Here’s a preview of what my mosaic is all about! It’s still relatively low quality, cause I only have 30% of my resources gathered (ideally I want 200%, so I have some colors twice to limit repetition).
(Again, as a technical note, I started implementing a standard deviation test at the suggestion of my room mate to allow the program to automatically discard very poor quality images, where the colors vary excessively)
Recently I’ve started collecting images online (specifically off of the flickr website owned by Yahoo!). My goal is to collect roughly 65,000 images to build a mosaic out of them. I’ve only collected roughly 6000 so far.. so I don’t have nearly enough to began building a mosaic.
I have done one experiment on them, however. I’ve averaged all the pictures together (Resize them to 256×256, summed each pixel up and divided by the number of images). I obtained this:
As awesome as that is.. it appears mostly gray. You can see some hints of blues and reds in there, which I found interesting. I then took this, and simply normalized the image to obtain a more apparent version of how the colors interacted (Excuse the poor jpeg quality).
This is a much better image to describe what is going on. My [limited] explanation for what is going on is that darker colors tend to be on the bottom (floor, ground, etc), while faces and people tend to be in the middle, and sky and clouds tend to be on top.
I intend on doing more experiments with these images once I collect more of them. And once I get enough, mosaic time!
(On a more technical note, the image fetchers and processors have been programmed in python, using MySQL as a backend to keep track of the histograms of every image.. to make access time for creating a mosaic much faster).
I went camping two summer’s ago, but I just realized I never shared the panorama I made with the world. Me and a few friends spent a weekend in Crawford Notch, NH. We had some fun, but unfortunately it rained most of the time we were there.
The pano isn’t perfect.. there are some very visible flaws, i.e., one of the clouds moved while I was taking the picture. The flaws are only visible if you look for them, so don’t look too hard! 
Miro is an video feed aggregator. It’s main function is to take many RSS feeds, parse then, and extract any videos they might link to. This provides sort of a pseudo internet “TV”.
When I first downloaded it, I noticed it had hundreds of built in RSS feeds ready to use. It also had the ability to search for videos in all the feeds. So, I set it up to downloaded new movie trailers, some AdultSwim stuff (cartoons, such as Robot Chicken), and Linux.com video feeds.
So far I’m impressed with its design and its ease of use. There really is no downside to the program itself, I’m just not sure how useful it would be to me. I like the whole idea of automatically downloading new videos from the sources I specify, though, I’m not sure if this is a program I would use on a day to day basis.
The other downside, from a programming aspect, is I’ve found it has a tendency to crash from time to time, though it isn’t enough to convince me to stop using it for that single reason. It also gets clogged up during a massive video search sucking up CPU time to do the search.
So, if you are into a program to take all the videos in RSS feeds, download them, and then view them, then this program is for you. If you just watch some youtube videos from time to time, then check out the program, you may like it, or you may find that just hopping on youtube in firefox is easier than starting up this program.
Gimp is a photo/image manipulation program. It stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. One of the best things about Gimp is that it’s easy to use, but in the right hands it can be just as powerful as photoshop. One of it’s downfalls is it lacks some of the tools photoshop has. Photoshop’s blending is far superior to that of Gimp’s. However, it is still possible to do everything that photoshop does, you may just have to use other methods. Gimp also has an extensive selection of plugins to use that come standard, including many effects that are uncommon.
Gimp is a great program. It makes it even better that it’s 100% free. It works on Linux and Windows systems. Get it and try it!
Well, I’ve been lazy the past few days. It’s been tough with working so much.
Anyhow, the program of today is dvd::rip. As you may be able to tell it rips dvd’s! The program is for linux, and makes the whole process easy. Just stick in the DVD, start up the program. Rip the DVD to your computer, and then transcode it to whatever format you’d like (mpg, avi, etc). Isn’t that easy?
I won’t go over the exact details of how to use it, but it is a pretty intuitive program for someone technically experienced in the area. Even a little experience is enough.
So, check it out, it’s the only program I use for ripping dvds.
Coldplay recently released their new album Viva la Vida, which has some pretty good music on it. Personally, I think the best song on the album (from which the album gets it’s name – Viva la Vida), is the best song (which makes sense..). Unfortunately, I’ve found that the song is overplayed to the point where it will probably be it’s death. Not only has itunes adapted the song in a commercial of it, but my local radio stations (primarily WBRU) are playing this song multiple times a day.
Don’t get me wrong.. it’s a great song and Coldplay did a tremendous job at desining it.. but public media will kill it by overplaying it to the point where the vast majority of people get bored of it. This also happened to their song Clocks released a few years earlier.
That said, the itunes commercial that uses the song in the background is quite captivating. You can find a high quality version of this commercial below:
Today I want to feature a windows application. I haven’t heard of anyone else who knows about this application – but it is literally one of the best windows applications I’ve used in a while. The program takes opensource video converters, and combines in an easy to use graphical interface. No more searching for “avi to mpg” converters; just open up super, select the file and tell it you want it to save at as an mpeg. Easy as that. I’ve also used it a lot in converting videos to flv files to put on my website for online viewing.
This program is so useful, I’m surprised it hasn’t been featured on other websites. Despite it’s hard to use website layout, it’s quite good software.
You can view the webpage at erightsoft.com. If you can’t find the download page, don’t dispair.. it took me a little while to. That’s why I’m making a mirror.
Direct download from my sight: supersetup
Have fun!
Avidemux is a quick and easy linear video editor for linux. It’s a good program for simple full video effects processing, and appending multiple videos together. Personally, though, I use it for video conversion. It’s perfect for taking my AVI’s and making them DVD compatible so I can burn them to a DVD. Shrinking video size is another good use for the program. Overall, the program itself doesn’t have a lot of features, but it is a great interface for video conversion and simple video viewing.
The upcoming free game entitled Battlefield Heroes, by Electronic Arts, seems as though it has the potential to be very entertaining. What makes it seem entertaining? Well, just look at a screenshot.
The game is obviously purposefully cartoony, which gives it an almost childish sense of fun. After watching one of the trailers, all the vehicles seem to be (I may be wrong on this point, after all the sound could have been dubbed over the actual trailer) cartoony – with deaths sounding like an animated cartoon character just threw himself off a cliff. If you’ve ever played, and fell in love with, Battlefield 1942, you must at least try this game. It’s planned to be released sometime during Summer 2008 (This summer). If you play it, let me know what you think! As for me, I intend to get it the first day it comes out. It looks very entertaining.
The only downside, as far as I know right now, is that even though the game is free, you have to pay if you want additions to it. So, if you see that gun you’ve always wanted.. say goodbye cash.
Other than that minor downfall (Which seems reasonable – they have to make some money to keep people employed and servers running), it looks to be a very entertaining game.