damians personal blog

(Foto nachgestellt)

Kürzlich habe ich mein Natel baden geschickt. Eine unüberlegte Bewegung, und platsch, voll ins nasse Element! Ich habe natürlich so schnell es mir meine Reflexe erlaubten das gute Stück wieder herausgefischt, aber es war schon voll durchtränkt.

Als erstes habe ich es ausgeschaltet. Wenn ich den Akku erst herausgenommen hätte ohne es auszuschalten, wäre die Gefahr bestanden, dass noch mehr Wasser ins Gehäuse eindringt, wenn ich das Abdeckung öffne. Also erst ausgeschaltet, und dann den Akku heraus. Danach habe ich es vom Spritzwasser befreit, aber was drin war, war drin.

Auf der Fahrt nach Hause habe ich es über die Lüftung gehalten und mit Warmluft anblasen lassen. Zuhause angekommen habe ich der Sache noch nicht richtig getraut, und habe mich an einen "Oma's Tipp" erinnert: Reis saugt Feuchtigkeit auf. Beispielsweise Salzstreuer sieht man oft mit ein paar Reiskörnern drin, damit das Salz nicht verklumpt. Also habe ich das Natel und den Akku kurzerhand über Nacht ins Vorratsglas zum Reis gesteckt und gut verschlossen.

Und siehe da: meine Kur hat gewirkt! Auf dem Display sind noch ganz leichte Spuren von der Wäsche zu finden, aber es funktioniert wieder tadellos.

        30.Jul.2007, 7:53 :: life outside computers :: Permalink :: Comments (2)

Quote from creativebits.org:

Don't hotlink, ImgRed instead

Hotlinking is when you use the image from one website on another website without copying the image to the second website's server.

Most website operators hate when people do that to their images if they don't link back to the source. (...) You can of course avoid all this problem by saving the image and uploading it to your own server. (...) [Alternatively] You can use the service called ImgRed. All you do is add http://imgred.com/ in front of the url of the image you want to display and ImgRed will take the image (once) and create a copy of it on ImgRed's servers.

I guess this was not the complete idea of the creator of imgred.com. It was rather to provide others with an easy-to-use showcase solution which everyone can adopt for their own server.

Unfortunately, the code is not ready for any server: if you don't have permission to run the PHP exec command on your host, which is very likely if you don't have a pro account, the script will fail. A very simple solution to this problem is to replace the user defined function GetMIMEType by the PHP function mime_content_type.

For my purpose, I set up a rewrite rule which allows me to add /imgred/ in front of the original URL of the image. Nevertheless it was tricky to find out that per default, any double slash // in a webhost path is reduced to a single slash. So I had to find the following workaround:

RewriteRule ^imgred/http:/(.*) /imgred.php?Image=http://$1
RewriteRule ^thumbred/http:/(.*) /imgred.php?Thumb=http://$1

The source code for the above image looks as follows:

<img alt="any example image" src="/thumbred/http://adsoftheworld.com/files/images/CalciWWF.preview.jpg" width="100%"/>

        29.Jul.2007, 4:21 :: programming :: Permalink :: Comments (0)

© Verner Nielsen

(Deutsche Zusammenfassung dieses Eintrags)

There is another method to combine several exposures into one called Dynamic Range Increase. The argument against HDR is that an image is created, which contains more information than the human eye is capable to handle.

This is no true, it is not the eye that is the problem, but the viewer technology. As far as I'm concerned, people argumenting like this don't understand what HDR is about.

Nevertheless some HDR Images look somewhat shallow, because the colors seem to approach grey during the HDR conversion.

My experience is that night-shots look great with DRI. But with day-shots, especially with a bright sky, nothing beats HDR.

drimaker.com:
More information about DRI and software to automate making DRI images.

Continue reading "hdr vs dri" »

        28.Jul.2007, 18:53 :: photo :: Permalink :: Comments (0)

© 2005 Apple

Petit dialogue dans le bureau*:

• Dave: Fred, c'est quoi ton adresse?
• Fred: fred at mail dot com
• Dave: Non, ton domicile!

Trop beau, si l'adresse par défault c'est l'adresse mail *lol*!

* Les noms ont été changé par la rédaction.

        26.Jul.2007, 9:49 :: unsorted :: Permalink :: Comments (0)

© 1995-2003 Apple

How to add a folder permanently to the PATH variable of your Mac OS X environment:

echo 'export PATH=/your/path/:$PATH' >> ~/.bash_profile

Notes:

• /your/path/ for instance could be /usr/local/bin/
• the config file for the standard terminal in OS X is not .bashrc
• sometimes .bashrc contains instructions although not used, you may want to keep these by using mv ~/.bashrc ~/.bash_profile
• make sure you use the apostrophe and not quotation marks, because "$PATH" would replace $PATH with the actual content of the path variable
• the >> is used to append the output of the preceding command to the file, thus preserving the contents of the file
• to check what your current bash profile looks like, use cat ~/.bash_profile

Update: I forgot to mention, but you can similarly export any environment variable permanently, for instance:

echo 'export SVN_EDITOR=VIM' >> ~/.bash_profile

        20.Jul.2007, 8:50 :: mac os x :: Permalink :: Comments (0)

Why does my heart feel so bad? haben sich schon Männer mit viel mehr Lebenserfahrung gefragt.

Wieso ist es, dass ich mein Herz immer weggeben will? Wieso hänge ich mein Herz immer an die Nächstbeste? Ich kenne sie nicht, ich weiss nicht wie sie heisst oder wo sie wohnt, ich weiss nicht was ihr Lieblingsessen ist oder wie sie beim erwachen aussieht. Aber ich würde ihr mein Herz schenken.

Je te donnerai mon coeur. C'est tout ce que j'ai, tu peut l'avoir si tu veux. Il est bon, et il y aurait pas mal de fille qui le prendrait, mais à toi, je te le donnerai.
(Züri West auf französisch klingt irgendwie nicht so gut wie auf Schweizerdeutsch.)

Scheiss drauf,
wenn ich noch einen sauf'
schlaf' ich Morgen länger aus.

        15.Jul.2007, 3:00 :: herzvoll :: Permalink :: Comments (0)

© 2007 Digital Domain

Today I was browsing digitaldomain.com and was amazed about the making of / behind the scenes (BTS) of computer generated effects, so I wanted to save these videos on my Harddisk.

Usually, a bookmark ('favelet') with the following code does the job to list embedded media*:

javascript:f=%5B%5D;for(i=0;(e=document.getElementsByTagName('embed')%5Bi%5D);i++)%20%7Bf%5Bf.length%5D=e.src;%7Dfor(i=0;(o=document.getElementsByTagName('object')%5Bi%5D);i++)%20%7B%09if%20(o.data)%20%7Bf%5Bf.length%5D=o.data;%7D%09else%20%7B%09%09for%20(j=0;p=o.getElementsByTagName('param')%5Bj%5D;j++)%20%7B%09%09%09if%20(p.name.toLowerCase()=='movie'%20%7C%7C%20p.name.toLowerCase()=='src'%20%7C%7C%20p.name.toLowerCase()=='href')%09%09%09f%5Bf.length%5D=p.value;%09%09%09%7D%09%09%7D%09%7Dm=/(mpg%7Cmpeg%7Cmov%7Cavi%7Cswf%7Casf%7Cwmv%7Cmp3%7Cram)$/i;for(i=0;(a=document.getElementsByTagName('a')%5Bi%5D);i++)%20%7B%09if%20(a.href%20&&%20m.test(a.href))%20%7B%20f%5Bf.length%5D=a.href;%7D%09%7Dr='%3Cdiv%20style=%22border:1px%20solid%20%23BBB;%20border-top-style:%20none;%20padding:%204px;%22%3E%3Cstrong%3EEmbedded%20Media:%3C'+'/strong%3E%3Cbr%20/%3ERight-click%20and%20save%20file(s)%20as:%20%3Cul%3E%5Cn';for%20(i=0;i%3Cf.length;i++)%7B%09n=f%5Bi%5D.substring(f%5Bi%5D.lastIndexOf('/')+1,f%5Bi%5D.length);%09if%20(n.indexOf('?')!=-1)%7Bn=n.substring(0,n.indexOf('?'));%7D%09r+='%3Cli%3E%3Ca%20href=%22'+f%5Bi%5D+'%22%3E'+n+'%3C'+'/a%3E%3C'+'/li%3E%5Cn';%09%7Dr+='%3C'+'/ul%3E%5Cn%3Ca%20href=%22javascript:;%22%20onclick=%22parentNode.parentNode.parentNode.removeChild(parentNode.parentNode);%22%3EDone%3C'+'/a%3E';d=document.createElement('div');d.innerHTML=r;d.style.cssText='font:%2010px/15px%20%22Lucida%20Grande%22,%20Geneva,%20Arial,%20sans-serif;%20text-align:%20left;%20position:%20absolute;%20top:%200;%20right:%2016px;%20z-index:%201000;%20border:%201px%20solid%20%23FFF;%20border-top-style:%20none;%20background-color:%20%23FFF;';void(document.body.appendChild(d));

This script takes the current page, examines the embedded media (movies, flash, etc.), and displays the links to the source files in the upper right corner. You can download them with a right-click, and "save as...". But somehow the script didn't work this time.

The HTML-source showed a lot of JavaScript, but no Quicktime file. So I took a second bookmark which is to view the rendered source*:

javascript:r='%3Cdiv%20style=%22border:1px%20solid%20%23BBB;%20border-top-style:%20none;%20padding:%204px;%22%3E%3Cstrong%3EViewing%20Rendered%20Source%20of:%3C'+'/strong%3E%3Cbr%20/%3E%20'+document.location;r+='%3Ctextarea%20style=%22font:%2010px/15px%20Monaco,%20monospace;%20display:%20block;%20overflow:%20auto;%22%20cols=%2280%22%20rows=%2220%22%20wrap=%22off%22%20readonly=%22readonly%22%3E'+document.body.parentNode.innerHTML+'%3C'+'/textarea%3E%3Ca%20href=%22javascript:;%22%20onclick=%22parentNode.parentNode.parentNode.removeChild(parentNode.parentNode);%22%3EDone%3C'+'/a%3E%3C'+'/div%3E';d=document.createElement('div');d.innerHTML=r;d.style.cssText='font:%2010px/15px%20%22Lucida%20Grande%22,%20Geneva,%20Arial,%20sans-serif;%20text-align:%20left;%20position:%20absolute;%20top:%200;%20right:%2016px;%20z-index:%201000;%20border:%201px%20solid%20%23FFF;%20border-top-style:%20none;%20background-color:%20%23FFF;';void(document.body.appendChild(d));

There I found an iframe (include frame), with the following address:
/movie.php?id=20&section=bts&w=480&h=360
In this frame, the actual movie is embedded - the first bookmark to list embedded media worked great.

Get a list of links of the files which I downloaded.

* This may work in Safari for Mac only, other Platforms are not yet tested.

Continue reading "save any quicktime video from websites" »

        14.Jul.2007, 16:03 :: web world :: Permalink :: Comments (0)

   

A HDR image of the panorama of Fribourg (Châpelle de la Laurette) and the original images above, shot july the 6 with back light of the evening sun. It is quite amazing how the sky is blue and textured, and the houses in the foreground still show natural coloring. This image was made using Photomatix Pro and the Tone Mapping set to 'Tone Compressor'.

        9.Jul.2007, 10:04 :: photo :: Permalink :: Comments (0)

(Deutsche Fassung dieses Eintrags)

Digital cameras cannot take pictures the way humans perceive it. The human eye has a higher dynamic range than the camera.

The easiest example is an object with very bright background: the human eye can see textures on the object as well as in the background. When taking a picture of the object, the camera will make a choice: either the textures of the object appear, and the background is completely white - or the texture of the background are visible, and the foreground will be too dark.

The solution to this dilemma (except from cut-out and mask) is to increase the dynamic range of an image: the amount of data stored in the a pixel is doubled. High dynamic range (HDR) images cannot be displayed on a normal computer screen or printer prior to mapping the higher range (32-bit) to the conventional range (16-bit).

Because there are no HDR compatible cameras on the (consumer) market yet, the process works as follows: the information of two or more (usually 3-5) images of the same scenery with different exposures is combined into one image. The range of image is then 'compressed' to fit standard viewing methods.

When HDR will be implemented directly in the cameras, the photographer will not need to worry anymore about over- or underexposed pictures. The decision about the 'exposure' will be post-production. I'm looking forward to that!

More information about HDR:
wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging
hdrsoft.com

Note: the Photomatix Pro Software from this website may be trial licensed only, but can still be used to generate pictures without watermark: use the Tone Compressor method instead of Details enhancer when tone mapping, and you will get no watermarks!

Continue reading "hdr wtf?" »

        8.Jul.2007, 17:17 :: photo :: Permalink :: Comments (0)