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October 31, 2006
Halloween
Posted by thedude at 4:27 PM | Comments (1)
October 29, 2006
Something to Feel Good About
Yesterday we attended the end-of-season horse show at the Xenophon Therapeutic Center in Orinda. This little organization pairs disabled children with specially trained horses. Kelly has been volunteering her time at Xenophon for two years.
I was not sure what to expect on my first visit. What I found was truly beautiful and inspirational. Many of the children could not have gotten on the back of their horse without the help of two or three gentle volunteers, but once in control of their horse, everything changed. Their beautiful, smiling faces tell the rest of the story better than I ever could.
Posted by thedude at 8:41 AM | Comments (4)
October 28, 2006
Everything in a Single File!
Just a quick note to ask you all to take a look at Tiddlywiki. I'm busy working on images for two other blog entries, but I just could not wait to tell you about this. When you view the TiddlyWiki site, bear in mind that you are viewing a single file. A rather small file, in fact - one that easily fits on your USB key. Here's another example of a single file web tool thingie. Very interesting...
Oh - and the always-fashionable Olive dropped in. :)
Posted by thedude at 3:57 PM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2006
Warping Space with a Digital Camera and PhotoShop
A new acquaintance inspired me to follow through on an idea I've had for a long time. The idea is appealing to me because it fulfills a real need, but also because it gives me an excuse to combine some of my more obscure toys and skills to produce something unique.
The idea was to find a better way to create rack elevations, or maps for server rooms. A map like this has many uses but, its usefulness is directly linked to its timeliness. Most server room drawings are created in Visio or some other complex application, and take days or even weeks to complete, so they normally get built once - or not at all, and then never get updated. I made this map in an hour using simple tools - a fisheye lens and the PTLens plugin for PhotoShop. The results - what appears to be a shot of 5 server racks taken from 15-20 feet away is in fact completely impossible. There are just three feet between rows in our server room.
To create this illusion, first I shot 5 images with my fisheye lens in portrait orientation. This allowed me to capture our eight foot racks from floor-to-ceiling from a distance of two feet! Here's the simple rig I used to shoot these. The unretouched results look like this.
Time now for the fabulous PTLens. I have raved about this indispensable plugin (or standalone app) before. It allows me to take those wildly distorted images and flatten them out like this. Magic!
See where this is going now? A little perspective correction and some crude stitching in PhotoShop produces the results you see in the finished image. It's not perfect, but I'd say it's way more than good enough! Way cool.
In the office, I created an image map in ImageReady and associated it with this image. Viewed in a browser at work, many of the servers are actaully links. The links activate something associated with the particular machine - a managemant page, Remote Desktop connection - some links even make an ssh connection and pop up a terminal windows. Fabulous!
Upon close inspection of the full resolution images, I can see that there are one or two things I'll do differently next time. I will focus manually and use a string to position the lens the exact same distance from the gear in each shot. These things will make for a sharper panorama and will make stitching easier.
Also, while working on this entry I came across this excellent article about using Panorama Tools with the Nikkor 10.5 mm fisheye lens. I'm sure this info would apply to any digital camera with any extreme wide-angle.
Posted by thedude at 8:34 PM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2006
New and Improved!
MyPublisher released a new version of their cool book-making software. The new version has a few key enhancements. First of all, BookMaker 2.0 looks much more like a book. You now also have the ability to print pages with black backgrounds. YAY! There are other new features, but these two alone make the upgrade worthwhile. Get it!
The other huge development is that Internet Explorer FINALLY displays transparent PNG files properly! Have a look at this page to see what that means for your humble blogger. If the header looks right, (transparent, not a big white block) your browser is displaying the transparent PNG file properly. This should finally work on all modern browsers. Scroll up and down the page. Look closely at the header. It is truly transparent! This means I can use a single header on all of my pages with different "fixed" backgrounds. I will no longer need to fake transparency - I'll have the real thing! Say hallelujah!
So, if you do not see a cool transparent header with the background image exposed below it on this page, for cryin' out loud, please install (in order of preference) Opera, Firefox or now even IE7.
Posted by thedude at 9:19 PM | Comments (2)
October 22, 2006
Monticello Vineyards
We were lucky enough to be invited to Napa valley for a private wine tasting at the Monticello winery on one of the nicest days of the year. Our Indian Summer started late - today will probably be the last 84 degree day this year. Thanks again to Scott and Justyna for the invitation!
Wow. Napa Valley sure is beautiful in the fall!
Posted by thedude at 8:03 PM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2006
Not Entirely My Idea
I really wish I could take credit for the redesign idea, but it was the always inspirational Before and After Magazine that made me do it. The latest issue contains a story about this attractive site. What peaked my interest is that this design clearly rewards people with a lot of screen real estate. My friends with 24" displays and Opera are gonna see exactly what I mean. Now would be a good time to press F11, Grant, Orlando.
I'm planning to use one image a month from my site as a 1920 pixel wide background. I already have two or three additional backgrounds mocked-up. With a nifty PhotoShop template, (9 megabyte .psd file) and sed, it's simple to create them and to swap them out of my blog. There are three pieces, the background, a higher resolution header JPEG (to preserve the look of the font) and a GIF footer.
Hope you like it!
Posted by thedude at 9:43 PM | Comments (2)
October 19, 2006
Another Cool Optical Illusion Site
You know I love this stuff. I want to get the building's elevator floor painted just like this.
Posted by thedude at 8:19 AM | Comments (1)
October 18, 2006
Musical Keywords
The best thing ever to happen to computers is Adobe PhotoShop. Ask anyone who uses it every day. It's mind-boggling.
The second best thing is Winamp. Instant access to my vast music collection is a godsend. Winamp was such a breakthrough when I first saw it that I immediately sent my ten bucks to Justin Frankel. Others have tried, but nothing beats Winamp for it's simplicity, (old style skins, of course!) and functionality. With Winamp and any reasonable search engine, I can easily fill an evening with an off-the-wall playlist of songs I and my wife (mostly) like. Even a tool as lame as Windows search allows me to scan my MP3's and instantly create playlists of songs containing words like "Friday" or "shadow" or tonight's list - "road". (A good one!)
Windows search is a bit lame, so I use a web frontend called Andromeda. It's old, definitely un-fancy, and works prefectly. I registered it too.
Oh - and the third best thing ever to happen to computers is the Internet.
Posted by thedude at 8:10 PM | Comments (2)
October 8, 2006
Congratulations, Steve & Debra!
Kelly and I had a wonderful time at your wedding. The 20's theme was an excellent idea - everyone looked great!
I now have hundreds of photos to retouch, color-correct and otherwise perfect in PhotoShop before they'll be suitable for display on thedude.com. I'll be busy for days. I'll post images as I finish them - that means in no particular order.
Now, where were we? Oh yeah, some people got married and then...
(I DO have pictures of the actual marriage, but they're not my favorite shots. Everyone gets kind of somber and sometimes even weepy during the ceremony - by far the dullest part of any wedding. No movement - few smiles - let's just skip it for now.)
Posted by thedude at 2:02 PM | Comments (2)
