Perhaps you’ve tinkered with photoshop’s panorama stitching tool and after the first time you never touched it again because the process is so time consuming and the interface was so sluggish. Wouldn’t it be great if it just worked automatically? It can. Check out autostitch. While this is more a proof of concept than a fully developed application, it works very nicely. Collect a set of images in a folder (no special naming conventions required), run the program, and tada, a relatively seamless panoramic image is created. It’s remarkable how well this works. It’s free for now (the product of research at the University of British Columbia) but they’re looking to license it. Who knows, it could end up in the next version of photoshop. I’ll use this to produce a couple of panoramas once I finally get around to posting some of my backlog of photography.

[update] First of all I forgot to mention it’s a windows-only tool. Second of all, I got around to testing it. Check out the page here in my gallery system - there are two examples of panoramas created with autostitch and then with the excellent panorama factory. The quality is basically equal - I’m really impressed with autostitch. For a free tool you can’t beat it. Panorama Factory has tons more features of course, so it’s not like I’m going to switch, but if you’re on windows and don’t care about quicktime VR output or don’t have the money for a copy of Panorama Factory this is a great tool.

Is there anyone out there who actually likes the windows key on their keyboard? For my part, I hate it - invariably I hit it by accident while I’m playing games and get booted out to the windows desktop, leading to a flurry of cursing and (usually) the loss of life in the gameworld. My recent new computer build reminded me of how useful this registry entry is - if you’re on a windows box and you’d like your windows key/s to stop acting like, well, windows keys, chances are excellent you’ll appreciate the link.

Certain inadequacies at my current employer have led me to begin turning myself into an actual sysadmin (as compared to the current bull in the china shop danger to every box I touch admin type I am currently - those of you who know me well are probably chuckling at the whole concept right now). Anyway one of the things I’ve had to come up to speed on quickly is sql - specifically mysql but understanding sql in general has become important to me. I’ve bought a selection of books and I’m using tools like phpmyadmin and so on, but interestingly one of the most useful things to me has been A gentle introduction to sql. If you’re looking for a well developed easy to understand set of tutorials to help you come up to speed with sql, database design and more, check it out, it’s really well done.

For at least 7-8 years I’ve been in the habit of upgrading my main pc roughly every 12-18 months. I broke that pattern this time around because of a variety of things - the supposed transition to 64bit computing, changes to cpu socket architectures (first I was waiting for amd socket 754, then 939) and the actual transition away from agp to pcix for graphics cards. The fact that my trusty AMD 2400 and Radeon 9800 Pro were basically capable of running every game I wanted to run at a reasonable framerate and resolution also kept me from feeling like I needed to upgrade.

That all changed about a month ago when I bought a 20.1″ widescreen LCD monitor. Suddenly my framerates were in the single digits and it was time to get serious about building a new box. One 1 gallon jug of change rolled up and deposited later and I had all my components. I was ready to replace my 2.5 year old machine with something new.
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We bought an xserve at work to serve as a quicktime streaming server and webhost for academic applications. This was not exactly by choice. Given my druthers, we’d have gotten a linux box. But a variety of issues caused us to go with the xserve for at least the next year, and the task of admining it has fallen on me. It’s been worlds less than pleasant. Somehow Apple in its infinite wisdom decided to compile php against mysql libraries from a different version of mysql then what they decided to install on the box. They also decided to NOT compile PHP with the GD libs, meaning out of the box an xserve, a ~$6k server product, is incapable of authenticating against mysql and incapable of image manipulation using php. What did they think people intended to serve on the box, static web pages? This is just so….. bush league. (If you’re not up to speed on such things - a whole host of very popular web apps - gallery, Coppermine Gallery, Drupal, phpmyadmin, Mambo, Wordpress, Moodle…oh screw it, basically any good php-based app requires one or usually both of these in order to function). The mysql stuff is relatively easy to work around, but the GD libs one is huge and is going to require that I rebuild apache and php from source, no easy task and a huge time sink. Long term unix admins are thinking at this point ‘quit yer whining, I’ve rebuilt apache from source on a 286 with 128k of ram!,’ but the point is, we bought a mac, so-called kings of user experience and ease of use, in part because we needed to be up and running quick and we hoped non-admin types would be able to help run it. This box has been anything but so far. I won’t even get into how trying to tie the box to the college’s active directory servers were causing it to lock up (details here if you’re really interested), or how Apple’s VNC client, Remote Desktop, is a buggy piece of junk, or how their GUI server management tools are schizo (change some settings using only the gui! Others, back to the httpd.conf - what’s the point! If it’s going to be in two places and it’s not logical in what lives where, it’s actually harder to have a GUI! I’m better of putting webmin on the thing and training the non-admin admins to use that). I love my TiBook (and my ibook before it) but man, I would never advise someone to buy an xserve based on my experiences with this one. For a couple of grand I could have had a red hat-based 1u dell server which I would have had up and running within about 3-4 days of installing it in the rack, whereas I am still beating on this xserve after a couple of weeks. Lesson learned, I guess. I’d say something positive, like, well, the hardware is really nice, which it is until you compare the process of installing an xserve in the racks vs a Dell box. Apple has some ways to go with their servers is my 2 cents takeaway from this experience.

Another weekend in paradise. Funny, I lived in ‘vacationland’ for like 12-13 years, but I’m having more fun this summer than I can ever remember having. Saturday Andrew swung by with his new black lab puppy (Stan) and we went to the hudson with a kayak and the dogs and spent hours swimming, paddling and playing with the dogs. Stan was mostly intimidated by the water but he did hop in at one point and swim his way out to Andrew, and at another point he managed to fall out of the kayak and then swam (with more than a little whimpering) to shore, roughly 10-15 yards. You have to give the little guy credit given that he’s only 8 weeks old and much smaller than say, a football. Every time Soolin swam near him when he was in the water he would lose power and get swamped in the turbulence created by her passage, sometimes only his nose would stick above the water as he tried to get back underway. No wonder he mostly wanted to scamper around on the riverbank.

Sunday was ‘finish building new computer’ day - despite it being gorgeous out I spent the morning working on that (I’ll post about it separately) then I worked out and headed to Andrew’s for an awesome beer-fueled summer barbecue.

You’ve probably noticed firefox’s support for RSS if you’re running a recent version - the little icon at the bottom right of your screen (usually orange, unless you’ve installed a custom skin) indicates the presence of an RSS feed you can bookmark. Livelines extension changes the default behavior so that you can add the subscription to your preferred RSS aggregation tool. It does not (yet) work with every aggregation tool, but if you’re using Bloglines, Newsgator, Rojo, or any of several other tools, this can be very handy - instead of copying and pasting the RSS feed’s address you simply use the tool to automatically invoke the subscription. It also works with any program that recognizes the ‘feed://’ protocol, like my personal favorite Feeddemon. A handy time save if you’re figured out how useful RSS aggregators are. And if you haven’t, you really ought to. It’s all about efficiency.

Need an easy to use tool to help folks make image galleries? Check out jalbum. As the ‘j’ in the name suggests, it’s java-based, with a nice, simple interface and tons of available templates. We’re going to offer this to students here at Skidmore as a simple way for them to produce photo galleries.

What if some of the developers of that package went off and built a new cross platform (win32 and OSX) naturalistic painting app, then offered it for free to any and all? If this were the case, chances are high you’d immediately click on this link and get yourself a copy. This is great stuff, especially if you have a pressure sensitive tablet to work with, but even without one it’s a great little drawing/painting app and as usual you can’t beat the price.

So perhaps you’ve come across a few of the articles that have been running lately about folks finding themselves able to make a living off of their adsense revenues. I’m pondering going that route myself - finally going ‘live’ with metamusing.net, pushing it off onto a commercial host, connecting myself to all relevant points in the ‘blogosphere,’ adding the adsense bar, letting it go for a year and see where I get. It will only cost me a few hundred $$$ to try it and from pondering, the worst repercussion I can come up with is my ego takes a beating when the world doesn’t beat a path to my website. I’m not looking to make a living off of metamusing, but if it can pay for its hosting bills plus a few dollars here and there I’d be more than content. I’d have to move it to a commercial host since it’s against Time Warner’s terms of service to host a commercial website on their bandwidth. Anyone going to strenuously object if the adsense bar starts appearing here? I might even go so far as to offer a greasemonkey script for folks who really don’t want to see the text ads google puts in.

I mentioned a week or so ago how much I liked Jot but lamented that I couldn’t really swing the price. If you’re interested in trying a wiki but can’t swing the price either, check out wikispaces.org. Free, super simple to use and a nice clean interface. It may not have the feature set of Jot but this is a more than capable wiki engine for small teams to work with - a visual editor, versioning, a category/tag system and RSS/Atom feeds are all built in. If you can’t manage to get a wiki running on your own machine this is a great alternative.

It’s hot here, HOT, so I went swimming friday and saturday. Almost had a disaster friday - after work Soolin and I were overheating so I stopped home, switched into swimming gear, then headed to the hudson on spire falls road. We got there, I tossed the frisbee in the water, and Soolin took off - she lost sight of the frisbee and became obsessed with finding it, or simply confused, and proceeded to just swim down river. She got a couple hundred yards ahead of me as I scrambled along the edge of the river in water ranging from ankle to waist deep. I finally ended up falling in and swimming after her. Long story short a guy in a kayak rescued her, else she would have ended up at the dam in glens falls or who knows where. It was pretty scary, I couldn’t imagine how I would have tracked her down if I had ended up losing sight of her, and I’m immensely frustrated with my inability to get her to respond 100% to the ‘come!’ command. Anyway this led to plan b on saturday - no more off the leash for her. We went back to the same spot, this time me with my paddling life vest on and her on a lead. I hopped in and the two of us swam and drifted about a mile or so downriver, stopping now and then along the bank for her to rest. It was like having a little motor on a string - I let her head wherever she pleased for the most part and just floated along behind as she dragged me too and fro. When we got out we just walked back to the car. I need to get something with a little more buoyancy to it before we go next time because at times Soolin wants me to hold her as we drift, and I can’t stay above water with our combined weight. I might get a doggy life jacket and see if she takes to it, otherwise I’m thinking a styrofoam ‘noodle’ or two will do the trick, or maybe this thing would be a better bet since she probably could get on and off it on her own.

RoR has all the buzz these days in web development land, and for good reason - it’s a fantastic system for building database backed web-apps. Proponents of other languages have been bringing out a variety of similar MVC-based webstacks in response (or at least, lots of them are getting discussed now that RoR has all the buzz - all ships rise on a rising tide and all that). They vary widely in quality, quantity of documentation and ‘readiness to deploy on,’ and I definitely haven’t had the time to dig into all the ones that have been coming out, but I’ll mention one in particular that looks promising, especially if you see learning Ruby as a barrier to entry for Ruby on Rails. Django is a Python-based web framework that emerged out of work the developers did for a variety of consulting projects. It distinguishes itself from a lot of the other emerging frameworks in that (like RoR) it’s been in production for a couple of years. There are also a few decent tutorials out for it. I ran across a pretty insightful comment about RoR as compared to Django, which described Django as a CMS toolkit as compared to RoR’s as a webapp toolkit.

There’s one significant barrier to entry with Django - they’re building off of mod_python and Apache 2.x - if like me you’re still working off of Apache 1.x this can be a deal killer. Still, this is worth monkeying around with, especially if (again like me) you find Python world’s easier to read and write than Ruby.

Chronicle.com (The chronicle of higher education, a trade publication that covers the higher ed ‘industry’) covered my favorite project last week, the Romantic Audiences Project. Unfortunately the site is paid registration only, so while I can link to the article you won’t be able to read it unless you have an account. I’m sorely tempted to simply snarf their text and reprint it here, consequences be what they may, but since they don’t refer to me by name (I’m named as the Bowdoin web developer a couple of times), I guess it’s not really worth risking the ire of the chronicle’s copyright cops, assuming they have any. It’s cool to see something I had a role in developing get some positive national press even if they fail to mention me.

Check out GreatNews if you’re on windows and can’t or won’t pay for the superb FeedDemon. It’s not quite as featureful as the benchmark standard but it’s super speedy, integrates nicely with bloglines, and you can’t beat the price.

Subject line pretty much says it all - two more web design/css link collections, one of which Danny was kind of enough to send me an email about. First - the css focused CSS Directory and then the almost too comprehensive for comprehension Web Developer’s Handbook. Both are excellent resources if you’re a web developer looking to keep your skill sharp or needing to research an issue.

So you read Snow Crash (and if you haven’t, what are you waiting for, it is along with Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy responsible for popularizing a whole genre of science fiction and a ripping good tale to boot) and you thought ‘how cool was that!’ My guess is so have the folks at Second Life, but instead of just thinking about it, they proceeded to try and build it, and they’ve come the closest so far to realizing Stephenson’s vision of an immersive virtual world. Normally it costs a one-time fee of $9.95, but to celebrate their anniversary they’re giving away free registrations. You’re a download away from checking out one of the coolest community built online worlds that exists, go check it out quick.

Check out SmoothTeddy if you’re on windows and are interested in a really easy to use 3d modeling and painting application. I’ve never seen one as easy to use as this. Of course in part this is because it’s so feature-limited, but that’s really the point here - quick, easy to understand, fun to tinker with.

OS X comes with it built in, and if you’ve added a third party ssh client it is probably the wonderful iterm and on Windows I’ve been recommending putty, but today I noticed a credible cross platform alternative, the java-based MindTerm. It’s worth a look if you’re on a pc - while you pay a slight performance penalty due to MindTerm being based on Java, you get some handy tools like integrated ssh file transfer in return. On the mac side you’re probably better off with iterm, though again the integrated tools may make you consider switching. If you’re managing a campus lab environment this could be a great choice as it will simplify your support and documentation issues by standardizing on one ssh client.

My love of outliners used to know no bounds but I have to admit my ardor has cooled somewhat as wikis have taken over the role outliners used to play in my software toolkit. Still, I can’t resist tinkering with ones new to me as I discover them. Today I found keynote, an outliner/notebook type app which is most easily compared to products like Circus Ponies’ notebook and aquaminds notetaker. Keynote is for windows only and is pretty featureful - a tabbed interface, the ability to nest notes inside each other, encryption, an API to build extensions and a developer community supporting their creation, drag and drop support, plus a ton more. I think it’s fair to say it doesn’t really come close to notetaker or notebook on a feature basis despite all the aforementioned, but free is free and plus it runs on windows. If you haven’t taken to wikis as a model for your personal data storage needs, or if you’re a fan of outliners, check out keynote.