide to Bail Organa until he met Palpatine. Palpatine saw "something" in him and made him an aide. After the creation of the empire, Palpattine began Milisc's Sith training. He later joined Palpatine's "Inner Circle" of aides. Palpatine sent him to monitor the prison of Jedi who survived "Order 66" where he met an old friend from Alderaan named Jovana Nolvar. He saw the horrors that she endured so he released her and a group of jedi. They escaped to Alderaan where he started his own rebelion of force-sensitive warriors. He took on the persona of a masked hero of Sith folklore named Darth Viserous, who was the only Sith to return from the darkside. He was also an ancestor of Milisc and Milisc weilded his lightsaber. In a bold move, Milisc bombed the Imperial Palace, nearly killing the Emperor. Later that day he took over the HoloNet building and put a message out on the galactic newswaves. In it, he proclaimed the Empire was evil. Many other people joined his cause after that and he continued to fight for the freedom of the galaxy along the side of his wife, Jovana, and in the future, his son Milisc Ronew II.P.S.-For the freedom fighter Milisc I was thinking about using the ROTS Royal Gaurd and modifying the neck and helmet for him. I want it to look Sith-like but still Jedi-like if that makes any sense. The re write will put me a little off track, but not much because Iam lazy and only shot two shots so far. Make it the last week of April, by that I mean the photonovel. The camera w/ all the custom pics is still int the shop and i shoul get that back in about a week and a half. I'm soooooo off schedule w/ posting and shooting it's disgusting. I completely understand if you guys (and girls) get mad at me for not posting sooner.
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Wanderings with the Great Ones of Europe
Alone at night in a labyrinth holding a lantern and wandering between the impulses from great European authors.
Heidegger, Martin (1889 - 1976)
"…we stand at once within the realm of that which hides itself from us…"
"…stehen wir auf einmal in den Bereich dessen, was versteckt sich vor uns…"
Wikipedia »
In the course of the 40-minutes program, our visitors are allowed to wander the whole area of the Labyrinth of Buda Castle, and they are all alone in the entire maze during the reserved time. Admission is free with a ticket purchased for day-time labyrinth walk. Similarly, the ticket purchased for the night-time program can be used once again for one of the day-time programs. Reservation is required to participate in these programs.
The programme starts at
Monday 01.00
Thursday 06.00
Friday 23.00
How to make a program reservation?
The available times can be viewed by clicking on the button bellow. Once you select the time suitable for you, you have to log in or sign up. The reservation can be confirmed after signing up. After your reservation is made, a confirming e-mail is sent to you, enabling you to confirm the reservation. In case you fail to confirm the reservation at least 24 hours before the beginning of the program, the reservation is considered null and void, and the given time will be available for reserving again. In case you reserve a time more than 3 weeks beforehand, the confirmative e-mail is sent 3 weeks before the beginning of the reserved period.


text: Switching What are your cancellation fees? If you're on a variable tariff, you won't need to pay any exit fees. For our fixed term tariffs, we want to make sure you have certainty over the prices you pay. So if you wish to switch to another supplier, or another tariff with us, you may be required to pay a cancellation fee if it's before the end of your fixed term contract. Details of tariff cancelation fees can be found on your Tariff Information Label (TIL) here. Did you find this information useful? Yes No


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Mercedes-Benz in addition to Tesla See a Future in Electric Self-Driving Buses
Mercedes-Benz in addition to Tesla See a Future in Electric Self-Driving Buses
people moving toward urban cores in our cities in record numbers. While paying cities inside, the idea has become harder than ever to have a car or several cars inside family. At the same time, the fresh subway tunnels in addition to railways require deep pockets in addition to funding sources are often controversial. The solution, according to some, is actually inside automatic bus (or semi-automated). Bus ticket purchase is actually almost an ambitious American consumers of the middle class, nevertheless two ambitious brands Mercedes-Benz in addition to Tesla both projects recently mentioned bus designed to address the dilemma of collective transport in urban areas.
the idea makes sense. People move inside retina of buses with traffic signals may ease the stalemate without the different (much more expensive) improvements such as the construction of fresh subway or light rail lines, or add politically loaded, such as pumpkin-AV own urban area policies. According to International Transport Union Publica (UITP) , an international organization of transport authorities in addition to operators, in addition to one particular, large articulated bus can replace 40 personal vehicle in addition to the idea takes just one-eighth of the road space.
future Mercedes-Benz bus, city bus which has a semi-automated technology group called CityPilot, is actually the front-runner in This kind of area. the idea can trip up to 12.4 miles (20 km) without the need for the driver to touch the steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedal. With dozens of cameras in addition to the long radar in addition to short-range systems control the way forward, can buses future spot obstacles in addition to pedestrians, follow lane markings, in addition to function as part of a fresh system of rapid transit buses (BRT), in addition to employ networked data on traffic signals along the way .
This kind of system requires a Mercedes-Benz driver on board (a press of a button puts them in semi-automatic mode). the idea's also a fully functional today, which is actually being tested on the road inside Netherlands, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport. At the same time, looking for many more years inside future, Tesla recently announced a plan which looks, in some respects, complementary solutions, such as the future bus.
Tesla sees the future for smaller buses half Autonomous
inside long term, Tesla the idea intends not only to enter the bus sector, nevertheless for the production of buses unmanned says. As part of the much discussed master plan Tesla Dox part of the company to expand in addition to "cover major forms of ground transportation," said Chief Executive Elon Musk: "In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two different types of required electric vehicles: trucks high in addition to urban transport passengers in addition to heavy density. "
musk which the fleet of modest buses semi-autonomous can move by the role of the bus driver to the fleet manager. In Tesla scenario, in addition to you needed to ride these buses arrangements through the application of mobile phone, although Musk also suggested setting a fixed call buttons inside current bus stations.
Tesla says which the bus is actually designed to be like the performance of the auto, so the idea does not impede traffic, including flexible seating which can accommodate wheelchairs, strollers in addition to bicycles planning
- Elon Musk plan Tesla Master, Part Deux: Semis pickup, solar roofs energy, in addition to the participation of the auto
- 2016 Mercedes-Benz Mitris first driver Review
- Tesla type X: comments, pricing, specifications
Mercedes-Benz buses future, as the idea is actually, is actually a diesel-powered, nevertheless the company all the electric propulsion system for buses on the road announced the 2018's. which must be overcome Tesla by many years ago. Do you get the Tesla name, or active Mercedes-Benz safety reputation, to make the American people more susceptible to the bus ride them? the idea's too early to say, nevertheless with these two names are concerned, the future of public transport today seems only more secure, nevertheless a little more glamorous.
Mercedes-Benz in addition to Tesla See a Future in Electric Self-Driving Buses
Source: Mercedes-Benz in addition to Tesla See a Future in Electric Self-Driving Buses


text:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/misclmcrad ... -part-five
Part FIVE of our ongoing discussion of Astral Powers.
For each of the five senses there is an Astral Sense, which was well-known, and often much-feared, to ancient people. The old Wonder-Workers were capable of astonishing feats of power.
Let's discuss some of these powers and abilities and how to develop them. Along with such fascinating techniques as Astral projection, psychometry and the Astral Tube, we'll also discuss Crystal gazing!
Reverend Jon Saint Germain, pastor of Divine Harmony Spiritual Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, is the Voice of the Crystal Silence League and author of CRYSTAL MAGIC: DIVINATION, HEALING AND SPELLCRAFT WITH GEMS AND MINERALS, providing Spiritual guidance on the practical use of crystals and crystal balls in the development of mental concentration and mind power, silent influence over others, divination and scrying of the future, and telepathic contact with people and spirits.
Call in to speak with the host (657) 383-0525
Tonight's Crystal is Spessartine.
Crystal Silence League Hour #115:The Astral Power Part Five
Every Tuesday, Rev. Jon Saint Germain provides guidance on the development of mental concentration, silent influence, divination, and telepathic contact with people and spirits.
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Crystal Silence League Hour #115:The Astral Power Part Five
Rev Jon Saint Germain
HRCC Grad - BOD AIRR - BOD AISC - Hoodoo Psychics - Crystal Silence League
HRCC Grad - BOD AIRR - BOD AISC - Hoodoo Psychics - Crystal Silence League
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text:
By Jill Pertler
Meow. It's me again. The cat. From time to time I take a crack at this column stuff. If you are reading this, today is your lucky day.
The female adult human who usually sits at the computer must have a cramp in her opposable thumbs, because she is not typing. Never fear, I am here! Leave it to me to catapult in and come to the rescue (as usual).
Did I mention I am privy to the rules of the universe? It isn't surprising. Most cats are. Look at the life we live and tell me it's not an omnipotent display of clever, well-planned politics (or at the very least clever, well-planned napping). Since the days of the pyramids, we have been in charge, without you, dear humans, ever suspecting the truth. What about that isn't brilliant?
There's no arguing the fact that cats are the supreme life form. Still, I find humans somewhat endearing. Their furless bodies and bipedal stance makes them vulnerable and perhaps even charming (in an unattractive sort of way) and I'm not only saying this because they can reach the high cupboard and open the bag of catnip. There's a soft spot in my heart (albeit a tiny one) for my humans. I'd allow them to continue living in my house even if they didn't pay the mortgage, but don't tell them I said so. I wouldn't want them to get too comfortable with our situation.
I have a few fine nips of feline insight to bestow upon you today. (You can thank me later.) For now, sit tight, and prepare for a glimpse into the highly evolved brain of yours truly. You'll find my rules of the universe keen and clever if you are paying attention. (Which by the way, most cats are not.)
As an example, consider rule number one: Paying attention is optional unless you are taking a nap. Then it is not an option.
And rule number two: A nap trumps just about anything else in your day.
My list goes on:
If you see opportunity, pounce.
If you see any sort of movement, under a blanket or other fabric covering, pounce.
When in doubt, pounce unless you are taking a nap.
Crinkled paper, rolled into a ball is better than any store-bought toy especially at 2:00 a.m. in any bed where a human is sleeping.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
Do not let them watch you eat.
If a human calls your name, walk in the opposite direction. Unless they are in possession of catnip.
Apathy. Apathy. Apathy.
God did not make the sunshine on warm windowsills by accident. The same goes for mice.
God loves cats.
Confidence. Above all else, confidence. Walk with your head high, your tail up and your cattitude intact.
If you must purr, do so loudly.
Humans may pay the rent, but cats own the house. Never let them humiliate you with a bell or a bath.
Dogs are not to be trusted, until you find one you can trust.
When jumping, aim for high places.
Always land with your feet on the ground.
You've only got nine lives; live them well.
When you get to the end of a list, take a nap. Or pounce. Either way, you're a cat and that makes you a winner. I know I am.
It is on that condescending note I will sign off. Until next time, I remain
Apathetically yours,
The Cat


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October 24, 2011
Lodging added as allowable business expense for procurement card
Submitted by Ann Marie Treinen
The Division of Financial Services announces the addition of lodging as an allowable business expense to the K-State business procurement card, upon departmental request and card training.
A brief informational session is available for anyone interested in learning more about this capability. Please click here to register for an available sessions. Sessions begin Oct. 31.


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RICHMOND, Va. (March 21, 2012) – Virginia Commonwealth University officials confirmed today that head men's basketball coach Shaka Smart will remain at VCU.
"Coach Smart recognizes -- as do the rest of the university community, alumni and fans -- that VCU is the place to be right now," said VCU President Michael Rao. "He continues to demonstrate his commitment to VCU and its pursuit of excellence athletically and academically.
Under his leadership, the success of the VCU basketball program and our scholar athletes raises the bar for national research universities and intercollegiate athletics," Rao said.
"I am very grateful for the support and belief in the coaching staff and basketball program that comes from the very top of our university's leadership -- President Rao, Athletic Director Norwood Teague and the VCU Board of Visitors – as well as our phenomenal fans," Smart said. "There are great things to accomplish at VCU and I'm looking forward to building on the successes of our program and university."
After VCU's historic run to the Final Four in 2011, this season Smart and his staff led one of the youngest teams in the country to a school record 29 wins and the 2012 Colonial Athletic Association Championship. Backing the Rams all year long was a fan base that packed the Verizon Wireless Arena at the Stuart C. Siegel Center for every game, making VCU one of only five NCAA teams to sell out every home game this season.
Smart has led the Black and Gold to 84 wins, the second most in the first three years of any head coach in NCAA history. He has led the Rams to two NCAA Tournaments and has helped bolster VCU's national reputation with a total of 57 games being televised over the past two seasons.
Teague said that Smart has agreed in principle to some changes in his current contract, the details of which are being finalized.
"The agreement reflects Coach Smart's continued focus on his players, coaches, the men's basketball program and its contributions to a great university," Teague said.
Prior to VCU, Smart was an assistant to University of Florida head coach Billy Donovan. He also was an assistant coach at Clemson, the University of Akron, the University of Dayton and at California University of Pennsylvania.
Smart played college basketball at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he graduated magna cum laude with a history degree. He also earned a master's degree in social science from California University of Pennsylvania.


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Summer's almost over, and still no solar panels on White House roof
WASHINGTON — In October, Energy Secretary Steven Chu pledged that solar panels and a solar water heater would be installed on the White House roof before the start of summer.
Now, summer is almost over, the 2012 election campaign is well under way, and there are still no solar panels on the White House roof.
Why? That's a mystery.
The Energy Department will say only that the project is mired in the "competitive procurement process." Spokeswoman Joelle Terry declined to go into details of the holdup. Questions about when that process might be completed also were rebuffed. So were queries about the projected cost of adding the panels and where the panels would be located.
The National Park Service, which put solar panels on White House outbuildings during the administration of President George W. Bush, said it couldn't comment on why the previous installation was completed more quickly. It directed questions to the White House, where press spokesman Clark Stevens deferred to the Department of Energy, where spokeswoman Terry stuck to her original statement.
Not even Solar Design Associates, which according to the magazine Solar Today installed the previous panels, was willing to comment. A search of the government contracting website USASpending.gov did turn up a $10,000 contract, awarded in January, to Overly Manufacturing Co. That contract was to "support the contractor" for the photovoltaic system and "ensure that the integrity and warranty of the White House roof is maintained."
No one was willing to reveal the details of the formal government bidding proposal, which was not posted online.
Solar panels atop the White House, America's most famous government building, have long been a policy statement. President Jimmy Carter installed 32 in 1979 when an Arab oil embargo spiked fuel prices.
"No one can ever embargo the sun or interrupt its delivery to us," Carter said at the installation ceremony, having never seen the episode of "The Simpsons" where Mr. Burns blocks out the sun with a giant disk.
President Ronald Reagan removed the panels in 1986. Then came the National Park Service-directed installation during the most recent Bush administration. Those panels went on a maintenance building and on the president's cabana to heat water for the outdoor White House pool.
Chu announced that panels would be going up on the White House itself at the GreenGov Symposium, which was described on its website as "a three-day educational event to identify opportunities around greening the Federal Government." It was sponsored by the White House Council on Environmental Quality and held at George Washington University in Washington Oct. 5-7, 2010.
"As we move toward a clean energy economy, the White House will lead by example," Chu said then when he promised that solar panels would be returned to the White House roof. "It's been a long time since we've had them up there."
The project was intended to be part of the Energy Department's larger SunShot Initiative to make solar technology cost-competitive.
Solar power is one of the staples of the growing alternate energy sector. Both commercial buildings and homes are incorporating the technology, though it still makes up only about 1 percent of the energy produced by alternative fuels in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
A spokesman for the organization 350.org, named after an atmospheric target of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide recommended by some scientists to ward off the "greenhouse effect" blamed for global warming, expressed disappointment that the solar panels hadn't yet made it to the roof of the White House.
"This isn't rocket science. Hammer it in, make a few connections — you're good to go," said Jamie Henn, the group's spokesman. "If the first lady is going to go out and get her hands dirty planting her garden, then it's up to the president to do some home improvements as well."
His group has been a leading proponent of heads of state adding solar panels to their residences.
"The administration needs to do more to show that they're serious about moving clean energy forward," he said. "There's no better way of doing that than getting on the roof of the White House and proclaiming that there shouldn't just be solar panels there, but on rooftops all across America and around the world."
While it may be a little more complicated than Henn jokes, two other heads of state have installed solar panels on their official residences.
In the Maldives, 48 panels went up on the Mulee Agee Palace in 2010, within days of Chu's appearance at the GreenGov Symposium. President Mohamed Nasheed helped install the solar panels himself and pledged to make the island nation carbon-neutral by 2020. The Maldives, which sit off the tip of India, are vulnerable to the rising seas associated with climate change. How vulnerable? The highest point is less than eight feet above sea level.
In New Delhi, 64 solar panels were installed on the auditorium at Rashtrapati Bhavan, home of India's president, Pratibha Devisingh Patil. One hundred solar-powered streetlights also illuminate various sections of the Rashtrapati Bhavan compound, which boasts of five electric vehicles that are charged with solar power and leave no carbon footprint, according to the government's website. India began greening the presidential compound in 2008 as part of the Roshni initiative to develop green urban habitats.
(Biron reports for Medill News Service, the Washington program of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.)
An interactive history of solar power
Left, right agree: For big debt cut, end subsidies that harm environment
Study: Solar industry job growth slowed by red tape
Would looser environmental regulations help the economy?
Follow McClatchy on Twitter.


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Computational Photography
By Brian Hayes
New cameras don't just capture photons; they compute pictures
New cameras don't just capture photons; they compute pictures
The digital camera has brought a revolutionary shift in the nature of photography, sweeping aside more than 150 years of technology based on the weird and wonderful photochemistry of silver halide crystals. Curiously, though, the camera itself has come through this transformation with remarkably little change. A digital camera has a silicon sensor where the film used to go, and there's a new display screen on the back, but the lens and shutter and the rest of the optical system work just as they always have, and so do most of the controls. The images that come out of the camera also look much the same—at least until you examine them microscopically.
But further changes in the art and science of photography may be coming soon. Imaging laboratories are experimenting with cameras that don't merely digitize an image but also perform extensive computations on the image data. Some of the experiments seek to improve or augment current photographic practices, for example by boosting the dynamic range of an image (preserving detail in both the brightest and dimmest areas) or by increasing the depth of field (so that both near and far objects remain in focus). Other innovations would give the photographer control over factors such as motion blur. And the wildest ideas challenge the very notion of the photograph as a realistic representation. Future cameras might allow a photographer to record a scene and then alter the lighting or shift the point of view, or even insert fictitious objects. Or a camera might have a setting that would cause it to render images in the style of watercolors or pen-and-ink drawings.
Digital cameras already do more computing than you might think. The image sensor inside the camera is a rectangular array of tiny light-sensitive semiconductor devices called photosites. The image created by the camera is also a rectangular array, made up of colored pixels. Hence you might suppose there's a simple one-to-one mapping between the photosites and the pixels: Each photosite would measure the intensity and the color of the light falling on its surface and assign those values to the corresponding pixel in the image. But that's not the way it's done.
In most cameras, the sensor array is overlain by a patchwork pattern of red, green and blue filters, so that a photosite receives light in only one band of wavelengths. In the final image, however, every pixel includes all three color components. The pixels get their colors through a computational process called de-mosaicing, in which signals from nearby photosites are interpolated in various ways. A single pixel might combine information from a dozen photosites.
The image-processing computer in the camera is also likely to apply a "sharpening" algorithm, accentuating edges and abrupt transitions. It may adjust contrast and color balance as well, and then compress the data for more-efficient storage. Given all this internal computation, it seems a digital camera is not simply a passive recording device. It doesn't take pictures; it makes them. When the sensor intercepts a pattern of illumination, that's only the start of the process that creates an image.
Up to now, this algorithmic wizardry has been directed toward making digital pictures look as much as possible like their wet-chemistry forebears. But a camera equipped with a computer can run more ambitious or fanciful programs. Images from such a computational camera might capture aspects of reality that other cameras miss.
We live immersed in a field of light. At every point in space, rays of light arrive from every possible direction. Many of the new techniques of computational photography work by extracting more information from this luminous field.
Here's a thought experiment: Remove an image sensor from its camera and mount it facing a flat-panel display screen. Suppose both the sensor and the display are square arrays of size 1,000x1,000; to keep things simple, assume they are monochromatic devices. The pixels on the surface of the panel emit light, with the intensity varying from point to point depending on the pattern displayed. Each pixel's light radiates outward to reach all the photosites of the sensor. Likewise each photosite receives light from all the display pixels. With a million emitters and a million receivers, there are 1012 interactions. What kind of image does the sensor produce? The answer is: A total blur. The sensor captures a vast amount of information about the energy radiated by the display, but that information is smeared across the entire array and cannot readily be recovered.
Now interpose a pinhole between the display and the sensor. If the aperture is small enough, each display pixel illuminates exactly one sensor photosite, yielding a sharp image. But clarity comes at a price, namely throwing away all but a millionth of the incident light. Instead of having 1012 exchanges between pixels and photosites, there are only 106.
A lens is less wasteful than a pinhole: It bends light, so that an entire cone of rays emanating from a pixel is made to reconverge on a photosite. But if the lens does its job correctly, it still enforces a one-pixel, one-photosite rule. Moreover, objects are in focus only if their distance from the lens is exactly right; rays originating at other distances are focused to a disk rather than a point, causing blur.
Photography with any conventional camera—digital or analog—is an art of compromise. Open up the lens to a wide aperture and it gathers plenty of light, but this setting also limits depth of field; you can't get both ends of a horse in focus. A slower shutter (longer exposure time) allows you to stop down the lens and thereby increase the depth of field; but then the horse comes out unblurred only if it stands perfectly still. A fast shutter and a narrow aperture alleviate the problems of depth of field and motion blur, but the sensor receives so few photons that the image is mottled by random noise.
Computational photography can ease some of these constraints. In particular, capturing additional information about the light field allows focus and depth of field to be corrected after the fact. Other techniques can remove motion blur.
A digital camera sensor registers the intensity of light falling on each photosite but tells us nothing about where the light came from. To record the full light field we would need a sensor that measured both the intensity and the direction of every incident light ray. Thus the information recorded at each photosite would be not just a single number (the total intensity) but a complex data structure (giving the intensity in each of many directions). As yet, no sensor chip can accomplish this feat on its own, but the effect can be approximated with extra hardware. The underlying principles were explored in the early 1990s by Edward H. Adelson and John Y. A. Yang of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
One approach to recording the light field is to construct a gridlike array of many cameras, each with its own lens and photosensor. The cameras produce multiple images of the same scene, but the images are not quite identical because each camera views the scene from a slightly different perspective. Rays of light coming from the same point in the scene register at a different point on each camera's sensor. By combining information from all the cameras, it's possible to reconstruct the light field. (I'll return below to the question of how this is done.)
Experiments with camera arrays began in the 1990s. In one recent project Bennett Wilburn and several colleagues at Stanford University built a bookcase-size array of 96 video cameras, connected to four computers that digest the high-speed stream of data. The array allows "synthetic aperture photography," analogous to a technique used with radio telescopes and radar antennas.
A rack of 96 cameras is not something you'd want to lug along on a family vacation. Ren Ng and another Stanford group (Marc Levoy, Mathieu Brédif, Gene Duval, Mark Horowitz and Pat Hanrahan) implemented a conceptually similar scheme in a smaller package. Instead of ganging together many separate cameras, they inserted an array of "microlenses" just in front of the sensor chip inside a single camera. The camera is still equipped with its standard main lens, shutter and aperture control. Each microlens focuses an image of the main lens aperture onto a region of the sensor chip. Thus instead of one large image, the sensor sees many small images, viewing the scene from slightly different angles.
Whereas a normal photograph is two-dimensional, a light field has at least four dimensions. For each element of the field, two coordinates specify position in the picture plane and another two coordinates represent direction (perhaps as angles in elevation and azimuth). Even though the sensor in the microlens camera is merely a planar array, the partitioning of its surface into subimages allows the two extra dimensions of directional information to be recovered. One demonstration of this fact appears in the light-field photograph of a sheaf of crayons reproduced at right. The image was made at close range, and so there are substantial angular differences across the area of the camera's sensor. Selecting one subimage or another changes the point of view. Note that these shifts in perspective are not merely geometric transformations such as the scalings or warpings that can be applied to an ordinary photograph. The views present different information; for example, some objects are occluded in one view but not in another.
Shifting the point of view is one of the simpler operations made possible by a light-field camera; less obvious is the ability to adjust focus and depth of field.
When the image of an object is out of focus, light that ought to be concentrated on one photosite is spread out over several neighboring sites—covering an area known as the circle of confusion. The extent of the spreading depends on the object's distance from the camera, compared with the ideal distance for the focal setting of the lens. If the actual distance is known, then the size of the circle of confusion can be calculated, and the blurring can be undone algorithmically. In essence, light is subtracted from the pixels it has leaked into and is restored to its correct place. The operation has to be repeated for each pixel.
To put this scheme into action, we need to know the distance from the camera to each point in the scene—the point's depth. For a conventional photograph, depth cues are hard to come by, but the light-field camera encodes a depth map within the image data. The key is parallax: an object's apparent shift in position when the viewer moves. In general, an object will occupy a slightly different set of pixels in each of the subimages of the microlens camera; the magnitude and direction of the displacements depend on the object's depth within the scene. The depth information is similar to that in a stereoscopic photograph, but based on data from many images instead of just two.
Recording a four-dimensional light field allows for more than just fixing a misfocused image. With appropriate software for viewing the stored data set, the photographer can move the plane of focus back and forth through the scene, or can create a composite image with high depth of field, where all planes are in focus. With today's cameras, focus is something you have to get right before you click the shutter, but in the future it could join other parameters (such as color and contrast) that can be adjusted after the fact.
The microlens array is not the only approach to computing focus and depth of field. Anat Levin, Rob Fergus, Frédo Durand and William T. Freeman of MIT have recently described another technique, based on a "coded aperture." Again the idea is to modify a normal camera, but instead of inserting microlenses near the sensor, a patterned mask or filter is placed in the aperture of the main lens. The pattern consists of opaque and transparent areas. The simplest mask is a half-disk that blocks half the aperture. You might think such a screen would merely cast a shadow over half the image, but in fact rays from the entire scene reach the entire sensor area by passing through the open half of the lens. The half-occluded aperture does alter the blurring of out-of-focus objects, however, making it asymmetrical. Detecting this asymmetry provides a tool for correcting the focus. The ideal mask is not a simple half-disk but a pattern with openings of various sizes, shapes and orientations. It is called a coded aperture because it imposes a distinctive code or signature on the image data.
Further experiments with coded masks have been reported by Ashok Veeraraghavan, Ramesh Raskar and Amit Agrawal of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory and Ankit Mohan and Jack Tumblin of Northwestern University. They show that such masks are useful not only in the aperture of the lens but also near the sensor plane, where they perform the same function as the array of microlenses in Ng's light-field camera. The "dappling" of the image by the nearby mask encodes the directional information needed to recover the light field.
Patterns encoded in a different dimension—time rather than space—provide a strategy for coping with motion blur. Raskar, Agrawal and Tumblin have built a camera that removes the fuzzy streak created by an object that moves while the shutter is open.
Undoing motion blur would seem to be easier than correcting misfocus because motion blur is essentially one dimensional. You just gather up the pixels along the object's trajectory and separate the stationary background from the elements in motion. Sometimes this method works well, but ambiguities can spoil the results. When an object is greatly elongated by motion blur, the image may offer few clues to the object's true length or shape. Guessing wrong about these properties introduces unsightly artifacts.
A well-known trick for avoiding motion blur is stroboscopic lighting: a brief flash that freezes the action. Firing a rapid series of flashes gives information about the successive positions of a moving object. The trouble is, stroboscopic equipment is not always available or appropriate. Raskar and his colleagues have turned the technique inside out. Instead of flashing the light, they flutter the shutter. The camera's shutter is opened and closed several times in rapid succession, with the total amount of open time calculated to give the correct overall exposure. This technique converts one long smeared image into a sequence of several shorter ones, with boundaries that aid in reconstructing an unblurred version.
A further refinement is to make the flutter pattern nonuniform. Blinking the shutter at a fixed rate would create markers at regular intervals in the image, or in other words at just one spatial frequency. For inferring velocity, the most useful signal is one that maximizes the number of distinct spatial frequencies. As with a coded aperture, this coded exposure adds an identifiable signature to the image data.
Some cameras come equipped with a mechanical stabilizer designed to suppress a particular kind of motion blur—that caused by shaking of the camera itself. The shutter-flutter mechanism could handle this task as well.
Computational photography is currently a hot topic in computer graphics. (Computer devoted a special issue to the subject in 2006.) There's more going on than I have room to report, but I want to mention two more particularly adventurous ideas.
One of these projects comes from Raskar and several colleagues (Kar-Han Tan of Mitsubishi, Rogerio Feris and Matthew Turk of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Jingyi Yu of MIT). They are experimenting with "non-photorealistic photography"—pictures that come out of the camera looking like drawings, diagrams or paintings.
For some purposes a hand-rendered illustration can be clearer and more informative than a photograph, but creating such artwork requires much labor, not to mention talent. Raskar's camera attempts to automate the process by detecting and emphasizing the features that give a scene its basic three-dimensional structure, most notably the edges of objects. Detecting edges is not always easy. Changes in color or texture can be mistaken for physical boundaries; to the computer, a wallpaper pattern can look like a hole in the wall. To resolve this visual ambiguity Raskar et al. exploit the fact that only physical edges cast shadows. They have equipped a camera with four flash units surrounding the lens. The flash units are fired sequentially, producing four images in which shadows delineate changes in contour. Software then accentuates these features, while other areas of the image are flattened and smoothed to suppress distracting detail. The result is reminiscent of a watercolor painting or a drawing with ink and wash.
Another wild idea, called dual photography, comes from Hendrik P. A. Lensch, now of the Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik in Saarbrucken, working with Stephen R. Marschner of Cornell University and Pradeep Sen, Billy Chen, Gaurav Garg, Mark Horowitz and Marc Levoy of Stanford. Here's the setup: A camera is focused on a scene, which is illuminated from another angle by a single light source. Obviously, a photograph made in this configuration shows the scene from the camera's point of view. Remarkably, though, a little computation can also produce an image of the scene as it would appear if the camera and the light source swapped places. In other words, the camera creates a photograph that seems to be taken from a place where there is no camera.
This sounds like magic, or like seeing around corners, but the underlying principle is simple: Reflection is symmetrical. If the light rays proceeding from the source to the scene to the camera were reversed, they would follow exactly the same paths in the opposite direction and return to their point of origin. Thus if a camera can figure out where a ray came from, it can also calculate where the reversed ray would wind up.
Sadly, this research is not likely to produce a camera you can take outdoors to photograph a landscape as seen from the sun. For the trick to work, the light source has to be rather special, with individually addressable pixels. Lensch et al. have adapted a digital projector of the kind used for PowerPoint presentations. In the simplest algorithm, the projector's pixels are turned on one at a time, in order to measure the brightness of that pixel in "reversed light." Thus we return to the thought experiment where each of a million pixels in a display shines on each of a million photosites in a sensor. But now the experiment is done with hardware and software rather than thoughtware.
Some of the innovations described here may never get out of the laboratory, and others are likely to be taken up only by Hollywood cinematographers. But a number of these ideas seem eminently practical. For example, the flutter shutter could be incorporated into a camera without extravagant expense. In the case of the microlens array for recording light fields, Ng is actively working to commercialize the technology. (See refocusimaging.com.)
If some of these techniques do catch on, I wonder how they will change the way we think about photography. "The camera never lies" was always a lie; and yet, despite a long history of airbrush fakery followed by Photoshop fraud, photography retains a special status as a documentary art, different from painting and other more obviously subjective and interpretive forms of visual expression. At the very least, people tend to assume that every photograph is a photograph of something—that it refers to some real-world scene.
Digital imagery has already altered the perception of photography. In the age of silver emulsions, one could think of a photograph as a continuum of tones or hues, but a digital image is a finite array of pixels, each displaying a color drawn from a discrete spectrum. It follows that a digital camera can produce only a finite number of distinguishable images. That number is enormous (perhaps 10100,000,000), so you needn't worry that your camera will run out of pictures or start to repeat itself. Still, the mere thought that images are a finite resource can bring about a change in attitude.
Acknowledging that a photograph is a computed object—a product of algorithms—may work a further change. It takes us another step away from the naive notion of a photograph as frozen photons, caught in mid-flight. Neuroscientists have recognized that the faculty of vision resides more in the brain than in the eye; what we "see" is not a pattern on the retina but a world constructed through elaborate neural processing of such patterns. It seems the camera is evolving in the same direction, that the key elements are not photons and electrons, or even pixels, but higher-level structures that convey the meaning of an image.
© Brian Hayes
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New Orleans, Louisiana 1/3 arc-second NAVD 88 Coastal Digital Elevation Model
NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) is building high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) for select U.S. coastal regions in the Gulf of Mexico. These integrated bathymetric-topographic DEMs were developed for NOAA Coastal Survey Development Laboratory (CSDL) through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 to evaluate the utility of the Vertical Datum Transformation tool (VDatum), developed jointly by NOAA's Office of Coast Survey (OCS), National Geodetic Survey (NGS), and Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS). Bathymetric, topographic, and shoreline data used in DEM compilation are obtained from various sources, including NGDC, the U.S. Coastal Services Center (CSC), the U.S. Office of Coast Survey (OCS), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and other federal, state, and local government agencies, academic institutions, and private companies. DEMs are referenced to the vertical tidal datum of North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88), Mean High Water (MHW) or Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW) and horizontal datum of North American Datum of 1983 (NAD 83). Cell size ranges from 1/3 arc-second (~10 meters) to 1 arc-second (~30 meters). The NOAA VDatum DEM Project was funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 (http://www.recovery.gov/).
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