Costa Rica Beach Panorama
Freehand panorama of a beach in Costa Rica. 20 images stitched in Windows Live Photo Gallery.
Stitching Images – The Panorama Begins
Ever since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics I’ve been enthralled with the freedom of 360 degree and wide aspect panoramic pictures. Apple had recently released QuickTime VR and used it to create 360 degree photos of the Atlanta Olympics. Viewing the photos across my dial-up modem was a chore but the reward of exploring the environment and choosing where to look made the task worth the effort. Instead of being captivate to the photographer’s intended target I was free to look in the other direction for a complete sense of the location. Apple was the first, as I recall, to pioneer this type of technology and make it available to the general public
Unfortunately I didn’t have a Mac and couldn’t generate content on my own. Later years I dabbled with PTgui and some other stitching software that came with a camera. The results were impressive but I wasn’t ready to invest in a high quality camera and the software to generate the images. The Panorama Tools project was interesting but between 2000 and 2002 the tools were too complex to bother using.
Over the past year my interest in panoramic pictures was refreshed by projects like GigaPan and Spherical Panoramas. It was possible for me to tinker with multi-picture stitched panoramic pictures from my point-and-shoot camera because Windows Vista and Windows 7 included a free panorama stitcher in Windows Live Photo Gallery. While on vacation I free handed 20 picture panorama from a beach in Costa Rica with my brother’s digital SLR camera. The results were amazing and I knew it was worth upgrading and buying the proper software.
The “Projects -> Photography” category is an ongoing blog of my adventures with stitched panoramic and 360 degree pictures.
Excel 2007 Insert Column Slowed by Google Desktop
On a spring afternoon a call came in from a very exasperated client. “Why is my excel coming to a crashing halt? Is 120,000+ rows too many in a spreadsheet? How come it keeps locking up!” He spoke with the unmistakable tone that indicated his computer was about to take flight from his second story window.
The sheet was only 17MB in size with about 120,000 rows, a few pivot tables, and no complex formulas. Every time he would insert a new empty column on the main sheet Excel would come to a screeching halt. After about 10 minutes the operation would complete. Turning off automatic calculations and starting excel with the /safe switch resulted in no change of behavior.
After some creative Google searches I came across a post about Google Desktop slowing down excel. With nothing to to lose Google Desktop was un-installed and miraculously the insert column took 1 second instead of 1o minutes!
Further examination revealed another blog posting that further explained the underlying problem.
Ironic, isn’t it? Searching Google revealed Google Desktop to be the culprit of the slow down.
Review of the Russell T. Davies’ TV series Torchwood
Because it followed the Doctor Who series my hopes were high that this would be an exciting alternative while waiting for the next Doctor Who installment. Just as the Tardis is bigger on the inside than it appears on the outside, so is the disappointment I feel inside greater than what my mind could possible contain. Torchwood might as well burn – I wouldn’t miss it. I’d be thankful for not having endured the filth of the series and the agony of the let down.
Torchwood is less about science fiction and more about liberal drama. All of the actors pursue sexual relationships with each other and the highest sense of accomplishment and purpose for living is to not be alone. Sure, Gwen comes on the scene as a compassionate heart who wants to help everyone but that is soon replaced with a character who is empty and seeking physical contact to fill that emptiness. I don’t even want to admit to having watched some of the eipsodes. I’m sorry, episodes like “Day One” and “Countrycide” were just too raunchy and grotesque and should have been a clear indication the rest of the episodes weren’t worth watching.
I’m a sucker and wanted to give it one last chance so I started watching the “Children of Earth” season 3 miniseries. <rant>I can deal with time travel, regeneration from the dead, crazy inventions, but what is REALLY unbelievable is the gun fights in day 2. Torchwood explodes, Gwen and Ianto crawl from the wreckage and each manage to evade a well placed sniper who is watching for survivors. First of all, the sniper wouldn’t use a laser sight for a distance shot thus revealing his position and allowing the characters to notice the marker and realize, ‘Oh, look, a light dot, someone is pointing a gun at me, Duck!” Second, a few minutes later Gwen manages to shoot the front AND back tires out of an oncoming vehicle from a free hand position over 50 yards away. Really, I thought this was SCIENCE FICTION not FANTASY!</rant>
Don’t waste your time with Torchwood. If Doctor Who gets as raunchy and grotesque I might shed a tear.
Too Much Experience
“Mark Twain used to say that it was possible to learn too much from experience. A cat, he said, that had squatted once on a hot stove lid would never sit down on a hot stove lid again. The trouble was that it would never sit down on a cold one either. ”
-Isaac Asimov’s Treasury of Humor