A Little Blog – Page 9 – Random thoughts at random intervals

Idle

Playing with MSR Cliplets

Cliplets is nifty, free tool from MSR that allows you to take a video and turn it into what appears to be a still photo. If you have the right scene, it results can be surprising and delightful.

Here’s my first go, say hi to Finney.

The picture above looks like a still photo, but then Finney pricks up his ear. It’s not a video, it’s an animated gif created with Cliplets.

About a year ago Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg made a splash by hand stitching images together to create moving still photos they called “cinemagraphs”. For an example of this technique done really well, check out a blog post from the Washington Post: Cinemagraphs: What it looks like when a photo moves.

Creating their cinemagraphs probably took Beck and Burg many hours of painstaking work in Photoshop. I don’t have that kind of time or patience. Fortunately, Microsoft Research Cliplets makes creating one of these still images quite simple. The UI is fairly intuitive, but there are a few things that need a little explaining. The best way to learn the features is to watch the short tutorials on the Cliplets page.

It’s worth noting, in order to produce a quality image you really do need good source material. The video I used for the picture of Finney was shot on my cellphone camera. The camera does shoot in 720p, but even so, the dark areas are grainy and parts of the video were blurry and couldn’t be used.

You know all those times you mistakenly had your camera set to video instead of picture? Time to go back and have some fun with those pictures.

Tags Dogs, Photography

Tech

Launch your web browser as another user

Post author By Reeves Little
Post date July 17, 2012
14 Comments on Launch your web browser as another user

In SharePoint 2013 there is no longer a quickie menu choice to allow you to indulge your alter ego. I’ll let others go into depth on why it went a way, but I wanted to share a quick tip for how to be another user when you need to test your SharePoint install: create a desktop shortcut to launch your browser with the runas CL argument.

New identity, no waiting

When you created your new SharePoint installation you probably gave yourself Epic Guru level access (it may be called Farm Admin in your version). This is good, it allows you to get tons done. It doesn’t, however, allow you to verify you’ve adequately secured the CEO’s Beanie Baby picture collection, or pretend to be an adoring fan posting to your My Site news feed. To do that, you need to be someone else.

For my example I’m going to use Internet Explorer, because I’m an unapologetic company man. You should feel free to swap in your browser of choice… like Netscape or Lynx.

Create a shortcut to your favorite browser. In Windows I did this by navigating to C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer and dragging iexplore.exe to the desktop (by default this creates a shortcut).
Right click your new shortcut and select “Properties”
Modify the shortcut target by adding runas and the desired user account to the beginning of the path. Change the target to (replace user@domain with your test acct):
%systemroot%\System32\runas.exe /user:user@domain "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
Click OK to save changes.

(Note: if you’re not running 64bit windows, the target should be: %systemroot%\System32\runas.exe /user:user@domain "%ProgramFiles%\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe")

Double-click your new shortcut and you’ll get a prompt to enter a password. You won’t see anything on the screen as you type, so just go on faith. Type your pw and hit enter.

A little extra for style points

Because I can never leave well enough alone, I had the need to soup up my shortcut (I’m way to old to say “pimp my shortcut”… but you know I was thinking it). The icon of the runas.exe shortcut is boring. I need an icon that screams “I’m a browser shortcut!”

Once again, right-click the shortcut and select properties. Click the change icon button. I went for the globe with a mouse on top.

Just because I want to customize it, don’t assume I have any imagination.

Finally, give yourself a reminder that you’re someone else. Double-click your shortcut to launch the browser. When your browser comes up, enable the favorites bar (in IE, right-click the title bar and choose favorites bar). Bookmark a site (any site will do) and add it to the favorites bar. Right click your new favorite and rename it to the user name of the special account.

Must remember to put on the glasses…

Instant split-personality. Let me know how it works out for you!

Tags SharePoint, SharePoint 2013, Tips

Life

Here’s where I pat myself in the back

Post author By Reeves Little
Post date July 8, 2012

Weekend’s done, was i productive? I wasn’t feeling productive… but upon review,

Finished the screen for our trash bins

Finished my workbench

Trimmed the garage door

And cleaned out the garage.

I also managed to spend some of Ben’s money… but that was fun and doesn’t really count as work.

Tags Home Improvement

Idle

Moon

Post author By Reeves Little
Post date May 13, 2012
2 Comments on Moon

The moon seen through the corkscrew willow in our backyard.

Tags Photography

Idle

Aww… cute widdle buggie

Post author By Reeves Little
Post date May 3, 2012

Urgh… sorry, you were much cuter from across the room.

Game over man, game over!

Tags Photography

Idle

I’m living in the future

One of my molars was almost all filling on the top, so a crown was required. Instead of ordering out, the dentist just did a 3d scan of my teeth and made me a new tooth while I sat enthralled, staring at the machine next to my chair like a 5 year old boy watching a construction site… or like a nerd watching a cnc mill carve a tooth out of ceramic.

I now have a brand-new tooth topper and I can’t tell it apart from the teeth I made myself (though it took me more like forty years to make mine).

Idle

Is nothing more entertaining than irony?

Post author By Reeves Little
Post date March 28, 2012
5 Comments on Is nothing more entertaining than irony?

Last night some enterprising spammer started sending mail to a distribution list (DL) at Microsoft. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue since most DLs don’t accept mail from addresses outside the company. Older DLs, however, often haven’t had this setting turned on. Now, there’s nothing especially remarkable about spam email, but when it occurs with a large DL, it arms one of the most entertaining corporate behaviors… the "me too" mail bomb.

There a few things you can do when getting an unwanted email:

Delete it, move on
Contact the DL owner, ask them to fix the issue
Point out the problem by sending a mail to everyone on the alias

The first option is easy, but unsatisfying for most. The second option is effective, but requires work (and work is hard). The third option is useless, since most everyone else on the DL is in the same boat as you.

While it’s useless, the third option, when it happens on a big DL, is also frequently hilarious.

Here’s the basic sequence of events:

Someone sends an off topic mail to a large alias
Other members of the alias reply-all to the mail to commiserate, or offer a helpful solution
And then the fun starts
A different set of alias members get upset about the off topic mail, and they reply-all… telling people not to reply-all

Once a DL reaches a critical size it will have a good cross section of the employee population. This is important because you need enough personality types to play the roles in the three steps above. I’d really like to know the threshold for list size… but the alias last night was plenty big.

The spam mails last night were sent to a mail list with over 28 thousand employees.

Sure, I wasted some time watching the mails go by. But they were all small, I knew I didn’t have to do any work, and best of all, I got to read statements like this:

Yes. All of those mails were sent with reply all. That tickles my funny bone and jabs my irony spleen.

Tags Communication, Email

Home

I made a box!

Post author By Reeves Little
Post date March 18, 2012

Exciting stuff, right?

It’s my prototype for my new office built-ins.

Now I’m ready for the real thing, just needs to be a bit bigger. I have the layout all planned out on the wall… it reminds me of a cell-shaded video game. The wood is all out in the garage waiting for me, shelf brackets should arrive this week… the end is so close.