nungee.

Still Raw

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Still Raw
We actually divorced once over the airplane/treadmill argument. (Preemptive response to the inevitable threads arguing about it: you're all wrong on the internet.)

Photoshop Disaster? Nope, a Mimicking Error

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:44:35 GMT

Notice anything funny about Mrs. McCain's right hand(s)? What's that, a Photoshop job gone very wrong?

Not so fast. It's a category of apparent error called a mimicking error, for cases in which actual content looks like an error but isn't. Mimicking errors might include a musician including in synthesized music a noise that sounds like it might be a telephone ringing in the background, but isn't; or a texture in a photograph that looks like film grain but isn't.

In this case, a picture published by the New York Times is being shown around the web as a "Photoshop error" when in fact it's nothing of the kind. It's true that Cindy McCain doesn't have three arms. But the appearance that she does is merely an illusion. Her right arm is linked in Jimmy McCain's, and is holding a microphone. The arm that appears to be hanging by her right side (our left) belongs to an individual standing directly behind her; you can see his pants leg to the right of her hip and thigh. The illusion is exacerbated by the "flattening effect" of a long telephoto lens. The effect might mimic a so-called "Photoshop disaster," but it isn't one.

___________________

Mike (Thanks to Christopher Gibbs)

How to read a movie - Roger Ebert's Journal

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:55:52 GMT

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/08/how_to_read_a_movie.html

Hi, I’m a Mac… Beep, Beep!

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 19:49:48 GMT

Insightful analogy from Charles Miller: John Hodgman’s PC character is like Wile E. Coyote.

★

Beatbox Fame Game

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:16:54 GMT

Beatbox Fame Game

Daily Show on Republican hypocrisy via DaddyD

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 11:26:20 GMT

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/04/daily-show-on-republ.html

Preventing Paranoia: When Does Google Chrome Talk to Google.com?

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:48:27 GMT

Good summary of Chrome’s phone-home integration from Matt Cutts.

★

via The secret of two hidden messages in Google 2008 Logo.

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:40:49 GMT

via The secret of two hidden messages in Google 2008 Logo.

Metallica thrilled new album leaked online a week early

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:43:55 GMT

"happy days"

amazing little animation application from illustrator David

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:59:05 GMT

amazing little animation application from illustrator David OReilly :: click below to watch

Remote Heaven or Hell depending on the Results…

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 04:39:23 GMT

Here’s a quick video of the still camera remotes at the Beijing Olympics. I didn’t have time to shoot, blog AND edit video during the games - so I didn’t get a chance to look through and cut this video until now. It shows close to 100 remote cameras - ALL - focused on the finish line of the men’s 100M Final - THE - marquee event of any summer Olympic games (with the exception of Phelps this time around of course.)

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

Photographers showed up as early as 5:30 a.m. - for a 10:30 p.m. race that lasted less than 10 seconds… and as I wrote in a previous blog post - it was a hilarious scene to witness at times… maddening to some who had other photographers “bump” their cameras off target at the last minute… and these were often photographers showing up “late” (late being 4-5 hours prior to the race) bumping the photographers’ cameras that had been set up 17 hours prior to the race…. Bill Frakes of Sports Illustrated had 17 of his remote cameras set up for the race alone… and he shot #18 handheld of course. Nuts!

This is quite a site - even for professional photographers (you’ll see a quick shot of photographers taking photographs OF the cameras midway through the video…) I love the little Canon G9 used to shoot this - perfect little camera to have on you at all times.

When you think of it, you’re looking at close to $1 million worth of camera gear used for remotes alone when you add the lenses, Pocket Wizards, cords and mounts in this video… All to get that “one” great shot… enjoy!

N.B.: You will need to have Apple’s free Quicktime plugin installed on your browser to see this video on either a Mac or PC.

Google’s Browser Has A TOS Rights Grab

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:31:07 GMT

“…by posting anything (via Chrome) to your blog(s), any forum, video site, myspace, itunes, or any other site that might happen to be supporting you, Google can use your work without paying you a dime.”

“And for the record, Microsoft tried this years ago with MSN messenger, where MS got an irrevocable perpetual license to all IP that passed through MSN messenger, and the net basically revolted.”

“There are some people who have claimed that this is standard legal jargon for every piece of software. Not only is that simply not true, no clause even close to that is in the Firefox terms of service.”

Read about it (here), Thanks Bart.

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Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

In A World…Without Don LaFontaine

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:30:58 GMT

Don LaFontaine, voice artist for some 5,000 movies and 350,000 advertisements passed away Monday. He’s the man who came up with the “In A World…” that begins most film trailers, as well as the baritone voice style that goes with it. The Washington Post has an obituary.

In the early 1960s, he landed a job in New York with National Recording Studios, where he worked alongside radio producer Floyd L. Peterson, who was perfecting radio spots for movies. Until then, movie studios primarily relied on print advertising or studio-made theatrical trailers. The two men became business partners and, together, perfected the familiar format.

Mr. LaFontaine, who was editing, writing and producing in the early days of the partnership, became a voice himself by accident. In 1964, when an announcer failed to show up for a job, he recorded himself reading copy and sent it to the studio with a message: “This is what it’ll sound like when we get a ‘real’ announcer.”

Trailer for The Elephant Man, proclaimed to be his favorite:

And a short interview/documentary:

Don’s impact is unmistakable, and it’s striking to think of how his approach changed movie advertising. May he rest in peace.

(Image)

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:38:24 GMT

Reposted from johl via mzeltner

via Stephen Fry » Happy Birthday to GNU

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:37:45 GMT

via Stephen Fry » Happy Birthday to GNU

Chromium Developer Documentation

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:15:42 GMT

Developer documentation for Google’s new Chrome browser. Most interesting to me is the User Experience section:

In the long term, we think of Chromium as a tabbed window manager or shell for the web rather than a browser application. We avoid putting things into our UI in the same way you would hope that Apple and Microsoft would avoid putting things into the standard window frames of applications on their operating systems.

★

The End is Not for a While

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 04:00:00 GMT

The End is Not for a While
I THINK EVERYONE INVOLVED HERE IS CUTE.

Improvised

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Improvised
Oh, your brother is Luke. Sorry, should've mentioned that first.

good old 50mm

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:47:00 GMT

good old 50mm

tiny fly

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:46:52 GMT

tiny fly

tiny fly

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:46:44 GMT

tiny fly

wood

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:46:36 GMT

wood

don't touch this

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:46:26 GMT

don't touch this

structure

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:46:16 GMT

structure

flies

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:45:57 GMT

flies

flower

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:45:37 GMT

flower

dead or alive?

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:45:28 GMT

dead or alive?

daisy

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:45:18 GMT

daisy

flower

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:45:09 GMT

flower

flower

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:45:00 GMT

flower

green

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:44:52 GMT

green

very small forrest

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:44:41 GMT

very small forrest

a leaf

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:44:33 GMT

a leaf

green visitor

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:44:25 GMT

green visitor

green visitor

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:44:18 GMT

green visitor

green visitor

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:44:09 GMT

green visitor

Featured Firefox Extension: Ubiquity Prototype Offers a Natural Language Web Command Line

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 07:54:16 GMT

http://lifehacker.com/5042312/ubiquity-prototype-offers-a-natural-language-web-command-line

List of problems solved by MacGyver

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:44:45 GMT

More from the bounty of Wikipedia: a list of all of the problems solved by MacGyver.

MacGyver creates a bomb to open a door using a gelatin cold capsule containing sodium metal, which he then places in a glass container filled with water. When the gelatin dissolves in the water, the sodium reacts violently with the water and causes an explosion which blows a hole in the wall. ("MythBusters" questioned the size of the explosion but verified that pure sodium does cause an exothermic reaction when mixed with water, just not enough to destroy a concrete wall.) The amount of sodium required to destroy a concrete wall would greatly exceed the size of a cold pill.

Despite the length of the page, the text warns that "this list is not yet comprehensive". (via gongblog)

(link)

The untold story of Lucasart's two cancelled Full Throttle sequels

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:43:37 GMT

with concept art, sketches, and prototype screenshots

Generative book covers

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:36:10 GMT

A British company called Faber & Faber is doing print on demand books with a wrinkle: each book has its own distinct cover that's generated at print time.

Generating the borders was just one, if major, task of the final solution, though. The custom software written in Processing, straight Java and PHP works as an internal webservice at Faber which receives new batch orders and then generates complete, print ready PDF files with all copy, branding, spine, ISBN, barcode and optional high-res JPG preview using the book details supplied. Generating a single cover only takes about 1 second, but due to its iterative and semi-random nature can sometime require hundreds of attempts until a "valid" design is created which is judged to be "on brand" by software itself.

What a day it will be when software can determine whether all of us are "on brand" or not. (thx, david)

(link)