First, I uploaded a bunch of pictures from New Bern, where we spent Labor Day weekend with the in-laws.
Second, I’ve had the opportunity at work to play with Seadragon, a plugin-free library for displaying very high resolution images. It works just like Google Maps, only sexier. (Check out the example on the page I just linked too—zoom in on the top-left-most set of pictures in the big picture.) As I mentioned before, I’ve been using Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor to stitch panoramas together lately, and it has the ability to export images as tile sets. I decided to try it out, and the results are below.
First, I gave it some images of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park that I took on my honeymoon. It does a much better job of stitching the pictures together than Photoshop did five years ago (see the old version for comparison). It somehow adjusts the brightness of each image based so that you don’t get some parts of the image darker or brighter than the others (even if you took every image in auto mode). You might also note that there are two Stephanies in this picture—she moved between pictures. This one is 24.0 megapixels:
Next up is a 103.7 megapixel panorama of Oak Island, NC, which I took at the beach in June:
And lastly, I have a 138.1 megapixel image of the Tryon Palace gardens in New Bern, NC, which I took last weekend:
That last pano is fantastic. Did you use a tripod, or do it all freehand? And did you take the multiple shots in landscape or portrait orientation? How many pieces were there total?
Jonah- There were 64 photos, all taken in landscape orientation and zoomed all the way out. I took them freehand, just standing still and spinning. I took them in three levels—first, 29 pictures looking horizontally, then 21 pictures looking up about a 25 degree angle from the horizon (I’m guessing), and lastly 14 pictures looking down at something like a 40 degree angle from the horizon. All the individual pictures were 15.1 megapixel source images, so MS ICE had about 963 megapixels of data to stitch together. (So I guess about 825 megapixels were discarded.)
I think I just participated in a Turing test. I had a problem ordering a new cell phone from Sprint, so I did an online chat with a customer service representative. They said they would e-mail me a transcript, but they haven’t yet. Since the chat was in a Flash object, I couldn’t select the text to copy and paste it, so I just combined two screenshots, and added some annotations.1
1I suppose I could have used OCR to get it into text format, but I didn’t feel like it.
Literal-Minded here: I’ve thought all the episodes in the last month or two have been really good, very satisfying. I loved having Hurley trying to write The Empire Strikes Back, and then to top it off, having that in the episode where Miles’s father is revealed.
It’s a satirical news story from The Onion, about a video game called “Close Range.” I would summarize it more, but I think it’ll be funnier for you if I don’t.
I recently discovered Pandora.com. Basically, it’s internet radio. You put in some bands or songs that you like as seeds to your “stations”, then it plays stuff it thinks you’ll like based on those seeds. As it plays songs, you can give them a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to let it know further what your tastes are. And it’s all free and legal and the only ads are on-screen ads (i.e. no audio ads that you have to listen to).
I was skeptical at first, but I’ve been using it for a while and I’ve been surprised at the number of times it has presented me with a song from a band I’ve never heard of but which I actually liked. For someone who hasn’t purchased a CD (or acquired new music in any form, really) in something like three years, this is a pretty great way to find something new to listen to. And it’s much better than real radio.
(I’m going to start ranting now.)
I really don’t understand why radio stations insist on playing the same twenty or thirty songs over and over again. With the internet being around, music distribution is so much different than it was even ten years ago. The industry can support so many more bands, because music can be recorded, produced, and distributed digitally at a fraction of what it used to cost. It seems like a radio station could easily fill a 5-hour rotation with only music recorded in the last year that is decent that fits the station’s genre, without repeating any songs. Not that I have anything against music that is more than a year old; I’m just saying there is lots of music being made all the time which is at least decent, so I don’t see why I have to hear crappy Nickelback or Papa Roach songs every time I turn on the radio in my car.
If you haven’t seen something like it before, this is pretty cool. It is a hacked Super Mario World level that can be completed without touching the controller. As far as I can tell, it uses only elements which were already in the game (except it looks like they modified Yoshi egg blocks so that Mario automatically jumps when he hits one). This one is a really impressive one because it is like 11 minutes long and choreographed with anime music. Enjoy.
Any idea how you go about even editing Super Mario Bros. maps like this? It’s certainly on an emulator, but there must be tools available for making your own maps. I’ve never looked into that kind of thing, but it might be fun to try.
There’s at least one level in the original Super Mario World (one of the Butter Bridge maps, if I remember correctly) where you could ‘auto-play’ your way through it if you had a cape and Yoshi. You just run, fly up, and coast to the right through the entire map, bouncing off of various creatures the whole way. Good times.
A hilarious blog I discovered a few months ago is Stuff White People Like. I’ve been meaning to mention it here for a while, but a good post last week, entitled Being Offended, reminded me I needed to share. Here is an excerpt:
Naturally, white people do not get offended by statements directed at white people. ... As a rule, white people strongly prefer to get offended on behalf of other people.
It is a poorly guarded secret that, deep down, white people believe if given money and education that all poor people would be EXACTLY like them. In fact, the only reason that poor people make the choices they do is because they have not been given the means to make the right choices and care about the right things.
And for a great cross-section of the kinds of idiots that reside on the internets, try to read some of the comments! (I say “try to” because very few people will actually succeed.)
As you probably know, there was a total lunar eclipse last night, visible from most of the continental United States. I tried my hand at photographing this event, and I think I got reasonably decent results, given my lack of a telephoto lens. I used a tripod and the delayed-shot feature on my camera1. I got half a dozen photos out of the event, which you can find on our photos page. You can also see in all the pictures Saturn (down and to the left of the moon) and the star Regulus (above and slightly to the left).
While I was looking for information on the eclipse yesterday, I found NASA’s solar eclipse website, which has maps of every solar eclipse from 2000 BC to 3000 AD, in 20-year blocks. It looks like I only get three chances to see a solar eclipse in my lifetime, assuming 1) I live in this general area of nation for my whole life; 2) I don’t want to travel more than 3-4 hours to see one; and 3) I live to be at least 96 years old. There was a partial solar eclipse on May 30, 1984 which passed right over my hometown, but I guess I was too two to care at the time. (See the map of 1981-2000 eclipses.2) However, on Monday, August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will pass by very close to where I currently live. I’m thinking on that day I’ll take the day off work and head out to somewhere in the western North Carolina mountains to see the eclipse. If anyone wants to join me then go ahead and mark your calendars.
The third opportunity for me to see an eclipse will be May 11, 2078. I will be 96.5 years old then, so I’m not sure if I’ll still care (assuming, of course, that I’m still alive, which is statistically improbable).
One last thing that I couldn’t think of a way to segue into: there is an interesting story about how Christopher Columbus used a lunar eclipse to save his life. Proof once again that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
1That was a tip from someone I work with for getting clearer pictures out of a mediocre camera. With a delayed shot you don’t have to worry about the camera shaking, because you won’t even be holding the camera during the exposure. 2I seem to recall an eclipse happening when I was in middle school. I know it didn’t get dark or anything, but I think it got a little bit dimmer outside. This must have been the May 10, 1994 partial solar eclipse, although the path of the eclipse was several hundred miles from North Carolina.
I had to devote a small part of my blog to spreading the word about The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. I wouldn’t be doing this except for the fact that you probably haven’t heard of it. It’s a movie about Steve Weibe’s efforts to beat “Gamer of the Century” Billy Mitchell’s 1982 world record Donkey Kong high score, and the efforts of Billy and his posse to stop him. It’s a documentary, but it’s still really entertaining and hilarious. I won’t spend time repeating things you could read on variousothersites. I’ll just suggest that you go see it if you can find a theater that’s showing it (you currently only have two options in North Carolina...). Failing that, save it in your Netflix/Blockbuster queue so that you can watch it whenever it comes out on DVD.
you’re the best around, nothing’s gonna ever keep you down
I would have recommended this movie to you months ago if you hadn’t told me all my indie picks would just fall on deaf ears. Maybe you should give Rocket Science a shot too?
Well I have historically hated a lot of indie movies that you like. But I did listen to one of your indie music suggestions (Silversun Pickups, who I like a lot now). :)
I don’t categorically reject indie films though.. I really liked Eternal Sunshine, Garden State, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Thank You For Smoking, and Little Miss Sunshine. (I think those are all considered indie films..) But I could come up with a list two or three times that long of indie movies I didn’t care for.
As you probably know, 
I had to devote a small part of my blog to spreading the word about The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. I wouldn’t be doing this except for the fact that you probably haven’t heard of it. It’s a movie about Steve Weibe’s efforts to beat “Gamer of the Century” Billy Mitchell’s 1982 world record Donkey Kong high score, and the efforts of Billy and his posse to stop him. It’s a documentary, but it’s still really entertaining and hilarious. I won’t spend time repeating things you could read on 
September 13, 7:29 pm
That last pano is fantastic. Did you use a tripod, or do it all freehand? And did you take the multiple shots in landscape or portrait orientation? How many pieces were there total?
September 13, 9:04 pm
Jonah- There were 64 photos, all taken in landscape orientation and zoomed all the way out. I took them freehand, just standing still and spinning. I took them in three levels—first, 29 pictures looking horizontally, then 21 pictures looking up about a 25 degree angle from the horizon (I’m guessing), and lastly 14 pictures looking down at something like a 40 degree angle from the horizon. All the individual pictures were 15.1 megapixel source images, so MS ICE had about 963 megapixels of data to stitch together. (So I guess about 825 megapixels were discarded.)