Photo A Day Tips

For whatever reason, I’ve decided to do my second Project 365 this year.  As of today, that makes 375 pictures posted to photoblog.  Along the way, I’ve learned a few things:

• For me, personal is better.  The thing I’ve enjoyed the most is looking back at the older photos and remembering the circumstances of each photo.
• If not personal, then a theme of some kind might be cool.  I travel often and have been thinking about how to focus on just that.
• Even with personal, perhaps less than artistic shots, your photos don’t necessarily have to suck (like mine ).  Take some time to clean them up.  With today’s multi-mega-giga-pixel cams, you can almost certainly crop to the best part of the photo and have plenty of size left, ESPECIALLY for the web.  Learn to use whatever photo editing program you have, be it whatever came with your camera, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Photo-Paint, the Gimp (free), or even the excellent (also free) Fast Stone Viewer.  Consider learning more about post-processing as part of your project.  Taking the pic is only half the job.
• After you crop, at a minimum, learn to adjust things like contrast, dynamic range, color balance, and unsharp masking.
• If you have low light shots taken at night (hey, we work in the day time, right?), consider converting them to B&W.  Your image editing program has some simple methods built-in, but there are some advanced techniques you might consider.  The concepts on all these links can generally be used in every decent program, although menu names and terminology may differ.   Special note for Corel Photo-Paint users prior to version X4, the color mixing controls are pretty lacking.  Check out the section called Some Assembly Required near the bottom of dpFWIW’s page.
  
• Do something with your finished work.  At the very least, set up a screen show on your computer.  Better, post them on the web at photoblog, Flickr, Facebook, or any photo sharing site.  You might even consider setting up your own web gallery.  There’s something about the discipline of posting my shots publicly that keeps me motivated.
• Finally, here’s a tip about that might help you remember to take your daily shot.  It’s easy to get caught up in the day’s work and activity and just forget your project.  Use your calendar or to-do list to remind you.  Personally, I have a daily entry in my Google calendar set to email me at 4pm.  If I haven’t had a chance to shot a photo by then, it’s a reminder as I’m winding up the work day.  There’s still some daylight left and the project is on my mind on the way home and into the evening.

Good luck!

Project 365-X2

I haven’t completely decided what the “X2″ means, but I’m cranking up another year of daily photography.  After the 2008 Project I needed a bit of a break, but I think I’m ready to go again.  Annie and I both seem to go back and look over the 2008 pics and it’s amazing how much it brings back each day of the year.

RIP Clean Desktop

Back when XP was the new OS on the block, the genius engineers at Microsoft discovered that a typical user only runs a handful a programs and that a clean desktop was the way of the future.  Too bad they didn’t spend some time on trivial issues, like, um, boot time.  One turn of the crank later, Vista introduced the craptacular sidebar.

Win 7 will remove the sidebar restriction allowing the eye-candy to run wild to any spot on the desktop.  Take that, anal retentive types!

Facebook Follies

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook recently:

“thinks facebook is an ego-driven wormhole that contributes to our narcissistic society and is frankly disgusted by it. Oh, and by the way, good morning, I am now eating delicious bran flakes…”

That sounds about right to me.  Until a few months ago, I pretty much considered Facebook (not to mention Myspace) only suitable for “kids” or at least people under 35.  But I knew about a FB group from my old high school and an unexpected email from another high school friend mentioned that she was using it as well.  So I signed up to see what all the fuss was about and quickly discovered that Facebook is the Devil .  OK, well not really but they definitely seize as much control as possible and privacy / security concerns are rampant.

Not to mention that Facebook is a neo-con capitalist imperial venture.  On the upside, things are questionable financially so maybe they’ll just go out of business.  Doubtful, of course, but there’s still a chance that Microsoft will buy them which would just give me one more reason to consider leaving.

But for now, I’m hanging out.  I’ve hidden the more egregious over-posters, results of games, and CAPITAL letter typers but still enjoying those random views into the days of friends and family members.

Infinite Monkeys

If an infinite number of monkeys could eventually write Shakespeare, how many Nigerian scammers would it take to string together a couple of plausible paragraphs trying to scam us?  Not enough, at least not yet…:

THIS IS THE (F.B.I)

http://www.fbi.gov
fbi_cyberwatch_us@yahoo.com.hk
Robert S. Mueller
Executive Director FBI

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION SEEKING TO WIRETAP THE INTERNET

Dear Esteem Beneficiary,

Have you receive your fund from the FedEx Courier Service Nigeria? Or from any organization claiming that they have your fund with them? We have been watching every transactions that you made from last year 2008 up till date and you have to know that we are also working to make sure that your fund which is supposed to be delivered to you some days ago can be immediately be delivered to you without any further delay or any kind of excuses.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation does not want any of our citizens to lose their fund and that is why we have been working every hour on our cyber watch department so you won’t get burnt by this scammers.

We are aware of every payment you have made on the transaction you are into to make the transaction succeed, yet the fund is still held down by the drug law agency and the immigration officer at the airport.

We want you to take note that our special investigation service diplomatic men are the one to deliver your fund of $5.8million to you without any further roadblock agencies.

The diplomatic delivery men are in Nigeria where your fund is originated at the international airport now, as soon as you get back to this email by applying to the instruction that is sent to you, the delivery will take effect immediately.

The payment you are to send now so that your fund can finally get to you is the sum of $400USD for the airport clearance of your fund due to the huge amount of money, and as soon as this has been sent down via money gram or western union international money transfer, the delivery will take immediate effect by the delivery diplomatic men.

You have to stop every transaction you are into and communication with other organization to avoid delay on processing of your fund and wrong contact that is why we at the FBI have email you to warn you that your fund is in Nigeria at the immigration office where the diplomatic men will deliver it to you personally as soon as the payment of $400USD is sent to them.

Get back to us at the FBI as soon as you receive this email.

Thanks for your co-operation.

Robert S. Mueller,
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001, USA

All Along the Flak Tower

Flak towers just visible in Humboldthain Park in 1977

I was watching Hitler’s Hidden City on the Nat Geo channel a couple of nights ago.  It was a bit on the hyperbolic side (more typical of the History Channel, actually)…but I was particularly in interested in the flak towers built during WWII.

When I was in Germany in 1977, we stayed at a youth hostel in the Wedding district (now redivided into the Gesundbrunnen district) across the street from Humboldthain Park.  Best I can tell from Google Maps, the Jugendgastehaus Nord might now be a Holiday Inn.

Every day as we walked to the Gesundbrunnen U-Bahn station, we wondered about the “bunker” remains that we saw in the park.  On our last night in Berlin, an early group of BackAmp researchers jumped the fence and sat on top of the concrete structure.  There were no signs or information, but we guessed that it was a WWII structure.

So when the TV showed a photo of the same Flakturm Humboldthain, I finally knew what we had been exploring 32 years ago.  It turns out that the interior is now open for tours from the Berliner Unterwelten.   I’m looking forward to updating our reconnaissance in the not too distant future.

Update: I had been wondering why the Tower is partially buried in a hillside and two of the gun platforms are missing.  According to Urban Exploration Resource:

The Gefechtsturm or G-Turm (lit. “Battle Tower”)
Built in 1941-2, alongside the S-Bahn line, by Italian and French workers.
In 1948 – 51 the G-Turm was partially demolished and the two southerly gun platforms destroyed. 1.6 millon cubic meters of rubble was heaped up around base to form artificial hill and to enhance the park to plans by Garden and Building Department Leader Gunther Rieck. The work was carried out by local jobless people. Most of the rubble was pilled around the south, east and west sides, access being available. But as the tower is build in close proximity to the railway, to the north, dumping and pilling rubble was not done to any great depth. So the northern side is left partially exposed.
The northern face of the bunker is still visible. In the north of the park, and now known as “Humboldt-85 höhe” it overlooks the Hochstrasse and the Gesundbrunnen U-Bahn station.

I suspected that the tower was buried in its own rubble to improve that park which is now confirmed. It’s lucky that any remnant remained visible otherwise it may have completely forgotten.

Phonatic

Phonatic

I got a bit lost on a jog (slog, run, trudge…) around Brown University in Providence RI today.  As I was walking back to the hotel, I saw the best.Vietnamese.restaurant.name.ever….”Phonatic”

Five Handy Travel Tips

Handy Travel Tip #207:  If your bag is ten rows behind your seat, avoid the urge to barge past 40 people when the plane lands.  You’ll get stuck trying to come back and just clog things up.  Try waiting patiently until the intervening passengers have deplaned and stroll back casually to pick up your stuffs.

Handy Travel Tip #416:  Don’t text at the urinals in the DFW airport Men’s room.  Just don’t.

Handy Travel Tip #847:  Don’t piss off the flight attendants by trying to put 22″ roller bags in the short overheads on the port side (at least on American).  Editors note:  Port is left, but always relative to the front of the airplane, so that’s to your RIGHT as you are boarding.  In other words, over the seats labeled A, B, C or A, C.  And don’t ask what happened to B.)

Handy Travel Tip #264: When you get to your row and there’s someone in the aisle seat blocking your access, don’t stand immediately in their way blocking them from moving into the aisleway.  Where exactly do you figure they are going to go?

Handy Travel Tip #914: If the revolving door leaving the secure area has a recording that says  “Only two people per revolving door opening, please.  Touching the door will cause it to stop.”, it probably means that five people in the door opening is going to cause a delay.

Collect them all!

Fracking Vista

Photo: Kristi Evans

My friend Niel recently blew away Vista and installed Ubuntu because of stuttering media issues.  I applauded the move and certainly considered it myself with a long standing wireless problem on my Thinkpad.  A couple days ago, my desktop Vista machine, which has been reasonably solid, started having stuttering during playback.  Pretty much any music or video playback over the web would stutter a bit with any other activity, browser, network copying or even just local disk access with Explorer.

So I turned up Mark Rossinivich’s blog post about Vista’s multimedia playback and network access.  In a nutshell, Microsoft TRIED to improve media playback by adding a service (MMCSS) that increases the priority of the media thread.  OK so far, but MMCSS seems to clobber some network connections.  That I could live with, but it turns out that it’s not altogether bug free and the service itself can cause the media to stutter.  Um, wasn’t that the whole point of the damn service?  This all worked fine on XP, so why does Microsoft go trying to fix stuff that isn’t broken?

One reg hack and one disabled service later (thanks ZDNet) and the problem appears to be resolved.  I’m still uncertain why this issue would suddenly turn up since I don’t allow Windows Update to run automatically and haven’t installed anything recently (…oh wait, I did install Raw Therapee the other day, could it be?…nah).

Hey, We’re Walkin’

I was poking around in Flickr (sorry, forgot to note whose profile I noticed it in) and discovered WalkScore, a website that assesses walkability of where you live.  WalkScore uses Google Maps and generates a score based on what’s nearby.

My results:

• Current house in South Austin: 37 (A bit low IMO since there is an HEB just around the corner which could fulfill 75% of most people’s needs.)
• Last house in Podunk, FL: 6 (Admittedly a bit low too, with a grocery and a couple restaurants close.  There are worse, not a lot, but worse.)
• House I grew up in, Rockledge, Florida: 54 ! (Big points it seems for a close hospital, high school, and churches.)
• First house in NW Austin: 35 (Hrm, compared with current house, more stuff but further off.  Would have expected worse.)
• Second house in NW Austin: 60 (WTF?  Must be big points for having a bar and gas station close by.  It’s clear that there is no allowance for walking routes on busy roads with no shoulder/sidewalk.)

Update: According to the “How It Doesn’t Work” section, WalkScore only considers distances as the crow flies and does not understand pedestrian friendliness, bodies of water (and other impediments), and so forth.  That’s too bad since it heavily skews the results.  For example, our old house with the ‘60′ score had no decent walkable destinations.  There were plenty of closeby amenities, but driving was a necessity due to freeways and busy roads.  OTOH, I walked to the grocery store, video store, and restaurants several times at week at the house with the ‘6′.

WalkScore is teaming up with Zillow and a number of realtors to promote their rankings.  That’s great and I’m all for walkability, but I really do have some reservations about their rankings.  I hope people are just using this as a starting point.