Thanksgiving Sunset

The snowy roof of the Duquette Barn is in the distance

I don't like shooting landscapes or sunsets, but I couldn't miss this sunset Friday night. I wanted more practice with the next two nights, but I read through the one on Saturday night and I napped through tonight's sunset. Hopefully, they were cloudy sunsets so I didn't miss much at all!

After I shot this photo, I downloaded The Photographer's Ephemeris software (available for PC, Mac, Linux and Apple and Android apps). It tells you the astronomical data you need to shoot sunrises and sunsets. TPE gives you elevations and all sorts of information you need to get your outdoor photography lighting done well. Try it — it's free.

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More MacHeresy

Consumer Satisfaction Index, Mac vs PC

I've always loved Macs. But the iPhone killed my adoration of all things Apple. If I had been able to get an iPhone in Vermont when they were introduced, I probably would have. (It was illegal, yes, illegal, to sell iPhones in Vermont. It was also illegal to go to Boston and bring one back home.) The iPhone frustration got me thinking and I slowly began to suspect that for decades I had willingly participated with Apple's marketing hype. I still enjoy my Macs (we still have and use quite a few), but now I wonder why.

I've never wanted to be one sheep in a herd that blindly and unquestioningly followed a master marketer so that I would buy what I don't need. But that's just what I did when I bought and desired Apple products. The pride of owning glittery computers that were admired by others was just what Apple wanted me to feel. I believed the marketing hype, I fell for the price decoys, high reference prices, and Mac bundling to rationalize spending $3,000 for a laptop computer. But Apple is too exclusive for me now; I want a more inclusive and less rancorous computer culture. Read How Apple plays the pricing game Creative strategies prompt consumers to buy, buy, buy. Now it's the Mac OS X operating system I love, not the machine. So I doubt that I'll ever buy another Apple product unless it is the OS (read Mac OS on a Dell? Dell Favors, Apple Opposes and read more about the Hackintosh here).

The components that Apple uses in its MacPro line are not the top of the line components that I had always assumed were used. Upgrades to bigger and better components are overpriced. I always thought that the components used by Apple were the highest quality, but they aren't. I can buy (and we have, recently) bigger, better and faster components to upgrade my PC system. You can't do this with Apple. (source: http://thenextweb.com/apple/files/2010/09/mac01.jpg). Click the image on the left to read the details in a new window.

Remember the old windoze jokes (if you are, or were, a MacAddict you do)? I'm not laughing anymore. Windows 7 is good (not spectacular) and Microsoft is not the evil empire. Read Why does everyone hate Microsoft?

My own experiences with Windows and Dell have been very positive. I am able to do anything I wanted to do on my Macs — and more. I can run Priime95 now (also GIMP, Electric Sheep and Apophysis). My photographs are not altered to Mac-only formats.

Last week, Arthur upgraded our two PCs with a 4 terabyte server. We were running out of room (because of the photographs) and having response problems. So for $500, Arthur configured a server for us and installed it. That is 12.5¢ a gigabyte. With operating system software. I couldn't do this with a MacBook or MacPro.

And to make this whole new PC experience better, I got new eyes! Finally after many years of ignoring my growing vision problems, I had to get new glasses. The lens fell out of my readers and I couldn't find it. Now I have progressive bifocal lenses. It took a week for me to be comfortable with them, but now I love them. Of course, I wonder why I didn't do this years ago! Do yourself a favor — get a new, cheap PC and new glasses and enjoy the hundreds of dollars that you can now spend on — well, whatever you want. Like groceries, firewood, or a savings account!

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A Hazy Landscape But No Wires

With wires

Do you remember this photo of the Duquette Barn that I posted last Wednesday? I was disappointed because of the telephone wires in it. I could have taken them out with Photoshop but it is a long, laborious process. One of my commenters, Robin of Around the Island in Tel Aviv, told me about NoWires. It is a stand alone Windows application or an Elements plugin that easily gets rid of your power lines. It does exactly what Photoshop cloning would do but easier and quicker and without cramping my fingers. I tried it. I bought it. I fixed the photo, and  you can see the new version below:. Thank you, Robin!

Without wires

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Visualization of Algebraic Surfaces with Free Software

The SURFER program is a unique realtime raytracer of algebraic surfaces with an intuitive user interface. Watch the video to learn more. This is free software and if you like manipulating images such as fractals, flames, or chaos images, try this. I'll be playing with this software and you know I'll be posting my creations. If you are also a mathematics teacher, you'll want to get this into your school.

Download at http://www.imaginary2008.de/
Newsletter subscription requests at http://www.imaginary20 . . .

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I ♡ Buddy

. . . so I made a collage of some of his photos with Shape Collage. This heart shaped collage has a transparent background, which unfortunately shows black here. Shape Collage is free, very fast, makes collages in any shape you want, and there are online and Facebook versions. Get it. Now.


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Photo Hunters: Different Effects

Parallels

Clockwise from top left: color, sepia, black & white, antique

This photo will open full-size in a new window when clicked.

Thank you for visiting.

Click PhotoHunt to view more participants.

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Pansy's "Life Poster": How To Make It

There is a new way to make collages and life posters at the HP Community Mosaic site. This site works in conjunction with the Flickr HP Community Mosaic Group. I used these tools to create Pansy's life poster above. The directions below are for Macs. Hopefully, a PC user will use the comments to modify/correct these directions for PCs.

1. Select all of the photos that you want to use (a minimum of 10 is suggested).
2. Upload these to your Flickr account and tag them with a very unique tag so that you can identify them in the group photo pool later. I used "meeyauw" and "Pansy."
3. Join the Flickr HP Community Mosaic Group.
4. Send your selected photos to the group.
5. Return to the HP Community Mosaic web site.
6. See the mosaic in the bottom left quadrant of the screen? Click on that.
7. In the next screen, click in the text box and type your unique tags. If you have just uploaded your photos to the group, it may take a couple of minutes for them to be seen by the system. Be patient, it works.
8. Click "generate." A new Flash screen will appear with your photos.
9. Click "customize and print." Another Flash screen will appear with a white sheet of "paper" with your photos on it.
10. Click and drag your photos around until you have what you want. If you want to discard a photo, simply drag it off of the sheet of paper. When you are finished, click "print it!."
    
11. The rest of the directions are for Mac only if you would like to manipulate this collage image before printing.
12. After you click "print it!" on the HP site, a page set up dialog box appears. Click OK.
13. Now a Print dialog box appears. Click "Preview." Keep the HP window open on your desktop, just "in case."
14. Preview will now create a .pdf file for you, and you can now create a .jpg image from this.
15. If you like what you see, continue. If not, return to #10 above.
16. Choose the "select tool" in Preview. Draw a rectangle around your collage, trimming off any excess white edges you may not want.
17. Now we will crop that image. Press  + K and a crop dialog box appears. Click OK.
18. Now you have a new .pdf page with your cropped image. Go to the File Menu and select "save as . . . "
19. In the save dialog box, select JPG, name your file, save it, and you are done!

This is a very awkward way to make a collage, but it is the only way I have been able to do this with free software on a Mac. Which is so irritating! I took my collage of Pansy and used Photoshop Elements to fill some white spaces with color. I then used ImageWell to frame the image. Is there any easier way? I hope so.

Please be aware that any photo that you put into the HP Community Mosaic Group photo pool is available to anybody anywhere to use for a mosaic. This is the best use for these tools: you can create a mosaic of anything you desire (like trees), simply by inputting the tag you want at the HP mosaic site. If you don't want anybody using your photos, don't put them there. When I called up my photos of Buddy for a collage, I got somebody's photo of a hat!

I wanted to make one collage of all seven of my cats and announce my new Catster membership and learn from you about Catster activities. But this method of making a collage is so cumbersome that I am re-thinking that. If we have a snowstorm and a snowday, perhaps I will spend the time to do it. Right now, I have too many photos to choose from, so this method of making a collage would be very lengthy.

A note to Mom Unplugged: this is what I was going to do for the Christmas week Unplugged Project. A tad late, huh? This was also going to be my Cats On Tuesday post for this past week. Late again. But at least I got it in for Caturday.

Technorati Tags: HP Community Mosiac, Flickr, Preview, ImageWell, Photoshop Elements, photo collage, Macintosh, Mom Unplugged, Unplugged Project, Cats On Tuesday, Catster, Caturday
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Snow Grass

My first fractal image made from Fractal Domains after I learned how to create a Julia set from a Mandelbrot set and followed half of the first tutorial (Using Orbit Traps). Then I used Randomize for a color set that I liked, added the white background and rendered a 600x600 image which I Grabbed to make this jpeg.
Friday Fractal

Technorati tags: Fractal+Domains fractal+image

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Favicons Part 2

In my previous post, I described how you can design your own favicon using the pattern block virtual manipulative from the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives (NLVM) from Utah State University. Not only was I unhappy with my resulting favicon, I decided not to install it on my blogs.

Tonight I decided to continue playing with my pattern blocks and I cleaned up the favicon: I used the rhombuses to make a different style of the letter M (for meeyauw). I placed it in the top left corner of a square. Again, I used Skitch to grab my design from NLVM and then imported it into Photoshop Elements. I erased the black boundaries but not the black outline. I used yellow around the graphic to make it stand out.

I had been unhappy with favicon.ico because it required me to change the file type of my image after favicon.ico had created the favicon. I also would have had to host the favicon on ImageShack and alter the code of my blog myself. I'm too tired to do all that.

I then went to myfavatar.com and learned more about the site. It was somewhat confusing but I played and learned. You register your blog on myfavatar just as you register on mybloglog. You upload your favicon image and myfavatar creates and hosts your new favicon png file. It then delivers the code for you to install on your blog (for blogger, you simply copy the code and paste it directly after the HEAD code in your template). I also deleted the code for my old favicon that I had created ages ago with favicon.ico. I previewed the blog before I saved any changes. My new favicon was there! I saved the changes and followed the same steps for my Barton Daily Photo blog and for meeyauw's recipes blog.

According to wikipedia.org, a favatar is a "favicon file on a server controlled by the represented user as an avatar."

Myfavator.com offers other services that I want to learn about. I am very happy with the fast loading of the favicon (which didn't always happen when ImageShack hosted it). The process is much simpler then the old sequence of steps I detailed above.

I am happier with my new favicon. But I'm not finished designing it. And this is the greatest advantage to myfavatar: if you change your favicon, you simply upload it to your myfavatar account. You never need to change your blog's template code again. The code that you first installed links your blog directly to whatever image you currently claim as your favicon. Change your favicon, upload it, and all of your favicons in your blogs are updated. That gives me a lot of freedom to change the image as much as I like until it is perfect.

Myfavatar.com is on of those great finds for bloggers. It's easy, fast and fun. (No, myfavatar did not pay me for this endorsement, unfortunately.) All of my blogs now carry this new favicon. You can see it as an M, a bird flying to the northwest, or a flower whose petals open to the southeast. I used a slide tessellation (of unknown degrees) to create it. You can be sure I will continue to work on it in the future.

Technorati tags: myfavatar.com favicons NLVM National+Library+of+Virtual+Manipulatives Skitch
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Heads or Tails: Mark: Make Your Mark

Favicons are those little icons in the address bar of your browser. You can make your own favicons easily at sites like myfavatar or favicon.ico. I had made poor favicons for this site and for my recipes blog but I wanted a more mathematical, trademark favicon to use across these blogs and my photography blog. We all identify each other by our trademarks, which are distinctive signs or symbols that each of us chooses. Our mark.

I went to one of my favorite sites that I use in labs with my students: the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives at Utah State University, an NSF funded project to make manipulatives accessible to all schools and students, no matter what their age. The site is always growing and is a priceless resource. You can now download all of the manipulatives for a free trial period. But if you are a student, a designer, a parent or a child, it is worth $40 to buy it. All of the manipulatives have directions and most have activities that are mathematically valuable without overwhelming any learner. Here is a screenshot of my desktop while I worked with the software:


I played with the pattern block applet, and tessellated (turned, slid and flipped) equilateral triangles and rhombuses in attempts to make a stylized M for meeyauw. The graphic you see in this post is what I came up with. I then used my mouse to select my creation. This kept all of my blocks "glued" together. I colored the blocks blue. I used Skitch to create a jpeg of my logo and Photoshop Elements to make the background yellow. I am sure that I did not need to use Skitch or Elements, but I am familiar with the software and could use them quicker than finding an easier way.

I uploaded my graphic to favicon.ico which made the favicon. I downloaded it to my hard drive and I will upload it to Image Shack. In the next few days I will put the URL of the favicon on Image Shack into my templates so that it will be visible. Favicon.ico returns an ico file which Image Shack does not accept. I will have to change the filetype in Elements or iPhoto before I upload it. I also see some editing I want to make on the graphic before I am finished.

If you have any questions on this process, be sure to ask in the comments (with your e-mail if you don't have gmail). I'll answer as soon as possible.

I'm still not happy with this icon because it is not the one image that I could use for my profile. . . for my signature, or mark. But it's a start.

To see more Heads or Tails participants, visit Skittles.
I hope you have a wonderful and peaceful week.
It may take me awhile to visit all of you because I teach on Tuesday nights. Thank you for your patience.

Technorati tags: Heads+or+Tails favicons Skitch Photoshop+Elements trademark logo icon

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Unplugged Project: Red Maple Leaf of Vermont Facts

The concept of the Vermont Leaf of Facts is not mine but the implementation is. Deb Markowitz, the Vermont Secretary of State, published Vermont History: Facts and Fun. Spencer Rothbell made this illustration of a maple leaf of Vermont facts. In the fourth grade, Vermont children learn the history and government of their state. Our fourth grade teacher and computer lab person use this page as a fun way to not only teach about Vermont but to learn Microsoft Word and improve keyboarding and formatting skills. I took the exercise and made a simple jpeg file for today's Unplugged Project. If you click on the graphic, a larger version will open in a new window, making it easier to read. I also curved the stem a bit.

Visit other participants of the Unplugged Project here.

Next week's project is open-ended and the theme is BOX.

Technorati tags: Vermont+History+Facts+and+Fun Unplugged+Project

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Carving Pumpkins, Without The Mess… | The BenSpark

Carving Pumpkins, without the mess… | The BenSpark

Drew has two great links on this post, and I had to get them both. I "carved" this pumpkin at theoworlds.com. You are given a pumpkin and then you use a free hand or straight edge tool to carve, creating your own e-greeting card to e-mail to friends. The shot above is mine (I used only polygons on my pumpkin. Do you know the names of the polygons?) There are also Christmas and Valentine cards you can make. I like to blog the cards. You can grab your cards with Skitch or Preview (both Mac only apps) and create jpegs to upload to blogger. By the way, I still have 4 beta invites for Skitch (for Mac only). Drop me a line and one will be for you.

The other link Drew had was for a Photoshop Elements podcast: Adobe Photoshop Elements Killer Tips (clicking on the title will take you directly to the podcast page in your iTunes browser. It is a free podcast subscription. Still don't have the free iTunes app? Click here.)

I wish I had been visiting blogs last weekend so that I could have been playing with these things while I was sick. Today is the first day that I have begun to visit other blogs again. I missed a lot of great stuff. Never get sick over a holiday.

No Photo Hunt for me today. I have midterm exams to correct, midterm evaluations to do, bills to pay, a book to read, and neglected kitty and dog time to make up for. I also want to visit as many blogger friends as possible and thank all of you for your e-mails and messages. So many comments to reply to!

On a blogger note: there are noteworthy blogger advances to mention:

• If you want to be notifed of follow-ups on comments, click the little box for that when you make a comment. You need a free gmail address (who doesn't have a few of those?) and you are automatically updated when I comment on your comment.
• You can now add Google gadgets as a page element to your blog. You have to use Blogger in draft by logging in at http://draft.blogger.com/. Go to your layout, click on "add a new page element" and there is a choice for adding a gadget. The problem? Which gadget to choose. There are thousands of them. I tried a couple on my test blog and they seem to work fine.
• All gmail accounts are now IMAP! I haven't configured my Apple mail.app for it yet, but it won't be a problem
• There are many new things on Google Earth and Google Maps. Check my Starred Items on my right sidebar for links to them.

Technorati tags: iTunes Photoshop+Elements+Killer+Tips halloween e-cards virtual+pumpkin+carving Blogger gmail Google+gadgets
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How-To: Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone & Apple Mail

How-to: Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone & Apple Mail

gmail is going IMAP, which I have waited for for a long time. In fact I wouldn't use gmail for a time because it was not IMAP. But it will be any moment now, and here are the instructions to set up mail.app on your Mac. (Also instructions for iPhone, which is not legal in Vermont).

gmail IMAP mail.app Macintosh
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Google Earth’s Hidden Surprise: A Flight Simulator

Google Earth’s Hidden Surprise: A Flight Simulator: "Hidden inside Google Earth is a secret Flight Simulator that takes full advantage of Google’s extensive satellite imagery."

The reviewer says it is "as good visually as the paid Microsoft Flight Simulator, and in terms of actually presenting real objects it was better."

Click the link for directions.

technorati tags: Google+Earth, flight+simulator

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CameraPorn: Shooting The Moon

Shooting the Moon: How I Shot The Lunar Eclipse and Tips For Better Moon Photography at CameraPorn: 

Shoot RAW (the higher dynamic range and detail will help for post-processing)
Camera set to manual mode 1/250th shutter speed
Somewhere in the neighborhood of f/8 - f/11 aperture ISO 100 for minimum noise Mirror-lockup enabled (when available)
Lens set to manual focus

NOW they tell me! I spent that evening before the eclipse taking 100 photos of the moon and they all were rotten. I see now that my first mistake was the 400 ISO. I don't know why I didn't change it. But I was convinced (am convinced) that higher numbers make better photos.

rygood includes info for point-and-shoots like mine.

I think this ISO thing will also solve my new problem of way too much noise lately in my photos. I thought it was the new iPhoto but now I'm convinced that I have to drop down as low as I can go for macros.

Technorati tags: lunar+photography

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Heads or Tails: Hobby

New England Aster (Aster novae-angliae)

Black-capped Chickadee (Parus atricapillus)

Common Buttercup (Ranunculus acris)

Playing with iPhoto 7 from iLife '08. I'm getting different results and some I don't like, like the noise in my macros. I am posting these to see what they look like in Blogger and in different browsers.

Technorati tags: Heads+or+Tails, New+England+Aster, Aster+novae-angliae, Black-capped+Chickadee, Parus+atricapillus, Common+Buttercup, Ranunculus+acris
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Photo Hunters: Happy

I've had a bad night. Mathematics is soothing. I found this puzzle at Let's Play Math and solved it. It's an easy one and has made me happy. I played with my demo of iWork '08 to make this slide. There is no save function on my demo, so I used Grab to make a screen shot of my work. Then I had to use iPhoto to crop it. Click on the jpeg and it will open in a new window, large enough for you to read it.

Happy Hunting. Hope you are all doing well.

Technorati tags: PhotoHunt Ahmes Ahmose Rhind+papyrus pi mathematics geometry+puzzle
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10,000

Today I passed 10,000 visitors to my blog. I've been keeping the data since December 2006. And I know who you are, Robyn.

Instead of correcting exams and writing a final exam for tonight, I have been installing software. I got Adium (OS X only) becaue iChat was irritating me with warning windows that continuously popped up, unbidden. As soon as I configured Adium, I learned why iChat behaved like that: I had not turned off a Chax plugin. I'll keep Adium for awhile because it has my jabber, AIM, dotmac and yahoo chat accounts all in one list and all connected at the same time.

I also trashed my Weatherpop. It has not been performing well, and the support and updates are gone. The website is dead. But VersionTracker had a comment about Meteo, which is open source, resides in my menubar as I prefer, and has the radar and graphics that I desire. You can download Meteo at sourceforge.net by clicking here.

Meteorologist is a full featured, free, and open source weather program for Mac OS X. This version of Meteorologist supports multiple cities, new version checking, and many more features.

I never put up today's photo of the day and I need a Wordless Wednesday photo. So I had better get outside to get some good shots. A great blue heron has flown by the front door every morning for the past week. Yet I still fail to take his picture. What's up with that? I'll be more vigilante the rest of the week.

I am considering not renewing my dot Mac account this October. I can't believe I am considering this. But Google has all I need for free. I can buy server space at Google for cheaper than Apple. I wouldn't be considering this except for the talk of Apple and Google cooperation. But I'll lose syncing and neat web publishing that is fluid with Apple software.

There will be no shortage of photos next weekend because this is the week of the Barton Fair! And I am going to the demo derby.

Thank you again, Robyn, for being number ten thousand!

Technorati tags: Google Apple dot+Mac Adium Meteo

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Criz's Sanctuary: GIMP 2.2.13 – FREE SOFTWARE FOR EDITING AND ANIMATION

Criz's Sanctuary: GIMP 2.2.13 – FREE SOFTWARE FOR EDITING AND ANIMATION

Here is the info you need if you use Windows. He even shows you how to make those spinning globes, and does it much better than I did!

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Town of Barton, Vermont (Google Earth Challenge)

Here is part of Barton Township with the village of Barton. The village of Orleans is to the north. You can open each image to view them large in a new window. Each was grabbed from Google Earth with Skitch. I also used Skitch to annotate the second image. (Mac only, 4 beta invitations left!)

I give you a Google Earth Challenge: where do you live, work or play? I would enjoy seeing your Google Earth images. You can annotate them or not. I have no idea what Windows software you would use to do what Skitch does. Please leave your link to the Challenge here in the comments! Be sure to grab the button above!


Technorati tags: Google+Earth Skitch Barton meme Vermont Barton+Mountain Crystal+Lake Willoughby+Lake Google+Earth+Challenge

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