Unsharp mask: it's a great too to have in the digital photo toolkit, for sure. Just like most Photoshop tools, unsharp mask also has an original darkroom “analog” that's fascinating. This entry from Photo Critic attempts to demystify unsharp mask through history and application.
Apple’s Time Capsule: Painfully Slow
We recently bought an Apple Time Capsule for backing up or main machines at home. The first thing we did was disable the wireless portion of it since we already have a wireless base station that's performing quite well (we've also been burned by bad Apple wireless products in the past, read: original Graphite Base Station had bad capacitors, an Airport Express that randomly drops the wireless signal, and two Airport Expresses that have faulty power supplies).
I needed to perform a restore from the time capsule to my PowerMac G5 via 100mbit/s ethernet. The total size for the restore was just over 90GB– it took just over 40 hours to restore completely. That's nearly two days! That's just wrong– there has to be a problem somewhere.
To it's credit, it performed as advertised allowing me to restore my computer completely from a backup. It just took longer than I believe it should have.
Needless to say, I'm now backing up my machine on an internal drive and leaving the Time Capsule for future generations until there's a fix.
Oh, and don't believe the estimate. It never went over 20 hours at any point.
Oscar Myer gets MINI on their Wiener Mobile
Oscar Myer is currently promoting a new mini-sized food product and thought it a good idea to down size their wiener mobile. The new set of buns is a MINI Cooper S with the traditional red and yellow paint job with a ginourmous bun and hot dog on top. Catch the video for a quick making of. Watch out for the hot dog related humor.
No word yet on Dawn Wiener's reaction.
Yazoo: On Tour!
Brit electro synth-pop Alison Moyet and Vince Clarke Yazoo are back together to promote a new 4 disc box set of their early and short-lived work together. They have announced U.S. tour dates, two of which are in New York July 16 and 17, 2008.
Stunning pictures of San Francisco Fleetweek Airshow
Check out these photos by Bernard Zee from the 2007 San Francisco Fleetweek airshow. There are some really stunning pictures like the one to the right which shows visual distortion from the shock wave of the aircraft. Amazing!
Link. Thanks, Jim!
Moment of Hammer Time Zen
Thanks Flickr, you always come through.
Cameratoss, addition to the photographic vernacular
I just learned about this one today. Cameratoss is a term that is much what it sounds like. Darken the room, turn on specific point light sources, set camera for longish exposure, trigger and toss. I might not be trying this with my new camera, but maybe a small point and shoot with the tether around my wrist.
Link to Cameratoss Flickr group. (photo by davespilbrow via Flickr)
Unordinary Camera Accessories
Lens Babies
The Lens Baby is a flexible lens that fits on your SLR camera to give you finger-tip selective focus on subjects. Compress the Lens Baby in one direction and you get a tilt-focus effect, similar to that of a large format camera. The results are endless. Lens Baby also makes accessories for video cameras as well.
Joby Gorillapod
The Gorillapod might be the best impromptu tripod available. Position the three fully jointed legs in any position or secure it to a railing, lamppost or chair-back to get a shake-free shot. The rubber-ringed joints stay put.
Thanks, Ray!
How Old is Your Hearing: The Mosquito Ringtone
The Mosquito Ringtone came about after a crafty British man who invented a device called The Mosquito, the Mosquito is a device that emits a very high frequency tone meant to annoy teenagers (adults are unable to hear the tone). Some crafty students decided to convert the same technology into a ring tone that only they (teenagers) could hear! By utilizing this free ringtone, you can get phone calls and receive text messages while in class or school without teachers knowing it.
The highest frequency I could hear was 16.7khz. Maybe it's my speakers. You?
Link. (image by gravitywave via Flickr)
Astropix.com by Jerry Lodriguss
Be sure to check out Jerry Lodriguss's web site astropix.com for a terrific gallery of extraordinary pictures of celestial objects, most shot with pro-sumer Canon equipment. But the best thing about his photos are that he tells you the details about each picture giving a wealth of information about the shot. Jerry is located in Philadelphia and is a photographer for the Philadelphia Enquirer.