Bi-weekly Background - 2010.08.06

Going to be busy with work and other stuff tomorrow, so I decided to post this a bit early... Here's my second free background, Real Bliss:

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Taken somewhere in the Palouse when I visited Palouse Falls. I couldn't help but notice the similarity with Microsoft's iconic "Bliss" image, which I always thought was over saturated and not particularly blissful. Having seen the hill where the original image was taken, I think the Palouse is quite a bit prettier. Using this as a desktop background produces some interesting double-takes, particularly when people know your computer is running Linux or Mac OS. This was actually taken from a moving car, using a low shutter speed - a technique that I've found works pretty well for hard-to-access scenery.

Bi-weekly Background 2010.08.01

So a while back, I was trying to decide what to do with my photography library. I like having the photos in Picasa and sharing them with friends and family. I also like seeing my pictures in use, but I'm not quite ready to release them to wilds on the interweb for all to consume. After a few weeks of chewing on this, I came up with an idea: Every week, I'd release a few of my pictures, cropped and resized as desktop backgrounds.

My tentative plans are to release two pictures a week -- probably Monday and Friday, schedule permitting -- free of charge, as a Creative Commons, No derivatives, Attribution content. Any picture I take is fair game for this, except those of friends, family or other clearly recognizable people (distant crowds are okay). Some days might be nature or scenery pictures, others my attempts at astrophotography, or even abstract art that I think would look good as desktops.

Keep in kind that I'm an amateur photographer -- some of these are going to stink -- and I don't have the photoshop knowhow to churn out great pictures by the dozen. Initially, at least, I'll be releasing cropped pictures in reasonable desktop sizes, but otherwise untouched from my camera. Schedule is liable to be subject to change; I have a busy job, and I travel frequently, so there may be delays (foreseen or unforeseen).

Eventually I'll place an archive of these on my website, but for now, I'm going to use my blog to do that.

Anyways, without further ado, here is my first free desktop, Purple Flowers:

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This was shot with my trusty telephoto 55mm-250mm lens on my Canon Rebel EOS XSi. Although this is a telephoto lens and typically doesn't focus well at close distances, I've found it can take some great macro-like shots at its maximum focal length from my standing height. The flowers themselves were found while hiking along the Tomales Point trail out by Point Reyes, just north of San Francisco.

Exploratorium & Galilieoscope

Yesterday Urmi and I went to the Exploratorium in downtown San Francisco. Being both science inclined folks, we're both suckers for science museums (even the ones which are aimed primarily at kids) and the Exploratorium was no exception. Unlike many of the science museums I've been to, the Exploratorium is mainly a hands-on sort of place. They have exhibits demonstrating pendulums, echos, optical illusions (including on that gives you the illusion of being in a rotating barrel), and all manner of scientific principles. My personal favorite was one demonstrating the Curie Point, a temperature at which a ferromagnetic material becomes paramagnetic and loses its ability to be attracted to magnets. The Exploratorium is also set in a gorgeous location, with a lake (full of ducks, swans, etc) and small park. I took plenty of pictures, which are available on my picasa account.

While there, I picked up a Galileoscope, which is a cheap, low-powered, DIY telescope based on the same model that Galileo used to observe Jupiter, the moon, Venus, and Saturn. In its default configuration, it's a 25x zoom telescope, good enough to make out a lot of detail on the moon, see the moons of Jupiter, and more. The telescope also comes with a Barlow Lens attachment, which doubles the 25x zoom. I haven't quite made this Barlow lens attachment work, but I used the default configuration last night to view several stars (sorry, no clue which ones -- I used whatever I could see from our apartment) and the moon. I took some great (if slightly blurry) shots of the moon as well. My best is below.

Clearly visible are several impact craters and maria, as well as Copernicus crater. This was taken about a halfhour after moonrise, so the moon really was this color. I took this using the highly scientific method of sticking my camera up against the telescope and snapping pictures. I don't recommend this -- it was very hard to get shots in focus, and if I bumped into the telescope, all bets were off.

Metro App v1.0.2

My Metro App for Android has been updated to version 1.0.2. The only thing fixed in this release is a rare bug that occurs if the phone has disabled the location services (GPS and Wifi-network based location) and the user tries to sort stations by distance. I've added a warning message if this occurs as well.

Metro App Near 1000 downloads

So in the last two weeks, nearly 1000 people have downloaded my little metro app. It looks like most of the response has been favorable, but I've noticed a few crashes that people have reported. I should be able to take care of those (it appears to be related to getting your location for the 'nearest station' feature). Look forward to an update hopefully later this weekend.

Metro App Released!

After far, far too much tinkering, I finally bit the bullet and decided to release my Washington DC Metro app for Android. It's about damn time -- the thing has been ready to go (except for a single typo) for over a month. This is my first Android app, but I use it fairly often (daily, if I remember) to check on the status of the trains on my way to and from work. Homepage for the software is here. Enjoy!

Apple Really, Really Clever

From AppleInsider: Apple iPad 3G uses the LCD Frame as a 3G antenna. This is an amazingly clever design. I wonder how many other tricks people use for laptop and portable antennas? Getting a really high signal quality out of a small device typically requires you to either be deviously clever (like this) or give the user instructions along the lines of "Whatever you do, don't touch this!" Score one for Apple. Too bad I'm not interested in an iPad.