I just spend 10 or 15 minutes trying to figure out why I couldn't get a mini
ethernet network set up between my laptop and my iMac (to transfer some large
files without waiting forever to do it over the wireless network I use for most
things). No matter what I did, I just couldn't get the machines to see
each other—in fact, I couldn't even get the iMac to show the ethernet port
as anything but inactive. I even unplugged and replugged the network cable, to
make sure it wasn't something stupid like a loose wire.
If only it had been something that stupid, instead of something much, much
stupider. You see, I'm very used to my G4, with the tower on the floor next to
my desk, and the monitor on my desk. And because I haven't yet decommissioned
the G4, the tower is still sitting next to my desk. Right next to where I set
the laptop down. And the iMac really does look like it's just a monitor. I
think we can all see where this is going...
Lesson learned: plugging in the ethernet cable is good, but it's even
better to plug it into the right computer.
Category: Geek
Writebacks (0)
In any given hand, Laura is not allowed to score more points than Stuart.
I hope that settles that question. Now that it appears on the internet (with
the word “official”, no less!), it must be true.
That is all.
Category: Random
Writebacks (0)
In preparation for heading to Germany, in light of all the German we didn't
keep studying like we had intended to, we plastered index cards all over the
apartment last night identifying objects with their German names. The cards
tell me that I am sitting at "der Computer", looking at "der Bildschirm" as
I tap away at "die Tastatur". Probably not critical words I grant you, but
many of the others are much more useful. Hopefully that plus some targeted
studying of important
words (we didn't find any prepositions or adjectives around the apartment,
unfortunately) will slightly reduce our ignorance before we strike out.
And hopefully the week in France won't erase what limited German we
have...
Category: Life
Writebacks (0)
Okay, so I missed my post for yesterday. But Sunday morning is a lot like
Saturday night, right?
Anyway, I have an excuse: I was playing with hugin.
It's an automagic panorama creation tool—you drop in some pictures, feed
it lens information, define control points in pairs of images that correspond
to the same point in reality, optionally tweak some parameters I don't
understand yet, and poof! Instant panorama. It does all the necessary warping
of the images to remove perspective effects and minimize barrel distortion,
while keeping the horizon level, then positions them correctly and does some
edge blurring to remove harsh lines.
It's not perfect; the OS X port still has some roughness to the UI, and
it doesn't (as I was hoping it would) automatically do color level adjustments
of the pictures to match the colors at the control points in order to prevent
sudden color variation across the final image. On the other hand, setting
the control points is surprisingly painless, and it's pretty impressive to see
how quickly it figures everything out. It's certainly unbelievably easy
compared to doing everything myself in the Gimp, and does a lot more actual
distorting rather than relying on meticulous airbrushing to fake it. And as
an added bonus, there's actually a step where I have all the distorted and
positioned images as separate files; it would be easy for me to inject some
manual color adjustments at that point, or even to to my own custom fuzzing
and stitching if there are any details I want to get just right.
All in all, I rate it extremely cool. Stay tuned for a sample panorama or
two.
Category: Photos
Writebacks (0)
This was just too good not to mention:
What might cause us to go to EDA-Level Red:
you may wonder? I'm glad you asked.
And as for why, well, there are apparently
plenty of reasons.
Category: Random
Writebacks (0)
I'd been meaning to post a detailed comparison of just how much better my new
iMac is than my old G4, but I think it's easiest to just sum it up: it's about
a jillion times better.
I'm very pleased with the speed, the screen, the quietness, and even the
look (despite my misgivings when then G5 iMacs were first introduced). All in
all a great computer, saving me lots of time (and sanity) that would previously have
been spent sitting and waiting a little bit longer every time I did something
moderately taxing. It even runs Aperture like a champ, which is good since I'm probably
going to be switching over from iPhoto to Aperture—after having played around
with it for a few hours, I am hooked.
So for anyone who was wondering how I'm liking my new computer, the answer
is: very much, thank you.
Category: Life
Writebacks (0)
Today's deceptively simple quiz: Fill in the blank in the title. Give both the
spelling and pronunciation of the missing word.
Category: Language
Writebacks (6)
I think it's safe to say that the answer to the question "Will getting a domain
encourage me to post more?" is "No". I've had some posts floating around in
my head, but for whatever reason they never actually made it up here. But two
months of dead space is getting to be a bit much even by my standards—so,
to compensate, I'm going to try an experiment: I will post something
every day for a week. I certainly don't expect to post every day forever, but
maybe some forced posting will get things kick-started a bit.
Here goes!
Category: Life
Writebacks (0)