Tom – Page 121 – Random Connections

Fun with Anaglyphs – Part 3

February 23, 2011 Tom No Comments

Photography

In the first part of this series I was stumped because I didn’t even have a pair of 3D glasses. This time I was stumped because I didn’t have a 3D camera set-up. In Part 2 I had mastered converting existing sterographic images into 3D anaglyphs using Photoshop, and now I wanted to try my … Read More “Fun with Anaglyphs – Part 3” »

Fun with Anaglyphs – Part 2

February 23, 2011 Tom No Comments

General Technology, Photography

In my last post I talked about discovering that the South Carolina Digital Library has a new collection of 3D images. They have taken old stereographs from the Civil War era and have converted them to anaglyphs so that they can be viewed using 3D glasses. As I was thinking about how they did this, … Read More “Fun with Anaglyphs – Part 2” »

Fun with Anaglyphs – Part 1

February 22, 2011 Tom No Comments

History and Genealogy, Photography

This week I was looking for some resources on the South Carolina Digital Library (www.scmemory.org) when I saw that they have a new collection online. The collection is from the USC library, and is a collection of stereoscopic images of South Carolina.

The images were taken with a twin lens stereographic camera during and just after the Civil War. Most of these are of the Charleston area, and many show the devastation of the war, with ruined buildings seeming to be a favorite topic.

These images were meant to be viewed with a stereograph viewer, similar to the one seen below:

The image card would be placed in the holder, and the off-set images merged into a 3D view in the viewer. When I was growing up we had one of these antiques and a collection of cards, and I loved looking through them.

Wolfram Tones

February 22, 2011 Tom 1 Comment

Internet, Music

I’ve not had much chance to play around with Wolfram Alpha. I know it’s an amazing computational engine, and can solve math and many other types of problems. I just haven’t had much need for it, although I can see that it would be a fantastic tool for students. I have, however, spent a few minutes looking at Wolfram Tones. It’s a pretty cool online music composition toy that can kill a bit of time.

The tonal patterns are based on a computational formula developed by Stephen Wolfram in the 1980’s. As such, they tend to be fairly random. There is a degree of control over the sound, however. You can pick a style from a list as follows:

Chorale Chamber Ensemble Winter 2011 Concert

February 22, 2011 Tom No Comments

Music

This past weekend was a concert weekend for the Greenville Chorale Chamber Ensemble, so I wasn’t able to get much blogging done. We had rehearsals, then the concert itself Sunday afternoon in Daniel Chapel at Furman University. This year we did the Rutter Requiem, accompanied by a small ensemble that included organ, harp, flute, oboe, … Read More “Chorale Chamber Ensemble Winter 2011 Concert” »

Flickr to Panoramio – One More Attempt

February 18, 2011 Tom No Comments

Geocaching and Maps, Photography

I really want to contribute to Panoramio. Really, I do. I would love to have my photos show up in a native layer on Google Earth without having to use a third-party KML/KMZ file. So I’ve been looking for work-arounds for their security problems and inability to upload more than 10 images at a time. … Read More “Flickr to Panoramio – One More Attempt” »

Rethinking Panoramio

February 17, 2011 Tom 5 Comments

Photography, Rants

Last post I was singing the praises of Panoramio for location-based photo sharing. I’ve uploaded a bunch of photos, and had 250 approved for Google Earth. I was quite flattered. The selected photos included some of my best shots, and covered the entire US, from Florida to Maine, to Washington State. …and as of this … Read More “Rethinking Panoramio” »

From Flickr to Panoramio

February 16, 2011 Tom 10 Comments

Geocaching and Maps, Photography

I finally caved in. I’ve been uploading some selected photographs to Panoramio so that they will appear in the Google Earth Photos layer. As of this writing I have 121 photographs that have been selected to appear in Google Earth, and I’ve submitted more that are awaiting approval.

If you’ve got a Google account, then you can use that to sign into Panoramio and create an account. Photos are uploaded just like they are to any other photo sharing site. Just make sure that your photos are geotagged. Even if they haven’t been geotagged previously, there is a drag-n-drop map so you can locate your photos once they have been uploaded.

Panoramio has some specific guidelines for approval for Google Earth. There are the usual conditions – no pornography, discriminative, or abusive photos. However, there are some other guidelines. They are looking for photos that illustrate a place, so images of people, events, or detailed images of flowers or other items may not be approved. Likewise, interior shots probably won’t be selected for Google Earth.

For Google Earth and Google Maps we select only photos about exterior places: landscapes, monuments, streets, buildings, parks, and so on. All photos must comply with the Panoramio Photo Acceptance Policy.

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Sparkleberry Unfiltered

February 13, 2011 Tom No Comments

Paddling

It’s the second Saturday of the month, and that means another trip with my friends from Lowcountry Unfiltered. For this trip we decided to tackle Sparkleberry Swamp, at the north end of Lake Marion. I had paddled it before, but we only did a short trip that day. I was eager to see more, and I was curious how the swamp would look in winter.

Preparations:

Matt and I went back and forth on this trip. What we wanted to do was to hit the heart of the swamp, and paddle from Sparkleberry Landing to Risers Lake. However, there were lots of variables that had to be in place before we could take the trip – weather, water levels, etc. We had several alternatives, such as launching from Low Falls Landing, or doing something different all together.

The Palmetto Paddlers were also planning a trip to Sparkleberry for the same weekend, but they were going Sunday instead of Saturday. I contacted Kate Whitmire, the trip’s organizer, to see if she had any insight into water levels. She pointed me to the USGS water levels website for Pineville on Lake Marion. According to Kate, a reading of 72.09 was necessary for a paddle without portages.

I took my GPS track from my last trip, trip reports from several other paddlers, and placed all the data I could find on the Lowcountry Unfiltered wiki site. Based on this data, I created a GPS file that included waypoints and routes, as well as a Google Earth file with image and map overlays.

John Nelson also shared a great map of the swamp. It didn’t have the detail of the Google Earth data, but it had the “bones” of the swamp, and would prove useful to make sure we were on a major channel. It also provided names for the various creeks and guts that weren’t available in Google Earth.

I printed out copies of John’s map, my Google Earth maps, and a map of the 7.5 minute USGS topo map of the area. I had also purchased a fishing map of Lake Marion. I put all of these in a waterproof map case I had just purchased, and also programmed all of the waypoints into my GPS. I felt like I was ready.

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The Perfect Point-and-Shoot

February 11, 2011 Tom 1 Comment

Gear, Photography, Uncategorized

I think that any camera person is a de facto gadget person. If you get into this hobby seriously there is a ton of STUFF you want to buy to make your photos better – lenses, flashes, tripods, lighting, the cameras themselves, then bags to hold it all. With the age of digital cameras there … Read More “The Perfect Point-and-Shoot” »