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Tuesday, 20 January 200910:33:49 PM
Monday, 12 January 20091:48:36 PM
One year worth of images give some amazing videos.
One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.
So far I’ve made two videos of the images I describe in this article. The one here at the top and another two minutes version. Read on to learn how I did this, to see the other video and to download the videos and images in high quality. And if you want to watch this video here at the top in HD quality you have to click through to Vimeo.
The story
Back in 2005 I did an experiment shooting images out of my window for one year. It turned out pretty cool and in the end of 2007 I decided to do the same. But in much better quality.
So I started shooting images with my Canon 400D. From the same spot each time, but not through my window. I found a spot outside that gave more or less the same framing each time I placed my camera. So, I went out on our balcony snapping some images at pretty irregular intervals all through 2008 .
Each time I snapped the following images:
3 exposures @10mm (Canon EF-S 10-22 F3.5-4.5 USM)
3 exposures @17mm (Canon EF-S 17-55 f2.8 IS USM)
3 exposures @55mm (Canon EF-S 17-55 f2.8 IS USM)
All images shot in RAW. The three exposures where: normal, +2 EV and -2 EV.
In addition to the images I decided to record some audio at the same place. Using my Canon S2 IS and my Canon HF10 I recorded simple background sounds trough 2008 as well. Not with exact connections to each image. More with a focus on getting audio from winter, spring, summer and autumn.
All together giving me a pretty decent range of material to put together some experiments.
Then what? The videos…
Link to this video in HD on YouTube.
At the top of this article you find a 40 second version that show one year. Using the 10mm wide angle images. Right above you find a two minute version made from the 55mm zoomed in images.
First I used Photomatix to make HDR images of the ones I decided to use. Mostly because the HDR effect makes the images flat so that the difference in light and shadows won’t disturb the transitions in my video.
Then I used Photoshop to align all the images. Placing the camera manually at the same spot each time won’t give the exact same spot. So I needed some fine adjustment. Photoshop does this. Here’s how:
First load the images you have chosen into layers by using “File->Scripts->Load files into stack“
When you have found all your files make sure to check “Attempt to automatically align…“
Give your computer huge amounts of time and get back when it has finished. Now Photoshop has adjusted all the images and put them on separate layers in one file. The next thing you have to do is to crop the image. Because of the adjustments the images are not the exact same size. A crop will do the trick.
When the computer is done cropping you export the layers to files. “File->Scripts->Export Layers to files“
Now you have a folder with a bunch of images with the same framing. I decided to do simple dissolves between them.
And ended up with a project in Final Cut Express that looked like the image above. I didn’t want one dissolve at a time. I wanted to make some kind of flow where one dissolve is taken over by the new one before it is finished. As you can see from the timeline my dissolves overlap.
The free downloads
First of all: please comment here or contact me if you use the images. I’ll link to all cool projects made from these files!
All the images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. In other words: Use them non commercially as long as you give me credit and as long as you share the work you do under the same license.
For commercial use please contact me. I have all the images in the original 10 megapixel RAW files.
And where are the files?
Images:
10mm wide angle aligned HDR images in this flickr set.
All the images from that Flickr set in a ZIP file.
55mm zoomed in aligned HDR images in this flickr set.
All the images from that Flickr set in a ZIP file.
Audio:
The audio as WAV in a ZIP file
Video:
40 second movie, 8 mbit/s H264, 1280×720 25p
Two minutes movie, 8 mbit/s H264, 1280×720 25p
But I know what I’m doing and want the full resolution RAW files to make something really cool!
Please comment here or contact me and I’ll provide you with what you want. RAW files, video footage, more audio from the same spot etc…
Whats’s next?
Eh. Well. I just upgraded my camera to a Canon 5D Mark II. Giving me a possibility of getting even higher quality footage from this nice view of some trees… Guess I’ll snap some images on my balcony through 2009 as well. 
1:44:55 PM
Tuesday, 6 January 20098:26:52 PM
Tuesday, 18 December 2007Since Scripting News existed before blogs were invented, I went ahead and included the stuff that I blogged before there were blogs.
I hope this isn't too confusing!
"cheesecake"
PS: Scott Karp asks if blogs can do journalism. Try this question. Can journalists do journalism? At best they seem to be able to copy each other, so mistakes propogate. We've made so many accomplishments, both before and after the coining of the term, Karp for example starts with VIgnette. In 1997 if you told someone the functions of Vignette could be provided to millions of people virtually for free they wouldn't have believed you. (This is factual btw, I did, and wasn't believed.)
They also thought syndication would be done by the big publishing companies, something unweildy called ICE. We thought it should be simpler so that anyone could support it on both ends, and we won. The journalists have no record of this probably because they believed the big companies behind ICE and ignored the low-tech stuff. Jorn Barger used my software to do his "web log" -- why isn't that part of the story? Well it isn't if all you think is important is the choosing of the name.
[Scripting News]
10:49:18 AM
Amazon removes the database scaling wall.
When Amazon introduced S3 in March 2006 I knew I would use it and I was sure a lot of other developers would. I saw it as a solution to a problem we all have -- storage that scales up when needed, and scales down when not. Otherwise we all have to buy as much bandwidth as we need in peak periods. With S3, you pay for what you use. It makes storage for Internet services more rational. Later they did the same for processors and queuing. And a couple of days ago they announced a lightweight scalable database, using the same on-demand philosophy and simple architecture and API. It's going to be a huge hit and forever change the way apps are developed for the Internet.I was explaining the significance of this to Scoble on the phone this morning. It's worth repeating here.
When I developed Frontier in the late 80s and early 90s my target platform was a modern desktop computer, a few megabytes of RAM, a half-gig of disk, a few megahertz CPU. A system capable of running Quark XPress, Hypercard or Filemaker. It would be used to develop apps that would drive desktop publishing. Later, it was used to generate static websites, then a demonstration of democracy (a multi-author ultra-simple CMS), then news sites, which became weblogs, then blogs, and editthispage.com, Manila, weblogs.com, and that's when scaling became an issue. (Later we side-stepped the scaling issue by moving most of the processing to the desktop with Radio 8.)
As we approached then cracked ease of use in web authoring, scaling became an issue, then the issue.
A Manila server would work fine for a few thousand sites, but after that it would bog down because the architecture couldn't escape the confines of a single machine it was designed for in the 80s. (Before you say it's obsolete, there still are a lot of apps for single machines. Perl, Python, JavaScript and Java share the same design philosophy.)
Same with weblogs.com. It worked great when there were a few thousand blogs. Once we hit 50K or so, we had to come up with a new design. Eventually we were tracking a couple million, and Frontier was hopelessy outclassed by the size of the problem.
If only Amazon's database had been there, both Manila and weblogs.com could have been redesigned to keep up. It would have been a huge programming task for Manila, but it would have made it economically possible.
Today, when a company raises VC, it's probably because their app has achieved a certain amount of success and to get to the next level of users they need to spend serious money on infrastruture. There's a serious economic and human wall here. You need to buy hardware and find the people who know how to make a database scale. The latter is the hard problem, the people are scarce and the big companies are bidding up the price for their time. Now Amazon is willing to sell you that, to turn this scarce thing into a commodity, at what likely is a very reasonable price. (Haven't had time to analyze this yet, but the other services are.) Key point, the wall is gone, replaced with a ramp. If you coded your database in Amazon to begin with you will never see the wall. As you need more capacity you have to do nothing, other than pay your bill. Further, the design of Amazon's database is remarkably like the internal data structures of modern programming languages. Very much like a hash or a dictionary (what Perl and Python call these structures) or Frontier's tables, but unlike them, you can have multiple values with the same name. In this way it's like XML. I imagine all languages have had to accomodate this feature of XML (we did in Frontier), so they should all map pretty well on Amazon's structure. This was gutsy, and I think smart.
They're going down a road we went down with XML-RPC and then SOAP. There may be some bumps along the way but there are no dead-ends, no deal-stoppers. All major environments can be adapted to work with this data structure, unless I'm missing something (standard disclaimers apply).
Their move makes many things possible. As I said earlier, if it existed when we had to scale weblogs.com, we would certainly have used it. One could build an open identity system on it, probably in an afternoon, it would be perfect for that. A Twitter-like messaging system, again, would be easy. It's amazing that Microsoft and Google are sitting by and letting Amazon take all this ground in developer-land without even a hint of a response. It seems likely they have something in the works. Let's hope there's some compatibility.
[Scripting News]
10:13:31 AM
Saturday, 1 December 200711:50:56 PM
Wednesday, 28 November 200711:26:28 AM
Larry Lessig presents at TED: Nails it.
TED put up a new video of Larry Lessig's presentation at the TED Conference from earlier this year. The title of his fantastic talk: "How creativity is being strangled by the law." I have seen many presentations by Larry. They are always good and delivered in his unique "Lessig-Method" style. Usually his talks are on the long side, 45-60 mins or more. Question: How would Larry's talk be if he only had 18 minutes? Answer: Even better. Standing-ovation better. The 18-minute constraint forced Larry into making the best talk I have ever seen him make. He nailed it. His content was good, the argument was logical (even if you do not agree with it) and his visuals and the way he effortlessly controlled the visuals behind him is the perfect demo for the way it should be done.
Larry usually stays behind or near the podium, though he is also close the screen. Nothing wrong with this. I personally prefer to get rid of the computer stand and use the whole stage. But there is nothing wrong with standing in one place so long as you are out there in the front "naked" close to the audience. Larry's style is a bit professorial (he is after all a professor), but he is engaged, passionate, and certainly engages the audience with a combination of good logic, interesting and relevant storytelling, and simple, effective multimedia support delivered in a smooth fashion. No bullet points. No off-the-shelf template. Three stories, one argument, and a core message that is memorable and "sticky." See video below.
Lessig: "A growing copyright abolitionism...a generation that rejects the very notion of what copyright is suppose to do. Rejects copyright and believes that the law is nothing more than an ass to be ignored."
Larry's performance proves that it can be done. You too can make compelling, smart, and logical presentations enhanced by slideware (he's using Keynote). There are no excuses. Watch, learn, and share this video. Excellent stuff. Bravo, Professor Lessig.
11:20:50 AM
Wednesday, 7 November 200710:09:59 AM
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