Looking for an escape from the covid pandemic that didn’t involve crowds or cities, Leah and I took a day to drive and hike the Blue Ridge Parkway, a scenic highway that runs from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina, running along the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
For a quick day trip, we flew out to the Asheville Regional Airport, rented a car, and drove north. We took in the scenic views driving, and stopped along the way to take a few hikes. The most notable was Mount Mitchell State Park, the highest point east of the Mississippi River. After exploring a little bit of nature, Leah and I returned to Durham rejuvinated.
Leah finished her Master’s in Reproductive and Sexual Health Research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and it was time to head to London for her graduation! We decided to make a trip of it, and stop by Budapest on our way to London.
Budapest has a long and storied history, with periods under Roman, Tatar, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian rule before being occupied by Germany and then the Soviet Union in World War II. The history lends Budapest a resilient spirit and broad culture. During our visit, we were able to see a wide variety of the sites. Sunday, we saw the Dohány Street Synagogue and St. Stephen’s Basilica before taking a cruise along the Danube River and ending the evening at one of the ruin bars, watering holes that sprung up in derelict buildings and evolved into bohemian landmarks.
Monday, we visited Buda Castle, the historical seat of the Hungarian Kings. From there, we explored the Hospital in the Rock, a sprawling hospital complex built into cave systems under the castle. The hospital was built just before World War II, and was most notably used in the siege of Budapest at the end of the war. It was subsequently developed as a nuclear and chemical warfare bunker before being decommissioned in the 1980s and converted into a museum in the 2000s. We ended the day with a visit to the Szechenyi baths, the largest medicinal bath in Europe built on a thermal artesian well. Tuesday, we saw the Great Market Hall and spent some time in the Rudas Baths, thermal baths built under the Ottoman Empire. Wednesday, checked out of our room and climbed up Gellért Hill to the Liberty Statue that celebrates the liberation of the city from Nazi occupation before heading off to London.
The London activities started with Leah’s long-awaited graduation ceremony on Thursday. For the rest of the week, I got to meet the friends she worked so hard with during her master’s. Friday, we saw Waitress, one of Leah’s favorite musicals, made extra special by Sarah Bareilles’s reprisal of the lead role. Saturday, we saw a matinée showing of Dear Evan Hansen before going for a dinner cruise on the Thames. Over our lovely meal floating through the middle of London’s beautiful river skyline, I proposed to Leah, and she enthusiastically accepted! Sunday, we flew back home, graduated and engaged.
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I’m currently working on a project that involves face tracking, and as a first prototype am using the built-in features in the ARKit library, Apple’s augmented reality API for iOS.
Using a device with a front-facing TrueDepth camera, an augmented reality session can be started to return quite a bit of information about faces it is tracking in an ARFaceAnchor object. One of these details is the face geometry itself, contained in the aptly named ARFaceGeometry object. For those who care about face shape landmarks, the 1220 individual vertices (points) can provide a wealth of information. However, there is little to no published information on which vertex corresponds to what point on the face.
While keeping in mind that this means these vertices could easily change in future versions of ARKit, I’ve taken the liberty of labeling points in case it is helpful for a future developer.
This May, I was lucky enough to get one more trip across the Pond to visit with Leah and celebrate her birthday. We spent a few days driving across Iceland, where we did some whale and puffin watching, hiked and did a bit of ice climbing on the Sólheimajökull glacier, visited the Reynisfjara Black Sand Beach, wondered at the ice “diamonds” in the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon, and stopped for a dip in the Blue Lagoon. Then we flew back to England, where I spent a couple of days in London meeting Leah’s classmates and friends, and a couple of days in Oxford, where I taught her to punt and introduced her to the joys of Summer Eights!
On our last day in Greece, Leah and I tried to see all we could see in Athens. We started with a tour of central ancient Athens, including the Temple of Olympian Zeus, a colossal monument to the king of the ancient Greek gods; the Acropolis, the sanctuary of the ancient city; the Ancient Agora, which was its cultural center; and the Temple of Hephaestus, one of the best preserved temples dedicated to the god of metallurgy.
Fresh from our adventures in Santorini, we flew to Milos, a smaller Aegean island with a population of about 5000, and gorgeous beaches. We checked into our lovely windmill and (after a brief adventure figuring out driving manual transmission) headed out to explore the island!
Leah has always had a penchant for clear blue water and romantic island life, so while she’s been away doing her master’s in London, we decided to meet up for a week in Greece. Our first stop was Santorini, known for its beautiful ocean views. We arrived on March 30, and checked in to Hotel Sunny Villas built into the side of a cliff in Imerovigli, famous for its beautiful sunsets.
Although Durham was inland enough that Hurricane Florence was felt mostly as a few days of heavy rain, it was devastating to southeastern North Carolina and the Outer Banks. Although the storm surge and winds were in line with other Carolina hurricanes, its lingering path across the eastern portion of the state dropped 35 inches of rain in some places. This caused severe flooding and power outages, closed thousands of roads, and disrupted the transport of food and supplies to the eastern swath of the state.
Operation Airdrop is a nonprofit organization formed in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017 to deliver supplies to inaccessible areas after natural disasters. I was lucky enough to be able to fit one Airdrop mission between a week of neuroanesthesia and a week of night call. Erin, a combined internal medicine / pediatrics resident, and I delivered a batch of food, bottled water, batteries, bug spray, and childcare supplies to Columbus County, North Carolina. It was rewarding to have the opportunity to help out in this small way, and the story got picked up by the Duke Anesthesia newsletter.
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In our continuing hunt for getaways involving sandy beaches — especially important as Leah gets ready to head off to London — Leah and I took a few September days to enjoy some sun in Key West and Miami. We spent the weekend in Key West, staying in a cute AirBnB just off the lively Duval Street. I showed Leah a few traditional Key West highlights: the southernmost point in the continental United States, the nightly sunset celebration in Mallory Square, and of course a few encounters with the wandering chickens. We also enjoyed the regional delicacies of Key Lime Pie on a stick and drinks in coconuts.
On Monday, we drove back up to Miami, where we stayed at the Grand Beach Hotel Surfside. Here, Leah introduced me to the Ocean Drive club scene at the Clevelander, and we enjoyed some relaxing beach time. Unfortunately, our trip was cut short by the impending Hurricane Florence. We were able to catch an earlier flight back to North Carolina to avoid the storm, and can’t wait for our next sandy beach adventure.
