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March 29, 2004
March 28, 2004
what do you see?
The webcam here is pretty boring. You can
onClick="MM_openBrWindow('/automate/webcam/bethesdacam0.jpg','','width=320,height=240')">click
on it for a slightly larger view, but it's nothing special to see...
especially at this hour when all you get are a few pinpoints of light from
the neighboring houses.
I think Liana or the Cat must have been playing with it, since the view
has moved up and to the right just slightly. It used to show the post
light at the top of the stairs in the front yard. But it's not there right
now.
I've been trying to think up other ways to make it more interesting. It
does keep the last 48 images (48 x 2 minute-interval = 1 hour 36 min.
archive) and I'm going to put up a new page so that you can see those
easily in a timelapse.
Since I still can't use EvoCam (the better of the two webcam applications
I bought) with Mac OS X 10.3, I can't take advantage of that application's
built-in archive feature. It can create a QuickTime timelapse movie of the
previous day and save that to the server. That would be great, but EvoCam
just won't do for now.
In other geeky news, I hooked up my TV to the DVI (digital video) port on
my G5's video card. I had to buy a $19 adapter at the Apple Store, and now
I get S-Video or composite video out from the G5 and it acts as a second
monitor. Using the Griffin iMic that I've had sitting around for years, I
hooked up the sound too.
So, now I don't need to hook up my PowerBook to the TV or have a separate
DVD player whenever I want to watch DVDs.
--------
March 11, 2004
wild turkey
How to Create "The PlaneBusiness Wild Turkey Award for Excellence in
Airline Management" in 10 Easy Steps
Well, read on to see how I created the feature image for the award. I'm
not sure I'd recommend these steps to anyone else -- at least not a sane
person.
First, get assignment from Holly (editor, publisher, CEO, and payer of web
editor -- me, that is -- at PlaneBusiness) on Monday.
alt="Holly's assignment" />
She sends a couple of turkey images but says she does not want to use an
actual Wild Turkey bourbon bottle. Understandable. (The name of the award
is an homage to Mr. Airline Success -- Southwest founder Herb Kelleher --
and his drink of choice.)
Sleep on it overnight because my ideas are nil.
Second, create the other major graphic for the day's issue of
PlaneBusiness Banter -- the plaque for the
href="http://www.planebusiness.com/awards/2004ronallen.shtm">Ron Allen
Airline Management Award (awarded to bad airline management). I think
the "Dancing Ron" effect of the animated GIF might be a little over the
top, but Holly loves it. Try harder to think of Wild Turkey Award image.
Third, ask Holly if I can "make my own bottle" using a real bottle and a
"faux label" that I would create digitally. Response was not enthusiastic
but also not against the idea, so I forge ahead (at about 1 AM -- my part
of publishing the Banter should be nearing an end by about this time
Wednesday mornings).
Four, search house for bourbon bottle. Nothing. Well, OK, I have a little
tiny bit of Knob Creek, but not nearly enough to make a convincing bottle.
And I'm really going to need that Knob Creek later. So, I make my own --
bottle and bourbon.
I dump out a nearly-empty bottle of banana rum, left over from the
previous tenants of the house (no one currently living here was about to
drink that, believe me). Wash out the bottle and scrape off the paper
label. The bottle was slightly green, but I was pretty sure that would be
invisible when it was full of brown liquid... Speaking of the liquid, what
was I going to use to simulate bourbon?
Five, brew fake liquor. I tried powdered iced tea, but there was too much
particulate (sugar, tea, whatever else is in that stuff) floating in the
bottle and it looked cloudy. Who ever heard of cloudy bourbon? So,
instead, I fired up the stove and boiled water for fresh hot tea. When it
was ready (I steeped it extra long), I poured it in to the bottle.
Six, grab the digital camera and try to find a decent amount of light and
an acceptable background. I shot about 20 frames, none looked great on the
small LCD screen on the camera, but I decided to download them to the
computer to check them on-screen.
I had used the
onClick="MM_openBrWindow('http://jlb.to/images/reject-flash.jpg','badbottle1','width=200,height=267')">flash
on some.
onClick="MM_openBrWindow('http://jlb.to/images/reject-noflash.jpg','badbottle2','width=200,height=267')">Not
on others. Close up and far away.
The best of the bunch was this shot (click it for a larger version), taken
without the flash and from across the kitchen:
onClick="MM_openBrWindow('http://jlb.to/images/bottle-big.jpg','goodbottle','width=640,height=480')">
src="/images/bottle-small.jpg" height="150" width="200" border="0"
alt="Best Bottle" />
Seven. OK. So now I have a photo of the bottle. I also have a picture of a
turkey and a photo of the America West bunch ringing the closing bell at
the NYSE that Holly had sent me. Time to make the label for the bottle.
Take the turkey picture, the photo, add some text and throw it on a
reasonable background. But wait, the label has to curl around the
curvature of the bottle. Photoshop can't seem to handle that request, so I
dump it in to Illustrator (I'm still not exactly sure what I did to
accomplish that -- I think I saved it as an EPS, or something) and use
it's "Warp" function to give the label a little curvature. Dump the image
back in to Photoshop.
onClick="MM_openBrWindow('http://jlb.to/images/finalbottle-big.jpg','finalbottle','width=370,height=627')">
src="/images/finalbottle-small.jpg" width="100" height="169" border="0"
alt="Final bottle award image" align="left" style="padding-right: 5px;"
/>Eight, paste the label on the bottle. Ah, but the bottle was
photographed slightly upward, so it has a bit of perspective, making the
top narrower than the bottom on the photo. Adjust the label in Photoshop
to compensate for the perspective of the bottle -- AND, I'm done. Maybe.
Nine, show the final product (shown at left) to Holly. She likes it --
it's a go!
Ten, put it on the Banter page, along with the other graphics for the Wild
Turkey Award. Whoops, the bottle image is much too big and it dwarfs the
rest of the content. A quick downsizing in Photoshop results in the final
product, as
href="http://www.planebusiness.com/awards/2004wildturkey.shtm">published
in the Feb. 24 PlaneBusiness Banter. It's just after 3 AM when I close up
all of the files and get back to the meat of the issue.
It was definitely a rush job. You can easily tell the label is
fake. It would have been nice not to have so much pixelation along the
edges of the label where it curves. But, I just don't know enough about
Illustrator. I probably should have made the whole thing in Illustrator,
but Photoshop is more my cup -- er, bottle -- of tea.
March 02, 2004
branching out
They're planning on opening the new First National Bank office on
href="http://www.bankfirstnational.com/offices/expodr.shtml">Expo
Drive in Manitowoc on May 3rd! If you're not exicted by this... um...
you should be? Yes! You should be.
Also, someday in the not-too-distant future, there might finally be a new
web site for the Bank. That design has been online since Dec. 1, 1999...
And there has been a huge number of pages added since then, not to mention
the Internet Banking site that has a similar design.