Lightning Pictures
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I took some sweet pictures of the lightning storm last night using burst-mode and 15-second exposures on my Canon SD500. I also learned about “Stitch Assist” mode which should help a lot with my PTAssembler work. |
Livejournal Usability
I like the livejournal blogging software. Mostly, because you can basically enter whatever html you like into your own blog. I also like the fact that I can transparently mirror all of my involution.com news entries to my lj blog via XMLRPC. (BACKUP == GOOD). What I don’t like is the lj interface for editting and specifically, deleting entries. To delete an entry, you have to click on the blog entry link, then edit, then delete, then OK. Is there anyway to do this via XMLRPC? While I’m on my complaining soapbox, why can’t I edit my lj comments? A lot of times I’ll bork the html or make a grammatical or speling error, and I basically have to delete the comment and start over. I could bring up the “View Source” window and copy the old text, delete the entry, recomment and paste the old text, but why should I have to? Also, is there a way to do this via XMLRPC? Admittedly, I haven’t looked any of this up, but why should I have to?
PerlMagick+Garmin GPS Data+USGS Orthoimages
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I finally got a day off from work, and managed to write a little perl script to take my garmin forerunner xml watch data and overlay it on a high-resolution USGS Orthoimage. USAPhotoMaps will not do this nor will GPS Visualizer. So, I basically had to roll my own script to do this chore. The CPAN Perl Module PerlMagick made short work of this. I had quite a bit of trouble producing an image this big on my computers. The actual TIFF data for the satellite image from USGS was nearly 500MB. The full resolution satellite image was 16000×10000 for the entire town lake trail (which I stupidly ran on Wednesday). ImageMagick crashes on handling an image this big even though my Linux machine has 1536MB (1.5 Gigabytes) of RAM. Adobe Photoshop fortunantely handled the full-res 16000×10000 image, and allowed me to resize it to a 9000×5648 TIFF. Then, my PerlMagick read the TIFF file in, and produced the GPS Track annotation and saved it. I then used command-line ImageMagick to mogrify the TIFF to a JPEG, which is what I added to my gallery. Enjoy. |
Wireless Microsoft Haterade
Microsoft Windows XP has the worst Wireless Ethernet selector ever. I can sit my laptop within 1 foot of my access point in my apartment, and it still insists on connecting to a distant neighbor’s open access point that has very little signal. Another thing that annoys me is that I have to disable the Wireless card at work because I get an intermittent signal in my office, and every time that I do, it breaks the VPN connection. That’s annoying enough, but here’s what network properties looks like when the wireless is
Disabled:
and Enabled:
No, that’s not a typo. Enabled (but not connected) displays a red “X” over the connection. Disabled has no “X”. Bizarro.
Rio S50 MMC Card
I wanted to copy the WMA files off my Rio S50 MMC card to my hard disk in order to transfer them to a bigger SD card. Guess what? I CAN’T! Does anyone know how to do this? Linux won’t mount the card either for some reason.
USGS Topographical Maps Overlayed with GPS Tracks Color-Coded by Speed
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GPS Visualizer is a cool little web application that picks up where USAPhotomaps leaves off. GPS Visualizer shows you your GPS tracks overlayed on Satellite Maps, Topographical Maps, and Street Maps, and then color codes the tracks by Speed. Everyone with a Garmin watch should Paypal the creator, Adam Schneider $2.56. |
Undercover Live from the 17th Floor of the Hyatt!
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I managed to get to play “Sweet Home Alabama” with the Austin Police Department band Undercover last night. Thanks to Todd Myers for letting me sit in. There’s a DivX Video of the performance if you click through to the gallery. |
Guajolote Ranch
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I took a trip out to the old Guajolote Ranch in Skidmore, Texas this weekend for a little fun in the sun. Of coure, there’s a mega gallery of pictures and videos online from the ATV Ridin’ / Pongo Pete Chasin’ Extravaganza. The whole trip was the exact opposite of pants. |
Palo Duro and Caprock Canyon Pictures / Satellite Maps
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I ambled out to old Palo Duro State Park last weekend. I added something like 237 images to my gallery. Also, I experimented around with some open sauce to “stitch” multiple images together from my camera. I used Max Lyons’ PTAssembler to do the stitching in conjunction with Enblend, AutoPano, and Panotools. All of this software makes stitching very easy, but I did have some color issues with my shots. I think that this was perhaps due to the fact that my camera was not in “manual” mode. Two of the shots turned out very well though, and I’m working with a local photolab to get them printed. In addition to the pictures and panoramas, I created three new satellite maps with GPS overlay tracks. I created these for Palo Duro Canyon, a Caprock Canyon, and one from downtown Austin last night. |
First Sattelite GPS Overlay Running Map: Green Belt to Zilker
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I finally managed to obtain a Garmin Forerunner 201 GPS watch to use when I go out running. This watch allows me to download my track points from the watch to my computer and then overlay the route onto a sattelite map. This image was taken on the southern portion of the Austin, Texas Town Lake Trail in what’s known as “The Green Belt”. I parked on Spyglass, and walked most of the way to Barton Springs because it’s a fairly rocky bit of trail to get there. I then ran to the end of the Mopac bridge and back. The whole journey was probably around 6 miles (I didn’t start the watch until about 3/4 of a mile after I started). |
