Random Frames

Ok, so I saw another link on BoingBoing to a photo gallery I thought people might be interested in.

Above is one of the pictures in the gallery. Now, what do you think you are looking at? It looks exactly like a scale model that someone created and painted realistically, right?

Well, if you thought that, you’d be wrong. The pictures in the gallery are pictures taken from a helicopter of actual places (the above picture is of an aquaduct in Rome). He uses a tilt-shift lens to create that effect.

I’ve never heard of a tilt-shift lens before, but I looked them up, and kind of have an idea of what they do now. What I still can’t really figure out is, what is it that makes a picture of a model look like a picture of a model and not a picture of the real thing?

On BoingBoing, I caught a link to this site. The site has a bunch of pictures showing a home theater system that some guy turned into a huge set that looks very similar to the bridge of a Star Trek ship. It’s a little bit crazy. Cool… but crazy.

You can also view a 3-D tour of the room at this site (worked in Linux/Firefox).

Ok, I’ll start us off on this week’s theme, which is entries for The Mirror Project. The idea is to get some sort of self portrait using a reflective surface. Plenty of examples can be found on The Mirror Project’s website, and there are a bunch of other rules that they have as far as pictures that are posted.

The picture above is smaller than what I usually post, because I couldn’t find the original, and had to download the version that I had posted to The Mirror Project all those years ago. This weekend, I hope to do some shooting and come up with some more creative shots.

Anyway, the above picture shows a reflection of me and my camera on the elbow of the cold air intake in the engine compartment of my car. (And no, I couldn’t figure out a way to cram more prepositions into that sentence.)

As usual, if you have ideas for future themes we can use, please let me know.

Ok, for the next week, let’s create entries for The Mirror Project. The idea is to get some sort of self portrait using a reflective surface. Plenty of examples can be found on The Mirror Project’s website, and there are a bunch of other rules that they have as far as pictures that are posted.

Personally, I don’t think that we need to obey the other rules (< 30k, < 300px in any dimension, etc). Smaller versions of the pictures can be submitted over there.

Post whenever you’re ready.

On Kottke.org, I saw a link to a photo essay about shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh.

I was fascinated by the pictures. The environmental laws are looser there, which is why a lot of ships get sent there to die… where they are disassembled and scavenged by workers (many of whom don’t have shoes or gloves).

I got a chance to see the Beta 2 of Windows Vista this week.

The vast majority of the features that have been added are things that have been available in other operating systems or competitors’ software for years. They have ripped off an amazing amount of stuff from Mac OS X, including the drop shadows, Spotlight, etc.

I have to admit, though, that there was one feature they ripped off but managed to make even better than the thing they were ripping off. And that is Expose in OS X. The Windows Vista version is shown in the above picture.

When you hit a particular button, you get an edge-on view of all of the un-minimized windows. You can then click on the window you want brought to the front, or you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to cycle through the windows in that view. It is very slick, and is the one new feature that they have added that I actually want.

As previously discussed, this week’s theme is Things With Meaning. Please post a picture of something that has meaning to you, and the story behind it (i.e. why it has meaning to you).

We’ve been having some great threads lately, so let’s keep it up. As usual, if you have any suggestions for future themes we can use, please let me know.

Hey, guys. Anyone have any suggestions for a theme we can use for the next week?

One that I was thinking about proposing was Objects That Have Meaning to You. The idea would be that you would take a picture of something that has some special meaning to you, and then tell the story behind it.

I’m just not sure that people will be into it or not. So, what do you think? Or do you think a different theme would be better for the next week? Please let me know.

Apparently, people use this for their hands as a moisturizer. But they never bothered to change the labeling. Thanks Nicole K for introducing me to this wonderful teat-healing product.

Click on picture for a higher resolution exploded veiw.

Now some of you will not have a clue what this picture is of others member here this picture should bring back some memories. It Dew-Rag’s Tower!… I meant Durlag Tower. This is from back when several of us were playing D&D (your know Dungeon and Dragon). By the way a few of us still are playing. Well Barry had done such and excellent job (IMHO) on the segment involving Durlag’s Tower I asked to borrow his orginal drawings and generated a 3-D model in Solid Edge. The only thing missing is a few of the extradimensional spaces that were part of the magic of the tower.

What I would love to do is figure out how to export these levels from Solid Edge into some game editor and create a walk through model of the tower. A system like Halo or something. I exported it as a vrml file but I never did find a good vrml view that would allow for a stable walk through view. The vrml client all seem to be very twitchy.

Just thought some might like to see this.

enjoy -Homis