Caricatures Ireland

I just watched this TED talk with Blaise Aguera y Arcas on Photosynth, a powerful application in development that stitches thousands of photos together and extrapolates the position of the photographer, creating a virtual model of the area photographed (found on BizarroBlog). A written explanation doesn’t do it justice, you really should watch the demo. I’ve just been playing around with the prototype on Microsoft Labs, it’s really incredible. This kind of thing is going to replace the linear, click-next-in-slideshow model of sites like Flickr and Photobucket, and what’s incredible is the complexity of the metadata that’s going to build up around each image: as people tag images in the likes of Flickr, that data is applied to all connected images. The best thing to do is try it, and if your computer hasn’t got the chops for it watch the talk on the TED site.

Tags: computers, photography, technology by admin
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Photo owned by Fred Jala (cc)

Millionaire at 17. So what’s left to do? Try to take over the world? Congratulations guys!

Tags: how to get a girlfriend, news, technology by admin
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As described earlier, my computer is deceased, no more, gone to the big Dell outlet in the sky. One of the implications of this is that certain software subscriptions I’d had on that machine are no longer any use. A case in point is Norton Antivirus. I know it has its critics but I’ve always found it effective and has prevented me getting viruses from certain, shall we say, not quite tech savvy people

I’d set Norton for automatic renewal when I downloaded it, which meant the subscription would renew and be charged to my credit card. Of course this happened within two days of my Dimension dying. I thought that was sixty odd quid down the swanny, but I emailed Symantec customer support and explained. I received one of the most courteous replies to tell me the amount had been refunded to my card and the automatic subscription cancelled the next day. They had my money, I asked for it back and they gave with no fuss whatsoever.

I’ve had bad experiences with some software and hardware support before, so when I get good support I like to sing about it. And on an ironic note Tom Richmond posted this around the same time as my harddrive packed in.

Tags: computers, customer support, technology by admin
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I found this list of design geekery and alarmingly found most of it highly amusing. I have been looking a little FFFFFF recently- I really must get out more.

The world of design can be a ruthless one; not only do you spend most of your time pondering and tweaking minute details that most people find insignificant – and most likely won’t even notice – you also get lured into developing anti-social habits like font-spotting and source-code peeping.

Learn to spot the warning signs in time
– you know you’re becoming a design geek when:

1. You giggle whenever you use the colors F0CCED, EFF0FF and 44DDDD
2. You’re in the sun and you look around for a Drop Shadow to sit under.
3. You give your relatives a lecture about color spaces and profiles when you email them your vacation photos.
4. Seing someone use Lens Flare or Comic Sans adversely affects your blood-pressure
5. You maintain a grid system for your refrigerator magnets.
6. You organise your CD collection according to the Pantone chart.
7. You sit at work for eight hours straight just looking at your monitor, waiting for a spark of inspiration that doesn’t come.
8. You’re up ’til 5am because you came up with the best idea ever while brushing your teeth.
9. The hottest dream you ever had was “Trace contour… Find Edges… Pinch… Extrude… Smudge Stick… Motion Blur…. Sprayed Strokes…”
10. You know Lorem Ipsum by heart.
11. Your kid knows Lorem Ipsum by heart.
12. The preschool teacher complains your child won’t color inside or outside the lines – only indicate colors on a separate sheet.
13. Activating your entire font collection makes your computer crash – and you’re running OSX.
14. You deliberately butcher your perfectly cross browser compatible site in IE by placing a “Too Cool for IE” banner on it.
15. You prefer a Layer Style of 50% Opacity (or less) on your wife’s Satin.
16. You spend $200 on a font for your personal website because “it’s the only one where the lower-case g is just right…”
17. Looking at a menu make you go “hmmm, ITC Baskerville italic” rather than “mmmm, lunch!”
18. And when you finally order, you go for Layer Based Slices with Grain Texture…
19. You use words about fonts you dislike that other normal people reserve for fascist dictators and serial killers.
20. Apple+Z is the first thing that goes through your mind if you drop and break something.
21. You refer to colleagues as Strict, Transitional, Loose and the Future Unemployed.
22. You refer to your privates as “the Magic Wand”.
23. You actually understand this post and pass it on to your friends.

Tags: blogging, design, technology by admin
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I have a little button on my website and blog so that clients can contact me directly using Skype. Click, ring, ring, I’d like to enquire about your caricature prices. But I frequently get contact requests or chats from random people, not just in Ireland, but all over the world. I don’t necessarily mind (yet!) but it got me thinking: you’d never just pick up the phone and randomly ring someone from the phone book, would you? And isn’t VOIP supposed to be computer-based telephony?
Here’s my thinking on it- the whole social networking phenomenon (Bebo, Myspace etc) is so ingrained into the culture of computer usage that applications like Skype fall into that bracket by default. By the same token that you can browse and add friends at random on networking sites, Skype users are doing the same thing. Which begs the question, what is considered proper Skype etiquette? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

Tags: bebo, blogging, myspace, skype, social networking, technology by admin
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