geek speak

I came across what looks to be a cool image processing application recently called Hydra. The idea is that many cameras are incapable of capturing, in a single shot, the high dynamic range of scenes like a sunset with foreground elements which are dark, or a dim forest with sunstreaks and highlights. Our eyes adjust quickly as we scan a scene in front of us. But a camera must try to capture the sutble dark areas at the same time as not allowing the bright areas to be blown out, which doesn't work out too well in many cases.

Hydra takes the approach of using two pictures of the same scene and merging them together. One picture should use the appropriate settings to capture the highlights (dark areas will be almost black) and the other to capture the lowlights (bright areas will be blown out near white). It then uses some complicated algorithm to merge to two pictures together.

Now, I'd love to give this application a try with my compact digital camera, but, alas, it only runs on Leopard. I wonder if one my photog friends who have access to a Mac running the latest OS to give it a try and let me know how this program works for you.

ThinkGeek is selling a Wi-Fi Detector shirt that picks up wireless networking signals and displays glowing bars on the shirt which also depict the signal strength. Now, while I'm not sure if the T-shirt thing is going to take off, I think this is a pretty cool, and extremely geeky idea. You don't have to wonder if there's wifi in the area... just check out the shirt.

I've not found an official ABC press release, but the buzz has been out there for the last week that ABC is going to provide High Definition streams of various shows starting this July. This is what many loud voices have been calling on Apple to provide in the iTunes store for a year or so now. And much more so now that the AppleTV is available and can handle 720p content. I admit it, I am an HD junkie.

Read more about this over at Broadcasting & Cable

We were blessed again this past week to watch, listen, enjoy and remember our girls from the African Children's Choir as they performed with Josh Groban on Idol Gives Back. I haven't got caught up in the whole American Idol "thing" or "phenomena" and we typically don't watch it. However, this night was different as two nights of performances and videos were shown to raise awareness and money for impoverished children in the US and Africa. I have again been amazed at how God is able to use seemingly improbable venues and people to bring glory to Him. As of April 26, which is now three days ago, over $60 million has been raised. Simply amazing.

Michelle posted Silent Night on her blog back on December 23rd when the choir appeared on The Tonight Show, to which I added the video I recorded onto VHS tape. Editing her entry, I added a remark that I wish I had a High Definition version of the show. Well, I haven't found that particular show in HD yet, but the American Idol show was in HD and I did record it. So my prayer has been answered.

[Geek speak: Lucky for me, Idol (Fox) is not encrypted (the 5c bit set to "Copy Freely") which means I can stream it to my Mac over Firewire from my DVR, capture it with AVCVideoCap which is part of the freely available Apple FireWire SDK, and transcode it from MPEG2-TS to AVI or QuickTime with MPEG Streamclip]

I haven't been able to add nametags to our girls in the video, but here are still pictures of them from the video:

Dora

Esther

Stella

If you didn't watch the show, I think it would be worth the time to download one of the files below. While these High Definition files are large, the quality is stunning. And, if you have a high-powered PC, the AVI file below is full 720p including 5.1 surround sound. If you have trouble with the AVI file, you may need AC3Filter for audio or DivX for video.

Right-click and download:
Download QuickTime 720p version [100.7MB, 1280x720, 29.97fps, stereo]
Download DivX AVI 5.1 version [104.5MB, 1280x720, 59.94fps, 5.1 surround] (May require VLC for OSX.)

If you don't have a need (or desire) to watch this in HD or surround sound, you can also download relatively small version which weighs in at a meager 23.8MB.

Dora, Esther and Stella, "Our girls," look beautiful .... just like they did when they were here. I've watched the video several times and even though they only singing background for Josh, I get emotional watching and listening to their small yet strong voices. I remember so well hearing them in person the two times we were blessed to be able to, and I long to see them and hug them again. May God continue to enrich their lives, and to give them strength as they continue on their journey. I pray He keeps their faith strong when they return to their homeland to further their education, that they share their friend Jesus with everyone they meet and have the courage to listen and obey God throughout their lives.

The latest issue of TidBITS included the following YouTube video which I found myself giggling at in the office. Of course, I had to send it around to the IT staff.

I guess even the simplest interface may not be as simple as we think.

(Edit: YouTube removed the video. Changed to a MySpace link.)

Vista ≠ OS X

If you read Apple's Hot News or get the Hot News RSS feed, you've probably seen this already, but for those who haven't or don't, check out David Pogue's comparison of Vista and OS X and understand his rationale on why Vista is not an OS X ripoff.

We've recently starting experiencing a phenomenon that many others across the wonderful internet have for a couple years now: Comcast blacklisting. Apparently, Comcast thinks one of our webhost's email servers is being used to send SPAM email, and so now, all email from one of our host's email farm is blacklisted, so emails we are trying to send from our duckfamily.net accounts to anyone with a Comcast email address is not being delivered. That I know of, no notice is given to the Comcast subscriber that an email was blocked. I heard that the NFC mail server was blacklisted, too...

Googling comcast+blacklist will get you a couple hundred thousand hits. Why did Comcast have to resort to such measures? Did they send out advance notices about blacklisting? If I had received emails back saying, "Hey, we delivered this, but the server you're using is going to be blocked unless your provider stops sending SPAM" then I'd much more happy. But they didn't do that.

Is my webhost at fault here? Probably. They've had problems with servers doing relaying in the past and have worked to lock them down. I'd be willing to bet that some are still doing it. Problem is that my specific mail server is the one being blacklisted. I've let them know there's a problem and they say they're looking into it.

So, why aren't more web hosts using SMTP authentication? For most users, this would be a slam-dunk. Sure, it takes 3-5 more seconds to send the email, but would this impact your daily email life? I don't think so. Would it impact the life of a spammer? You bet! For a small spamming of 5000 emails, that adds 7 hours to the email sending process. And that's a small amount of spam email. For the big spammers, it would take them days longer to spam out the hundreds of thousands of emails they send daily.

So, ask your host to start using SMTP authentication today! :)

[GeekSpeak in brackets]

Due to an unannounced change to [the Unix file permissions on] my website's server, the Gallery is currently unavailable. [All the gallery-specific data files (pictures) were, until today, owned by httpd:httpd, which is the webserver account, which is normal. Today, they are owned by me. This causes issues because the webserver account can't modify files owned by someone else, and chmod 777 doesn't seem to help either, which I think is very strange. 777 means read/write by the world.] I've submitted a support ticket to which the response was, essentially, "This is a feature, not a bug." Why it changed last night, no one seems to know.

Currently, I am attempting to upload a slightly updated version of Gallery [and will run through the upgrade script to find out if the permissions issue can be worked around].

Sorry for the missing picutres.

With Apple officially allowing Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP by utilizing the hack known as Boot Camp, users have had the ability to dual-boot their Mac computers. Which is cool, but not so very much productive. The lack of simultaneous use requires me to have a PC desktop at home for work purposes.

Virtual PC - Maturity

The standard on the market for virtualization has been Microsoft's Virtual PC for quite some time. I've used VPC since version 4-something many years ago when it was owned by Connectix , and I've always enjoyed being able to run Windows inside the Mac OS. It just has always worked pretty well for me. Unfortunately, VPC doesn't run on Intel-based Macs.

Parallels - Modern

Now, with Intel-based Macs out there, the software virtualization markey is enjoying a few newcomers to the product offering plate. The most recent I've heard about, is Parallels. This software has been getting more press lately and I'm not sure exactly why. Good marketing perhaps. But what is interesting is that some user performance specs show that on similar PC hardware, hard-core number crunching software like 3D renders, are only 2-5% faster. Now, that's no benchmark, but it is rather impressive. Parallels is in beta release now.

WinTel - It Boots Fast

Less known to me is WinTel. That's an interesting software name to choose as it was typically used in a derrogatory way to refer to Windows on Intel. OpenOSX touts super-fast boot times for WinTel. And, as with most software except VPC, you must provide a licensed copy of Windows to install.

Q - Open Source

Another run Windows on your Mac software entry is Q. The biggest deal about Q is that it is open source. You currently do not have to pay anything for it. And it just may stay that way. Not all open source projects do, but most remain free. What Q lacks, however, is a full set of features and a really stable release. It's only currently an alpha release, so there's plenty of bugs to enjoy there. But really, what is up with the colors on their site? My eyes are bleeding!

With Microsoft not keeping up with Apple hardware all that well for Virtual PC (they had a major delay when the G5 came out), it seems that Parallels might just run away with the prize this time and take some business away from the Giant. If I were in seriously in the market for new virtualization software, that's where I'd be lookin'.

For more information about x86 emulators/virtual machine software for the Mac Intel and PPC, check out MacWindows.com.

The Construction Cam is online, well two weeks ahead of scheduled demolition and reconstruction activities. Even though the Middle of the Night doesn't allow for viewing of much, you can still enjoy the occasional glimpse of the moon or a bright star, wind-blown tree shadows, and random bits of multicolored static well after you should have gone to bed.

Construction cam picture: Cleverly camoflaged webcam in a nice weather-resistant Pelco housing.

Until the start of demolition on June 25, the camera will capture a generally serene scene of a large parchment-color vinyl-sided wall. There will also be appearances by family and friends, mostly the kids, who will likely be visible mostly on the grassy area. We try to keep the children off the wall and roof as much as possible. Oh, and, of course, Toby the black lab will also be frequently observed looking dead ... as he warms himself in the sun in the mornings and cools himself in the afternoon shade. Don't worry, he looks like that a lot.

For the techie-types out there, the web page is being served up by the feature-full EvoCam v3.6 using a custom, rather bland html template just for the purpose of emedding within the duckfamily.net site. The camera is a wired ethernet TRENDnet TV-IP100. The Construction Cam page is just an iframe (w3.org, HTMLHelp) which pulls the original web page source from my G4 running EvoCam at home. The frame rate would be better if Comedycast supported more upload bandwidth ... bring on FIOS, Verizon.