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August 30, 2005

photos of the hurricane

Photos of Hurricane Katrina via flickr

normal people pictures:

http://flickr.com/photos/darrelf/38467269/in/photostream/

http://www.nola.com/hurricane/photos/gallery.ssf?cgi-bin/view_gallery.cgi/nola/view_gallery.ata?g_id=3661

Hope everyone's OK.

August 29, 2005

iTunes scrubbing - keyboard shortcut!

Here's one that has changed my life! (ok well, at least my music listening life!) I'm going to post this up at OSXHints and spread the love. It would be nice to be recognized for finding it. Of course, _someone_ else must know about it... at least the programmers who wrote iTunes, right?

But anyways... let's say you're listening to iTunes and you want to move a little bit forward or backwards - no need to mouse on over to the playhead, just hold down Command-Option-Control all at the same time - and then press the left or right arrows! It jumps a few seconds for you. (like holding down the arrow keys on a CD player)

It's GREAT!

No need for an applescript solution!

Of course, if you want to jump to the next song on your playlist - just press the right arrow key... left gets you back to the start (think just pressing the arrow keys on a CD player)

I'll admit - I am a bit of a fan for keyboard shortcuts - I like not having to move my fingers off the keyboard - so between command-tab, quicksilver, and now control-option-command (key mash!) left and right arrows... I'm pretty set.

August 26, 2005

you NEED to do this

OK
So you're running mac osX right? If not, stop reading right here.

OK for the rest of you, open your Terminal (if you're in the finder hold down the apple button (the command button) and the shift key, and the 'U' key at the same time. This opens your Utilities folder in your Applications folder. Then type 'ter' and you should have the Terminal program hilighted. Hold down the command button again and press the 'down arrow' button on your keyboard. This will launch the application for you) -- or you could use the wonderful and free program Quicksilver to launch Terminal, by typing not much more than 'T' and hitting return.
Either way you do it, now the terminal is open.

Copy and paste this line into it:


defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBoth


Then hit return.
That's it.

You can quit out of the terminal now.

When you log back into your account, you'll now have arrows at both sides of your scrollbar. You no longer have to choose between having the 2 arrows at the top or bottom... you can have them both!

Doesn't that just make you feel better?!

What if you want to go back to the way it was the old way?

Well, you don't even need to go to the Terminal and copy and paste any text if you don't want to - instead you can open your system preferences, and just choose to have the arrows on the top or the bottom.
No harm, no foul.

I can't remember how long I've been using this, so I figured I'd pass it along to anyone else who wanted to know about it. It's not _too_ geeky!

August 20, 2005

live from nowhere

OK - I'm stuck, stranded in Washington DC - our nation's fair capitol. (thanks United!) I guess at least they put me in a hotel, instead of letting me sleep on the floor of the airport.

Another thing I'm grateful for, is Hilton Hotel's free internet access. So, as I sit here and think about how I'm going to get from DC back to NY - I've at least got something interesting to look at for free. 'F TV' lately is how I feel about it. So for my 'news' I'm sticking to Net News Wire, and my own favorite RSS feeds.

I think that there might be something subversive about subscribing to 'news that you want to read' only... so I sometimes try to take in news from sources I don't trust/like... but I find that online, my patience for that runs thin. So, for now I just like watching news that I 'trust' ... and by trust, I guess I mean, that have written articles that I have found interesting in the past.
So from bOING bOING I found a fantastic little bizarre 'TV talk show' that takes place inside of a video game. Inside you ask... indeed - sometimes in the middle of the interviews - 'noobs' jump in and try to shoot the guests and hosts. It's a little strange to wrap your head around - I think it's the contrast of the dialogue and the video game footage that I find so interesting... machinima they seem to be calling it.

Re-working video games into 'movies' and 'tv shows' --- pretty high-brow talking for a strange looking, and what I think will inevitably be a short-lived art form. The first few episodes are fun to watch from a 'what in the world' point of view... but I can't imagine tuning in for a weekly show. Perhaps I'm showing my age, and general callousness.

I'm kind of torn about it right now. I think that because I'm not a fan of this Xbox game, I kind of got tired of the visuals after a while. And perhaps what I liked most were some of the guest's opinions about new media rather than the 'frag-fest' that seemed to go on while they were discussing how a story could evolve to inhabit a 3 dimensional world.

I suppose for some people, these video games are a world... I cannot agree with this though. RIght now, it simply seems like a way to waste time, blow off steam, and spend some cash. I'm not ready to call this the 'world of the future.'

I still recommend watching a few of the episodes of This Spartan Life just so that you can see what I mean.

August 14, 2005

Pen tricks?!

OK ---
My mate Bryce used to do these sorts of things when we were in high school. I never could really follow his explanations of how it worked... and have no idea where he learned these sorts of things back then. I don't even think the internet was a twinkle in anyone's eye at the time. But that's neither here nor there...

Pen Tricks.

Who knew?

This seems like the perfect kind of thing to fiddle with during uncomfortable situations... or just while sitting at a table... impressing the ladies! [cough cough] sorry... you couldn't here my reference to Napoleon Dynamite in the tone of my voice.

Which reminds me, I'm not sure I can spend another day without owning the new action figure. Napoleon.
Mission accomplished!

Go cougs!

August 11, 2005

great black and white

OK - it's been too long since I've added much here.
I just ran across this article though, and it's really worth checking out. It goes into detail about 2 different ways to move from a color image to a black and white image. They don't even mention levels!

I have known about the 'don't go grayscale' to be black and white... but I hadn't realized there were a couple of ways to get from here to there. I'm a fan of the channel mixer idea myself.
In the past I'd just used one of the red green or blue channels and called it a day, but hadn't realized you could blend the 3 together to get a different grey scaled image. (truth told I'd then run one of the channels through levels or curves for some different looks - but I could probably still do that using the channel mixer idea!)

Perhaps I should turn some of my color images B&W -- just for fun of it.

Guess I got to start shooting some more!
I've decided to go back to Moab, and grab more shots there, and I think I'll buy myself a new camera to go there with.

Why not?!