Self Preservation _and_ GigaPan Promotion!

At Burning Man Ted said that "Self Preservation is more important than GigaPan."

It seemed like a strange statement.

In Santa Rosa on a total whim I bought a reflective safety vest. I've been wearing it over my coat while I gigapan.

It was a certain affectation, to create something of a uniform for taking gigapans, but in reality it has worked far better than I could have imagined. It is the Telstar Logistics urban camoflauge model.

I set up the mast and start taking a GigaPan, then carefully make a GPS waypoint and use my notebook to make notes about the situation, and then I just sort of stand there looking around.

I think that 'standing around looking around' part probably looks pretty dorky. But _if you have a safety vest on_ than no one thinks anything is strange. In fact, people are curious.

Sometimes they ask what I am doing, and then I hand them GigaPan cards and we sometimes have a nice conversation.

I accidentally learned that people often like to talk about their own city. I asked someone for some places I should GigaPan, and he gave me a whole list. I've been asking other people the same question, and showing them my list, and it is a great conversation piece.

It is almost like flying umpty-thousand miles away to a place where I don't speak the language (but most people speak English) has cured my social anxiety. It must be that, or the drugs. Hard to tell.

At the Amsterdam Airport they wanted to examine the two gigapans I had in boxes in my carry on bag. Oddly they didn't care about the one with the camera on it that was not in a box. So I opened them up, and I took out the other one with the camera on it, and started talking about Gigapixels and panoramas and I may have said 'NASA.' Rose says that there were five or six security officers, gathered around asking questions. Apparently enthralled. I gave them all cards and told them to check it out.

(I even gave the TSA guy in SF a card, but he was less interested :-)