There was a very cool talk from SIGGRAPH on a novel method for resizing images by removing parts of the image with the least energy by Dr. Shai Avidan and Dr. Ariel Shamir.
The paper can be found on Dr. Ariel Shamir’s homepage, but the site is very slow right now. Check out the embedded video below.
Link found via dpreview.com.
Sunset from my apartment this evening.
A comment I wrote on the City Room blog of the NY Times was put on the blog’s front page.
I was writing in response to the mayor’s spokesman, Stu Loeser, who said, “Nobody likes taking the subway. If you like taking the subway you should see a psychiatrist, get your head examined, go to see a shrink.”
My comment was paraphrased on the blog’s front page to: “With all due respect to the mayor’s chief spokesman, I enjoy taking the subway… I haven’t driven since 1991; I don’t think that makes me crazy.”
Looking for a photo of my apartment building?
Check out the new Google maps Street View: Sam’s apartment building.
Tonight I was reading the news before I went to bed. The major story of the day is in regards to the shootings at Virginia Tech. The insane man who took the lives of 33 other people hasn’t been identified yet.
One item that was released by the college newspaper, The Collegiate Times, was the name of a professor who was killed that morning. Given the professor’s name, it is pretty easy to find the professor’s staff page. Then there is an email address which leads to his personal web site, with notes about his hopes and dreams, photos and family. And then you realize how that this was a living human being, not just an image on a television set or in a newspaper.
But it hit me even closer to home when I clicked on his resume and saw that he used to work in an IT department at another university in North Carolina. From there, I realized that I was probably less than six degrees away from him, since I used to work with someone who is now in charge of IT at another North Carolina university.
Or, to take another path, I believe his father is a well-published science fiction author. And I know I have read some of his work before, whether it is hidden at an anthology in my shelves or in the attic of my father’s house. And that makes this all too real as well.
Maybe if the insane man knew his victims better, he wouldn’t have done what he did. In a way, the world isn’t nearly small enough.
If you want, you can visit Jamie Bishop’s site for yourself.
The week or so has been very tough. There was a lot going on at work, I have a couple of deadlines looming, and I had an upsetting last second change in some travel plans. That being said, I read a cool post on my Internet provider’s blog today. It’s about folks who abuse the DMCA.
It includes an embedded video clip from blip.tv with someone who settled a lawsuit in an interesting manner. The blog post has all of the details, and it is worth reading.
Link from William Gibson
YouTube has a cool video of a kernel of popcorn popping in slow motion
Referral from Serious Eats
Here are a couple of sites I have found interesting recently:
Two write-ups regarding the effective resolution of a digital camera: Diffraction and Photography and Why Is My 50mm Lens Equivalent to 80mm on a 35mm Camera. A site on digital photography standards. A book about asset management. A proposal by Lawrence Lessig on Orphaned Copyright Works.