Two wheels, two payloads, and a bunch of struts. Can you evolve a bike that crosses the terrain?

Tags: Fun, Interesting Stuff, Flash, Evolution

I Make Projects.com has some unusual and interesting projects. I particularly like the Halloween Monstrosities. The labels are a work of art: “SHRINKING POTION TEST SUBJECT #13, MALE AGED 23 YEARS, SURVIVED 8 MIN 9 SEC”.

Tags: Halloween, Jars, Fun, Interesting Stuff, Octopuses, Skeletons

Datapeak has a large collection of all things computer -- even computer scientists. It’s interesting to see all the people who’s names appear in the subject literature. Other pages cover computer history, algorithms, and conferences. Everything is dated and has links to more information.

Tags: Scientists, Programming, Interesting Stuff

Telescopic text by Joe Davis.

Tags: Telescopes, Tea, Stories, Fun, Interesting Stuff

From the Computer History Museum comes 101 minutes with some of the pioneers of computer graphics: Brad Bird, Writer/Director, The Incredibles, Pixar Animation Studios, Ed Catmull, Co-Founder and President, Pixar Animation Studios, Alvy Ray Smith, Co-Founder of four centers of computer graphics excellence (Altamira, Pixar, Lucasfilm, New York Tech) and a Microsoft Fellow, Andrew Stanton, Writer/ Director, Finding Nemo, Pixar Animation Studios , and Michael Rubin, Moderator, Author of Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution.

Catmull and Smith were two of the pioneers of computer graphics algorithms and hardware, inventing many of the fundamental techniques that are at the root of everything done today. Lots of discussion about computer animation as a medium, not an end in itself, and the importance of story over technology.

Tags: CGI, Graphics, History, Pixar, Movies, Interesting Stuff, Animation, Anti-Aliasing

Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie make up Fight of the Conchords, a kind of parody folk group from New Zealand. Click the image above to see them sing Business Time live on stage. "It's Wednesday, and Wednesday night is the night we make luuurve... Conditions are perfect; there's nothing on TV". They are clearly having a ton of fun.

I prefer their live performances over the music videos. Be sure to watch The Humans Are Dead, Jenny, Albi The Racist Dragon, Bowie Song, Something for the Ladies, Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, and Issues.

Tags: Interesting Stuff, Fun, Movies, Music

Wolf Rentzsch has posted the first video from the C4 conference that took place in Chicago last year. It's entitled Indie Ethos, and talks about the place of independent Cocoa developers in the world.

Here is the complete list. One will be posted each week.

• Wolf Rentzsch: Indie Ethos
• Wil Shipley: Monster Marketing
• Daniel Jalkut: Application Acquisition
• Shawn Morel: Virtualization Vivisection
• Bob Ippolito: Exploring Erlang
• Adam Engst: Hacking The Press
• Tim Burks: RubyObjC & Nu
• Cabel Sasser: Coda Confidential

If you are interested in what is happening at ground level in the Cocoa developer world, watch these.

Update: Will Shipley's talk about hype is up now.

Tags: C4, Fun, Interesting Stuff, Nerds, Movies, Cocoa

Make Magazine has a link to and discussion about Claude Paillard who makes his own vacuum tubes. Not only that, he makes the machines, tools, and equipment he needs to make the vacuum tubes. The site has a link to a 17 minute video (125MB) that shows the whole process. It's fascinating to watch.

If you happen to live in Hong Kong, then Sheung Wan is the place to go. There are stores like WiWi Tubes with thousands of square feet of them. The site has some information on and pictures of the manufacture of tubes, for instance the 300B.

To find out what a vacuum tube actually does, check Wikipedia's entry and links.

Tags: Vacuum Tubes, Interesting Stuff

I visited Macworld today. My immediate impression was that It was more crowded and larger than last year. Notably there were many companies selling storage solutions: clearly back up and media storage is now becoming mainstream in the Mac world.


This is a plastic missile launcher powered and controlled by USB. I was lucky enough to get the missile streaking out of the frame while the shutter was open.


Ever wanted to type with one hand? The FrogPad lets you do that. In the foreground are two pads, one for left-handed people and one for right-handed people. The common letters are on the keys and to get the less common letters you chord with another key. There is also a symbol and a shift lock key. It takes a little getting used to, but I was able to type a simple message without too much trouble.

These are relaxation pods. I didn't ask what went on inside them.


One use for an old iMac case: turn it into a trash can.


I got my hands on a MacBook Air after waiting in line for a while. It's very thin, very light, and it's a Mac. There's not much else to say about it. Performance seemed fine for the small amount of playing that I did with it. The case got warm, but definitely not hot. Since it is all aluminum and curved, it's much stiffer than you would think it would be. MacBook Pros look like huge ugly bricks next to this thing.

Apple was showing off very little this year. The only Macs apart from the MacBook Airs were Mac Pros with two big screens each. These were being used to show off some pro apps and also for general OS X demonstration to any interested parties. No sign of Aperture. No iMacs. No minis. There was a whole wall of Apple TVs and plenty of iPods and iPhones on display.


Eye-Fi was there with their orange wireless SD card. You plug it into your camera and it transmits your JPEG images via regular wifi to your computer. Their software then stores it or automatically uploads it to a photo sharing site.


I also saw people creating hideous creatures with Spore. The gaming area was small this year.


Need a cover for your laptop? I didn't think so.

Tags: Macworld, Fun, Apple TV, Apple, Dinosaurs, Interesting Stuff, iPhone, iPod

There is a Wikipedia for cameras: Camerapedia. One of the things they list is my first SLR: the Olympus OM-30. The on-off switch is on the right in this image: protruding part on the ring around the film rewind knob. This meant that it was really easy to turn the camera on as you were putting it back into its case, and so completely run down the five very expensive button cells that it needed to operate.

Tags: Photography, Canon, Nikon, DSLR, History, Museum, Interesting Stuff, Olympus

That is The Waiter. For The Cheater, The Zombie, and others, see this page on English Russia. Oh and there are also picked cell phones, bikes on top of cars, and more. Plenty of odd things and unusual photos if you dig around a little.

Tags: Russians, Fun, Photography, Interesting Stuff

Waffle is a blog that covers a multitude of geeky, webby, and Appley subjects. It's technical and meaty. But somehow never waffly.

Tags: Blogging, Cocoa, Apple, Interesting Stuff

This Hungarian web site maps and documents disasters world wide: everything from earthquakes and algal blooms to floods and power outages. But for smaller-scale and more personally-oriented disasters, Fark is still king.

Tags: Disasters, Interesting Stuff

It's a documentary about the Mac, and it's coming. That's about all the web site will say about it. There are two teasers posted.

Tags: Fun, Macs, Movies, Interesting Stuff

Pierre Chatelier has posted a PDF guide to Objective C for C++ programmers. It's very good and very complete. I recommend it for anyone who only knows straight C as well because it covers the lesser-know corners of the language that are easily forgotten.

Tags: Cocoa, Programming, Interesting Stuff

The Register talks to Bill Buxton (who has built several multitouch systems) about Microsoft's Surface:

In fact, according to Bill Buxton - ironically a Principal Researcher at Microsoft's own research centre - these kinds of multi-touch interfaces have been around for over twenty years. Perhaps the Surface Computing marketing guys at Microsoft should check out Bill's web site. Moreover, perhaps Microsoft and developers like Jeff Han at NYU, who are building these 'old-school' multi-touch interfaces out of cameras and projectors, should consider the fatal flaw in their 'innovations'. This being that all back-projection interfaces are enormous. Think about it - you've essentially got a small cinema in a box behind a screen. Forget mobility and portability. Is it even moveable?

I remember using The Wasp, a portable and very yellow synthesizer in the early 80s. The keyboard was touch-sensitive, not in the sensitive-to-velocity kind of way, but in the touch-a-picture-of-a-key-to-press-it kind of way. As the site says:

Its most distinguishing feature is the keyboard and its awful non-moving touch keys. That's right, the flat plastic keys are only sensitive to your touch and so they are difficult and unreliable to play.

Anything that uses a touch interface has this tactile/audio feedback problem. A touch-input display also has the problem of planarity: the display and the input are co-planar. There are very few interactive systems designed this way -- none that I can think of that are designed for more than infrequent, dedicated use. The bigger the device (and so at least on paper the more impressive the display) the worse the situation becomes. Go smaller and the interface becomes usable because the hands can be positioned independently of the surface. Go too small and the area becomes too small to be useful.

I am wondering if Apple actually designed the iPhone like this: starting by finding the most functional form factor, then getting the feel and weight right, then moving on to the display, functionality, and finally electronics.

Tags: Microsoft, Multitouch, History, iPhone, Interesting Stuff

One of the new Apple Airport Extreme base stations now has a home in my computer closet --I mean literally - it is a closet. It's freeing up space, replacing some very old hardware, giving me a way of wirelessly connecting old devices, providing a Mac OS X computer for the kids, increasing my wireless network range, and centralizing a printer. All for $180.

My previous wireless network was based on an Airport Express operating in bridge mode. The Airport Express had a somewhat limited range, but the Airport Extreme gives a much stronger signal and does better against the 2.4MHz interference and other networks around here. The Airport Express will be pressed into service as a way of networking an older computer that lacks a wireless card, or connecting to the Brother printer if I move it.

A now ancient Linksys router connected the network to the internet via a DSL modem, but that is no longer needed. That also saves a huge power brick.

The largest space saving is in the exit of a G3 iMac DV. That used to be a server, but I don't need one any more. The Brother laser printer has a print server built in, so out goes that function. I no longer host anything from home, so no need for those services. The iMac is now running games. All my shared storage needs are met with a USB drive attached to the Airport Extreme. On the network the partitions look like separate shared disks on a server. Mounting the disks can either be done through the Finder or by a utility that uses Bonjour to automatically mount the disk when it is available. I had hoped that the two partitions on my disk could be configured in such a way that one would be public and one local, but that is not the case: the sharing settings are global. Either all the disks and partitions are available to the internet or none are.

The disk shares the USB port with a printer via a passive 4 port hub. That centralizes my HP color printer.

Set up was easy, but not so obvious in places. Initial configuration with the Airport Utility is straight forward, but you have to know to select Manual set up when you want to change more parameters later. I initially typed in an IP address incorrectly and the base station spotted the error and took me to the page where I could correct it. That was a nice touch.

I did have a hang up that required a reboot. Something happened to the USB disk, and the result was a frozen router. It is also inconvenient that the Airport Extreme must be rebooted to store any parameter change, even if it has nothing to do with communication. So my entire network and file sharing goes down for 20 seconds at a stretch. I am finding that my work PC laptop is much happier with the Airport Extreme than it was with the Linksys router. DHCP actually seems to work now and the weird delays and timeouts have gone.

Tags: Airport, Networking, Server, iMac, Interesting Stuff

Realmac Software released RapidWeaver 3.6.0 today. RapidWeaver is just as it sounds: a quick way to make great web sites. I've been beta testing it for a while, and publishing this site with it for as long as it has been stable.

For a quick look at what it does and how it does it, see the intro video and quick-start guide on the tour page. The quick-start shows how to create a blog in five minutes. It really is that quick. Customization is possible both through the RapidWeaver interface and by adding and editing HTML, PHP, and CSS. But there is no need to get embroiled in the details if you don't want to. There are plenty of low-cost themes and plug-ins available.

Tags: RapidWeaver, Blogging, Web Tools, Software, Interesting Stuff

It's shrink-wrapped and brand new. But how old is it? Is it worth anything? I cannot find any pictures of mouse pads exactly like this one anywhere on the web.

Tags: Apple, Mouse Pad, Mysteries, Interesting Stuff

This is really neat. John Hoogstrate has created a PHP-based system for browsing, filtering, and viewing Aperture libraries with a web browser called PHPture. It's open source and available at Source Forge . It uses SQLite to access the Aperture database and makes use of the high-resolution previews feature of Aperture 1.5 to display the images. It only ever reads the database so should be completely safe. Installation is not trivial since it needs PHP 5.

The design is very Aperture-like as you can see from the screen shot. An obvious application for this is when you have a number of people who need to be able to browse a library. Share it on the network or your machine and point PHPture at it. Multiple copies of Aperture are not needed.

It *does* need a new name though.

Tags: Aperture, Web Tools, Library, Interesting Stuff

Thirty-two Purple and Brown shorts in about 16 minutes. If the style reminds you of Aardman Studios, that's because it is Aardman Studios.

Tags: Fun, Video, Animation, Interesting Stuff

My main printer for the past decade or more has been an Apple Laserwriter Select 360. It's slow, heavy, and the paper tray is impossible to pull out, but it works. It talks Localtalk, so I was using an Appletalk bridge (an old ISDN router actually) to connect it to Ethernet. I think I paid about $1200 for the printer when I bought it new.

I actually have two of them. The first started to have printing problems and needed a good cleaning inside the optics to fix. But I found a secondhand one at Weird Stuff for $30 and it worked perfectly, only having ever printed 1200 pages. So I kept the first one for spares and carried on with the new one for another couple of years. Printer cartridges are available, but they are getting pricey, so recently when the toner started to run low I went searching for a replacement.

The result is that I now have a $100 laser printer that is a fraction of the weight, much, much faster, and takes cheap cartridges -- a Brother HL-2070N. It comes with a Mac driver and runs Ethernet or USB and has a print queue built in in case I ever need to talk to it with a PC.
It's not a Postscript printer like the Laserwriter, so the host does the RIPping. But that is OK. The host is much faster than the printer and the network is 100BaseT, so the result is that it beats the pants off the old one. The Mac driver installs and works just fine. The printer can be configured and monitored via a web browser. It isn't any good at printing photos. But again that's fine by me.

Any takers for two unwanted Apple Laserwriter Select 360s?

Tags: Printing, Apple, Brother, Networking, Interesting Stuff

Canon has announced the Powershot S5 IS and dpreview has the details. It uses the DIGIC III processor, has a hot shoe, and a bigger flip screen. Now 8 megapixels in the sensor.

I have the Canon S3 IS and am planning to replace it next spring. Do I get an S5 or go for an DSLR?

Tags: Canon, S3, S5, Photography, DSLR, Interesting Stuff

As seen on Daring Fireball, Philip Greenspun has a very clear and practical guide for anyone considering buying a digital SLR on his site photo.net. Lots of other useful material on the site to explore as well.

Tags: Photography, DSLR, Buying, Interesting Stuff

David Pogue talks (and sings) at TED about simplicity and its ability to sell. Will Shipley (articles 0, 1, 2, 3) and Thomas Dolby were there too (articles 1, 2).

Tags: Complexity, TED, Blogging, Interesting Stuff

Known then as "Arnold The Munching Monster", the Cookie Monster meets (and eats, of course), a talking machine. From an IBM training video, apparently.

Tags: Fun, Video, Interesting Stuff

From the Shiira project comes Aperture-like HUDs supplied in source as a framework.

Tags: Software, Cocoa, Aperture, Interesting Stuff

The application that I use to create and publish this site is called RapidWeaver, currently at 3.5.1; but there is a new version on the way. I have been testing a beta of RapidWeaver 3.6 and it is looking pretty good. It's stable enough that I use it to publish now. My site is large, and I am running into problems with the current version because of its wasteful use of memory during export. 3.6 fixes that, so my workflow is to create in 3.5.1, save, and then publish using the 3.6 beta.

I use RapidWeaver because it is just so darn easy to use. I only have to touch HTML and CSS if I want to. Site templates are plentiful and low cost and available from a number of third parties. And there is a developer SDK that lets third parties write plug-ins. The only problems I have are self-imposed: my site has 130 pages or so -- and those are actual pages, not the automatically-generated ones line the permalinks. My home page has more than 450 articles. There are at least 500 images in the Aperture section alone, so probably close to 1000 in total now.

But RapidWeaver is keeping up. Not bad for a piece of software that costs $40 and has had free updates for at least a year and a half. I'm eagerly awaiting the release of 3.6. I know what is in it, but you'll have to wait to find out.

[Update: The Realmac Software blog page is now (2007-05-02) starting to reveal some of the new features]

Tags: RapidWeaver, Blogging, Web Tools, Interesting Stuff

Mike Franklin has been testing the quality of photo books created by a number of different suppliers: Blurb, Apple, Viovio, and MyPublisher.

Tags: Aperture, Books, Interesting Stuff

Originally broadcast by the BBC in 2002, this excellent two-part radio series about Pink Floyd features the band members, people who worked with them and knew them, and of course their music. It's about three hours in total, presented in Real Audio format in four parts (the last two are in the wrong order) so you'll either need the Real player, or VLC to listen to it.

Dave Gilmour hasn't done too badly out of the whole thing either, as a tour of his floating studio on the Thames shows in an episode of the BBC's Three Men In A Boat (Google Video, 5 mins). That link also has many other Pink Floyd clips.

Tags: Music, Pink Floyd, Interview, Interesting Stuff

Wired has an interesting interview with Eric Schmidt, taken in 2005, but never published. It includes interesting observations about how they make decisions and deal with conflict:

There was one case in February (2005), which is a very, very difficult issue, and I'd rather not go into the specific product issue, but we were in violent disagreement, and for very good reasons. Actually, Larry and I were in agreement. Sergey was wrong, in my view. Sergey came in and he was just on a tear. He had convinced himself of this and he was absolutely sure. And I said, "Look, I can't take this, guys. You guys have got to sort this thing out. If the two of you can agree, I'll agree with you. But you have a deadline of tomorrow” Again here I am structuring it. "And you don't need to tell me the decision, you have to tell them the decision."

Tell who?

Tell the engineers. It's like 20 people who are completely demoralized because they're not getting clear direction. So what happens is the next night they get to the deadline -- and I remember it because this is an emotional issue -- and I called up Sergey, and I said, "What did you guys decide?" And he said, "I'm going there now to tell them," and he then described the solution, which was different than the three of us did -- and better.

So again the generic model is consensus building with dissent with a deadline. If you don't have dissent, stimulate the dissent, and inspect everything. That's sort of the default model, and then you manage the exceptions.

So the exceptions are when there really is a disagreement among the principles, and certainly I've encouraged people to say “I just don't agree,” and then every once in a while I've had to actually be a real CEO and mandate something and really force it and not listen to anyone else. Those are cases where it's legal or regulatory where I've just said, "Look, I'm just not going to participate in anything other than this outcome." And people know me well enough to know not to challenge me on it.

Tags: Google, Interview, Interesting Stuff

The 3D image on the right was constructed by a computer from the flat photo on the left (it's just a normal photo, but taken with mirrors). Computational photography does this and much more, as described in an article in Science News.

Tags: Photography, Interesting Stuff

Late Night Cocoa has just published a podcast featuring Frasier Spiers. He talks about the Aperture export plugin API.

Tags: Aperture, Plug-ins, Podcast, Interview, Interesting Stuff

The OS stats for this site show that Vista is not yet as popular as Windows 2000. I find that quite surprising, but that's what it says:

The site looks fine in Explorer 7 (checked here). Maybe the search on Vista defaults in such a way that this site is not found. Or maybe it's impossible to use a camera with Vista and so nobody is.

The browser share tells a different story:

Netscape stalled at version 5. Explorer 7 is being adopted pretty quickly. Everyone uses Firefox. Tiger has taken over completely.

Tags: Microsoft, Statistics, Interesting Stuff

I currently have a Canon S3 that is a year old. Next year I expect to replace it with something else (no clue what yet), but if I were in the market right now, I would be looking at the Olympus SP-550 UZ. That's the ultra-zoom camera with the 18x zoom lens. Dpreview.com now has a full review of the Olympus. The only direct comparison to the S3 comes on page 17 where the resolution charts are shown.

High points for me are that the lens goes wider and longer than the S3 and it takes AA batteries. On the down side, there is no flip-out screen, and it's not all that fast a camera. You can't use sound in a movie if you want to zoom. It does RAW, but I don't believe is supported by Aperture.

Tags: Photography, Olympus, Interesting Stuff

Robert Scoble was blogging about Microsoft before he was part of Microsoft. Now he's no longer part of Microsoft, his blog is getting interesting. His recent posts and particularly the comments they foster and his responses are very telling. He gets it. He likes Apple TV. He doesn't believe that Microsoft is in it to win.

#127: this is the problem. Microsoft is actually something like 100 companies lashed together. The Xbox team might be doing something cool while the Internet team is totally sucking wind.

In this context we’re talking about the Internet team.

Oh, and cool?

How about Photosynth? http://scobleizer.com/2006/11/10/demo-of-the-year-photosynth/

That’s cool. But it can’t be turned into a product.

Why? Cause it takes nine hours to stitch together a few hundred photos. Unusable.

So, very cool, but not a business.

Most of what we’re talking about above is about being BOTH cool and a great business ON THE INTERNET.

Microsoft is lacking on both areas.

And the comparison to the Beattles is NOT out of place here. Demonstrates that you take a Microsoft approach here.

Comment by Robert Scoble — March 17, 2007 @ 12:03 pm

Tags: Microsoft, Apple TV, Apple, Blogging, Interesting Stuff

The folks over at Something Awful are hacking Apple TV. Since the ATV runs Mac OS X, this is almost trivial: pop the cover, take out the hard drive, mount it on a Mac via a Firewire case, and modify. They have it playing Xvid movies, running SSH, and more. The hard drive can be replaced with a larger one too.

I notice that it contains a ForceFeedback framework too. That means games. Only games (simulators) use force feedback.

It may seem odd that the box is as open as this. After all, the XBox and other equipment like it is locked down just as tight as the manufacturers can make it. Not that it stops anyone. But it is not odd at all when you consider that Apple is in the hardware business. An open box sells more boxes, and that is all that matters. This is really the lowest-cost Mac on the market now.

Tags: Apple, Apple TV, Hacking, Video Games, Interesting Stuff

I want one of those. It would go well with my grey cat. Many other hard-to-find items at Suck UK. I also like the egg timer and the pen holder.

Tags: Fun, Furniture, Interesting Stuff, Intimidation

Cognitive Daily shows how artists and non-artists look at images. Artists scan all over, while non-artists focus on the subject. They have been trained to look at all the details of the picture and overcome the natural tendency to fixate on salient features.

It would be interesting to do the same experiment with photographers.

Tags: Artists, Interesting Stuff

Apple's Knowledgebase article 305121 lists the benefits that Aperture gets from the Mac OS X 10.4.9 update:

• Adds support for the RAW image formats of these third-party cameras: Leaf Aptus 17, Leaf Aptus 22, Leaf Aptus 65, Leaf Aptus 75, Leaf Valeo 11, Leaf Valeo 17, Leaf Valeo 22, Leica Digilux 3, Nikon D40, Pentax K10D, Pentax K110D, Pentax K100D, Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1, Samsung GX-1L.

• Improved Spot & Patch results: The update contains changes to Core Image that improve the visual correctness of images using Spot & Patch adjustment.

• Reduces issues of temporary "black" Viewer: Mac OS X 10.4.9 addresses several issues that could cause the Viewer to temporarily turn black when displaying adjusted images.

• GPS metadata is preserved when image versions are exported.

• Incorporates all RAW file format compatibility and other imaging issues originally addressed in Digital Camera RAW Support Update 1.0.1. This update improved RAW file format compatibility for the Canon Digital Rebel XTi / 400D / Kiss X Digital, Nikon D80, and Pentax *ist DS. It also addressed the following issues: Handling of large Canon RAW files (.CRW); DNG compatibility on Intel-based Macs; Lines sometimes appearing in images exported from Aperture.

The full list of supported cameras is listed on Apple's site. I expect we will see an update to Aperture before very long. Joe Schorr has already posted such on Apple's Aperture forums recently.

Tags: Apple, Aperture, Updates, Interesting Stuff

The second Thursday of each month sees a meeting of Silicon Valley CocoaHeads, usually on Apple's campus at 1 Infinite Loop. This month the topics are Core Animation and Related Leopard APIs (starter), and Cocoa Binding Tips And Tricks (main course). I will be there, trying to get my head around bindings one more time.

Tags: Cocoa, CocoaHeads, Silicon Valley, Apple, Interesting Stuff

The movie Black Sheep looks like a cross between Tremors, Alien, Shaun Of The Dead, and A Close Shave. And since it's set in New Zealand, I'd expect Hobbits as well.

Tags: Sheep, Movies, Interesting Stuff

Makoto Nagano completes what must be the hardest obstacle course in the world. It's Japanese. About the only thing missing is sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads.

Tags: Movies, Obstacles, Interesting Stuff

That white thing is a dock divider: a small graphic created by Adam Betts that can be used to section off your dock items. They are little Applescripts that just quit. That way if you accidently launch one it will do nothing. They come in horizontal and vertical flavors.

Tags: Dock, Interesting Stuff

Canon shows how they make lenses from raw materials and then assemble them into finished products.

Tags: Canon, Glass, Video, Interesting Stuff, Photography

Surely not. The A square is darker, much darker! Most people would put money on it. But they'd lose. Open it in Photoshop and inspect the pixel values. Or on the Mac open up the DigitalColor Meter application and take a peek .

Edward H Adelson explains it all in great depth in his paper Lightness Perception and Lightness Illusions. There are some great interactive illusions on the web site as well.

Tags: Optical Illusions, Interesting Stuff

Sensitive Light is the creation of Graham Jeffery. One of his subjects is smoke. How does he do it? Photocritic.org talks to him and finds out.

Tags: Photography, Smoke, Interesting Stuff

You be the decider. Ridiculous Fish challenges the reader to match the logo with the product type. Not as easy as it sounds. Ridiculous Fish also hosts Hex Fiend, a fiendishly good hex editor.

Tags: Hair Care, Digital Audio, Blogging, Interesting Stuff, Fun

Kevin Smith, Director of Dogma, wanted to know a little more about the rumored demonstration by 1500 people outside a theatre showing his movie. Here he tells the story of how he and a friend went along to join the crowd.

Tags: Video, Dogma, Interesting Stuff, Fun

Soyburger has a basement full of Macs and has posted photos on Flickr. There must be a hundred or so. All kinds, back to the original Apples, Mac, and the Lisa. Plus software, Newtons, PowerBooks, packaging, monitors, hard drives, iPods,..... There are many I don't think I have ever seen before.

Tags: Macs, Museum, Interesting Stuff

For developers, another WWDC 2006 presentation is available via iTunes: IT State Of The Union.

Tags: Apple, WWDC, iTunes, Interesting Stuff

DepicT is a short film competition. Short here means ninety seconds or less. Above is one of the entries from 2003: How To Tell When A Relationship Is Over. You have until Monday September 3rd to send in entries for the 2007 competition.

Tags: Fun, Video, Interesting Stuff

ApertureToGallery is an Aperture export plugin that takes images from Aperture and puts them into galleries created with Gallery. The latest version (0.98.4) is free and adds compatibility with the most recent release of Gallery2.

Tags: Aperture, Plug-ins, Interesting Stuff

Scott Stevenson has gone to great lengths to post an introductory article on learning Cocoa. He describes it thus:


Send Scott money if you like what you see and he will spend more time on this endeavor. The message of this tutorial is that Cocoa is a very powerful tool. I'm interested to see what is next.

Tags: Cocoa, Learning, Interesting Stuff

Regular (cheap, non-paying) ADC members like me can now download and watch one of the presentations given at WWDC last year. It's 500MB H.264, 1 hour 32 minutes. You'll need an ADC login to download it via iTunes.

Tags: WWDC, Interesting Stuff

Last night at about 8pm I thought I heard fire crackers outside. So I peered out of the window, and saw what looked like fireworks going up into the sky. When I went outside to investigate and looked over the neighbor's fence I saw flames coming out of the upstairs bedroom of a house two doors down at the back. After calling 911 I went back out, saw that the fire department was there and started talking pictures with my Canon S3. I added 18 pictures to the Canon S3 gallery (click forward to the fourth page). As far as I know the house was empty at the time.

Tags: Fire, Canon, S3, Interesting Stuff

An Atlas Of The Universe is just that. You can start at 14 billion light years radius and zoom in all the way to the stars that are closest to our own within "only" 12.5 light years (about 73 million million miles).

Tags: Universe, Atlas, Big, Interesting Stuff

EETimes has another great article that shows in detail why the home market is so important to Apple. Entitled The Top Ten Hang-ups in Home Networking, it catalogs the problems of interoperability, multiple standards, DRM, customer confusion, and leadership void that makes connecting anything to anything difficult or impossible. But the opportunity is huge:

A few data points provide a snapshot of the opportunities. Market watcher iSuppli Corp. (El Segundo, Calif.) predicts shipments of products with integrated wired home networking will rise by more than a factor of 10 in the next four years, to hit 223.8 million units in 2010. Parks Associates estimates the number of North American homes with networked digital-video recorders more than tripled from 400,000 in 2005 to 1.7 million by the end of 2006.

They state the problem very clearly:

But there are no easy pickings in this gold rush. Engineers face historic levels of complexity building the digital home for several reasons. An unprecedented number of players are competing for a piece of the action. Coordination between these would-be architects is minimal.

and give the consequences:

"The glue that holds all this together is home networking, and it stinks," said Van Baker, a consumer analyst with Gartner Dataquest, in an early 2006 story. "If home networking stays like it is, it will stall at 30 percent penetration," he said.

The home network is wide open for any player that can simplify, market, and deliver. Whoever achieves significant penetration will either drag the other players along, or push them to the side. Clearly iTV is part of this, but I expect there to be more.

Apple will start with the TV, get a toehold, and place themselves in a position to enable other players to do business through them, so creating an ecosystem. Think low-price downloadable games, YouTube videos, iChat, networked security cameras, and things like that. Make it compatible and it will just work on any Apple home system.

Tags: Apple, Apple TV, Networking, Interesting Stuff

Junko Yoshida, writing for EETimes is an interesting test case for HDTV. She is far from an average buyer:

I've been talking and writing about high-definition TV since I first saw Japan's HDTV demonstration--not in digital, but in analog--more than 20 years ago. My colleagues and I have chronicled for this newspaper all the trials and turbulence behind the development of U.S. digital HDTV technologies, including the advent of an underlying video compression technology that enabled the transmission of digital TV signals, the byzantine politics of TV spectrum and 1,080-interlaced vs. 720-progressive-scan resolution formats that pitted consumer electronics manufacturers against the PC industry. In short, I know this stuff inside out. Or so I thought.

Yet having bought all the equipment and hooked it up, it doesn't work correctly and nobody can fix it:

I ended up calling our retailer (Best Buy), which diverted me to the display manufacturer (Sharp), which called up a subdivision at a different location in order to find a repair guy in our neighborhood--where a high-tech glitch slowed things down. The repair shop's fax machine was broken. So I had to call the repair guy myself, and got to tell the whole story all over again. They said nobody could come until after Christmas.

Apple could have a huge hit in this space simply by making a system that works when you put it together.

[Update: I have added a lot of material in the comments in response to a reader]

Tags: HDTV, Pigs With Lipstick, Interesting Stuff

EETimes is reporting on the change in focus of the 801.11n wireless networking standard to home video. 802.11n is a high-speed, multi-channel version of the current WiFi standards, 802.11a, b, and g. All the current Macs have the hardware built in: it's just not enabled with drivers yet.

Broadcom Corp. and Atheros Communications Inc. raised eyebrows last January when they offered "draft" silicon for 802.11n, even though by year's end the IEEE working group had yet to finalize this standard. Almost as surprising as the early silicon for 802.11n was the fact that they emphasized consumer, rather than enterprise, applications on their Web sites.

No doubt driven by at least one huge customer knocking at their door: Apple with iTV and other products. Eventually Apple will set the standard protocol for wireless video delivery and then sell iTV to the display makers in an embedded form (how else will they differentiate themselves?). Like the connector on the iPod the wireless "connection" will be the key compatibility item that locks the competition out.

Tags: Video, Networking, Interesting Stuff

We made these delicious candy treats over the holiday: chocolate on a pretzel. Here is how to do it (original recipe from Family Fun magazine):

1. Get some bite-size, waffle-shaped pretzels, Hershey's Kiss or Hershey's Hug candies, and M&M's candies (Smarties for the Brits).

2. Heat the oven to 170ºF (75 C). Set a number of bite-size, waffle-shaped pretzels (one for each treat) in a single layer on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, then top each pretzel with an unwrapped Hershey's Kiss or Hershey's Hug.

3. Bake for 4 to 6 minutes (the white chocolate will melt more quickly), until the chocolates feel soft when touched with a wooden spoon. It is easy to overheat them, so go carefully with just a few until you can get it right. Remove the cookie sheet from the oven and quickly (gently) press an M&M's candy into the center of each Kiss.

4. Allow the treats to cool for a few minutes, then place them in the refrigerator to set, about 10 minutes.

Tags: Food, Interesting Stuff, Chocolate

Getting Real is a book of advice about creating web-based applications. It also has a lot of good information for anyone creating any kind of product or any kind of business. It's the creation of 37signals, makers of several web-based utilities and applications including BaseCamp, Campfire, and Backpack.

It is available free as HTML, as a PDF for $19, or as a dead tree edition for $29.

Here is an example essay from the HTML version of the book:

Hire good writers
If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer. It doesn't matter if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, or whatever, the writing skills will pay off. Effective, concise writing and editing leads to effective, concise code, design, emails, instant messages, and more.

That's because being a good writer is about more than words. Good writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else's shoes. They know what to omit. They think clearly. And those are the qualities you need.

Which is why blogging is so valuable to the blogger: it's great practice for the brain.

Tags: Books, Interesting Stuff

dbfletcher furniture design has some interesting circular tables. Through a rotation by 30 degrees, they expand to seat more people while remaining circular. Watch the videos for a demonstration. No mention of price. I think if you have to ask, you can't afford one.

Tags: Tables, Interesting Stuff

I have two 180G Firewire 800 drives that used to be my back up pair (back when everything would fit on that). Since the 24 inch iMac has one Firewire 800 port I thought it might be interesting to see if there is anything to be gained daisy-chaining them and setting them up as a striped RAID set.

I partitioned each drive into ten partitions. This let me pick the first and last partitions for testing: the first being the fastest (closest to the edge of the disk) and the last being the slowest (closest to the center). Then I ran three disk speed tests with XBench.

Single first and Single last tested just one partition on one drive. Striped first tested the first partition on each drive striped. Striped last tested the last partition on each drive striped. Mirrored first tested the first partition on each drive mirrored. Mirrored last tested the last partition on each drive mirrored. For comparison I also included the results from the internal 750G SATA drive and a single Firewire 400 drive. Here are the results in Mbytes per second for 256K transfers and a 32K RAID segment size.

With a 256K RAID segment size I tried a few more tests. I took three very large files totaling 9.89GB and copied them from the internal hard drive to the striped RAID pair, then copied them back to the internal hard drive, then duplicated them on the RAID.

I think this RAID set up will be useful if I need a scratch disk, particularly if the processing that is occurring is reading from one disk and writing to another.

Tags: iMac, RAID, Firewire, Interesting Stuff

I had been toying with two alternatives to buying the 24 inch iMac now: buying a MacPro now, and buying an iMac with the Santa Rosa chip set when they come out next year.

To justify a MacPro and its accompanying hit on the wallet I would have had to keep it for a long time. It would have offered a great deal of expandability that I would have used eventually, but I would have had a mainly empty, unused computer for much of its life. The RAM is expensive and that is a big put-off. And the future of FBRAM is not one of high volume and falling costs. It appears to be a stop-gap measure to allow large amounts of memory at the expense of latency and the market for that is relatively small. I don't think we will be seeing large price reductions for a while. I would have needed a screen (23") and 4G RAM, plus a fast graphics card. And all that adds up very quickly.

The other possibility was a 24" iMac. The better graphics was a big draw, as was the big screen. The 3G RAM limit is a pain: Apple was asking $575 extra for 3G over 2G. So the solution was to wait for the new version with the Santa Rosa chip set due out early 2007. That chip set will remove the 3G limit and the iMacs will support 4G. But Santa Rosa appears to be delayed, and so it was not worth the nine-month or whatever wait to get something that might appear. The cost of the iMac was about half what I would be spending on a MacPro. So for the same money I could get a new computer twice as often.

Buying now means that I get a fairly mature machine. The Intel iMacs have been around for a while now and the 24" has the most space and the least thermal limitations, so it should be reliable. And buying now means that I get the benefit of the faster machine right now. I can live with 2G of RAM and when prices are reasonable, upgrade to 3G. I got the machine with the biggest hard drive available (750G) because I know I will fill it up and it is not replaceable.

In a couple of years I might want to upgrade. I won't have a highly expensive MacPro that is still half-used telling me that I should really keep it for another couple of years. I will have a slow, maxed-out iMac that is ready for replacement. Another thing to consider is that my Macs get handed down, and it is much easier to hand down iMacs than any other sort of Mac because the screen is built-in. And the recipients of the hand-me-downs don't need the power of a MacPro any way.

Tags: iMac, MacPro, Interesting Stuff

What else have I been doing with this new monster on my desk over the past few days? It has not been all plain sailing, but the issues I have encountered have been minor, easily diagnosed, and fixed quickly.

First I backed it up to a 750G Firewire drive using SuperDuper. I use two of these drives in rotation (keeping one off-site at all times) and make a copy of the hard drive onto sparse disk image. I could not use an incremental back up as I usually do because everything had been updated in the move from the old G5 iMac, so this took a long time: about four hours for 160G of data (600,000 files, encrypted disk image). A second back up to a different drive without using a disk image or encryption took 2 hours 15 minutes.

Next I went through all my applications and utilities checking to see what was PowerPC and what was Intel or Universal. I did this quickly by bringing up the file inspector with option command I. It looks just like the file information window (command I), but updates as I click on different files. So this cuts out all the opening and closing of windows I would have had to do. Each time I found a PowerPC only application that I still wanted I made an alias of it on my desktop with option command drag, and when complete, I put all of those into a folder. This gives me a list of applications to go seek out Intel versions later. Pretty much everything I care about is now Intel. A few lingering Classic applications will no longer run (Intel Macs have no Classic support), so those were deleted. I found out later that another way to find all of my PowerPC applications is to use System Profiler. The Applications section finds them all and they can be sorted by CPU.

On opening GarageBand I found that all my audio units were missing. These are plug-ins that provide audio processing and synthesizers. Again this was a CPU difference problem, so I had to go find updates for those. My USB audio box (MobilePre) was showing up, but not working. I had to uninstall and reinstall the driver to fix that. It seems I already had an Intel driver, but the installer only installs the one needed at the time. While applications can be universal, some of the more fundamental parts of the OS cannot and need separate code for each CPU.

Migration Assistant had copied across all my network settings including the static IP address and warned me that I was going to have a problem if I didn't change one. I fixed that by changing the old Mac to DHCP.

RapidWeaver, the application I use to write this blog, developed a problem whereby it would hang loading my site file. I trashed the prefs and that was fixed. There were some interface changes following that, so I think that this was not an Intel problem at all, but a preferences corruption that had occurred a long time ago that just happened to not be fatal on PowerPC.

Not much maxes out the CPUs. They are usually very evenly loaded (I use Menu Meters to view their activity), so this implies that most applications are efficiently multithreaded. Even when I do max them out, the machine is still perfectly responsive, handles network traffic, launches applications, etc. Exporting from Aperture, converting video files, that kind of thing are the only activities that are limited by the CPU. I can hear the fans if I stress the machine, but I have to think about it. The hard drive is the noisiest part when it is doing a lot of seeking. Audio applications like GarageBand and iTunes hardly make a dent in the CPU.

Window resizing is silky smooth. I'm doing it right now while converting a 250MB AVI file from my digital camera to H.264. Playing two 1080p HD movies at the same time certainly makes the machine busy, but doesn't slow it down. So where are the limitations? Probably mainly in the hard drive -- seek time and transfer speed. Sometimes in the memory access. I can't do anything about the RAM except for an upgrade to 3G when the 2G sticks come down in price. But I could speed the disk access with an external RAID system on the FW800 bus.

Apple Remote Desktop 2.2 did not work as an administrator on this Intel Mac. But there is a fix. It involves deleting some files that cause the incompatibility. A side effect is that it becomes impossible to manage this Mac remotely. But that is not a problem for me.

Tags: iMac, SuperDuper, Migration, Interesting Stuff

While I am on the subject of new Mac experiences, Mark Morford, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, vividly and hilariously describes his new Macbook Pro:

I have right here in my hot little hands that actually aren't all that little and are only slightly warm at the moment a brand new lick-ready smooth-as-love Apple MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo Super Orgasm Deluxe Ultrahard Modern Computing Device Designed by God Herself Somewhere in the Deep Moist Vulva of Cupertino Yes Yes Don't Stop Oh My God Yes.

He exaggerates, of course, but not by much. Apple is going to drag the whole industry, kicking and screaming, weighed down by the rolled-over SUV that is Microsoft to a new place. Here is Microsoft's own marketing effort, describing Vista and why you should have it:

Windows Vista introduces a breakthrough user experience and is designed to help you feel confident in your ability to view, find, and organize information and to control your computing experience.

The visual sophistication of Windows Vista helps streamline your computing experience by refining common window elements so you can better focus on the content on the screen rather than on how to access it. The desktop experience is more informative, intuitive, and helpful. And new tools bring better clarity to the information on your computer, so you can see what your files contain without opening them, find applications and files instantly, navigate efficiently among open windows, and use wizards and dialog boxes more confidently.

See the disconnect here? Microsoft markets Vista like it is a cure for something socially unacceptable like smelly feet, not as something pleasurable and desirable like chocolate. They describe what you get, but they don't show anyone getting it. It's techno-twaddle, speeds and feeds, data points and powerpoint bullets. I've never sat down at my Mac either wanting or expecting a "computing experience" any more than I have gone into my bank seeking a "financial experience" or got into my car for an "internal combustion experience".

I come here to get things done and expect the computer and the operating system to get out of my way and let me do them. I don't care about files, information, processes, window elements, visual sophistication, or any of that. And suddenly boatloads of people are discovering that despite what they have been told, they don't care either. They just want to get things done. And that they actually can is an emotional and freeing experience. Mike Morford again:

She became excited. She became suddenly thrilled with the idea that she could, with a little effort and time and far less grudging techy BS than even she imagined, use these divinely inspired and thoughtfully made tools to make the movies she has always wanted, even stylize and edit and post them herself. Empowering? You said it.

And that describes the same one way trip that millions are making now.

Tags: MacBook Pro, Lust, Interesting Stuff

On Monday I ordered a Core 2 Duo 24" iMac from the online Apple Store with some extras: better graphics, big hard drive, 2G RAM. I'll be busy over Thanksgiving I thought, moving over all my stuff from my 20" PowerPC G5 iMac and fixing problems.

It arrived Thursday morning. It is big. The screen is perfect. And it is fast. I repartitioned the HD, loaded the OS, downloaded 400MB of updates (1.8G if you include the XCode tools), and generally checked it out. On Friday morning I left Migration Assistant doing its thing for about 4 hours. It's Friday evening and there is basically nothing to do except reenter in a few application serial numbers. Total time actually spent at the computer to achieve this: about half an hour.

Seriously, Migration Assistant is the closest thing to magic I have experienced in a long time. It really epitomizes the It Just Works aspect of Apple. Everything works: preference panels, applications, background processes, drivers. You name it, it's there working. All the junk on the desktop is there too, the layout stretched so that it covers the screen in the same way it used to on the smaller machine instead of being huddled in one corner. A nice touch.

Aperture is about four times faster. Much more usable. Tons of screen real estate. A bright, bright screen that makes the G5 look dull and gray in comparison. The only thing that has maxed out the CPUs so far is Aperture. Rosetta is in there somewhere, but I don't notice it running my old PowerPC code at all.

No wonder Apple's stock is doing so well. They have perfected the experience of driving a new computer off the lot. I've been a Mac user since 1992 (this will be my 5th Mac), so I shouldn't be surprised or excited, but I am. They are that good.

Tags: iMac, Migration, Interesting Stuff

Much opinion on Slashdot about DSLRs, SLRs, and Point and Shoot cameras. Not as rabid as it could be.

Although I used to have an SLR, it is now a dust collector following a decade of unuse. I got back into photography in 1997 when the Apple Quicktake 200 came out. Apple gave me one free with a new Mac, and I was soon enthralled with the 640x480 images it put onto 2Mbyte Flash cards. I haven't gone DSLR yet because I don't have a specific photographic need, and without that I would end up much poorer and with a huge bag of lenses. I do want the quality, but the freedom and portability of the Canon S3 fits the bill for now.

Tags: DSLR, Interesting Stuff, Photography

I discovered SuperCal the other day. It's a display calibration utility that does not need expensive hardware. It displays patterns and you move sliders to adjust what you see. It is kind of like Apple's ColorSync Utility, but does a lot more and allows for much more precise adjustment. I tried it on my monitor and it seems to work well.

Tags: Calibration, Interesting Stuff, Photography

Goopymart posts a pictorial guide to teh internets on Flickr.

Tags: Fun, Internets, Interesting Stuff

NK Guy has a web site with some amazing pictures of Burning Man. There are eight previous years too.

Tags: Photography, Fun, Interesting Stuff

You can find the recipe for this particular cookie here. Scroll down a little for the brain recipe.

Tags: Fun, Interesting Stuff

I tried to move some large files from one place on my hard drive to another today and found what looks to me like a bug in the 10.4.8 Finder. A move like that should be quick: all it does is move pointers around in the filing system. None of the file data is copied.

But I got a dialog that showed it was copying. So I cancelled that, and tried again, this time making sure that I really didn't hold Option down to turn a move into a copy. But even without Option I got the green + showing that a copy was going to take place. Huh?

Here is the bug: if you try to move a bunch of files and at least one of them is locked, the whole list of files is copied to the new destination, not just the locked ones that cannot be deleted after the copy. I find it hard to believe that this is the intended behavior.

Tags: Mac OS X, Bugs, Interesting Stuff

Interact 10 Ways has a fascinating piece of Flash animation that turns pixels into images and then images into pixels.

Tags: Fun, Color, Interesting Stuff

According to WordGizmo, knithrify is a verb, meaning to encase a person of noble standing in armor. Actually according to me, that is what knithrify means because I created and submitted the definition. At WordGizmo you define the meaning of pseudowords the page throws at you.

You can Google them too. Knithrify is on the Best Of page along with such gems as brib, bambage, mnempe, and gemblime for size. Resolve to use them in casual conversation.

Tags: Fun, Words, Interesting Stuff

Baby got no hair? Baby Toupee can fix that.

Tags: Fun, Interesting Stuff

I was in the Mall Of America (Minnesota) the other day and Aperture was not loaded onto any of the machines in the store, a fact confirmed by the staff. I know that all the machines I checked had had it removed, because I could still find the supporting files (plists etc.) present. There is some discussion of this on the Apple Aperture Discussion board.

Tags: Aperture, Apple Store, Interesting Stuff

Macworld and others report that Apple is hosting a special event at Photokina September 25th. A new version of Aperture? I certainly hope so.

Tags: Apple, Photography, Interesting Stuff

Devil Ducky has a video of the Yip Yip Martians from Sesame Street finding a phone and trying to communicate with it.

Tags: Movies, Fun, Yip Yip, Interesting Stuff

Cabel's Blog has an article about the Multiplayer Game of the Year. It's not what you think it might be. It's running. Real running on two legs.

What makes it multiplayer is that he's using iPod+Nike and competing against people on line. And that is where it gets interesting. He's writing about the social and emotional attachment that iPod+Nike has given him through running. This is where Apple is earning its new long-term business: technological support for emotional and social experiences.

Tags: Fun, Interesting Stuff

Arario gallery has a display of skeletons of popular cartoon characters.

Tags: Fun, Skeletons, Interesting Stuff

A Flash animation with the creation fighting the creator.

Tags: Fun, Movies, Interesting Stuff

Posted on PistolWimp, 47 minutes of Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) from 1992 as the devil, a headmaster, and others. Classic material from that era.

Tags: Fun, Movies, Interesting Stuff

This utility shows you all your applications with a single key combination. Pick the one you want and it will launch it. Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger required.

Tags: Fun, User Interface, Interesting Stuff

Here is an article written in 1999 forseeing a wave of Linux taking over the desktop, eradicating Windows as it goes:

"Are you a Microsoft investor? Be afraid. Be very afraid. By 2010 Windows will be as dead as CP/M, and every Windows-based software vendor will be either supporting Linux or out of business. The process is in fact 80% complete: The end result is already obvious to bright CEOs, and will shortly be obvious even to bright mainstream press columnists. In this essay, we will skim the available evidence, extrapolate the trend, and examine some of the mechanisms powering those trends."

Three years to go. Are we getting close? Yes and no.

The author has the desktop completely wrong: it's still Windows. The exponential effect has not materialized. But in the embedded and server worlds, we're already there. And there are actually two desktops to consider; the work desktop, and the home desktop. This essay was written pre-Mac OS X and things are rather different now. I'd wager that it's not Linux that will accomplish this change, but Mac OS X is a good contender.

Tags: Microsoft, Pigs With Lipstick, Interesting Stuff

Yes really. Literally they do. And in very personal ways. See this movie for proof (Flash needed).

Tags: Fun, Microsoft, Movies, Interesting Stuff

Thagomizer is the name given to the arrangement of spikes on a dinosaur's tail. Just in case it comes up in casual conversation.

Tags: Fun, Dinosaurs, Interesting Stuff

[Note: some of the Blender links are very busy today]



Blender 2.4.2 is out. What's that? Blender is an open-source 3D modeling, animation, and rendering package. It's multi-platform and it's free. And slowly but surely it's changing the 3D animation world by lowering the cost of entry and raising the payoff.

The learning curve is pretty steep because it doesn't do things the way you think it should. Figure on a couple of weeks of frustration as your wrestle through. But once you know it, it's very powerful, and being continually improved.

There is even an open movie made entirely with Blender, including the compositing and editing, Elephant's Dream. By open I don't just mean that the movie can be duplicated, but everything used to make the movie is open too: the models, scenes, animation, sound track, everything is licensed under a Creative Commons license so that only proper credit is needed for reuse. You can remix this movie.

See the milk flow on this 250k H.264 Quicktime.

Tags: Blender, Fluid, Interesting Stuff

Bendito Machine is a very odd Flash animation by Jossie Malis.

Tags: Fun, Movies, Interesting Stuff

Serpent has some deep sea pictures taken with ROVs as part of an image competition, including the microscopic radiolarian skeleton shown above. See photos here and here.

Tags: Photography, Underwater, Interesting Stuff

   
The Pink Tentacle has several links to a Japanese web site that features some amazing creatures. The Japanese web site is hard to navigate if you don't read Japanese, but the Pink Tentacle article has some helpful links.

Tags: Fantastic, Creatures, Underwater, Interesting Stuff

The Museum Of Hoaxes has a list of the top 100 April Fools. At number nine are the hotheaded naked ice borers (a great name for a band, incidentally):

"In its April 1995 issue Discover Magazine announced that the highly respected wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had discovered a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. These fascinating creatures had bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, could become burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds."

Tags: Fun, Ice Borers, Interesting Stuff

Gord owns a video game store. This means that in the normal course of business he has to deal with people every day.

[ring]

Ah sweet!  That's the same last name as the crazy lady…  Unleash the dogs of war!

"Good Afternoon, Government's Agents Office.  How may I direct your call?"

"Yes, I'd like to make a complaint about Gamer's Edge.  I need to talk to… [pause]…  the bureau, the bureau of… the bureau of video games and uhm…"

"The Bureau of Video Games and Customer Relations?  One moment please.  I'll transfer your call."

Gord presses the 5 key on the phone and says:

"Bureau of Video Games and Customer Relations.  How may I be of assistance?"

"Yes, I'd like to file a complaint about Gamer's Edge in Penticton!  For no reason they were rude to me and refused to rent to me!"

"Wait a minute, aren't you that crazy lady that was down there earlier today?  We're heard about you!  You slammed your door on your kid.  So what, are you retarded by birth or just been beat around the head too much?"

"WHAT?!?!?"

Acts of Gord chronicles his dealings with the public. That snippet was from The Book Of Victory, Chapter 2.

Tags: Fun, Interesting Stuff

Planet Earth is pretty big. Or maybe not once you start comparing it to the other planets or the sun, or other suns. That link is very slow. Give it a minute or so.

Tags: Fun, Size, Planets, Interesting Stuff

The 419 Eater web site features Nigerian online scams, but not the usual ones. On this site the scammers themselves are scammed, often hilariously. For a sample try the shrinking artwork, the church of the red breast, and the hitchhiker's guide to handwriting. Try not to neglect your children and pets as you work your way through the many letters.

Tags: Fun, Scambaiting, Interesting Stuff

You can take some photos of an environment and turn them into little planets like these:
  
There is an HTML version of the page that has links to large images here.

Tags: Planets, Photography, Interesting Stuff

There is an interesting message coming out of Cupertino these days. Apple is positioning itself as good enough. Good enough for what? And why?

Good enough is how minicomputers felled mainframes. Minicomputers didn't have all the bells and whistles and support that mainframes did, but, hey, they were good enough to get the job done, and demand for the high-end fell. Then minicomputers were good enoughed out by microcomputers.

Familiarity with technology always lowers costs because it requires less training, reduces errors, and simplifies selling. But that is counter to the systems that the pioneers of the technology set up around it. The money-making systems cannot be allowed to die. At the same time that the pressure on prices occurs, the technology starts gathering cruft and its costs rise inexorably. Lower volumes complete the vicious circle.

As the technology ages, a new generation of people and businesses are familiar with the technology and know better what they want and don't want. They don't need the support systems that are built in to the cost of what has recently become the high end. They do need simplicity and ease of use.

Microsoft used to be the new good enough. That was one of the ways that they dominated the market and pushed out competition. Their software was not the best, or the fastest, or many other things. But it was good enough and it provided a way around the high-end, costly competition. Apple, offering perfection and features that the mass market did not need was left out. Niche markets held onto Apple with an iron grip, however, and Apple survived.

But now Apple is positioning itself as the new good enough. Just look at the I'm A Mac ads. Apple is not only positioning themselves as the only choice for a home computer, they are also actually rebranding PCs as what your dad uses at work and fixes at home. Spreadsheets. Pie charts. Viruses. Set up time. It's work vs. fun. The message is that whatever the business world thinks of it, the Mac is the new good enough for what you want to do at home.

Finally, why? Because Apple is going after the mass market in a big way.

Tags: Apple, Good Enough, Interesting Stuff

Photos of a flock of about a million starlings in Denmark. Click on the picture at the link for a full-sized image.

Tags: Photography, Starlings, Interesting Stuff

A John Lasseter production from 1979.

Tags: Video, Fun, Interesting Stuff

Apple has posted three new ads comparing the Mac with Mac OS X with Windows PC: Touché, Work vs. Home, and Out Of The Box.

Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Interesting Stuff

While making this blog using RapidWeaver 3.2.1, I have found that the site document gets large very quickly as I add images. This is because RapidWeaver stores all the text and all the images in one large site document rather than externally in pieces in a file structure.

So if I drag in a 3MB TIFF image and scale it in RapidWeaver to 30% of its size, the site document stores the whole 3MB, while creating a much smaller JPEG to upload. To reduce storage requirement this without any extra tools I have found that I can use RapidWeaver itself to do the image conversion. It works like this:

1. Create a blog entry and drag in images

2. Use the image inspector to scale each of them

3. Preview the blog entry and tweak until it is OK

4. For each image, drag it out of the blog Preview and onto the desk top

5. Delete each image in the blog, replacing it with the desktop version by dragging

6. Delete the desktop images

So now the blog has just the JPGs. They are just the right size, and take up minimum space.

RapidWeaver should have a right-click menu that gives the option of doing all of this in one.

Tags: RapidWeaver, Performance, Interesting Stuff

A kitten attacks a Mac with Front Row.

Tags: Video, Fun, Interesting Stuff

Having given up on network back ups some time ago, I have been experimenting with and formulating back up strategies for the various machines around here. The goal is to back up quickly and be able to recover quickly without spending too much money and without being forced into software upgrades due to OS changes (ahem, Retrospect, I'm talking to you here).

Here is what I have come up with. Note that it is for back up only, not archiving. In other words, the immediate goal is to recover from failure, not store data long-term.

Each machine has its hard drive partitioned into a boot volume and a Scratch volume. The Scratch volume is never backed up and is typically 20% of the drive. It's a place for big files, anything that is generated by software from backed up files, temporary items, DV captures, etc. This strategy prevents unnecessary backing up of large temporary data.

Each machine gets a Firewire drive that is at least 25% bigger than the amount of data on the boot volume. The Firewire drive has a single partition. The drive is left turned on all the time, but the volume is unmounted. The machine is set to wake up at 5:30am and SuperDuper is set to run a scheduled copy at 5:31am using a smart copy. What SuperDuper does is to mount the drive, compare the firewire contents with the boot drive content, copy and delete as appropriate, then unmount the drive. Typically this takes fifteen to thirty minutes once the initial copy of the whole drive is performed.

What this buys me is near-instant recovery from a hard drive failure. Recovery works like this: HD fails. Boot machine with Option held down and select the Firewire drive. Machine boots from Firewire drive. I know exactly up to when good data is available, and therefore what I have to do to fill in the missing pieces. I lose a maximum of one day's work. And I can lose less if I schedule more copies during the day, such as at lunch time. It is not that expensive because the Firewire drives can be small and old.

What this does not do is handle catastrophic failures such as as fires, so there is an extra step. For off-site back ups I could maintain an extra set of Firewire drives and switch them with the on-site ones periodically. I actually don't do this because a) it means a lot of drives lugged about, and b) I don't have that many old drives. So instead I have two large capacity new drives (750G each) and have at most one of them on-site at any time.

On those drives I store sparse disk images, one per boot volume I need to back up. Sparse disk images grow as data is added to them, but do not shrink as it is deleted (but a Terminal command line can be used to shrink them back). Periodically I back up the machines, again using SuperDuper's smart copy, this time copying the hard drive to the mounted sparse disk image. In addition, to being convenient and not wasting space, sparse disk images give me the ability to encrypt the data. So all of my disk images are encrypted, ensuring that a lost or stolen back-up drive is no greater a loss than the value of the hardware. The large capacity drives get swapped around each time all the machines have been backed up.

Another convenience of this strategy is that the downtime on the machines is very small. The back up to the sparse disk images on the large capacity drive need not use any time at all on the machine it is backing up, since the Firewire drive that is sitting next to it can be disconnected (it is not even mounted most of the time), carried to another machine, the back up done there, and the drive returned.

Recovery from sparse disk images is easy too, but more time-consuming. Assuming that the machine and its local Firewire drive have been destroyed, the first step is to get a new machine or commandeer an existing one. Then that machine is booted not from its local hard drive, but from a boot partition on the large capacity firewire drive. I keep a small (10G) boot partition on each drive and make sure that the OS revision is low enough to boot any machine I want to recover. Now I can use Disk Utility to replace the machine's main hard drive contents with the contents of the sparse disk image I select (as long as I remember the password of course). Several hours later I can reboot from the internal hard drive of the new machine and I am back in business.

I have had two hard drives fail on me (before I adopted this strategy) and lost very little because of my back up paranoia. So I know there are other ways to achieve effective back up. However it took days to recover each time, and was a painful and disruptive process.

Tags: SuperDuper, Backing Up, Interesting Stuff

A Dark Reading article describes how USB drives were used to break into a credit union's systems by simply leaving them around.

Once I seeded the USB drives, I decided to grab some coffee and watch the employees show up for work. Surveillance of the facility was worth the time involved. It was really amusing to watch the reaction of the employees who found a USB drive. You know they plugged them into their computers the minute they got to their desks.
Social engineering at it s best.

Tags: Security, Hacking, Interesting Stuff