I want a new mouse

One that wont make me sick
One that wont make me crash my car
Or make me feel three feet thick

I've tried a couple of mouses at work—an off-brand and one from Microsoft—both cheap, corded, optical, and with a scroll wheel. Every so often, the mouse cursor/pointer jerks to a corner of the screen. This happens with both of them. I've gone through Dell's online troubleshooting process, but to no avail. I'm thinking the cause may be their lowly LED-based sensors on my fake-wood laminate desk. Laser should be better, right, or anything that doesn't need to look at my desk surface? While I'm replacing it, I might as well consider the ergonomics, too. My mouse wrist—the right one—hasn't hurt but, you know, now that I think about it, well, maybe it does hurt just a bit. :-) Actually my left wrist hurts more. What's up with that?

The Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan looks nice, although I've never used a trackball for any length of time.
3M has an interesting alternative—a joystick. Hmmm, I dunno, though...
	I think I'll get one of these touchpads just for fun. I don't mind using the touchpad on my Eee PC. Might be nice to switch back and forth between a mouse and a touchpad during the day.
The HandshoeMouse looks like a ray (you know, the fish). Nice, but it's not a laser.
Here's Microsoft's Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000. Not bad. I've had trouble with their scroll wheels in the past, though.
Finally, Logitech's MX 1100 looks real nice. Good reviews, too. I've used their MX Revolution at home for several years and really like it.

UPDATE 12/3/2009: I ended up buying a like-new Logitech MX1100 off of eBay for $20. I like it, although I have been accidentally clicking what are normally the Back and Document Flip ("stealth") buttons with my thumb. After recently losing some text I had just written by accidentally clicking the Back button, I finally got around to disabling these and the Forward button. I never use the Mouse Sensitivity buttons, but they're out of the way so I'll leave them alone. The button below the scroll wheel that switches between scroll speeds works fine, although I miss the automatic clutch in the more expensive MX Revolution. My biggest gripe is with scrolling in click-to-click mode. When you scroll in one direction and then stop, the wheel often rolls back to the previous notch, which moves the mouse back a bit in the opposite direction, which of course scrolls whatever you're looking at back past where you wanted to stop. Just a minor irritation, though. Overall, I like this mouse.

Two-wheeled emergency vehicles

I saw this on digg:



It reminded me of these Austin EMS motorcycles:

I HATE ALL THAT SILENCE.

This is my favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoon.



Click on the image for a larger, readable size.

Very realistic flame job

Not sure where I stole saw this. To add to the irony, this is permit-only parking—see the sign?

Vanishing act

One night when I was a teenager, during a break from playing keyboards in a nightclub, I was staring at a brick wall in a hallway much like this:



It had a carriage lamp on it but nothing else. As I stared directly ahead at the wall—but not the lamp—the lamp gradually disappeared so that all I saw was an unadorned brick wall:



I have since been able to do this at will with other scenes. It doesn't work if I stare at the object that I'm trying to erase, and the background has to be uniform, either solid or patterned. I just look at it for a few seconds and the object fades from view. if I alter my gaze, the object comes back.

I know that we all have a blind spot where the optic nerve passes through the back of the eye ball and that our brain compensates by filling in the details based on the scene. Maybe that facility is erasing the lamp. Somehow, I am able to consciously control it. Has anybody else had this happen to them?

IPv4 Exhaustion Counter

A friend pointed out this site to me. It shows how much longer we have until all IPv4 addresses have been used up. I wanted to add it to my blog, so I made an installer so that others may add it to their blog, too. Look in the right-hand margin for the result.

</a><div id='ipv4_en_badge_wrapper'> <script type='text/javascript' language='javascript' src='http://inetcore.com/project/ipv4ec/en-us/wolf_c.js'></script> <br clear='all' /></div>

Cinematic style in photography

Coming across a reference to "cinematic style" in a Twitter entry, I wondered what makes a photograph cinematic.

• Production
  
  
  
  • Wide aperture
    
  • Slow shutter (< 1/60 sec)
    
  • Telephoto lens from a distance on a tripod
    
  • Slightly underexpose
    
  • Dusk or dawn
    
  
  
• Post-production
  
  
  
  • Shift white balance
    
  • Black bars, top and bottom
    
  • Reduce saturation
    
  • Add multicolor noise
    
  • Curved gamma
    
  • Increase contrast or make black blacker
    
  
  

The above summary is based on the following citations.

...lighting, the way you move the camera (don't zoom in, be steady, use tripods), film grain, the exposure of the film, and of course depth of field. your depth of field isn't that great on most mini-dv cameras... they're pretty much flat. forums.studentfilms.com

White balance to off-white colors for nice tints.

Lock the camera down on a tripod and zoom in from a distance, this gives a nice shallow depth of field with blurry backgrounds much the way a film is shot. forums.studentfilms.com

Something I've learned is to get rid of shadow grain. this means toying with the exposure.

You know when yuor filming someone under a light, but everything else is dark, and the camera tries to compensate by adding more light? turn your exposure on the camera down a tad and it will get rid of that. forums.studentfilms.com

Another thing to do that is pretty easy is to add a black matte to the top and bottom of the screen. Just two bars of black. I know it's cheesy but it works well when you have no other capabilities such as knocking down the frame rate. forums.studentfilms.com

...get a camera with manual focus, exposure, and shutter speed, and set the shutter to 1/60s or slower. Use a tripod.

Avoid shooting at mid-day. Early morning or sunset will look better. forums.studentfilms.com

...try to shoot on a long lens as much as possible (put the camera far away from actors, zoom in and film it that way) to create some more depth. Also, shoot on a low F Stop forums.studentfilms.com

"How to turn your photo into movie-like effect using Photoshop?"
This is basically what the author says:

1. Reduce saturation
   
2. Increase contrast
   
3. Use lens blur to create shallow depth of field
   
4. Add Noise
   
5. Add black bars top and bottom for Cinemascope effect
   
6. Adjust color balance
   

How do I make my film look digital?

Film cameras normally sample time 24 times a second at 1/48th second each.

Film also tends to record a greater contrast ratio.

...film gamma tends to be more curved (exponential) than video.

Film grain tends to look more multicolored, smaller sized (because film has a greater resolution), ...

...start with basic 3-point lighting.

Use high or low angle shots to convey a character's power in a scene (camera at eyelevel is neutral).

...keep the aperture as open as possible (lower number) and the shutter speed as long a possible (normally 1/60th sec). ... Also, try and work with the camera more zoomed in (but never digitally zoomed in!) and physically farther away from the subject. This flattens the frame and narrows the depth of field (creating a blurry background)–this look is associated with being more cinematic.

Examine something as simple as the color of the walls: In a Hollywood movie, are interior walls ever off-white? No, they are either bright white or a darker, moodier color. This is a micro budget problem because most houses have off-white walls. Off-white works in real life, but looks dirty in a movie.

Desaturate Colors
Some people think reducing the color intensity makes video look more like film.

For whatever reason, video cameras don’t record the dark areas as black as they should (a contrast problem). ... make the blacks blacker ... by reducing the lows or with a filter called “Levels” by increasing the black input.

Blur the Highlights
... The very bright areas of the frame are blurry and almost bleed into the areas directly surrounding them. ... Add a small Gaussian blur ...

Add Grain
... Generate some noise that is colored and randomly changing (under it’s settings). ... Reduce opacity and experiment with composite mode (multiply might be good for this). Keep the opacity low—a little goes a long way.

Long list of URL shorteners

I recently went on a hunt for alternatives to tinyurl.com, just to see how many there are out there. The concept and implementation are simple. My company runs one, too—flq.us. As you can see, there are quite a few.

301url.com*
6url.com
bit.ly
budurl.com
canurl.com
cli.gs
cuttr.info*
decenturl.com
diggurl.com*
doiop.com
dwarfurl.com
easyurl.net
elfurl.com
fire.to
flq.us
freak.to
fype.com*
gonext.org*
is.gd
ix.lt
jive.to*
krunchd.com
kurl.us*
lilurl.us*
lnkurl.com*
memurl.com
miklos.dk
miny.info*
myurl.in
nanoref.com
notlong.com
piurl.com
plexp.com*
qicute.com
qurlyq.com
readthisurl.com*
redir.fr*
redirx.com
rurl.org
shorl.com
shorterlink.com
shortlinks.co.uk
shorturl.com
shout.to
shrinkurl.us
shurl.net
simurl.com
smarturl.eu
snipurl.com
snurl.com
starturl.com
surl.co.uk
tighturl.com
tinylink.com
traceurl.com
tr.im
twurl.nl
url9.com
urlcut.com
urlcutter.com*
urlhawk.com
urlpass.com
url-press.com
urlsmash.com*
urlsn.com*
urltea.com*
yuarel.com
x.se*
xaddr.com
xil.in*
xrl.us
yatuc.com
yep.it
yweb.com

*Defunct.

It's interesting that even with all this competition, tinyurl.com has almost cornered the market. I've seen some use of urltea.com and maybe single instances of a few more.

New dog fashion trend

Our beagle, Bailey, wearing the latest fashion in dogwear—dried frog on collar. We have no idea how it got there. Idgit dawg! He'd glance down at it from time to time. It finally fell off.

"When pride comes, then comes disgrace"

(Proverbs 11:2)

Last evening, I received an email from someone I know containing the tract on the right (click for larger version). Here is the response I sent to him and the other recipients:

Subject: Re: Fwd: I Am Proud To Be White~And I'm NOT A Racist....
From: xxxxxx
Date: 5/29/2008 9:49 PM
To: xxxxxx
Cc: xxxxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxx, xxxxxx

Xxxxx,

We are all Americans, but if you want to qualify it by race or ancestry, you and I are European-Americans, not simply "Americans."

I have never heard a racial slur used against a white person except on TV. No racial slur, such as "cracker," has ever been used against me, and I don't plan on using one against anyone else. Life is too short. Why bother insulting anybody, for any reason?

Regarding, "You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you," depending on what "a lot" means, I have never heard any racial minority use this argument. I think most people understand that violent crime is largely intraracial, e.g., for the most part whites kill whites, Hispanics kill Hispanics, and blacks kill blacks.

There are no "Black-only Colleges" in the U.S.; however, there are historically black colleges and predominantly black colleges. All have non-black students.

Whites don't have days, months, organizations, TV stations, etc. that identify themselves as being "white" in some way because _all_ of our days, months, organizations, TV stations, etc. are essentially white. That's what it means to live in a culture dominated by our, the white race. I'm sure the same is true in other, non-white cultures. For example, I doubt whether Liberia has a Black History Month or the equivalent of the NAACP. It would make no sense. Think about it.

Nobody thinks that "only whites can be racists." That's absurd. Every race has members that are racist against other races.

The U.S. has had a "white"-dominated culture for the past few hundred years. (For several _thousand_ years before that, it had an exclusively Indian culture.) There are institutions, programs, and social graces that specifically benefit non-whites because these people have been trod upon for so long by our culture. There are certainly inexcusable excesses, but I think it's pretty easy to understand the motivation within our still-white-dominated society to accommodate these people in a few mostly symbolic ways. I mean, if you really feel threatened by Black History Month, you need to find a hobby. :-)

Xxxx