Category Archives: Computing

Pratt & Whitney Engine

Posted on May 18, 2011 by thedude

Another Thea Render from a freely downloaded SketchUp model. Wow!

Posted in Computing, Design, Shameless Self-Promotion, Thearender | Leave a comment

Mo’ Rendering

Posted on May 18, 2011 by thedude

I’m having so much fun learning SketchUp and Thea Render!

Looking for excuses to create 3D objects, I decided to create a model of the public areas in our building. This could come in very handy, as we are currently working with a designer on updating the 80′s design. This is our building’s lobby with new colors applied.

Posted in Computing, Design, Loft Life, Shameless Self-Promotion, Thearender | Leave a comment

The Personal Genome Machine 360 View

Posted on April 25, 2011 by thedude

Swipe your mouse left and right for a 360 view.

This 3D Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine was rendered using TheaRender from a .3DS file exported from the original SolidWorks file. Raw PNG images batch resized with Irfanview, combined using a custom python script, (Thanks, Josh!) compressed into JPEG format with Photoshop and “animated” with the fabulous jQuery Reel plugin. Piece o’ cake!

Posted in Computing, Design, Shameless Self-Promotion, Thearender, Work | 4 Comments

World’s Largest Indoor Photo

Posted on March 31, 2011 by thedude

Click on the image below to view the largest indoor image ever.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m on a search for the largest outdoor Photo.

Posted in Computing, Panoramic, Photography | Leave a comment

Thea Render

Posted on March 5, 2011 by thedude




I’ve been playing around with what I consider to be a very fine renderer. Thea Render produces images with stiking realism. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. It supports slave rendering nodes. Slaves can be configured to cooperatively render a single image. This very cool feature yields excellent rendering speeds. I hope to have more 3D stuff to post soon!

Posted in Computing, Design, Thearender | Leave a comment

Updated Imagery on Google Earth

Posted on February 23, 2011 by thedude

I’m not sure when it happened, but it appears that the satellite imagery of Thule Air Base in Greenland has improved. Click on this Google Earth Placemark to have a look at my home for 17 months in ’85 to ’87. There are quite a few links to images of Thule landmarks, including a few by thedude.

Posted in Computing, Greenland | 3 Comments

Resistance is Futile…

Posted on February 4, 2011 by thedude

The brilliant marketing folks at Apple continue to suck me in with their amazing products. this time it’s the totally addictive App Store. This dangerous new icon snuck onto my dock a couple days ago, and I’ve already installed several free apps. I can’t help myself! It’s just so cool to see the app icon leap off the screen and onto my Dock. I even made a couple impulse buys. The scariest part? I have no regrets whatsoever.

Perhaps the best thing about the new App Store is the huge price reduction on Apple’s flagship image management tool – Aperture. Even thought the price for a pre-installed version is still $199, you can get Aperture for a mere 80 bucks at the App Store! The only difference I can find is that the App Store version does not include the sample library that comes with the DVD. This is probably due to its massive 7 GB size, and I can live without it. Also, if I’m reading the Apple license properly, I can install apps downloaded form the App Store on five machines I control. Wonderful!

Now, if Apple would just offer a non-glossy screen on it’s i7 iMac, I’d place my order today. Still, it’s only a matter of time. I will be assimilated.

Posted in Apple, Computing, Design | 3 Comments

EXIF and GPS Info in Google Chrome

Posted on February 2, 2011 by thedude

I hope by now you’re all using Google Chrome. It recently replaced Firefox as my browser of choice. I use it on my PC and my Mac because of its blazing fast speed, built-in Flash and PDF viewer and especially because of a couple of awesome plugins. One of my favorites is this excellent EXIF viewer. The extension displays EXIF info when hovering over images of a user-configurable size or greater. (I have mine set to 600 x 300 pixels.) It’s often nice to see what camera, lens and lens settings were used to make a shot. What sets this Extension apart from other EXIF viewers is the way it includes GPS info. When you hover over an image with embedded GPS info, you see something like the screen below. Hover over the red GPS icon to view a map displaying where the shot was taken.

These days more and more digital cameras include GPS coordinates along with the image data. The iPhone saves location info with every image, and soon every digital camera will do the same. With this nifty Chrome Extension installed, you can see not only how the shot was made, but where.

Posted in Computing | 3 Comments

Busy Boy

Posted on June 27, 2010 by thedude

Whew! What a month it’s been! The lack of blog activity only hints at how busy I’ve been. My new job is chewing up every free moment, and I love it. If you know me, you know that I’m happiest when I’m busy. The new job is a blast. I have control over lots of things I only wish I had in my previous job. I’m able to make an improvement almost every day. What a great feeling. I am sooo happy to have made the move.

And it’s not just work that’s keeping me busy these days. It’s also my home network, which I’ve been steadily upgrading. The network in my loft now surpasses most small business networks in speed and reliability. This morning I finally got WAN failover working between two networks – my blazing fast fiber connection to Paxio and a slower, but super-reliable DSL connection to Speakeasy. This will ensure that our uptime is as close to 100% as possible. Awesome!

Despite feeling busier than ever, I still manage to squeeze off a shot now and then.




That last shot was taken last night at the fabulous Walk in the Wild fund-raiser at the Oakland Zoo. I was pleasantly surprised to find the fabulous Matt Venuti hangin’ under a tree. If you haven’t yet heard the Venusians, I suggest you give them a listen. Very nice!

Posted in Computing, Just Blogging, Work | 5 Comments

An Exciting New Direction

Posted on May 21, 2010 by thedude

After ten great years at Affymetrix, thedude is moving on to what will hopefully prove to be greener pastures.

Posted in Bay Area, Computing, Shameless Self-Promotion, Work | 10 Comments

The Largest Image Ever Opened at thedude.com

Posted on May 19, 2010 by thedude

By far.

I have a new friend who is pushing the limits of image editing software. Here’s a glimpse into a 73,000 pixel wide image. Details to follow.

Posted in Bay Area, Computing, Contributed | 2 Comments

30 Inch Monitor, 100 Year Old Photographs

Posted on March 28, 2010 by thedude

One of the unfortunate aspects of owning a 30″ monitor is that, aside from thedude.com, there are very few web sites that post images at a resolution any wear near full-screen size. And, if you’re like me, you bought that 30″ monitor because you like images, right? There’s nothing quite like a super sharp image on a nice 30″ monitor. So, when I want to see the best of the best, where do I go? To shorpy.com, of course. The meticulous scans of old 8 x 10 images are custom-made for us large screen users. I check in often, and am always blown away. Check it out!

Posted in Computing, Design, Just Blogging, Photography | 5 Comments