From: Announcements, Design, Links, Money By Bevans on Sunday, May 11, 2008

For a while now, I've been trying to think of a way to update one of my favorite designs, the Angry Cactus logo. Since I lost the original file, I decided to remake it and see what I came up with.

In the end, almost nothing changed. I made the "aggravation lines" a little more interesting, and I gave it a much better color scheme. I've learned a lot more about color in the years since I first designed the logo. Originally, it had a gradient of bright yellow in the background, and a very bright green coloring the cactus and words. Ick. This time, I stuck with a complementary color scheme. I actually went through dozens of color variations before deciding that I liked the compelementary ones best. In fact, I'm even thinking of making it available in red, orange, and blue.

So, I've updated the Angry Cactus Shop on CafePress with the new design, so hopefully I'll be able to sell a few more shirts and buttons and stuff. So far, I've sold 8 Angry Cactus items, which is a record for me.

From: Design, Links, Reviews, Technology By Bevans on Saturday, April 19, 2008

Some of you may have seen a few YouTube videos where a guy showed off a really cool new image-resizing program that actually shrunk/enlarged elements of the picture, rather than just the whole picture, thus creating a more or less realistic image without unsightly stretching.

Well, a few days ago, they released this program as a beta to the public (eventually they'll be selling it as a Photoshop plugin), and you can find it here. I've been playing with it a bit, and here are some of the cool things I've been able to do with it.

In Liquid Resize, I selected the area of the picture that I DIDN'T want resized (Dan and his tripod), and let the program do the rest. As you can see, it created an almost perfect "scrunch job" of the image. Most of the image loss came from the path on the left, and from the trees. The large tree in the upper-right corner was scrunched a bit too much for my taste the first time, so I protected it too. The rest of the trees are mostly narrower, but you can't tell unless you're looking at the original.

In this image, I thought it'd be fun to try to take Dan out of the picture completely and see what happened. In LR, you can either choose to "protect" or "delete" an element of the picture. Protecting an area will cause the program to completely ignore the protected area when it's looking for elements to scrunch/stretch. Setting an area to "delete" will cause the area to be favored for deletion, so it'll scrunch into the deletion area as much as possible.

The result is pretty good, though you can definitely see some seams, and the big tree in the foreground has seen better days. Oh well; this isn't really what it's supposed to be used for.

Here's another fun shot. This is Kev, Dan, and Tim (and myself behind the camera) out golfing before Dan's wedding.

...and here's the square version. This one turned out really well. LR closed the gap between Kev and the other two, and brought in the left side. Remember that it's not cropping out ANYTHING; it's resizing the different elements so they all fit within the specified dimensions. The houses in the back do seem a little narrower, and of course the pond is a bit smaller, but you'd never notice that if you hadn't seen the original.

There is one minor issue though: Kev seems like he's a lot taller now, due to the change in perspective.

Hmm...why is Dan in every one of these pictures so far?

Anyway, this is Dan & Jenni after the wedding, when we were driving around on the bus through Stillwater. We stopped by an outdoor biker hangout and somebody let them pose for pictures on their bike.

Again, I had LR change it to be square. This one was tricky. I protected Dan, Jenni, and their motorcycle of course, and also Shelly on the right. I also protected the two motorcycles in the back, because they were too distorted the first time I tried this. I also had it delete the lady on the left. I may have protected the car in the back too; I don't remember.

As you can see, it brought the two bikes in the back (and Shelly) closer together. Some problems, which I could probably fix if I wasn't so lazy, are that the house in the back is kinda scrunched, as is the bike on the far left.

Now, let's play with a vertical picture, at 600x800. Here's a shot of some ducks on a frozen pond.

This time, rather than having the program scrunch the image down to a 600x600, I had it stretch it to 800x800. I didn't bother to have it protect any elements, and just decided to see what it would do.

Mostly, it just stretched the less-detailed area on the left. It also separated the ducks a little bit. Good solution.

This one is pretty funny, actually. I went back to the original image, and resized it down to 600x600. LR chose to shrink most of the background lake element, and as a result the ducks look gigantic. I definitely wouldn't have been chasing them with a stick that day if they were all 5 feet tall.

The horizon on the far right looks a little goofy too. It scrunched the skyline and treeline to make room for the branch.

Overall, I think this program/plugin is going to be a valuable tool in any photo manipulator's arsenal. Obviously it's not perfect for every situation, but it's very easy to use, and usually pulls off some impressive feats.

Here are a few more images I created. The first one is the original in each pair.

From: Entertainment, Links, Movies, Politics, Ranting, Science By Bevans on Wednesday, April 16, 2008

I'm using my considerable draw and influence to call attention to a good cause today.

By now you've probably seen commercials for Ben Stein's new movie "Expelled", which is apparently being marketed as a wacky teen comedy or something. But really, it's a "documentary" full of anti-science, anti-evolution propaganda.

That's not what I'm trying to call attention to. I'm calling attention to Expelled Exposed, a web site designed to show just how full of shit Ben Stein and his stupid movie (as well as creationists in general) are.

But, some may argue that this is just calling more attention to the movie. Well, it's already being advertised for on TV. The best we can do is help to draw attention to the truth. The Expelled Exposed site is currently #8 when you search for "expelled" on Google, and the more you link to a site, the higher it goes on Google. So the goal is to get this site to appear BEFORE the movie's web site on Google.

From: Entertainment, Links, Personal, Technology By Bevans on Friday, November 02, 2007

I've been meaning to write a hard-hitting post about politics or religion or something for a while now. But that day has not yet come. Instead, I'm going to share some of my favorite podcasts that I listen to each week.

For those of you who don't know, Podcasts are audio files (usually in MP3 format) that people produce on a regular or semi-regular basis. Their primary purpose is to be loaded onto a portable music player, or just listened to on your computer. And contrary to popular belief, no Apple products are required. I listen on an iRiver H120 while driving to and from class each day. The drive is usually about 40 minutes long, so I've got plenty of time to listen.

A great resource for finding new podcasts on pretty much any topic you can think of is the Podcast Directory on Digg.

So anyway, here they are.


The Ricky Gervais Show

Unfortunately, this one has ended, but you can still find the whole collection on the net (try BitTorrent), or my hard drive. And it's probably the funniest thing I've ever heard. The format is simple: 3 British guys talking to each other. The first (of course) is Ricky Gervais, a comedian/actor/writer who's probably most famous in the US for co-creating the tv show The Office. The second is Stephen Merchant, the other co-creator of The Office. The third is Karl Pilkington, their unemployed friend.

Most of the hilarity comes from just letting Karl speak his mind, with the other two reacting. Most of the stuff he says is ridiculous, inaccurate, or just plain crazy, yet also oddly poignant. When talking about the creation of the universe, he ponders, "Was the Big Bang really that loud, or did it just seem loud because there was nothing there to drown it out?"

They did a 12-episode "season" for free, then did 2 seasons of 6 episodes as part of a subscription experiment (don't worry, most podcasts are free) and then 3 holiday specials last year. Most are about half an hour long.


SModcast (feed)

This one gets its name from the last initials of the show's two hosts: filmmaker/writer/actor Kevin Smith, and producer Scott Mosier. Scott is often busy though, so Kevin's friends or wife sometimes fill in.

This one is probably only interesting if you're a Kevin Smith fan. In fact, it's probably only interesting if you've watched both "Evening With Kevin Smith" DVDs and came away wanting more. Smith and Mosier talk about whatever comes into their heads, from personal experiences to stuff they saw on YouTube.

It's usually about an hour long, and they do one every week or so.


The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe (feed)

This one is hosted by several members of the New England Skeptics Society, and they discuss the latest in science, pseudo-science, and scams, with particular focus on debunking and exposing subjects like the paranormal, conspiracy theories, the medical field, and so on.

They also have some great guests on the show each week, like Jimmy Carter, Bill Nye, Adam Savage (Mythbusters), Matt Stone (South Park), and Teller (he was actually talking too). There are also plenty of relative unknowns that are also very interesting; last week, the guest was an epidemiologist who was talking about the flu vaccine (short version: get it), the bird flu, upcoming pandemics, and how the human race will eventually be wiped out by viruses. Fun!

This one is a weekly feature, and it's usually over an hour long.


Webcomics Weekly (feed)

This is a pretty interesting look into the webcomic world, from 4 prominent webcartoonists. They cover everything from artistry to business to marketing to technology, and so on. It's aimed at other webcartoonists, but I find it pretty interesting anyway. It's also a weekly feature that's about an hour long.


NPR

Ok, I know what you're thinking. NPR is a radio station. But they also have almost ALL of their programs from around the country available in podcast form.

Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is a very funny quiz show where the questions come from the week's news and events. Car Talk features two hilarious New England brothers attempting to diagnose car problems from callers. Science Friday...well, I think the name pretty much explains it.

There are thousands of different feeds to choose from, and some are even compilations of all stories relating to a particular subject (like movies).


Assorted WoW Podcasts

Yes, I'm a Warcraft nerd. I listen to 3 WoW podcasts: The Instance, Legendary Thread, and the WoW Insider Show. They all talk about the same news stories about the same game, but I enjoy listening to their differing opinions and reactions.

Think of it like being a baseball fan and watching ESPN, Fox Sports, and...some other sports news channel.


So there we go. I'm always looking for new ones, and if I do find some, I'll be sure to post them here. And if you have one that you think I'd like, feel free to send me a link. Even though I've been listening for a while now, I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface.