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Personal Technology & Gadgets

Gigapan imaging

Well, there seem to be a number of ways of creating gigapixel panoramas. Possibly the easiest to use is the GigaPan robotic mount ($379), which was used to create the tremendous image of the Barack Obama inauguration, along with a Canon G10 (it doesn’t fit larger cameras).

Another way is to hack up a Orion TeleTrack  Altazimuth ($249) astronomic mount with a serial port ($15), bluetooth ($35) and use Papywizard software (free) running on a Nokia N800 ($135). You’ll still need Autopano or similar stiching software to put the whole thing together.

I’m tempted to try both!

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Personal

Neat stop motion music video


Oren Lavie – Her Morning Elegance
Uploaded by IgnitionVM
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Personal Technology & Gadgets

Cancelling my PC Magazine subscription

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PC Magazine’s latest issue (January 2009) contained the following interesting tidbit:

An Open letter to PC Magazine (Print) Readers,

The January 2009 issue (Volume 28, Issue 1) of PC Magazine will mark a monumental transition for the publication. It is the last printed edition of this venerable publication. Of course, as with any technology-related enterprise, this is not the end, but the beginning of something exciting and new.

Starting in February 2009, PC Magazine will become a 100-percent digital publication.

Well, that’s all nice and fun, except I read my magazines where and when I don’t want a computer. So this new distribution DOESN’T WORK FOR ME. Also, I have print publications (magazines) and online magazines. They each serve different purposes.

So, long and short, I’ll be calling them to cancel my subscription shortly and get a refund…. My subscription would have run out in September 2009.

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Personal

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

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Personal

Drugs…

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Personal

Validation


For some reason the original link stopped working…

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Personal Technology & Gadgets

Best WordPress plugins, ever

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Until someone figures out that this wants to be part of the core functionality, I highly recommend the excellent plugin, InstantUpgrade, by Alex Günsche. It rules. One click upgrades to your WordPress installation to the latest version. How easy is that? In case you’re wondering, yes, I did donate, as it’s an excellent, well-written, well-supported plugin that actually saves me from the laborious upgrade process for WordPress every time a new version comes out (once every two months!).

While I’m at it, I need to shout out the folks who wrote WPG2, the Gallery2 embedding plugin for WordPress. Not only has this been consistently upgraded to support both the latest WordPress and latest Gallery2, questions on the forum typically don’t go more than one day before the authors (ozgreg and capt_kirk) or some other helpful person answers them. Moreover, the answers are relevant without trying to be controlling (not the same experience as I’ve had asking questions of the Drupal G2 integration team, but that’s a story for another day). WPG2 happily and efficiently supports hybrid configurations like one G2 multisite installations, excellent rewrite support (really nice URLs!), and an awesome user interface that is integrated well with WordPress.

So with these extensions and plugins, I have InstantUpgrade for WordPress, self-upgrade for plugins to WordPress, and a fairly simple upgrade process for Gallery2. What more could I want? The same for Drupal (again, for another time, they could improve!).

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Personal

Nightshots

I took some night shots last night with the full moon out. It’s amazing how long the shutter stays open and how much like day the shots look. Check them all out here.

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Personal

November 2008 Time Lapse

Here’s a slightly more interesting timelapse. Shaun B. pulled out the night frames, and I speeded it up by a factor of two. As before, one frame per minute, played back at 60 fps.

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Personal

October 2008 Time Lapse

Out my window (this is my second attempt at time lapse, I’m starting to get the hang of it)