Sound and moon

My blog appears to be just about dead, but I'm keeping it hanging on every once in a while. I'd like to post more, but college and work are keeping me really busy.

Anyway, just ran across this, and thought it was a pretty good demonstration of a speaker for those curious.

http://animagraffs.com/loudspeaker/

Also, combo post! Here's a photo I took of the moon eclipse a while back.

Compression

I know I haven't posted here in quite a while...

Here's a visual representation of compression. This can be applied to audio too.

View full size!

Raw source (not really, but close enough)

Dynamic range compressed. Blacks flattened, loss of detail.

Data compression. This is why I don't like listening to MP3's in general.

College

Aaahh! It's April already! Time is moving so fast it's scary. College is really hard.

Why must the nicest weather of the year coincide with exam study time?

I wrote this up a while ago, and am just now posting it in between studying for exams. I've been doing nothing but math for the past 6 hours, and I need a brain break or I think my brain will break.

I realized the other day that I haven't really posted any pictures from college, so I'll make an attempt to rectify that from now on. First though, new computer setup!

Never seen that error before...

It's working pretty nicely. The main reason I'm running Windows is that the free version of Davinci Resolve (Davinci Resolve lite) only runs on Windows. From what I can tell, the paid version runs on Linux, but I don't have $1000 to spare, and since I'm a student, I get Windows for free, so...

I'm really excited for DaVinci Resolve 12, I'll probably move to that as my primary video editor. (except on Linux...) Resolve can even do real-time optical flow interpolation, which is the coolest thing I've seen in a while.

New system specs: (Subject to change fairly often)

CPU: 2.5 GHz Xeon x8

RAM: 20 GB ECC DDR2

GPU: Nvidia GTX 590

1 TB 7200 RPM SATA drive (Windows 7)

256 GB SATA SSD (Linux Mint)

So now I've got a good setup for CG and video editing, if only I had time to use it... I'm hoping to put it to use for the CRU VMA's next year. There are some nice computers in the video editing department at GMU, (i7 3770 with 16GB RAM), but they're rather lacking in terms of the GPU. (At least the ones I've tried, the mac pro computers may be better)

Anyway, photos!

Spring is beautiful.

 

 

 These are all raw, completely unedited, and some of them were taken with my phone. I did see enough good photo opportunities I've started bringing my camera. The Canon PowerShot G series is a really great all-around camera. It's small enough to bring easily, and still gives me all the control I need, and good photos. The new ones have HD video too. I'm very happy with my G10. I've put it through a lot, and it still delivers. I need to clean the lens though, as you can see in the photos above.

That's all for now.

Me and VMA shooting

Getting started on VMA's early this year...

Mostly generic guitar shots that could be used on various projects. I didn't realize until this project how nice the full frame sensor is on the 5D. I should have put magic lantern on it for this project, I'll try to do that for next time. It makes video shooting so much better. We didn't check focus except on the built-in camera screen for the first round, so we had to shoot that all again. 

Note to self: bring HDMI monitor next time, even if it's only a 5" screen, almost anything is better for checking focus than the 2" camera monitor. Magic lantern's focus peaking would have been very helpful.

We also did some other shots, I'm not sure how many of these will be used, they were more specific, but it was a very interesting shoot. Without revealing too much;

That is snow in the background, and the stick was an essential piece of equipment :)[]

Don't mess with Marines

This is pretty old, but still good:

http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2011/05/messing-with-wrong-marines.html

Text reads:

Assailant suffers injuries from fall

Orville Smith, a store manager for Best Buy in Augusta, GA., told police he observed a male customer, later identified as Tyrone Jackson of Augusta, on surveillance cameras putting a laptop computer under his jacket. When confronted the man became irate, knocked down an employee, drew a knife and ran for the door. 

Outside on the sidewalk were four Marines collecting toys for the Toys for Tots program. Smith said the Marines stopped the man, but he stabbed one of the Marines, CPL. Phillip Duggan, in the back; the injury did not appear to be severe. after Police and an ambulance arrived at the scene Cpl. Duggan was transported for treatment.

"The subject was also transported to the local hospital with two broken arms, a broken ankle, a broken leg, several missing teeth, possible broken ribs, multiple contusions, assorted lacerations, a broken nose, and a broken jaw...injuries he sustained when he slipped and fell off the curb after stabbing the Marine." According to a police report.

From TigerHawkBlog.

Don't mess with marines!

Advertisers take note!

Few things make an advertisement look worse than having photos in the wrong aspect ratio... Does this annoy anyone else?

Graphics designers seem to think they can just stretch images to fit whatever space they want. It doesn't work that way!

Crop or letterbox. It's not that hard.

Some of my more interesting pictures...

Here's a general collection of pictures (not necessarily photos) that I liked for one reason or another. Some were chosen for quality, others for content, (such as humor), and many for both.
Enjoy!

View all

Get your own

The photos were all taken with a Canon PowerShot G10 except for a few early ones that were taken with a PowerShot G7, and the fireworks photos, which I took with my father's 5D MK II.

If you do not have shockwave flash, click the link below: 

https://picasaweb.google.com/103231218926673265377/Highlights?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCIPsjPXZkcuoOQ&feat=directlink

End of swim season slideshow

For the end of the Summer swim season team banquet I made a slideshow. I did it a little differently this year, and I like how it came out for the most part. The photos were all taken by me or my father. We showed it with a projector, and I set up my speakers for the sound track. It seemed to be popular, and I enjoyed making it. Here it is:

4th of July 2012!

For the 4th of July this year we went to our grandparent's farm. They live by the water, and they have some neighbors who put on a great fireworks show each year. It was lots of fun, and here are some of the photos I took:

(Slideshow, and the individual photos are below)

My first lightning photo!

The reflections in the water really add a lot.

They had a really cool machine fireworks gun that they could aim. 

All photos CC-0 by the way.

100th post!

This post will be number 100, so the question arises, what do I put here?

Well, here are some photos I took Sunday night that are I liked:

Click for larger

Harper's Ferry

Well, I misplaced my camera for a while, and hadn't downloaded it's photos for a long time, so that's why these photos are only now being uploaded. We went for an all-day hike on the Appalachian trail earlier this year. Captions are for the photo above the text.

Along the river on the way there 

 More of the same. I think I need to clean my lens.

 The other side?

Some perspective 

 Part of the canal trail that we hiked on some.

Mist / fog 

Again, part of the canal trail that we hiked on. 

Rocks. I want to model rocks in Blender at some point. 

 Train tunnel

 A long bridge.

 I thought it this was pretty cool. See the wire linking the two ties? If that gets disconnected, it will probably alert someone that the tracks are out of alignment.

 Historic building

Recycling / trash barrels

 Historic buildings

 Curious. I just took a photo because I thought it was unusual.

 More trash / recycling barrels

 Train station

 We buy junk and sell antiques! (This is where we ate lunch)

 The restaurant where we ate lunch also had an "antiques" section. :)

Where we had lunch... Next two...

I think this was tilted to show how steep the place we were hiking right then actually was. 

 A little bit of snow. Photo documented!

 The sunset

 The sunset with less lens flare

 A very odd power line tower

 Sunset. One of my favorites of this set.

 Odd power line tower.

 Detail

 Rock sculptures. Next two...

 Can't quite read / decode it. Frustrating... I think I was able to read a little of it at the time though.

More historic buildings. Next two... 

 Canal trail. I had to use my hand as a lens hood to get a photo, and unfortunately it got in the photo. I may crop it later. You can also see that in the photo belos.

This is very high up, in case you can't tell... 

 Rapids. Next three...

 Photo taken from the bridge.

 And from the side...

 Angle view...

And some kayakers! 

Apologies for such a ridiculously long post, but I may do it again. Or I may just link to my Picasa web albums.