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My first crop of vegetables this summer. A cucumber and some jalapenos.
I had picked a few cherry tomatoes before this, but my son ate them on the spot. We can use the peppers for our Mexican dinner tonight. Lots more to come. I have some awesome habaneros growing…
Check this out:
Behold! A refund! Hi, As you might have heard, Pixoria and our application Konfabulatorwere acquired by Yahoo! last week. Part of what's taking place isthat the Konfabulator product is now free. How cool is that?Well... not so cool because you already paid for it. Fear not! We're sending you this note because any customer thatpurchased Konfabulator 2.0 or later will receive a refund,and you're one of them. If you paid by credit card Kagi will credited back the originalpurchase amount by Friday. If you paid by check and you live in the USA, Kagi will besending you a check in the next seven days. If you paid by check or cash and you live outside of the USA,Kagi will send you a check in your local currency from a bank in your country. We think this is much cooler than sending you the Yahoo!key chain our lawyers wanted us to send you since we figured"who doesn't already have a Yahoo keychain?" We'd also like to thank you for the support you showed us whenwe were three guys working out of our houses. You rock. So please, enjoy the refund, and don't spend it all in one place! Regards, Arlo Rose, Ed Voas & Perry Clarke PS: If you have questions about the refund process, pleasecontact help@kagi.com and they will answer any questionsyou may have concerning the refund coming your way.
Neat.
I took Apple’s H.264 video codec for a test drive tonight. The new codec has two main strengths. It looks good and it generates small files. I installed the Quicktime 7 Public Preview for Windows (which is my platform) and registered to get the Pro license ($30 I think). Once you go Pro, you can export movies and enjoy some of the other advanced features like viewing videos full-screen (I know, that’s not so advanced).
My goal was to use the codec so I can send my dad better quality video than the video I’ve been sending him so far. Actually, I don’t send him video since he only has dial-up and I figure it would take him way too long to play anything I could send. Goals are goals so I pushed forward.
I first wanted to test the new H.264 codec against the MPEG4 codec I’ve been using. I used my infamous “Dinosaur Battle” video where my kids duke it out pretending they are battling dinosaurs. The first try was a high-quality half-size video at the full framerate of 29.97fps (I read somewhere that it’s not exactly 30 because 29.97 eliminate some problems with color that would result it the framerate were exactly 30).
(click to enlarge)
The file was a raw AVI from my Canon GL2 camcorder. The raw DV file was pretty noisy due to the low light so I wasn’t starting off with anything special. You can plainly see that the clip on the left has a lot less noise, better color, and better contrast. Guess what? It’s about 20MB smaller too! The H.264 file was 47.7MB and the MPEG4 file was 66.4MB.
To create the video, I simply dragged in the AVI file into my QuickTime window and pulled down the “File” menu and selected “Export.” I picked a filename and clicked on “Options” where I was presented with this screen:
I clicked on “Settings” in the Video section and selected these settings:
(click to enlarge)
That’s it.
Now for my goal. I figure a quarter-sized video at maybe 15fps would do the trick. I limited the data rate to 56Kbps, which assumes that my dad will actually get the theoretical maximum bandwidth. We all know that won’t happen so I assume he’ll have to wait while things get buffered.
The resulting file rendered much more quickly since there were a lot less bits to crunch. It weighed in at a miniscule 1.71MB. When I opened it up I was disgusted by an unrecognizable blob of goo. See for yourself:
Ok, I thought to myself. Let’s more double the data rate to ISDN-like speed of 128Kbps. Dad will have to download and save this locally. Ah, the file was awesome. It was only 2.30MB and looked great (albeit a bit small):
To be complete, I rendered an MPEG4 version of this small file. It rendered much quicker, like 10x quicker. The file size was 2.58MB. Here’s a frame that we’re familiar with:
This frame is certainly not as clear and the color definition is definitely worse. The file size differences are less meaningful at these small file sizes, but the H.264 codec is still the clear winner.
In conclusuon, I don’t think a 2–3MB download will kill someone on a dial-up. This is especially true if you provide it as a web link instead of an e-mail attachment. In any case, I think my mission was quite successful.
This is huge, for me, Bloglines has gone mobile. A colleague sent me the link just now and I don’t know how long it’s been out there. There is probably as RSS feed that I should be subscribed to to be moreup on this kind of stuff. Well, now I have more time to read feds like that since my PocketPC phone supports EVDO.
My train ride got that much more interesting.
One of my colleagues just sent this to me and it was mind-numbing enough to pass on here.
If you go to this link, you will find a way to find the nearest cross-street to any address in NYC, aside for some of the lower streets below 8th.
If you can remember that, you are probably better off remembering to bring a map to your next city outing! Wow. I wonder if cab drivers memorize this?
It also reminds me of the Doomsday Algorithm which I actually did memorize for one year… a few years back. However, the NYC thing is worse than that since there are more numbers to remember for the street system.
I don’t know how I missed this launch since MSN Virtual Earth has some really neat layering features!
I’m a Konfabulator user and saw today that Yahoo! bought Konfabulator. I’m pretty happy for the folks over at Konfabulator, I’m sure they’re pretty happy. I’m also excited about getting my refund!
Anyway, this caused me to follow a link back to th site and smack into a link I never saw before… a script to turn a layered photoshop file into a Konfabulator widget… plus lots more.
I’ve said this a thousand times, but I’m really anxious to see an Avalon-powered Konfabulator tool. Baby steps…
I saw this ad on the train.
It’s kind of hard to tell in this picture, but the dude’s left hand has no wedding band and the woman’s right hand does has a wedding band. Now, they could not be married or maybe they lost weight and had to switch the rings up. Assuming that’s not true, this picture is a fake! They reversed it. If they did reverse it, which seems likely, then the dude’s heart is on the WRONG SIDE. Aliens!
I’ve been working at a feverish pace lately and the failure of the mouse cursor to do exactly what I want it to do has been met with increasing frustration. So, I decided to see what I could do about it.
I went on over to newegg.com and searched for mousepad. Lots came up. I ordered a few different brands at a few different prices. By and large, the pads were only $10–$15 each. Then I saw an Steelpad S&S for $30. Hmmm. Ok, I’ll try it.
When they arrived I opened the box and saw a few cloth mousepads curled up and the plastc mouse pads shoved in like sardines. They weren’t damaged but they were obviously treated with disdain by the packager. Then, I saw the Steelpad which seemed to be treated with exceptional care. It had it’s own box and was surrounded by its own layer of packing material. Oh my, now this is interesting.
Inside the Steelpad’s box was a black nylon carrying case suitable for pack-and-play for your next LAN party. Inside the case was the mousepad itself.
Wow. It’s a medium-large format measuring 10 2/3 x 12 2/3 inches. This is not as large as some of the other pads I got. Some were tabloid sized, 11x17 inches. It’s jet black having only the Steelpad logo on the lower-right-hand corner. The pad has a sticky bottom and it was protected in shipping by a piece of crisp brown vellum.
I removed the Steelpad from it’s case and placed it on my desk, quickly chucking my old faithful hard-plastic pad I got from the Guggenheim Museum Store (looks like the one I got is out of print since they only now have these).
I took a breath and started to glide by mouse over the pad’s surface. I knew in that moment that I was returning the other mousepads. They were worthless in comparison. The surface of the Steelpad S&S was profoundly slick and the optical tracking was perfect in every way. The large format of the pad makes working on a large 24 inch widescreen monitor a breeze since I don’t have to lift up and pull back as often.
I must admit that large movements are not as significantly improved as small movements. When I need to do a lot of quick small gestures, the slick nature of the glide makes the effort almost zero. Some of my physics friends can probably describe the pad as having a low coefficient of friction. At high velocities, friction becomes not much of an issue. At low velocities it takes more effort to overcome it. Thus, the pad’s low coefficient of friction makes small low-velocity movements much easier than with a traditional mousepad.
Overall, I gove the Steelpad S&S migh highest rating. If you go over to the manufacturer’s website, you can even see some more expensive models. I imagine they are just bigger. Other than size, in what ways this pad can be improved upon is a mystery to me.
Happy mousing!
TimBray has posted an excellent comparison between Atom 1.0 and Rss 2.0… as the title of this blurb suggests.
From what I can tell from skimming that document, Atom seems like a properly executed xml application while rss is kind of half-assed.
Uncfortunately, the comparison didn’t offer me much of a clue as to what all of this means. If the two standards are destined to compete, and it seems like they are, my prediction is that rss 2.0 is good enough and will prevail.
None of this matters to the end user, of course, since the user is as uncaring on what the format of the feed is as they are for what flavor of XML their favorite web site uses.
However, it seems to me that since Atom 1.0 is more XML-compliant than Rss 2.0, perhaps it will turn into a more fertile platform for extension. Perhaps tools that suck up Atom 1.0 feeds will light up their user interfaces with a little more magic as if they are energized by the extra content or flexibility of Atom.
More reading to follow…
I got my battery replacement kit in today. It cost $30 including shipping. I dont think I’ll have time to drop by the Apple Stores near me so this was my best bet.
The instructions were tiny. I swear you had to be 1 inch tall to read them properly. The entire procedure took about 20 minutes and it was really easy. Still, there are points in the process where you can destroy your iPod if you’re too hasty.
I turned my backlight back on and I’ll report on the new battery life. Wioth the old battery, things got so bad I had to permanently turn off the backlight and charge it while I was at work since my 1 hour morning commute drained more than half the battery life.
Now I can listen to more podcasts than ever and I’ll be able to read the title and switch podcasts while in the East River Tunnel, a place where the lights typically dim…
This is the revolution folks, brought to you by Michael Swanson. This is how we’ll all develop the presentation layer for apps. First on Windows, then everywhere. It’s the only way to do it and we’re long overdue. Subscribed!
Courtesy Chris Sells blog.
Technorati tags: xaml, illustrator
I read an excellent blog called Drawn! The Illustration Blog and they just posted an entry talking about a new Photoshop Podcast hosted by Photoshop World. I’ve never been to Photoshop World so I thought I’d walk on over there and see what’s up.
It’s a very elaborate site which looks like it’s dedicated to a conference and expo of the same name. Something else I never knew about.
Then I went searching for the Podcast since I’m a huge fan of Photoshop. The link and information are on the right sidebar labeled Photoshop Radio. I thought, cool, I’ll hit my “Subscribe with Bloglines” button and the magic will happen.
No feeds were found. Please verify that the website publishes an RSS feed.
What the?
No feed. Well, I’m sure the Podcast has a feed somewhere, I mean Wikipedia says, “ Podcasting is a method of publishing files via the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically.” if you just post a single mp3 on your site with no feed I would call that a PodBlip or something.
I can’t even listen to the one mp3 that’s up there if there is no feed. Something primal is stopping me from doing it.
Technorati tags: photoshop
Does anyone know if there is a Firefox extension which enhances the built-in Find/Search features in Firefox? It would be particularly useful to simply allow the “Find in this page…” feature to specify a regular expression. You could then inch through the document that way and/or highlight matching terms.
Of course, the flowing nature of a web document would provide some challenges to regex, or at least the user’s expectation on how it should work.
Take for example the beginning of line and end of line expressions. What do they mean on a web page which can flow differently based on how wide the window is? If you’re viewing a log via a web server than the meaning is clear, you break on newlines/line breaks. If you’re viewing a complicated web page, you’re probably better off breaking on paragraph marks or DIV tags. The user might now be aware of these and perhaps expects to break searches as they are visually layed out. If that’s realistic, it would mean a simple checkbox in the UI (but perhaps more challenging to implement from the extension API as I’m not sure it’s clear to the extension writer where the soft breaks happen). Otherwise, the UI would remain pretty much as simple as it stands now.
Reading Jon Udel write, “… making the browser a better writing instrument.“ I see clearly that technology like Mozile should be the defactor standard for Wikis. No more editing Wiki’s as text using obscure formatting codes, you edit them as XHTML. Better yet, use technology like Ajax (or Atlas?) and you dynamically update the page on the server… even seeing live updates by other users.
I have a pretty extensive Wiki on my site pretty much dedicated to gaming, here. I use the MoinMoin Wiki. It’s a great Wiki tool but it’s an aging tool and due for an update. Incorporating Mozile-like technology with Ajax-like dybamic updating would be killer.
UPDATE: Actually, I can’t be the first to think about this. Does anyone know of a Wiki that employes these techniques? I’d be tempted to switch as long as the backend runs on Debian Linux.
From Jon Udell’s del.icio.us affinity feed: old user interfaces here: http://www.aresluna.org/guidebook/index.
Cool stuff.
Now playing: George Winston - Tramarack Pines
