Categories
Web Weird

The Internet is the greatest!

Ah… it’s the random stuff that’s the best.


Here’s a guy who dresses up like Elvis… dressed up like a storm trooper.


Yes, it’s…

Categories
Web Weird

Dad rocks really, really hard

This made me happy:

Dad’s home
dadshome_d.gif

Click then click “watch this movie!”
(don’t tell me it’s old… I’m just out of touch)

Categories
Idle Music Software Software Tech Useful

My computer is now a fat jukebox

Success! 


I have finally reached the end of my CD collection… they are now all ripped.  870 (give or take) CDs are now stored on my PC.  17,501 files in 1,411 folders for a total of 270Gb.  There are 458 unique album artists covering just about every, imaginable genre.


Crap?  How do I find something now?


Windows Desktop Search to the rescue!  I use this free desktop search engine at work to quickly dig through megabytes of saved e-mails… and now I’ve also found a great use for it at home as well.


You can either type in your search (searching through e-mail, files and more) then narrow the results to just the music files by clicking the “Music” icon in the toolbar or you can use the keyword “music” when you perform the search (e.g. “Robert Plant Kind:music”).  You can even create some quick play lists by doing a search like “kind:music genre:classical”.  From the results you can select multiple files and either play them directly from search or create a play list.





Ripping all the music was done over the period of four months and took me hours to complete, I definitely don’t want to do it twice.  All the music is ripped to a RAID array, each hard disk has an exact duplicate.  For backup advice, see my earlier post: Are you crash-safe?

Categories
Web Weird

Things to California when you’re dead

I find it strangely disturbing that Activision has people running around graveyards playing a somewhat morbid game of poker relying on info from tombstones.  Sure, marketing never really worries too much about who they offend… as long as they sell stuff.  I’ve always felt that “dead is dead” and the residents of the graveyard would be fine with this kind of stuff… I just worry about how the living feel.


I’d love to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting where they approached the graveyard operator.


“Hi, we want permission to let a crowd of nerds into your graveyard to run around playing poker.  It’ll be okay, we promise… it’s to sell a video game.”


Visit C|Net for more info: ‘Graveyard Games’ makes lively debut in Bay Area

Categories
Cars Idle

California carpool lanes are starting to get more crowded

I’ve started noticing some interlopers into the carpool lane on the way to work… Toyota Priuses with only one passenger.  What the hell?


The rules for the carpool lane as I understood them used to be:
   – The specified number of passengers (2 or 3, depending on the segment of road)
Or
   – Fewer than four wheels (2 or 3-wheeled vehicles allowed)
Or
   – Zero emissions (electric, natural gas, hydrogen, etc.)


Now, with a new bill signed into law last year, ultra-low emissions vehicles (ULEVs) are allowed into the carpool lane.  To be an ULEV the cars need to meet emissions requirements and get more than 45 miles to the gallon.  The means that now, in addition to Electric and Clean fuel vehicles, some hybrid vehicles are now allowed to use the carpool lane if they display the correct stickers. 


If you want to be able to use your green vehicle in the carpool lane in California first check to see if your car is on the approved vehicle list then complete the REG 1000 form to apply for your clean air vehicle stickers.


I have just one request… drive faster or get out of my way, it is after all my lane.

Categories
Hardware Idle Photography Software Tech

Where’d I take that picture?

Pick a trip you took from, say, two years ago.  Take a look at the pictures.  Do you remember where each picture was taken?  Exactly where?  Great, do you think you’ll remember that 10 years from now?  Don’t worry, there’s a soution (provided you don’t loose all your digital pictures in both hard drive failures you’re statistically likely to have between now and then).


smugMap_sm.jpg
My picture location on a satellite map?  How cool is that?


One of the nifty bits of data that can be embedded in a pcture’s EXIF data is the longitude and latitude of where the picture was taken.  Adding this data to your pictures is called “geotagging” or “geocoding”. While it’s not hard to manually add this data to your pictures, you can also automatically add it if you have a GPS or an expensive camera.



EXIF: Exchangeable Image Format – descriptive data embedded in an image. This data is typically inserted into a JPEG image by a digital camera and contains information about the type of camera which took the picture, the shutter speed and date the picture was taken. A variety of free and commercial tools are available to allow you to view and edit EXIF data.


Okay, that sounds cool and all that… but so what?  Why can’t you just write down the information?  Imagine a slide show that walks along the path of your vacation, showing the pictures overlaid on a satellite picture of the area.   When we went hiking in Switzerland I took a GPS along and here’s an example of what Geotagging can get you: http://maps.smugmug.com/?feedType=geoAlbum&Data=859458 (look for a link to “play” in the right-hand column).  It is a large gallery (around 370 pictures) so it takes time to both load and play, be patient.  Tip: you can zoom in and out while the slideshow plays.


Manually adding a location stamp


When you add location stamps automatically (which I’ll discuss later) you’ll likely still need to adjust some of them manually, so let’s start with the process of manually adding or adjusting the geotag of a picture.  First, got get some software (don’t worry, it’s free and easy to use).  Microsoft Research, as part of their cool World Wide Media Exchange project, created a set of free tools for adding and reading tags.
First thing you need: Location StamperLocation Stamper requires you have the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 installed, so I suppose that is really the first thing you need… but I digress.  Go to the WWMX download page and follow the instructions to install the .NET Framework (step 1) and WWMX Location Stamper (from step 3).  Don’t worry about any of the other software on that page at this time.
Now, let’s stamp a picture.  Launch WWMX Location Stamper and select a picture from your collection by choosing “Add Photos…” from the “Photos” menu.  You can select one or more pictures at a time, but let’s start with just one.  The picture will show in the right-hand column of the Location Stamper interface.  At the bottom of the interface is a box to perform a “Location Search”; type in the address where the picture was taken.  Since Location Stamper will search the whole world, try to be as specific as possible, separating the information with commas (for example: Street, City, State, zip or City, country).  To get the location more exact, use the plus/minus icons to zoom in and out and use the white arrows at the edge of the map to pan the map.


To add the geotag, simply drag the picture from the photo area onto the correct location in the map and drop.  A small dot will appear on the map showing you the location stamped into the picture.


locationStamper_sm.gif 
Location stamper, with images ready to be stamped.


Automatically adding stamps


I mentioned before that you could buy a camera with a built-in GPS, but I don’t recommend them unless you have a distinct business need (e.g. you’re an insurance adjuster).  The cameras with built-in GPS are expensive and likely to become out of date very quickly.  The best route to go is to buy a GPS with a computer interface.  If you have a GPS it will work with any camera you have.  In our case we take two cameras on every trip, a large digital SLR for nice artistic shots and a little, pocket camera for convenience.  Having an external GPS allows us to stamp pictures from both cameras.


Step one: get a compatible GPS.  There are likely a number of GPS units which will work, but I can tell you for sure that the Garmin Geko 201, 301 and Foretrex 201 all work for this purpose.  The keys are: a) a GPS that can connect to your computer and b) a GPS that allows track data to be downloaded in GPX format.  If you’re going out on your own to pick a GSP unit, look for a unit that advertises the things above as well as good battery life and quick satellite acquisition (my two-year old Geko 301 eats batteries and can take forever to get a fix on its location).  The Garmin Geko 201 will run you about $120 new, the Forerunner 201 about $115.  You’ll also need a cable to connect your GPS to your computer (it’s not a standard item with most GPS units).


Step two: turn on your GPS and allow it to get its bearings.  If you’re sitting inside, next to your computer, you may have trouble getting a good signal.  Stop reading this and go outside. 😉


Step three: set your camera’s clock to be as close to the time displayed on the GPS as possible.  This is important because the location of the picture will be based on correlating the picture time to the GPS time.  Another thing to keep in mind: if you travel out of your home time zone you will need to perform some added time zone magic to get the pictures to line up correctly with the GPS data (I’ll discuss that later).


Step four: take some pictures.  With the Garmin GPS units (and with many other types as well, I suspect) you don’t really need to do anything other than turn them on.  The GPS will automatically start keeping a “breadcrumb” trail of your path over time.  This trail will stay in memory even if you turn off the GPS and take out the batteries.  You don’t need to save a track log unless you are running out of memory (in fact, it’s best if you can avoid saving track logs as the breadcrumb trail tends to be more detailed).


After you get your new (or break out your old) GPS and spend some time running around and taking pictures you’ll need to get the GPS data off the receiver and onto your computer.  The easiest way to do this with the Garmin units is to use the free GPS Track Download software from Microsoft Research (there are commercial applications, but once again, I’m cheap).  Follow the instructions on the WWMX download page to install the GPS Track Download software.


The Track Download interface is very minimal.  From the window select the type of data you want to download (I download track log and routes each time).  Next choose “download from device” from the action menu and select a location on your hard disk to save the GPX data.  You’re done with your GPS and Track Download for this session.


trackDownload_sm.gif 
Ready to download tracks from your GPS device.


If you haven’t already, download all your new pictures from your first location-tracked photo shoot (put them in a new folder for simplicity).  Launch Location Stamper and add all the new pictures (do this by browsing to the new folder, clicking a single picture, typing ctrl-a on the keyboard to select all and then hit the “Open” button).  Next, add tracks to Location Stamper by selecting “add tracks” from the “Tracks” menu.  You’ll see lines appear on the map pane as the GPX data is read in.  Finally, click the “Apply tracks…” button at the bottom of the picture pane.


About the apply tracks options: I find the best options to use are the options to set the location but put in a tricky cases bin, always prefer existing location information and save a backup copy.
Those are the basics.  Now that you have locations coded into your pictures here are a couple of cool things to do:



  • Upload your pictures to Smugmug, you’ll get a “Map this” button automatically for any gallery with geotagged pictures (Flickr also supports Geotags).
  • If you have a web site you can use the WWMX Travelogue Builder program to make a cool travel diary with maps attached.
  • Add your pictures to the WWMX web application (the client app appears to have been hidden for some reason, but if you dig into the source of the WWMX download page you’ll find it).

Some final notes


There are a couple places where things will get out of sorts when geotagging pictures:



  • Starting picture taking before starting the GPS – The location stamper software will attempt to place the pictures along the route based on time and location stamps.  On one of my trips the software placed some of my pictures in the middle of the ocean because the only GPS data it had was my home in California and a location after the picture was taken… the software just guessed the picture was somewhere in between.
  • Taking pictures in multiple time zones – EXIF data doesn’t contain a time zone stamp, but the GPS data does.  The Location Stamper will assume the time zone of the computer is the timezone for the pictures.  If you do what I do and set the time on the camera to local time for your trip you’ll need to adjust the time back to your local time before stamping the pictures (you can do this in Location Stamper by right-clicking a picture or group of pictures and choosing “adjust timestamp”).  After you geotag the picture you can set the time back again using the same method. 


Update: WWMX Location Stamper is now downloadable directly from MSR, a lot easier than digging into the source of the WWMX page for the hidden link.