Stitching Panoramas
Posted on December 30, 2008
I’ve been using Windows Live Photo Gallery for a while. My biggest reason for using it is the Flickr Integration. However; there are a ton of neat features I’ve discovered along the way. One of these features is the ability to stitch photos together automatically. I’ve used a lot of stitching programs and this is by far the easiest and the best.
The only steps needed are to 1) select the photos you wish to stitch and 2) right click and select “Create Panoramic photo…”
Windows Live Gallery then goes through a few steps of analyzing the photos, aligning them and finally stitching them together.
Since I’ve discovered the feature I’ve created quite a few stitches. You can find most if not all of them using my panorama tag.
REMEMBER: To create a really good stitch you need to make sure the exposure settings are the same for every photo in the stitch.
Broad St Aqueduct
Posted on December 29, 2008
A while ago I heard about plans to revitalize Broad street in downtown Rochester by converting it back into the Canal. This is what the aqueduct bridge was originally. When I first heard of the plan, I thought it was neat but didn’t think it would ever work. The biggest hurdle I can see to overcome is the traffic situation. Broad street is a main roadway and carries a lot of traffic.
I just found out that the plans didn’t die. In fact it seems like there are many proposals and that something may actually happen, although what exactly happens to broad st is still up in the air. It will be very interesting to see what happens. There’s a whole website dedicated to The Broad Street Corridor Renovations. The proposals are really quite interesting so take a look.
Decoding Nested gz base64 code
Posted on December 28, 2008
Whenever I first install any theme, I make my own modifications. Sometimes it’s removing extraneous code that I won’t be using, or changing the size of certain sections, or adding in some calls that I do need. Whenver I do this I always modify the footer to say ‘Modified by Randy Aldrich.’
Recently After modifying the theme to my liking I went to add my own footer only to find the Author had used gz compression and base64 encoding on the footer. All I found was the following code:
eval(gzinflate(base64_decode(”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”)));
This was obviously an attempt to protect the author’s copyright on the theme. However; as I heavily modified the original results, I felt the need to protect my own and so I found a solution to decode the footer.
If you run into this same problem, just place the eval code into a file called coded.txt. Then all you need to do is run this decrypt.php PHP script from the same directory and decoded.txt will be created in the same directory and will contain the decoded code.
NOTE: This solution is not mine, it was found on the web at Taree Internet
Books
Posted on December 28, 2008
I’ve been watching a bunch of Jeremiah episodes lately. I can’t believe I missed this series in 2002-2004. It’s quite good, and reminds me a bit of Jericho (surprise surprise, Jeremiah was canceled). Anyway… I just watched the episode titled “Out of the Ashes” in which a bunch of thugs are attempting to rid the world of books. Kurdy (one of the main characters) gives a quick little speech which I thought holds a lot of meaning even in the world we live in.
how are we to know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been?
these books are a bridge to our past
they allow us to touch other lives
generation upon generation, artists, philosophers, poets
If we let them die, we’re burning those bridges
If we let these words die, we are killing our history as well as our future
Merry Christmas 2.0!
Posted on December 25, 2008
Merry Christmas!
We’ve done christmas a little bit different this year.
- Hours spent in the malls: 0
- Hours spent online shopping: 0
Sorry, we can’t give it away just yet though…
By this time everyone should have heard our request for memories for grandma. Everyone wants to know what our gift was, and so rather than describe it, we thought we’d just show you.
To explain it, this is the card we gave her:
It was 1991, the year of the ice storm. Your house was one of the few which still had power. Mom dropped us off to spend the day with you. To keep us busy, you pulled out a few empty gallons of milk which we decorated and filled with warm water. You called them our “Hug Jugs.” When we got cold you told us to hug them to stay warm.
It is said that memories are one of life’s greatest gifts. They are like little hugs from the past that come to warm our hearts. This is Grandma’s Hug Jug. Inside, you’ll find cards which contain memories or pictures from your family and friends. Some contain thoughts of all the times you have made us laugh, others contain memories of how you have helped us to be strong or how you have touched the lives of those who love you.
When you feel the need for a warm hug or a few giggles reach in and pull out a memory or a picture from the past.
And finally, if you’d like to read over some of the memories people have, they’re all available below:
Thanks for everybody’s help who contributed, we couldn’t have done it without you!