A kind of optical illusion

One of my sisters sent me this. Sadly, I had to put on my glasses to try to read it.

Retro image editor...

... or rather, an editor for producing retro images.

It's "Poladroid," a tool that turns digital images into pseudo-Polaroid instant prints complete with the soft focus, odd color shifts, white borders, and other artifacts of that pre-digital medium.

Example:



There's a huge gallery of Poladroid images here, some quite artistic and wonderful:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/poladroid

The software is free and very easy to use:
http://www.poladroid.net/

Have fun!

Update: World's Oldest Computer

I've mentioned The Antikythera "Celestial Machine" before; it's a hand-cranked analog computer built about 2000 years ago in Greece. It was used to predict the "proper" start dates for Olympiads, the positions of the planets, and other events. A finely crafted mass of copper and tin gearing, it far exceeded what most supposed were the mechanical abilities of what we blithely call "the Bronze Age."

It's back in the news for two reasons.

First, the dating of the artifact is getting better, and it's now thought to be at least a couple hundred years older than previously estimated. With every backward increment in time, the sophistication of the device become even more remarkable. The Bronze Age wasn't just a time of metal spears and plows.

Second, a noted maker-of-scientific-animations has produced an excellent one that shows how the device worked. And some working mechanical replicas also have been built! In all, it's pretty cool.

See World's first computer may be even older than thought for the latest news.

The Guardian (UK) has a nice page with photos and videos. See
The inner workings of the Antikythera mechanism

And for more models and animations, see The Antikhytera Celestial Machine: fragments of genius from a legendary science

Summer daydreams

... are essential for mental health and creativity:

In a culture obsessed with efficiency, daydreaming is derided as a lazy habit or a lack of discipline, the kind of thinking we rely on when we don't really want to think. It's a sign of procrastination, not productivity, something to be put away with your flip-flops and hammock as summer draws to a close.

In recent years, however, scientists have begun to see the act of daydreaming very differently. They've demonstrated that daydreaming is a fundamental feature of the human mind - so fundamental, in fact, that it's often referred to as our "default" mode of thought. Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections. Instead of focusing on our immediate surroundings... the daydreaming mind is free to engage in abstract thought and imaginative ramblings. As a result, we're able to imagine things that don't actually exist.... (more)

Excellent article, if you're looking to recharge your batteries, unleash your creativity--- or just goof off for a couple of hours. =)

Earth Album

"Mashups" are becoming a trend. Wikipedia says:

In web development, a mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open APIs and data sources to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data. An example of a mashup is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct Web service that was not originally provided by either source. (More info: http://tinyurl.com/ctlbz )

Mashups aren't new, but some critical mass has been achieved of late, and the number and quality of mashups is rapidly increasing.

Here's a fun one for you to try:

earth album is a ... mash-up that allows you to explore some of the most stunning photos in the world courtesy of Google maps and Flickr. To begin your journey, just click somewhere on the map, e.g. "India". Note-- since the top Flickr images are used, the images change every few weeks; bookmark this site and check back for a different experience in a month!

http://www.earthalbum.com/

Incredible optical illusion

Seeing isn't believing, as this wonderful illusion (one I'd never seen before) clearly shows:

See the colored spirals, below? Your brain makes them look like two different colors, "green" and "blue," but they are, in reality, exactly the same color!


Full explanation:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/24/the-blue-and-the-green/

"A shockingly beautiful image"

"A shockingly beautiful image of a galactic smash-up known as Stephan's Quintet highlights the powerful shock wave created by a cosmic bullet."

(click for larger image)


"The compact galaxy group, 230 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus, is one of the favorite targets for astronomers studying gravitational interactions on a grand scale. It was discovered in 1877 by French astronomer Edouard Stephan.

"For many astronomers, the most interesting feature is something that doesn't show up quite as well in visible-light pictures: the light blue arc of X-ray emissions running through the center of the image above.

"That X-ray arc, detected by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, shows up prominently in other wavelengths as well - such as the infrared part of the spectrum that is the NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope specialty. Scientists have concluded that it represents a shock wave that is slamming through the group's intergalactic gas and heating it up so much that it emits radiation in a wide range of wavelengths. The shock wave is generated by the passage of one galaxy (NGC 7318b) through the cluster's core at a speed of almost 2 million miles per hour."

The rest of the excellent write-up, with many links:
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/07/13/1995171.aspx

Oh, hell yes!

"Extreme skater Dirk Auer skated the Tripps Drill Roller Coaster in Stuggart Germany wearing only a pair of customized in-line skates. Reaching speeds of 90 km/hr on the first hill, it took him less than a minute to complete the track.... "

Add a crossbar between the boots, and I'd be next in line! Woo hoo!

http://thechive.com/2009/07/you-gotta-be-kidding-me-14-photos/

The NH Tornado, 1 year after

Exactly a year ago on this date, NH experienced a rare tornado; not only rare for here (NH gets only one or two tornadoes a year), but rare, period: Last year's tornado stayed on the ground for 80 minutes and covered 50 linear miles (80km), passing over areas with significant elevation changes--- NH ain't Kansas, Toto.

I wrote about it in three posts here:

Part One:
http://fredlanga.blogspot.com/2008/07/tornado-corridor-impressions.html

Part Two:
http://fredlanga.blogspot.com/2008/07/tornado-corridor-impressions-pt2.html

Part Three:
http://fredlanga.blogspot.com/2008/08/tornado-corridor-impressions-pt3.html

Now, a year on, researchers say that a single cloud break in Massachusetts enabled enough highly-localized heating to trigger the unusual storm, which was embedded in a frontal passage. But researchers are still at a loss to explain why this tornado wasn't disrupted as it passed over the high hills of NH's lakes region; and why it persisted so long.

If this sort of thing interests you, here are a bunch of good resources:

Collection of videos and images:

This was shot within a couple miles of where I live:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrIbNiWPQNg
(see also the "related" videos)

A different collection:
http://www.mahalo.com/new-hampshire-tornado

The local news outlet retrospective:
http://tinyurl.com/m9w2wo

As a coda, about a week ago, a strong thunderstorm rolled through, producing a microburst that uprooted trees and did some housing damage within about half a mile (0.8km) of last year's tornado track here in Northwood. The folks who live there must be wondering what they did wrong....

How to correct Device Manager hardware errors

Reader Al Rodemann encountered this problem on an older PC, but the same kind of trouble can crop up even on the latest hardware and software. And in fact, the solution works for all Windows versions — even Windows 7!

• "I maintain a Windows 98 SE computer at my golf course and it has a problem I can't solve. I know WIN98SE is ancient, but I wrote two large tournament programs back in the '90s using dBase III Plus, and I need an LPT port to do printouts. These programs are used four days every week.
  
  "I used a hard-disk cloning program to back up the main drive to a slave drive, and this cloning program worked only once. Now, looking at Device Manager, two areas are expanded and show problems. 'Generic IDE Disk Type 01' has a red X through it and, when opened, tells me that 'This device is not working properly because a device it depends on — Primary IDE Controller (Dual FIFO) — has been dynamically disabled.' The hard-disk controller has a yellow exclamation point (!) through it.
  
  "This appeared only after cloning. Everything else works fine, but this problem has me stumped. How do I re-enable it so I can use the cloning program again?"
  

It sounds like your cloning software worked by overriding the normal functions of your hard-drive subsystem, in effect benignly "hijacking" the normal disk operations to make the clone. Something didn't get set back correctly, most likely because the clone software wasn't designed with ancient Windows in mind. In all, I suspect this is just a simple hardware configuration error with no permanent damage to anything.

Fixing that configuration problem is easy, and is the top topic in my current weekly WindowsSecrets.com column.

The other items this week include:

* BitTorrent put 100GB of junk files on my PC!
* Internet Explorer 8 causes screen blackout

Access to these items is by a kind of honor-system principle: You decide what the content is worth, and whatever you decide to pay lets you in to *all* the paid-edition content (not just my column) for a full year.

Full info (you start by signing up for the spam-proof free version) here:
http://windowssecrets.com/

Thanks for checking it out!

Asian Cuisine sometimes doesn't translate well

Sometimes, it's intrinsically strange. For example, there's a Thai baker who makes bread in the shape of realistic (and fake-gory) human body parts. Yes, this is really just bread:



I've heard of finger food, but really...

Then there are the more conventional items that are probably fine to eat, but that suffer mightily in translation:






I think I'll try "The Temple Explodes the Chicken Cube" today. I hear it's good, and it's surely better than that Plum dish sounds.

Four small grins for Tuesday

State of the art simulations from 40 years ago

Yes, it's being done to death: The 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. It's great to see science in the headlines again, but with so much coverage, there's a lot of repetition.

Then I found this clip: It actually bubbled up not from the lunar landing coverage per se, but in clips of iconic newsman Walter Cronkite's career. This one is of CBS' coverage of the lunar landing, which Cronkite anchored.

There was no live, from-the-moon video coverage of the actual descent and landing itself; all NASA (and we) had were data and voice radio feeds. The films you've seen of the actual touchdown (shot looking straight down from the lander) were literally *films* that had to be brought back to earth, processed, and released much later, weeks after the astronauts were safely home. There was live video from the moon some hours later, when the actual moonwalk began. But there was no live video at all of the descent and actual landing.

The largest TV audience ever assembled for a single event was watching, and CBS wanted to attract a giant share: They invested major money in a real-time simulation of the descent and landing to provide artificial visuals.

It was utterly state of the art commercial television; nothing like it had been done before. It was also one of the first major uses of live character-generation; where text is electronically superimposed on a separate TV image.

It's impressive. Yes, some of it looks a little cheesy by today's standards, but the gestalt of the simulation holds up pretty well even 40 years on, and that tells you how advanced it was for its day.

The core of the simulation is a filmed studio set piece with miniatures (models) and superimposed graphics. In some vertical, looking-down shots, an animation of the lander's exhaust plume is superimposed over an accurate scale-model image of the intended flight path over the lunar surface. In exterior shots (an impossible real-world vantage point), a model lander shooting real flame creeps across a giant lunar set. In closeups, even the starry background moves realistically.

Laid over that, text is double-exposed and/or character-generated atop the set pieces, showing altitude, speed, etc.

The simulation works well right up to the end. The real landing took longer than planned when the astronauts had to avoid some boulders at the last moment. They continued flying, manually and off-plan, to a flatter spot. But the pre-filmed simulation follows the planned schedule to the second, touching down exactly at the planned time, so it shows the miniature lander solidly on the moon for a brief time while the actual lander was still looking for a good spot to touch down.

But aside from that, the simulation was about as good as commercial TV could do in those days: The proof is that it's still engaging even 40 years later.

The live commentary is from Cronkite and Wally Schirra (the only one of the original 7 astronauts to fly in all three seminal programs: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo).

You'll see flashier simulations everywhere today, but this original is still well worth watching. Take a look!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_sWmD6NvMY

Fascinating site

You know the saying "a picture's worth 1000 words?" Well here's a site that operates on somewhat the same idea. It takes some time to understand, but once you "get" it, it's engrossing.

"Gapminder" takes what would otherwise be dust-dry information and presents it in animated graphs and charts. In an instant, you can see major and minor trends develop, flower, fall back, evolve over time; stuff that would take reams of text or dozens of static charts and graphs to illustrate. It actually makes statistics--- normally a dust-dry topic--- vital and alive.

It's an interesting use of technology, and rather informative, too.

Give it 10 minutes, and see what you think:
http://www.gapminder.org/

"My First Fail"

You probably already know about the classic Failblog.Org: A wondrous repository of of stupidity, accident and misfortune.

This post isn't about Failblog, but if you need 'em, here are a few random examples:









Failblog is so popular that it's spun off a host of imitators. A new one: "My First Fail," devoted to childrens' moments of ineptitude.

Examples:






Enjoy that, and the others, below. (Some items may perturb the very sensitive...):

http://myfirstfail.com/

http://failblog.org

http://thisisphotobomb.com/

http://engrishfunny.com/

Finally! Summer in New Hampshire (pix!)

It's been a sodden spring here, with enough rain to elevate June into the top 5 of "all-time wettest."

In fact, this story was making the rounds lately:

A curious fellow died one day and found himself waiting in the long line of judgment. As he stood there he noticed that some souls were allowed to march right through the pearly gates into Heaven. Others though, were led over to Satan who threw them into the burning pit. But every so often, instead of hurling a poor soul into the fire, Satan would toss a soul off to one side into a small pile.

After watching Satan do this several times, the fellow's curiosity got the best of him. So he strolled over and asked Satan what he was doing. "Excuse me, Mr. Prince of Darkness," he said, "I'm waiting in line for judgement, but I couldn't help wondering, why are you tossing those people aside instead of flinging them into the Fires of Hell with the others?"

"Ah, those," Satan said with a groan. "They're all from New England. They're still too wet to burn."

But it's summer now, and glorious.

The State Park behind my house opened a new trail recently; a 5 or 6 mile loop through forest and field. With some photo-ops, a few pretty good inclines and some less than perfect footing here and there, it's about a 2 hour walk.

The part of the trail that's unusual for this particular park is the portion that runs through fields. The original portion of the park is a small lake and the surrounding forest, but a landowner donated adjoining former farmland that's been fallow for 10-20 years or so. Parts of the fields are filling in fast with birches and poplars; the local volunteer tree species. Other parts are in waist-high grasses and wildflowers.

I walked the new trail for the first time several days ago. It was very pleasant. Much of the field was in flower (click for larger image):


The air was alive with butterflies in constant motion. I caught this one (an Atlantis Fritillary?) resting in the sun:


The disturbed spots in the grass here are were a herd of deer bedded down for the night:


Caught this pair of beetles using a sumac leaf as a honeymoon suite. I'm not a bug guy, but I'm guessing these are longhorn beetles; one of the gazillion varieties.


The sun was bright and warm, but the air was wonderfully dry and comfortable.


The grass colors looked different depending on the angle of illumination:






Very nice walk. And damn, it felt good to dry out!

How to fix 'slow script' errors in your browser

Reader Bill Brody's copy of IE 8 would sometimes drop into first gear when running a script:

"I've started experiencing an IE pop-up message: 'IE is running a script that can slow your computer.' It was happening to me with IE 7. I upgraded to IE 8 and it persists. The problem seemingly occurs at random. I can identify no correlates. But it's a pain in the lower back. Any suggestions?"

Sure, Bill! While this isn't exactly an everyday error, if you surf long enough, you will encounter this problem at least once in a while. It's also not unique to IE; it can and does happen in Firefox, too. But the good news is that troubleshooting and repairing this problem in IE isn't very difficult at all; and that fix is the top topic in my columns in the Windows Secrets newsletter this week.

The other items this week include:

• Excellent reader feedback on using virtual machines
• Downgrade to XP causes sign-in weirdness
• Are all solid-state drives short-lived?

The guys who run WindowsSecrets put my column in the paid-subscription section which operates on the honor-system principle: You decide what the content is worth, and whatever you decide to pay lets you in to *all* the paid-edition content (not just my column) for a full year.

Full info (you start by signing up for the spam-proof free version) here:
http://windowssecrets.com/

Thanks for checking it out!

Two interesting items on human evolution

Next time you're walking in the woods, give a thought to our early arboreal ancestors leaping from tree to tree...

By scanning a 54-million-year-old skull roughly the size of a walnut, scientists have created the first virtual 3-D model of an early primate brain, a new study says. Surprisingly, the model suggests that primates (such as lemurs, monkeys, apes, and humans, among others) might have evolved larger brains as a result of the need to move quickly from tree to tree—not, as commonly assumed, to hunt for fruit or navigate within a single tree. ---http://tinyurl.com/nvnjsz

... trying desperately to escape from constricting snakes:

The ability to detect threatening snakes may have shaped the visual system of our primate ancestors, a new study says.

In a sort of evolutionary arms race, primates kept improving their eyesight to help spot and avoid snakes as the snakes became more dangerous, suggests Lynne Isbell, a behavioral ecologist at the University of California, Davis.

"The initial change in primate [eyes] ... occurred when they had to deal with constricting snakes, probably about 90 million years ago," Isbell said. --- http://tinyurl.com/n4cqlb

Note that the latter item dates to a time in evolutionary history almost twice as far back as the former. This may suggest why ophidiophobia --- the fear of snakes --- may be such a deeply-rooted instinct!

Live: Realtime recreation of Apollo11 moonshot

For the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moonshot, Wechoosethemoon.org is running a second-by-second realtime recreation of the event, from prelaunch through splashdown. It's in progress right now.

It's a very cool site. Check it out!

http://wechoosethemoon.org/

Submarine races?

It sounds like a joke or an excuse kids might use to grab some, um, private time at the beach. ("We're off to watch the submarine races...")

But the International Submarine Races are real and --- here's the thing --- these are human-powered submarines!

Each team must develop a one or two-person "Wet" submarine. Two-person subs must have one person providing the propulsion and the other navigating and steering. Both crew members breathe SCUBA from the air supply carried aboard. Each sub is unique, designed from "scratch," and relies upon novel techniques for propulsion and guidance.

Some tests are done in open ocean; others in controlled environments borrowed from the Navy:

The 10th ISR just completed. Photos and more on this year's, and past, races:
http://www.isrsubrace.org/index.cfm

Northwood Meadows State Park

I shot this photo at the pond behind my house, yesterday afternoon.

If you're interested, this was the exact location of the subject of the photo:
http://tinyurl.com/nwvmmf

The photo (click for larger):



I love the amber eyes. Gorgeous bird.

A Roomba for an entire city?

They're testing a semi-autonomous trash-collecting robot in Italy!



It's called "DustCart," and it's part of an automated trash collection service.

Story and photos:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/italy/090616/robot-trash-collector?page=0,0

The Aurora, at eye-level!

The crew of the International Space Station have an incredible vantage from which to see both the southern (Australis) and northern (Borealis) Auroras: edge-on.

Here's a still frame of one such:


Click here for an animated version of the same aurora.

Many other ISS auroral images and videos:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ISSAurora/

Related:
The Boston Globe has an online feature called "The Big Picture;" galleries of glorious, hi-res photos that would suck if printed on newsprint with cheap inks. Instead of running crappy newspaper version, the Globe puts them online. Sometimes, they highlight space images, as in ths gallery of incredible images of Earth shot from the ISS:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/recent_scenes_from_the_iss.html

Running Windows without a Pagefile

Reader Joel Swehla is running an experiment on his PC by working without a pagefile:

I enjoyed Fred's June 11 article, 'Will moving the pagefile improve performance?' I was wondering about not having a pagefile at all. I have 4GB of RAM and no pagefile and have never had any issue. Am I tempting fate by doing this? I keep track of my RAM usage and never come close to using all 4GB, so I don't think it's a problem but am hoping for feedback.

Joel's right; it's possible to run Windows entirely in RAM. But I think he's probably also right in that he's indeed tempting fate. The in-depth topic in my column posted at Windows Secrets this week explains why nixing your pagefile will save some disk wear and maybe even gain your machine some speed but may also be skating on very, very thin ice --- at least with the current crop of PCs!

Also in this column:

• Unbidden, Windows awakens at midnight
  
  
• Perplexing partial Blu-ray drive failure
  
  
• Unidentified "setup.exe" running!

Access to the above content is almost free: You pay only what you think the WindowsSecrets newsletter is worth (there's no set fee--- you decide); whatever you pay that once gets you access to all the paid content, including my columns, for an entire year.

Want to have a question answered in that column? Use the "contact" info at the end of the column to send in questions you might like me to try answering. And you can also rate the content to let me know how I'm doing.

More info: http://windowssecrets.com/

Faster-than-light barrier broken--- again!

It first cropped up with "quantum entanglement" which Einstein referred to as "spooky action at a distance."

Entanglement is a strange feature of quantum physics, the science of the very small. It’s possible to link together two quantum particles – photons of light or atoms, for example – in a special way that makes them effectively two parts of the same entity. You can then separate them as far as you like, and a change in one is instantly reflected in the other. This odd, faster than light link, is a fundamental aspect of quantum science – Erwin Schrödinger, who came up with the name “entanglement” called it “the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics.”

from: The Strange World of Quantum Entanglement

It's fascinating because this "spooky action" ignores the otherwise-seemingly-inviolable universal speed limit: the speed of light in a vacuum.

Taking a different tack, researchers have now built a macro, human-scale electromechanical device that lets radio waves also break the speed of light barrier.

Device Makes Radio Waves Travel Faster Than Light

It's different from entanglement, which involves individual particles: If I'm reading the article right, they're making radio wavefronts move superluminally, although no single radio photon does so. In other words (and again, if I'm reading it right), the radio beam operates normally, but information could move across the beam at speeds greater than the beam itself, much like ripples in a stream can move faster than the stream itself.

Faster than light "subspace radio" or "hyperspace radio" has been a staple of science fiction for decades, although the writers rarely take a shot at explaining how it might work. But oddly, I remember this exact technique--- manipulating wavefronts across an established radio link-- proposed in a science fiction story many years ago. Anyone remember the story?

In any case, it's another chink in the armor of classical quantum mechanics. Einstein was 100 years ago: we need another Einstein now!

Photos: A break in the weather

It's been extremely wet around here for more than a month. June was in the top-5 wettest on record, and July has been in the same pattern. We've already had a summer's worth of rain.

But last Sunday was perfect: Bright sun, low humidity, and with the air was just warm enough to be comfortable, but still cool enough so that you could exert yourself without overheating. It was a day that demanded outdoor activity, especially after such a sodden start to the summer.

So, I hiked up a nearby hill for the view. It's somewhat grandiosely called "Saddleback Mountain," but it's really just a large twin-summitted foothill of the real mountains further north.

It's shown here: http://tinyurl.com/l4ysvc Toggle the map types and the zoom levels, and you'll get a sense of the place.

It's a forested hike, about a 4 hour round trip walk from my house (including a lunch stop) up some modestly steepish trails to a nice rock ledge that affords a view to the north.

With all the moisture, the streams and rivers are running heavy, and the woods were wet underfoot. The bad news with all the water is that we're growing a bumper crop of mosquitoes, but the good news is that we're also growing an equally-large crop of insectivorous fauna:

This bright blue dragonfly was sunning on a leaf:


(click for larger)

And this iridescent beauty was resting on a hemlock branch. Click for the larger view.


Once I reached the ledge with the view --- it was gorgeous up there --- I played with the camera a bit.

Here's a very wide-angle shot, maybe 130 degrees wide or so:


Below, a high optical magnification zoom shot of Mount Washington, which is on the horizon in the wide-angle shot above.


Camera and optics buffs will note the chromatic vignetting at extreme zoom; the tradeoff you get using one set of lenses for everything from macro-close to 20x optical zoom. It's controllable in post-processing, but the image above exaggerates it somewhat because I was looking for detail rather than chromatic perfection. It's a snapshot, not an Ansel Adams print. =)

A (telephoto) part of my small town, along one of its many lakes:

In the photo above, that distinctly-humped mountain on the right side horizon --- the one with the steep right flank--- is Cannon Mt, in Franconia Notch. "Notch" is the local dialect for what's called a mountain "pass" elsewhere. Franconia Notch is a textbook-worthy example of a glacial valley; ice-scooped into an almost perfect U shape rather than the V shape of stream-cut valleys.

I wasn't the only critter enjoying the gloriously sun-warmed rocks on the ledge:




Harmless, of course, but fun to photograph. Digital cameras usually have a lag between the time you press the shutter to when the image is captured, so getting exactly the right shot when a fleeting event occurs takes a bit of guesswork and luck--- but sometimes, you get it just right: I caught the bright-red, black-tipped tongue in mid-flick (best seen in the larger view: click the thumbnail!):


It was a nice hike on a great day.

And just as well: It's been raining ever since!

Chronological silliness

Tomorrow, at 5 minutes and 6 seconds after 4 a.m., on the 8th of July, 2009, the time and date (in US date notation) will be: 04:05:06 07-08-09.

Most of the rest of the world uses the far more logical yyyy-mm-dd date notation (descending order, from large units to small, same as the way we notate clock time), and so will miss out on this minor curiosity.

OK, it's utterly silly. But 4AM offers few amusements; you gotta grab 'em while you can! =)

Billion-pixel resolution!

An artist/photographer/geek named Max Lyons has been experimenting with incredibly-detailed hi-res pictures. The most interesting thing is that he takes these gigapixel images with an ordinary digital camera, not some wildly expensive professional gear.

He sets up a normal shot--- not necessarily a vast panorama, but a shot much like anyone might compose with a good camera. Then, he divides the overall shot into many smaller sub areas and shoots each tiny subarea at the camera's maximum resolution. When he's done, he has a set of high-resolution image tiles of the originally-composed shot.

He then uses stitching software to assemble the slew of image tiles into one seamless, ultra-high-resolution mosaic. The final image actually contains more detail than a human eye can see, and can full non-pixelated resolution even at incredible zoom-in ranges.

His page on "Breaking the gigapixel barrier" is at http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel.htm . There, you can see a much-reduced, low-res version of the gigapixel photo, along with an interesting commentary on his technique.

A modest gallery of his earlier work--- also mosaics, though not in the gigapixel range--- is at http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/index.html

Amazing!

Writing so bad it's good

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (named after the guy who wrote the infamous, trite-the-first-time "It was a dark and stormy night...") recently closed and announced the winners of this year's so-bad-it's-good writing contest.

Winner in the detective category (and my personal favorite) from Eric Rice of Sun Prairie, Wis.:

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida the pink ones, not the white ones except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.

Winner in the adventure category, from Joe Wyatt of Amarillo, Texas:

How best to pluck the exquisite Toothpick of Ramses from between a pair of acrimonious vipers before the demonic Guards of Nicobar returned should have held Indy's full attention, but in the back of his mind he still wondered why all the others who had agreed to take part in his wife's holiday scavenger hunt had been assigned to find stuff like a Phillips screwdriver or blue masking tape.

And the Grand Prize winner, from David McKenzie, Wash., the wondrous:

Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.

All 2009 winners:
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2009.htm
(another particularly good/bad one: "In a flurry of flame and fur, fangs and wicker, thus ended the world's first and only hot air baboon ride.")

Past winners:
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/lyttony.htm

Have multiple PCs? Save serious cash!

How would you like to get a legit copy of all Microsoft software --- full no install-limit, no-time-limit versions of Microsoft Office, Vista, Server... everything including Operating Systems (28 versions), Updated Products (14), Applications (48), Business Solutions (25), Servers (62), TechNet Technical Library (1), TechNet Technical Training (5) and Tools and Resources (29); thousands of dollars worth of software in total --- all for $349?

Microsoft's"Technet Plus Direct" lets you "evaluate all Microsoft full version software without time limits, and get Professional Support, technical resources and more." It's currently on sale, but even the standard price is awfully good.

Again: With a subscription to TechNet Plus, you'll get Win7, when it comes out, and meanwhile, *everything else* (Microsoft Office, Vista, Server... everything!) with no time or installation limits.

I had let my old TN subscription lapse, but renewed a week ago. In previous subscriptions, I had to fill out a little questionnaire, but this time, a Live ID and a credit card is all it took, no questions asked at all.

The catch is really an ethical one. Technet is intended for people who support others in their computer use. A Technet subscription isn't meant as a way to do an end run around standard licensing. The idea is to let those in support roles gain easy access to the full range of Microsoft software, and to let them use it for an extended time in order to understand the software and become proficient with it.

If you're the formal or de-facto IT person for your office or home office, you probably qualify.

You can order direct from Microsoft here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx . You may luck out and catch a sale (I did!) which knocks $100 off the price. But even at the full price, you're getting no-install-limit, no-time-limit access to thousands of dollars worth of software for a few hundred bucks.

Again, this isn't a way to set up Aunt Martha and your buddy down the street with a cheap copy of valid software. Please don't use it for that! But if you really do perform valid IT-type services (testing, installing, troubleshooting, maintaining...) of Microsoft software for yourself and others, then this could be a great way to get all your personally-owned PCs running with the latest software without having to take out a second mortgage.

Hope this info helps some of you to save some serious bucks! =)

How To Safely Test-Drive Windows 7

Safely test-drive Windows 7

Here's how to try out Win7 without messing up your current setup

John in Dallas is itching to test the free Release Candidate for Windows 7, but isn't sure how to safely proceed. He wrote and asked me:

* I have an XP sp3 machine, works just fine. Also, I have an external USB hard drive, used mostly for backups. Could I download the Windows 7 Release Candidate to that drive and play with it safely? It's my understanding the d/l would be a 'file' and could be sent directly to the usb drive and run? Is that correct? Since I don't have CD-burning software on my system, I don't want to bother with that process.

If your machine meets the minimum specs for Win7 (more on that in a moment), then you can safely and non-destructively test-drive the Windows 7 Release Candidate — but not quite the way John's thinking.

The answer is to use free "virtual machine" software. With it, you can safely test the Windows 7 Release Candidate on your PC without risking your current setup.

A full explanation with links for both the free Windows 7 release candidate and to free, known-good virtual PC software are top top topic in my current weekly WindowsSecrets.com column.

The other items this week include:

* External drive format question
* Does Windows force temp files onto external drives?
* Great (free!) troubleshooting tool

Access to these items is by a kind of honor-system principle: You decide what the content is worth, and whatever you decide to pay lets you in to *all* the paid-edition content (not just my column) for a full year.

Full info (you start by signing up for the spam-proof free version) here:
http://windowssecrets.com/

Thanks for checking it out!

Forest Canopy "Rafting"

In dense forests, most of the biologic activity happens in the forest canopy, far above the heads of researchers. There are various ways to get into the canopy, including simply climbing up, but one can only hang from a rope harness for so long.

For extended stays, scientists are now using a "canopy raft," dropped by a lighter-than-airship, that lets them stay for an extended time atop the canopy:



Check it out!
http://tinyurl.com/pd7egb