Halloween 2007

Feel free to use these for whatever you will. I haven't cropped them for common desktop resolutions this time, I will leave that to you.

These are full 8 megapixel jpg's with some light processing done. Thumbnails and links after the jump.
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It's nothing fancy graphically, but the intricacies of the motion make it gorgeous. I've never seen a screen saver that was more interesting to me.

In real life, these collisions do occur. They aren't a quick dance like on the screen. When you factor in the incredible distances involved and the scope of the masses interacting the cosmic fender benders take millions if not billions of years to play out.

The beauty becomes decidedly darker when you think of the implications. I'm one that doesn't doubt the existence of life on worlds other than our own. Imagine for a moment just a single stray star going along it's merry way through the universe, shot off on a path that brushes close to our own star. The interplay of gravity on that level has the potential to rip planets out of orbit. At best, that would completely change what life could exist and how it gets by on a world. It is much more likely it would just sterilize the world completely either through freezing, collision, or melting. A slight change in orbit makes a drastic difference in climate.

Now think of that on a galactic scale. Millions of stars being shifted about, never mind all the planets, asteroids, comets, etc. How many species erased in one event? How much potential?

In perspective it's really not that dark, considering the timescales involved, species could rise and fall many times in the process. And of course, the newly shifted systems that exist after the collision may now harbor life that was not possible before.

I was reminded of all these thoughts this morning by a post on Bad Astronomy Blog. Check out Bad Astronomy's write up of some great Hubble shots of galactic collisions and interactions. As you're looking at the pretty pictures, think of all that's actually going on, and all that implies to make this eye candy.

A couple examples:

In the case of tabular data Veerle Pieters has a couple of excellent tutorials on her methods.

Smashing Magazine just posted a nice showcase of gorgeous web forms. The focus here was contact forms, and I think the examples they picked were mostly terrific executions. Contact forms are easy though. You just have a handful of fields to deal with, so you have a lot of room to work with. You can use a lot of whitespace to add beauty and readability in this case, but what do you do when you have a more complicated form?

While I've built dozens of websites and web applications, I still find myself struggling when the data that needs to be presented or input is more than a few fields. My general attack on an information dense page is to try and distill it down to what is most important. That doesn't always work. Sometimes the client wants more information than seems possible viewable at the same time. Sometimes that's what the end user wants.

So where does that leave me? Generally unsatisfied. I'll present as much information as makes sense in tables that are well styled. I'll rethink the flow of an application to minimize the input you need in each step. That itself is a dangerous tightrope to walk, because if you disassemble something too far, you're just creating another kind of complexity. I know I'm not the only one who struggles with this. I think it may bother me more than most.

Here are some examples of interfaces that really bother me. I find them difficult to use, but I don't know the solution for cramming all the information they cover in either.

The Bad

my.ebay.com

There's a lot of information you can access here. The main area isn't terrible, but generally presents things I will never care about knowing. There is a good deal more info buried in the left hand menu with descriptions that don't actually tell me what I am looking for.

myspace.com

Ok, this one everyone knows. I won't even bother going into detail or posting a screen. Myspace has a truly horrible archaic interface, even the new beta revisions. I don't even have an account any longer because it's such a pain.

The Good

Facebook.com

While it's getting cluttered, and the advent of facebook apps has made the site a lot less desirable, it's still pretty easy to use and read. It's not gorgeous, but it's not ugly.

Blinksale.com

This is an invoicing service. Very straightforward functionality, very easy to use, and very easy on the eyes. I've been using them well over a year now, and I'm still very pleased.

So I'm calling for more examples from readers of both the good and the bad of information dense web design. Better yet, do you have any ideas on methods of dealing with it in your own designs? If I get enough responses I'll do a follow up post and I'd be happy to showcase your work.

Recorded in two parts, one just the guitar, straight into my trusty macbook. Then I came back and sang over it. I still haven't mastered the singing and playing at the same time, invariably I'll forget what I'm doing on one of the two.

[See post to listen to audio]

I love the sound of this one. It gives my fingers a good workout, and I move around the fretboard pretty well. I didn't play it as written, the last few bars I did a little embellishment on the rhythm so that it comes to an end more gradually and naturally. The original just has me play the beginning chords in the same rhythm and then strum an A minor. I like my version better.

[See post to listen to audio]

Posted a review on newegg where I bought it - immediate response! Just not in any way to me, it was a response to the negative review suggesting I contact them for support...

They list no phone number on their micronet site (I called the sales number for fantomdrives,) there are several reviews now on newegg with similar circumstances, and complaints of them not fulfilling their rebate offers.

It's one thing to have quality control problems, it's entirely different to not offer any support or communication channels to your customers. I accept hardware failure, it happens. I don't except offering warranties you will not honor.

The question today is what is the meaning of your life. That's close to the ultimate question everyone seems to be asking, what is the meaning of life, which is unanswerable. Luckily, this slight variation to that question is very answerable (and no, not with 42.) I will try to be concise and not prattle on about my morals, but it's difficult since the concepts are tied together. The answer is really very simple:

I am.

My life is it's own meaning. I need no further justification. All the good things in my life follow from that simple two word statement. Because I am, because I will, I create the world in which I want to live. Some of you reading this will not understand the depth of meaning in that simple concept, or perhaps you'll even balk at it. That's ok, I'll try to explain further.

I love to understand. I live to experience life.

Life has a lot to offer. It's got a lot of pleasure, a lot of pain, really it seems a mess at times. It is a very complex place, this universe we live in. It can be horribly confusing. From the moment we're born we're bombarded with inputs from our senses. I'm sure those first few years are nothing but a cacophony of sensation while we start to learn how to filter and interpret what we're experiencing. But learn we do!

It's a never ending process, learning how to deal with and understand our experiences. We are exposed to new ideas, and those like me integrate what we learn with our own understanding.

This web page has a bookmark/favourites icon. You can see it up in the location bar of your browser to the left of the URL. It's a japanese kanji Ri (pronounced ree.) It is the root concept for reason, logic, order, justice. It is one of the most important concepts we humans have come up with yet, even though we often times don't use, or even understand it. It's one of my highest ideals. It's not the core of my being; it's my most important tool.

Reason is my absolute

It's the only absolute we really have access to. It is from reason which we build our understanding of our lives. We have our senses to use to experience the world around us, but it is reason that lets us pull those inputs together to uncover-and create-meaning. Our values stem from reason, our morals, our purpose, even our emotions. Realizing this, and utilizing it is one of the most important breakthroughs a person can make.

Through understanding I can create, build, and produce.

Whether a man is to live alone, or as part of society, he must create. There is no escaping it. You are not fully alive if you are not producing value. It doesn't have to be anything monumental, but all life creates. It doesn't matter where you stand philosophically or politically, creation is required for continuance of life. Simple things like planting seed are acts of creation. We all do it. Sometimes I feel I'm addicted to it. I have a huge range of hobbies. I'm always trying to build or improve something.

I live to experience life.
Through reason I turn that experience into understanding.
From that understanding I create value.

It sounds a bit broad and vague because it is. I'm a photographer, a musician, a designer, a software developer, a gardener, a mechanic, and the list will just continue to grow. All of that stems from the above.

Alex's magic stick is glowing towards me. (she calls my iPhone a magic stick)

I'm drunk, I may steal too many.

We've been expecting an SDK, and a path for getting 3rd party apps on the iPhone and iPod touch for a while now. Even with the expectation there I am blown away. Not only do we have ridiculously cool and high tech hardware, but it looks like they did everything right with the SDK. We are going to see an explosion of creative apps utilizing a lot of untapped power in these devices.

Better yet, Apple is providing all the developers a marketplace they don't have to maintain that gets their apps in front of every iPhone/iPod user... anywhere in the world.

To top that off Apple's put aside $100,000,000 to invest in this market. I can't think of a single time I've seen a company create a market so rapidly, and so intelligently. This is what capitalism is all about people. Not only is Apple going to reap huge amounts of money from their innovative technology and thinking here, but thousands of small time developers now have an easy channel to make money on their work, and millions of users are going to benefit from the apps they create.

Wow.

I've been waiting for something like this for ages. Trent Reznor has always been amazingly creative in the soundscapes he creates. Even some of his earliest works are more layered an detailed than a good chunk of music you'll run into today. He's branched out in this direction before making atmospheric world-describing tracks that get included on some albums, and he has worked in soundtracks to both films and video games with great success. Now we've got something even more his own.

Ghosts I-IV is a real treat for the imagination. I ordered the $75 special set which includes a blu-ray disc with high quality recording and imagery associated with the tracks. I won't see it till May unfortunately, but I'm anxious. That set also includes a DVD with multi-track recordings that you're free to remix under creative commons!

I'm hearing that NIN is seeding the first part of the collection on torrents. Bold move, and cool. Trent Reznor is really pushing the edge on the evolution of the music industry. Thank you, Trent.

Photos will appear here in the next hour for the 2008 lunar eclipse visible from North America. Got some good pictures from my home near Dallas, TX. It's cloudy, but the clouds are moving fast so don't pose a huge problem!

And here we are with some pictures!

To take these pictures I used my trusty old Canon 20D with the 70-200mm f2.8 IS lens. I also used a very crappy tripod. In this situation neither the IS nor the tripod helped me much. The first few pictures before the shadow is dominating the moon I took at an Aperture of f14 and a shutter of about 1/250 second. You can see these are much sharper than the latter pictures.

Since the 20D doesn't have a spot meter I had to experiment a bit to find the exposure I wanted. Using center weighted or whole scene metering throws things FAR too overexposed for the moon. When shooting the moon you have to remember that the moon is very very bright compared to it's surroundings. Even using exposure compensation, 2 stops underexposed according to the meter is no where near enough. I think at 1/250 @ f14 the meter thinks I was 6-10 stops underexposed. If I had a spot meter, I probably could have metered on the moon, and dialed it in with EC.

The latter pictures where the shadow dominates my shutter crept down to 1/30 - 1/2 second. These are not as sharp. I tried using IS on mode 2, full IS, sacrificing aperture to bring the shutter up higher and I just couldn't get as sharp a shot. Time for me to get a real tripod.

I sliced a large Avocado, set aside.
Chopped some Tomatoes, set aside.

Julienned Red Bell Pepper, thrown into hot dry pan to sear.
Chopped 3 small zuchini, tossed into pan with pepper, lowered heat.
Dusted with Paprika, Cumin, Chilli Pepper.
Chopped a Jalepe]]> Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:22:58 -0800 http://virb.com/ozone42/posts/text/471643 http://virb.com/ozone42/posts/text/470311 Spent a couple hours messing around in garageband today. It's got some annoying tics, but there's a lot that you can do with it and it's fairly easy.

Here's a clip of a work in progress. This is a cover of Linkin Park's Pushing Me Away. Right now I have the same basic chord progression, but instead of just some overdriven strumming I'm arpeggiating and using some substitutions.

I haven't decided what to do with the chorus yet. I'd like to do something similar to their own remix of the song for that part... but I am not very good at screaming.

[See post to listen to audio]

I also need some drums in there.

I didn't take the time to do all the touchups and tweaks I normally would for a print, that is up to you. You are free to use this however you want, even commercially. All I ask is a credit and link for the original source.

Additionally here are a couple crops to use as wallpaper if you fancy the scenery.

West Texas Pano by
Alex Morse is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

I didn't have to think about this one long. Most of you know movie sequels rarely live up to the original film they are based on. There's always good sequels... but hardly ever QUITE as good as #1. Well I've got one for you that exceeds the original movie in most every way.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Most fans of Star Trek hail this to be the best of the movies. To me, it's a lot more significant that most non Star Trek fans recognize this title, and many have seen it. It's a good flick.

The original Star Trek Motion Picture was a good movie, but it came off as a little too hard sci-fi. It's a lot more esoteric and cerebral than the others. It was well acted, and directed but it would have been much better as it's own (unparented,) film rather than the introduction of some beloved characters to a new medium.

That's where The Wrath of Khan steps in. It brought the fans back to Star Trek, and it gave the non fans a good introduction to what made Trek so popular in the first place. Solid characters, action packed plot, amazing settings and a pace and tension that leaves you ready for another movie at the end.