weird video

if you’d like to start your week wirh a really weird video, then you might want to step over to pieceoplastic.com. jan posted a link to a video of belinda bedekovic who plays a weird instrument really weird. you can either watch the video as a flash-file or download the 32mb divx-encoded .avi. quicktime refuse to play it, so you might want to grab vlc, which is always the best candidate for those weirdo videos (and all formats :-).

as jan said it: holy mackerel!!!!

ps: why are the comments closed, piece?

finally!

finally i found a freeware panorama solution that works!

i confess: up to now i’ve used different unlegal ways to stitch my occasional panorama (read: cracked software), mostly because i just couldn’t cough up the steep amounts of money needed to buy one of these programs.

but now it’s over: last week i stumbled over HuginOSX, a program in the very early steps of development (e.g. experimental builds), but still useable for my needs.

HuginOSX is a free port of hugin to os x (who would have guessed…). hugin is a frontend to the excellent panorama tools by helmut dersch. the panorama tools are a set of scripts and plugins for different programs (like photoshop or graphic converter (both not free, so no option for me)) which give excellent results with panoramic images, and are free like in beer.

as i said before i am quite geeky, but definitely not the cli-person, i prefer to use a GUI for most of the stuff i do. that’s where HuginOSX steps in. you load in all the images you want, define control points (in quite a nifty way i must say: after you’ve defined one or two per image, the program is getting really accurate at suggesting the next matching control points), click on some buttons to optimize the panorama and to run the needed scripts and then can export the image in the desired format.

everything is still a bit rough on the edges – the toolbar is far away from useable, only flashes up for split-seconds – but it looks like HuginOSX is going to become a very important program for me (and my conscience :-).

for good results you should also use enblend, another free piece of software, which nicely blends the seams between the images. the combination of

leads to images like the one seen on the right (760kb .jpg, 3410*1186 pixels).

so i guess in the coming weeks i’ll have some panoramas for your delight and to help me master HuginOSX’ hurdles.

[1]: i couldn’t get enblend to work nicely with HuginOSX, so i stumbled over Xblend by Kevin Kratzke [2], another freeware program. Xblend is a front-end to emblend, which itself is also cli-heavy…

[2]: Kevin is the creator of PTMac, a shareware frontend to the PanoTools which i’ve used before, but as i said, i prefer freeware….

picture of the week 14

finally i got some time to sort through the pile of pictures i took on vacation in london. it’ amazing how many pictures you take, when you don’t have to care about any restrictions. the one below was taken in the tate modern, a very impressive old power-station converted by Herzog & de Meuron, two swiss architects. the main hall (see a panorama here) serves as the “main floor” for exhibitions and was only filled with some loudspeakers (by bruce naumann) (that exhibition was about as good as the link is…). nonetheless i was able to get quite a good shot of the eerie afternoon glow outside.

a bunch of new feeds

i just returned from the matt blogg+birthday meet which was really nice and interesting. it was really nice connecting the faces to the bits and bites, talking about tagging vs. keywords, map orientations and stuff like that.

i actually suspected to stay around an hour or so, but in the end i turned out to be home around ten at night.

guys and gals, it was really interesting to meet all of you, and i’m surely gonna add some more feeds to my news-reader.

btw: if you want to see the appropriate images, then go to my blog.ch-meet-tag on flickr. (so please tag your images accordingly, so they show up as a whole bunch under the general tag blog.ch-meet.

k700i and isync (or k700i & isync :-)

yesterday i went to prolong my contract with my mobile phone provider, so i was able to cheaply get a new mobile phone. after looking at the different mobiles compatible with isync i decided (mostly for monetary reasons) to get the Sony Ericsson K700i.

after trying to sync it with my computer i nearly gave up, because isync always crashed on me in the middle of the syncing process. after countless tries, deleting preference files, rewriting some preinstalled bundles and stuff like that isync notified me of a “duplication warning” with one contact i have in my address-book: the godfather of my sister is in my address book as: Renner Prename & Prename Wife.

that puny little ampersand made my isync crash every time. after i’ve edited the contact to “Renner Prename1 Prename2” everything worked like a charm.

just in case anyone out there has the same problem and is trying to find a solution…

now i just need to get file transfers going, that’s also a thing that doesn’t work. the transfer starts just right, but then dies with the error seen on the left. i can send files from the phone to the mac, but not the other way. really weird!

anyone any suggestions on how to remedy that situation, ’cause i’d really like to use a cool .mp3 as a ringtone…

rfid implant

you might have seen that flickr photoset which was linked from boingboing last week. a guy implanted a rfid chip in his hand to do different stuff with it, like opening a door lock, or starting his car. sounds crazy? it is, but it’s that kind of stuff i like. just imagine how cool it would be to touch the handlebar of your bike and it’s unlocked in that very same moment. no fiddling with keys and anything.

privacy concerns? not really, because the implant cannot be read if more than some inches away, which is surely the distance one would notice

now shannon posted an interview with Amal over at the bmezine. go and read it, it’s enlightening (or think what you want of it).

picture of the week 13

summer started, it’s true.

movie of the week 12

i spent the weekend in london with nina (just like other people did…) and didn’t have time to sort through all the pictures i took. can you remember the times when you took something like ten pictures on a whole weekend? ah, the good old analog times. but nonetheless i got a kick out of that little movie i quickly hacked together in imovie. it’s the tower bridge (not the london bridge!) opening for a ship to go through, with a little squeaky door effect i added. and if you recognize the song from which i took the opening riff, i’ll pay you a beer, the next time we meet! (tip: the song title contains london…)

(116kb .mov)

ps: i’ll surely share some pictures with you, but now i gotta run, nina has something to celebrate – she passed her exams!