The cutest thing ever April 28, 2009
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I make no apologies for this whatsoever. I saw this on BoingBoing.net (the greatest blog in the whole Wide Web World).
A Different Panorama Widget April 25, 2009
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Panorama of a Lake in Golden Gate Park
This widget is provided by Clevr.com. It can do the stitching as well (I haven’t tried that yet, but I think I will. I like how interactive the viewer is, and it seems more responsive than the one from Closr below). Naturally, you have to click on the picture before you can see the panorama at Clevr.com’s site, because I have the free hosting option at WordPress, and it is the reason my columns are so skinny and widgets cannot be used.
NASA-Ames Large Wind Tunnel April 19, 2009
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NASA-Ames has two wind tunnels. Here (click on the photo below) is a panoramic view of the larger one, about seven stories tall and about eight blocks long. It’s supersonic, and awesome.
Most of NASA-Ames is awesome. Why the heck doesn’t NASA get more funding?
A Panorama Widget April 15, 2009
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WordPress does not supply every kind of widget I would like. I take a lot of photographs with my extremely cheap, bought-on-sale-from–Radio Shack Samsung Digimax S630 6MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Advanced Shake Reduction Zoom (Black) (sale price: $89. I got one for my mother, too. That was last year; the link above goes to one on Amazon for $65). My only complaint is that they eat AA batteries at an alarming rate. These amazingly high-quality digital cameras encourage my snapping fetish, especially since I live in the most beautiful city in the US, as you can see from this panoramic view from the Veteran’s Administration hospital parking lot:
This view was made from 28 hand-held exposures stitched together with autostitch.exe to create the panoramic in a .jpg file, which was then fed to closr.it’s panorama viewer thingie. That produced a script which you can cut, and paste for your website…unless you have free hosting from WordPress, in which case you have to use the http link, as I did above. However, closr.it’s widget also can be supported on different bloggers: Facebook, Windows Live, Blogger, iGoogle, MyYearbook and Typepad. Give it a try.
Heather Angel April 14, 2009
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Any Google Image Search (GIS) will entertain the simple-minded (like me) for hours. I stumbled upon the works of Heather Angel on some science news site a while back and her name came up again this week. I couldn’t remember why her name was familiar, so I GISed it, and found this little treasure,
which reminded me both of Easter (can you see Our Saviour? Hint: he’s wearing a mask) and of this bear:
I am sure this housecat just wants to play.
The Last Supper April 10, 2009
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I suppose nobody needs to be told that the finest photo editing/compositing/forgery/plagiarism software to be had is Adobe Photoshop 7.0 [OLD VERSION], but did you know there is a software substitute for it that has the same basic capabilities (I said basic), the GIMP? It is available in popular platforms like Windows, Mac and Linux and it is free as in the mythical free beer.
And free beer is awesome.
Giant Brains Terrorize Mission District April 1, 2009
Posted by stuffilikenet in Awesome, Brain, Brilliant words, Geek Stuff, Mutants, Science, Toys.add a comment
Went to Noisebridge.org last night in the Mission. Awesome. About forty hackers of 60 attended their "organizational" meeting, if it can be called that. I had to walk through the shitty interesting neighborhood (see below)
Typical Mission Resident
to get there and was delighted to see on rounding the corner four punkish persons smoking dope. "Must be the place", I remember thinking. Inside, it was pleasantly crowded. Lots of under-35s discussing fascinating projects and stupid cult films. Hackable crap everywhere and puzzle-type games on one shelf (apparently they play Go on Thursdays and study Mandarin on Fridays). I chatted with a few of them and then the meeting proper started. Entirely driven by consensus, possibly the best decision was not to give the safety committee the power to vet activities. Awesome quote (half-remembered): "If we have to go through a committee and get approval, interesting dangerous stuff will not happen!" They found six grand for an additional space in the same building among the 40-50 people there, then inducted six new members (who were promptly sent on a beer run).
Noisebridge is too pricey for me to become a member ($80/month), but they let strangers come in and use the place, so I think I will show up Mondays and solder with Mitch Altman. I could always use a TV-B-Gone.
Really, if I spent all day trying to remember cool stuff I heard and cool people I met I wouldn’t get any of my drudgery done, and I have a wife and two kids. Get back to work, you.
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