October 2006 Archives
I fell off the wagon. Its been almost 2 weeks since my last run! Geez. One note of warning for those whose jogging schedule is less then regular - don’t start up again if you’re listening to a lot of high energy industrial-techno-ebm style music on your music player! I really over did it today because of the tunes. However, it is very helpful to have the music, keeps your mind off the fact that you still have X more minutes to go.
Conor’s toilet training is going well. And you, i kind of hate calling it “toilet training”. But you, maybe i just have to look at it differently. I do training, the running, why can’t i just frame it for him like that? Go Conor! Anyway, for only being at the start of the 3rd week of doing it in the toilet/potty, he is doing extremely well. Go Conor!
Over the past 2 weekends Conor has been able to see all his grand-parents (and one grand-aunt!). Its great that he has such a good relationship with them all, and that they are close enough for him to see frequently. Except of course that he get spoiled by them, but i guess that’s really the function of grand-parent-hood, no? Heh.
Rearranged the house over the weekend too. We are trying to minimize the amount of stuff we have. Its hard going. Although we are getting rid of enough books to start our own library - if you are interested in some free books, let me know and you can come by to check them out and take as many as you want! Anyway, the rearranging went very well, thanks in part to having used Sketch-up to model the house and try out a variety of setups and furniture layouts. It was very easy to use, and really did help when we were looking for new storage stuff to be able to quickly model it and place it into the room. Technology rocks!
“Google cannot be anyone’s friend. Companies are no friends, they are not people and thus no friends. I cannot stand it when people use human emotions in connection to legal entities and/or marketing constructions.” lizvlx from Ubermorgen Interview
The whole interview is quite interesting, and the projects that Ubermorgen have done are pretty amazing.
So, what is up with the new Playstation’s advertising? Eglinton Station is, literally, plaster with ad’s for it. And the thing i take away from all these ads? Wow, is it ever grey. Like, does the thing have any colour? Any life to it? Could it be any more flat and boring? Are the games going to be as flat and colourless as the ads?
Anyway, i’m in a mood.
But its not, sorry. Its things like this that make me despair for the human race.
“Despite an international uproar over Abu Ghraib, Congress spent only twelve hours on hearings on the issue. During the Clinton administration, by contrast, the Republican Congress spent 140 hours investigating the president’s alleged misuse of his Christmas-card greeting list.” Rolling Stone
Over the weekend there was quite a bit of TV watching done. Most of it seemed to be rather, well, dark. First was the show “Dexter”, about a serial-killer - no surprise that that was less then light, and the new Battlestar Galactica, which is still rather gritty. All good, but, well, not uplifting. Anyway, last night was the start of the new season of Dr. Who.
And i just couldn’t do it. It was too … bright and happy, at least in the opening 5 minutes. I need time to get back to happy and bright, i’m still stuck in grittyness!
The servers were down for a bit today as i’m working in the basement rearranging things. Everything should be up and running with our usual quality of service… whatever that may be!
I have so many “urban” photos, i need to spend some time with them, make them into something other then a lot of shots of utility poles. I also have many shots of the sky and clouds, which i’d like to take some time with too. Sigh. Just not enough of it!
Ok, so its not a tonne of new photos, but its 2. And they are panoramas. The first one is of the beach at long point from when we were camping this summer. The second one is of algonquin park which we were just at last weekend.
I used Autostitch to create the images, and, for a free tool (windows only), it pretty much rocks. The original’s of these images are in the 10 and 12 megapixel range. There are several commercial products which use the underlining algorithims from Autostitch, here are two which seem to get the best reviews:
- Calico for OSX
- Autopano Pro for Windows.
Autopano, at 99 Euro is expensive, but it does some amazing stuff. Having played with Autostitch, i’m tempted to buy Autopano for some of the other features, like the multi-exposure stuff.
