Interesting: December 2007 Archives

I returned home from Houston to this. Three of my malibou lights were destroyed. I wonder why they do this?

Believe it or not, it is a candy dispenser. Penguin poop!

Wow. It is amazing how much progress has been made on certain computer fronts. I came across this article about serving your media files with Amazon's S3 service and decided to take the plunge. I have been reading a lot of good things about S3. Like how you can treat it as a remote backup location. Like how SmugMug uses it under the covers to store their data. And now this article. Apparently you can store any file and S3 will just serve it up.

And it really was easy. Well almost. Signing up for the service is a snap. I used S3Fox to transfer my images over. My first problem was realizing that the default ACL was that only you could read (or write) the file. So I had to change all of the ACLs such that everyone could at least read the files. But I don't think that S3Fox is designed for as many files as I had. I had 1920 files and only the first 1000 had the correct ACLs. I finally got frustrated enough to write a Python script to change the ACLs of any file that did not have public access.

Then I had to add a new subdomain that would resolve to S3 domain. That was very easy with zoneedit.com! I love zoneedit. And its a free service if you are a relatively unknown person like myself.

Next up was changing over 700 entries in Movable Type. I had to change all img's and href's to the new location. Fortunately, MT has a global search and replace feature! And it worked for 90% of the entries. I had to fix a couple after MT borked them.

So tell me if you notice anything different. Or broken.

My Aunt sent me some old photos in her Christmas card. Old memories make for a great present.

I went out to Dot's for lunch today and just happened upon its first year anniversary. I wonder if everyone knows of its new location? It hasn't been as crowded as the old place was. But its still just as good as ever...

While I was taking a new set of photos of the disc golf at Pease Park, I came across this tree. And just had to take a picture of it. The stream has eroded the ground covering its roots almost away. And look how much Spanish Moss is using it as a home. I bet they rob the tree's leaves of some needed light.

Austin has been in a Churrascaria drought for a long time. But that dam has finally broken. Last year, Estancia Churrascaria opened up on Mopac and 290. And next up was Fogo De Chao. I just had to try it out. It is located on East 3rd Street next to the Convention Center (and next to the Melting Pot). Which makes it closer to me, but parking is harder (and costs money). The salad and meat selection was as good as ever.

"Mark, Welcome to Austin." Oooh, how scary. I wonder if it is a coincidence? Or are they scanning my blue-tooth phone?

John and I went to another ice hockey game. This season, the Ice Bat's games are held at a much smaller venue. There were only 5 rows and the seating was only around half of the rink. Even with the tiny size, the game was not sold out. This seems like a bad sign. I don't think anyone around here cares about ice hockey much.

Chapel inspired me to make another HDR picture. My first HDR picture was essentially bringing multiple exposures into one picture. When you take a picture of the sky, it requires a different exposure than one for something which does not contain the brighter sky.

However, there are other uses that I see for HDR. Besides playing with saturation, you can also play with the color mapping that is almost hidden within a picture. There are contour maps that can be brought out at the same time that you mess with colors.

Photoshop offers four 32->8 conversion routines: Exposure and Gamma, Highlight Compression, Equalize Histogram, and Local Adaptation. The first three are essentially flat mappings with very little options. They did not mix very well with the lighting in this picture. Which was flat and even as well. So I went with the last option. In the toning curve and histogram section, you can define a mapping function. And here is where you can really play with it. I chose a result that was other worldly. And those funky colors create the same look and feel of the funky colors in other HDR photos. Well, the other extreme HDR photos that I have seen.

When taking this picture, I relied on my Expodisk. It is amazing how much different the lighting color is between different sources.

This is what the light looks like with the CFLs on inside of the ceiling fan. Keep in mind, this is at the same time as when the fan blades are spinning. With some of the light reflecting back down off of the dark brown fan blades, it gives the light a decidedly brown tint.

With the fan blades off, the light is much more even. And much closer to white (or grey in this 18% capture).

And even with the fan's light on, if I were to use a flash, the flash's bright bluish-white light overpowers the other light.

I think that could then selectively pull in the HDR's colors into the starting picture to create an emphasis. I would like to try this with Antiquity's pollution markers in my next HDR picture. It would make them look more radioactive.

For a while now I have wanted to try out Hoover's Cooking. Mainly because of their chicken fried steak. But also because they have a lot of good southern foods on the menu.

I had the homemade lemonade which was served in a large pitcher style cup. And I also had the chicken fried steak, butter beans, and mustard greens. Jon had the broiled catfish, mashed potatoes and gravy, and Caribbean rice. It was pretty good. But it left us too full to try out the desserts.

For lunch, I tried out the newer Salt Lick in Austin. It is located on 360 south of the bridge. And it is different enough from the original one. It is more upscale. Although they do still have BBQ plate choices... And they do offer to sell meat by the pound, which is nice.

I wonder what happened to the plans to open a branch in Round Rock next to the Dell Diamond?

Jon and I ran across this tiny electric car in the IBM parking garage.

How, odd. That is not what I expect from this neighborhood...

This thread on BGG got me motivated to get my old computer out of the closet and take a picture of it.

My what progress we have made... Have 101 programming tips & tricks books been around that long?

There was quite a surprise when I opened my malibou light to replace a burned out light bulb. I found a whole ecology inside! Of course, there was light and air, but also flora, predators and prey. My last surprise inside a Malibou light was an ant farm. It was filled to the brim with dirt... and ants.