So I finally got my fireworks pictures up in a new gallery. This was a rather difficult shoot. The fireworks started as soon as we got to our place on the Mall, so I wasn’t able to get any pictures of the crowd, the Capitol or much of anything else. Just put my tripod down and started shooting and had to adjust all the parameters on the fly. Out of about 200 images, about 20 or so turned out pretty well....

There is nothing quite like flailing away with CSS. Its not quite the most frustrating thing in the world, but it would give most annoyances a run for their money. OK… Its pretty close for now, though its going to need a lot more tweaks, and that will probably take 10 times as long to accomplish. Though I’m actually impressed how just flailing turned out. I still need to figure out how to link to Gallery2 thumbnails....

You don’t often see revolutionary, killer-apps… Google Earth might just be one. Coming off of Google’s acquisition of Keyhole software (this is the software the news agencies used to bring you satellite images of Iraq during the most recent war), there was much speculation about what Google might be able to do with the technology. What they have produced is an incredible piece of software that combines their search engine and resources and their recent map product into a slick product that you have never seen before....

Growing up, there were three “comic” series that I enjoyed most… Batman, Spider Man, and X-men. The first on the movie scene was Batman, under the careful eyes of Tim Burton. He gave it the appropriate “dark” treatment Batman needed. However, it still had a “comic” feel to it. Burton followed it up with Batman Returns, which again I thought stayed true to the comic while maintaining a serious treatment. Things then started spiraling down hill....

If you write code, and you haven’t tried Eclipse, you haven’t experienced a truly great IDE. I’m currently trying to set it up to do my Web development, Java Development, and if I can figure out how to get a compiler to work, C++ development (that will be last, since I don’t have any @home C++ work to be doing… I get enough of that at work). (I’m going to update this post as the IDE setup continues....

So this post was supposed to go out last weekend. I had turned on Wordpress’s feature of scanning a POP3 email account to add posts. Needless to say it looks like it doesn’t work, so I’m just going back to manual postings. So much for that feature. Anyway, the exciting news of the day is that my new laptop arrived. =) Multiple things prompted this - the primary reason is that a few weeks ago, my Fujitsu (which had faithfully served me for almost 4 years) just flat out croaked....

Some cool things I’ve stumbled upon lately Text Image - Converts images to use colored text. Really neat output actually. Very impressed by a simple web application. Panoramas.dk - Really cool panoramas and VR. They have really cool "exhibits"... war in Iraq, Moon Landing, etc. Most require a latest version of Quicktime, but definitely worth checking out. Nearly-Live Planetary Desktop Backgrounds - I've set this up as my rotating background! Using the open source xplanet software, it generates images for download about once an hour....

Ok. I caved and saw it this weekend. Ann & I were downtown after Ann’s 10K race, took care of some wedding stuff, then said what the hell and saw a matinee. I’m glad I did, but not for the obvious reasons. Let me explain. (These reasons might come out disjointed, so bear with me) It is not like the Star Wars movies have been great works of art or cinema....

Well, I tried to do another session of astrophotography last night. I can see a handful of the brightest stars, but its really an uninteresting picture (just a bunch of dots). Obviously, a telescope would be handy, but even with the help there is probably just too much light pollution. Also, the lack of any good documentation on Registax is actually quite frustrating. Its a very powerful program, its just hard to control, especially how sluggish it performs on my machine (I’m sure if I had anything resembling a modern machine, it would do a lot better)....

Anyone looking for direct evidence that history repeats itself can stop. Go pick up a newspaper, read, and weep. Why is this country in the state its in right now? What explains this incredible push by the religious right? Is this the way its going to be, or is this just a phase and the backlash is coming? Smarter men and women than me can’t seem to find an answer. Sure, some have theories (no pun intended), but predicting the future is always a tough business to be in....