The Future

Shortly after extolling the virtues of my phone-run life, while updating said phone, it crashed.

But not all the way. While restarting Springboard (the interface), _that_ crashed, but the phone itself was still running. Now, the normal thing to do in this rare situation is a hard-restart; that is, hold the power button until the phone cycles power. However, my phone's power button has long since died (poor 3Gs design, a known flaw. Likely to be my final Apple phone). What was I to do? Wait until the battery died and then plug it in? That's one method, but it takes *quite* a long time for the battery to die, and I had to use the restroom.

Did I mention that the phone itself was still running? I mean, still observable on my network. I went to one of my computers, SSH'd into my phone, and issued the restart command. About a minute later it was back up and running, good as new (well, I _say_ 'new', but you know what I mean).

This is the future we're living in.

Magic

Content-Aware Fill is making the rounds. Here is yet another example video: Show/Hide


Mwahaha


And stunningly, it turns out that the basic technology (texture synthesis) has been around FOR A DECADE. That's right, nerds in the know were running magic in GIMP ten years before Adobe posted their sneak peak at CS5. The upcoming Photoshop with this magic isn't yet available, but the GIMP version is right now (resynthesizer and heal selection), so I thought I'd run it through its paces. I couldn't find the original hi-res photos anywhere (0 results on TinEye), so I had to make-due with screencaps from the original video.

(rollover for originals)



In the first picture, everything except the sky was an easy Heal Selection. The sky didn't turn out right, and I ended up using clone-stamp to cover up the weirdness, and then Heal Selection over that.




For the desert, again I had to clone-stamp part of the scrub-brush over the road first, and then Heal Selection over that.




Finally, for the panorama (which was actually the first image I tried), I didn't use anything except Heal Selection, BUT I had to do the picture in steps (first one corner, then the next, etc).

So what did I find? Well, although the Resynthesizer tool 'works', it's not nearly as easy to use as what is shown in the CS5 preview video. And some of the results were a little wonky. But it's fairly quick and easy, and the output will usually pass a quick glance (but not intense scrutiny).

What you'd need to do this yourself:
GIMP itself
Updated Resynthesizer (compiled for windows, sorry)
The patched Heal Selection script
Other References:
Another guy Resynthesizing the photos
Another guy testing it out last October
Other handy GIMP tips/tools:
Tweaking GIMP to replace Photoshop (sorta)
The Liquid Rescale plugin
The do-everything G'MIC plugin, although its predecessor GREYCstoration has better examples
The FX Foundry is a good collection of scripts
(Gimp Guru used to have good tutorials, but then they switched to WordPress and lost all the graphics)

Things They Don't Tell You

(CLICK THE IMAGES TO PROCEED THROUGH THIS COMIC)

Ze Frank recently buzzed about this, and I thought it was interesting enough to pass along. For me, there were two pages in particular that I thought deserved a comment.

#1:

Aha! I'm normal, bitches!

#2:

Argh! No, no, no. Money is not evil.

It's the *LOVE* of money that is the root of all evil! This is an important distinction! Timothy 6:10, look it up!

Removed

Here's another reason (of many) that I like Google:

If they block some results, for any reason, they will TELL YOU.



Right there at the bottom of the page. Not in tiny text either. They practically bold it and surround it by flashing lights.

Yahoo didn't. Bing didn't. And I couldn't find any results that they were showing that Google wasn't (because maybe they weren't asked under the DMCA to remove any results), but Google also shows more results on the first page (15 vs 10@Yahoo vs 14@Bing).

Television Piracy

Here's why I don't think that downloading TV shows off the Interwebs is a real threat to broadcasters:

I can get better quality picture and sound for FREE over the air with a simple antenna. Plus, I can get THAT faster than I can download it (often before it is even available for download).

Downloading has some advantages, I guess, but I have a DVR to capture off the air, which gives me most of them anyway.

And yes, for quality one can download the hi-res versions of a show, but a single episode of House is about as big as every episode of Important Things with Demetri Martin combined.

Just an observation.

(Also, if you ARE a downloader, and you have a fast enough connection, check out Hulu. Some of their streams are faster and higher-quality than your average cap, and the commercials are shorter than over-the-air)

The Sneeze

I don't Twitter, but I do sometimes run across people that twitter (in my car, HO!).

Steve "The Sneeze" twitters. Here are some of the gems that you've been missing:

# I think I'm turning into my mother. I was just nagging the kids to make their beds. And then I had sex with my dad.
10:01 AM Aug 13th from Tweetie

# Told my son on 1st day of kindergarten they make you fight a gorilla. He didn't believe me. I should show up in a gorilla suit
8:22 AM Aug 17th from web

# So typical. I had no interest in buying Marvel until Disney did and now I'm pissed at myself.
10:43 AM Aug 31st from web

# My favorite part of going to the dyslexic bakery is when you order a dozen and they give you 31.
11:02 AM Aug 31st from web

# My wife always laughs when I say I have PMS, so this weekend I bled through my vagina. Who's laughing NOW?
2:17 PM Aug 31st from Twittelator

If you tweet (and there's really no reason why you should), and you can't seem to stop yourself, check him out.

Facemarks

In yesterday's post, I used two facemarks to represent smiling dogs. Facemarks are like Emoticons, but viewed normally instead of rotated 90 degrees. They also often use Cyrillic and Japanese kana or kanji (so, sorry if your system can't display them. ^_^)

There are two good sites I use to quickly look up a facemark.

Hiroette's classic site that has been around for years: Japanese Smilies

A new site that let's people rate facemarks: Evoticon

More Snow Leopard Coolness

Bluetooth is (at the moment) working again in 10.6.1 and I found a sort-of workaround for the previously mentioned remote control problems.

The workaround is to have Quicktime open somewhere. Not in use, just open. Because, hey, what's a little resource waster, eh? (The previous trick was to have iTunes open on a store page, but that takes even MORE resources)

Anyway, with the QT player open, the remote once again works with other programs like it SHOULD. (actually, it doesn't. updated below)

As biskitwheels said:

I believe there are a few issues stemming from one problem. One of many problems with Apple's growing desire to control your user experience.

The solution is to allow us to manage iTunes keyboard shortcuts. Turn them off, re-map the keyboard, whatever it is we happen to want to do, we should have the ability to do it, especially for a matter so trivial of a feature yet such an annoyance to us. Additionally, it is so obviously contrived to push their software on us it makes me a bit sick to my stomach.

Now we have such a egregious fail on Apple's part, this auto-launch with no turn off switch, it is getting bad enough that people are speaking out. I hope it opens up a discussion about users making our own decision to use itunes or not. Seems as if Apple thinks we need iTunes in order to breathe, which WE DO NOT.

Apple, don't just disappear your most recent error, stand up and correct it by allowing us the ability to shape our user experience, even in the most basic of ways.

And while you're at it, throw in FLAC for us, ok?

My reasons to stick with this OS are dwindling fast.

(His line about Apple disappearing their error is in reference to the threads in the Apple support forum that have been closed/deleted/marked-as-solved when the problem very much still exists)

Anyway, the New Coolness is that SMB sharing doesn't work with XP anymore. So, now that I have the remote working, I can watch all jack-squat because I can't connect to the file server because it's on XP.

DUMB.

Once again, something that worked FINE in Leopard that is BROKEN in Snow Leopard. Do I wait for a fix? Or do I reformat and reinstall EVERYTHING.

Note for future use: Time Machine is good for you, and you should use it. (If I had a Time Machine backup of my Leopard system, I could downgrade)

UPDATE:
SMB sharing still doesn't work when I try to connect via Finder, BUT it DOES work if I connect via Plex. BUT! The Quicktime and iTunes tricks for getting the remote working, which work for VLC, DON'T work for Plex!

Apple, why you so stoopid?

UPDATE AGAIN:
Alright, it might not be malicious douchebaggery on Apple's part. It may instead be an actual bug. But I notice that they didn't fix it in 10.6.1, so...

Annual Manual

I'm sure I'm not telling anyone anything they don't already know, but if perhaps you haven't spotted it yet, the Inlander's 2009-2010 Annual Manual is out now. If you see one, pick it up (it's free).

Digital Tuner Stuff

I previous mentioned that the digital tuner coupon program ran out of money the day I signed up. Timing!

Anyway, I was put on the waiting list, and lo! Guess what arrived in the mail recently? My coupon.

I've looked at the comparison of boxes, and unless a better one comes along soon, I think I'll go with the Channel Master CM-7000. It's got good picture quality and s-video output. It's not perfect, but it's OK.

So, with the converter, I'm going to need an antenna!

Why don't I just make one? I found a couple sets of instructions.

#1: How to build a HDTV Antenna....CHEAP!
http://uhfhdtvantenna.blogspot.com/
Mmm, effective, but not pretty.

#2: The Gray-Hoverman Antenna For UHF Television Reception
http://www.digitalhome.ca/ota/superantenna/index.htm
Oooh, complicated!

Mmmmaybe I'll just buy one.

Romantische

Der Schlangemann has reminded me of a romantic tip (via The Sneeze [same tip as last year]).

A long time ago when my wife was my girlfriend and we were LIVING IN SIN, a tradition was born. I'd like to now share it with you all.

I came home from work one day and found her in front of the computer. I said "Hello," and she barely grunted back. I don't even think she looked up.

Half-jokingly I responded, "Okay, we're gonna try this again." I walked out the front door and came back in a few moments later...

"STEVIE'S HOME, STEVIE'S HOME!!! YAY!!!" was the new over-the-top cheer I was greeted with. It was accompanied by a hug and kisses. And I loved it.

What began as a joke quickly became an ongoing practice that continues to this day in our house: The person who is home first must make a small fuss when the other person gets there.

Does it sound silly? Yes. Do I promise that it will set the tone for a nicer evening just about every time you do it? Yes.

The world is full of douchebags, guys. Take 3 seconds out of your precious day to make a fuss over each other. Do it like you mean it. Do it as a goof. Just do it a lot.

I'm promise you'll be glad you did.

And THAT reminded me of the "I Love You Today" game in my family. The game is simple: whomever says "I love you today" first, wins. That's the whole game.

Well, actually that's not all, as there are variations. "I love you this year" for example, but that doesn't come up too often. ^_^

While playing it every day is the goal, if you run into someone you haven't seen for a while (that you play the game with), it's fun working it into the conversation before they remember.

A: Oh, guess what?
B: What?
A: I love you today.
B: Damn it!

You can add variations of the rules (no saying it right after midnight, etc), but the real point is just to say "I love you" every day.

Is it cheesy? Yup. And silly, and kind of goofy. But, like Steve's tip, it does make a difference. ^_^

(Says the single guy...)