Bag of Beans

This instructable shows one fairly simple way to combine multiple exposures into a HDR (high dynamic range) image using the GIMP.

By taking a shorter exposure or closing the aperture, the camera will underexpose. This means that the dark parts of the scene will silhouette and the light parts will be recorded well. Taking a longer exposure or opening the aperture, the camera will overexpose, meaning the light parts of the scene will wash out to white, but the shadows of the scene (that were black in the underexposed photo) will come out well. Composite HDR refers to a range of techniques to take the best parts of both of these photos and combine them in a photo that captures more of the range of light levels in the scene.

• Link
• Once you understand the basics, you can use the exposure-blend GIMP plugin to automate the process. (Use this version for GIMP 2.3 and later).
• For some examples of good HDR images, check out the TTHDR (True Tone High Dynamic Range) group, or the Quality HDR group, on Flickr

Related:

• Modern HDR photography, a how-to or Saturday morning relaxation

Founders at Work
Jessica Livingston
Apress, 2007

This book contains 32 interviews with founding members of different tech startups. Most of the interviews follow the same general format: how they got their idea, their first steps in forming a company, how they executed their plans, and what major obstacles they encountered. I think the author captures the character of many of these startups quite nicely in the introduction to the book: “In its plain form, productivity looks so weird that it seems to a lot of people to be ‘unbusinesslike.’ But if early-stage startups are unbusinesslike, then the corporate world might be more productive if it were less businesslike.”

Far from being a dry business book, the stories are engaging and inspiring. There are lots of great insights to be found in these interviews. Max Levchin tells us how much effort they spent to find ways to combat credit card fraud at PayPal, which became their main advantage as their competitors bled money from chargebacks. Mike Lazaridis was able to leverage their technical skills at Research In Motion to build a robust and reliable system for delivering wireless email. Philip Greenspun’s interview is a cautionary tale on what can happen when venture capitalists bring in incompetent managers to run your company.

Founders at Work is a good read for anyone curious about turning a wild idea into a sustainable business.

Rating: 7/10

Links:

• Amazon.ca
• LibraryThing

Check out these fantastic cakes posted on mental_floss. The Super Mario cake is simply beautiful:

• Link

A 9 minute video on how they make camera lenses.

• Link (via Strobist)

A very entertaining story when the author’s curiosity gets the better of her.

I mean, what kind of nanny state am I living in right now? I can’t even buy cold medicine anymore without the government all up in my shit? Why is my right to privacy being invaded in favor of incompetent police officers who lack the ability to catch drug dealers without spying on the average law abiding citizen?

Then, out of nowhere, I thought, I wonder what would happen if I tried to buy all the Nyquil on the shelf?

Would they laugh? Would they get angry? Would they sell it to me? Would they call the cops? Would they interrogate me until I told them what it was for?

• Link (via Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection)

This blog post has some nice photos and comments on a molecular gastronomy tasting menu at one UK restaurant. It sounds like quite an experience.

On Sunday night the GF and I ate at L’Enclume in Cartmel. We signed up for the “Underground Menu”, advertised as “No holds barred, no deviations” and running to as many as 26 courses. The chef Simon Rogan is possibly the most innovative chef in the UK, pushing forward concepts and ideas in molecular gastronomy more than anyone except Ferran Adria. It’s safe to say that I was more excited about this meal than anything I’ve eaten since the Fat Duck.

• Link (via Boing Boing)

This site has some pretty sweet paper craft PDFs you can download and assemble, including this incredible AT-AT. I know what I’m doing for the next little while.

• Link (via Boing Boing)

Would something like this actually be useful?

The principle is a cylindrical building with a helical shape for the floor. The slope of the floor is 1.5% (it rises by 1.5 cm every meter), thus hardly noticeable. The height of each ’storey’ is 3 meters, so that when you walk 200 meters along the corridor, you have walked a full circle, but you end up one ’storey’ above or below your starting point. This results in a diameter of approximately 60 meters, therefore quite common for large skyscrapers. The corridor is on the outside, so that everybody has access to the fabulous views over the city. Offices are all on the inside. As the tower is hollow in the middle, and the inner diameter of the patio is still approximately 40 meters, this makes for a very nice light shaft with peaceful lighting conditions.

• Link (via reddit)

Here are the top 10 finalists in the Neural Correlate Society’s annual contest.

The contest is a celebration of the ingenuity and creativity of the world’s premier visual illusion research community. Visual illusions are those perceptual experiences that do not match the physical reality. Our perception of the outside world is generated indirectly by brain mechanisms, and so all visual perception is illusory to some extent. The study of visual illusions is therefore of critical importance to the understanding of the basic mechanisms of sensory perception, as well as to cure many diseases of the visual system. The visual illusion community includes visual scientists, ophthalmologists, neurologists, and visual artists that use a variety of methods to help discover the neural underpinnings of visual illusory perception.

• Link (via Digg)

Decoding the Universe
Charles Seife
Viking, 2006

This book looks at how physicists are using information theory to further our understanding of universe. The book begins with an introduction to how communications and cryptography lead to the field of information theory. From there, we see how information theory and thermodynamics are closely related through the concept of entropy. The bulk of the book looks at how both relativity and quantum mechanics are actually theories of information transfer. By far, the most enlightening part of the book is the explanation of how one particular interpretation of quantum mechanics–the many worlds interpretation–influences the structure of the universe.

Throughout this book, the author provides the clearest explanations of the bizarre and seemingly paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics and relativity that I have read. It tells us how some of the paradoxes in those theories can be resolved with information theory. The writing manages to give you a great high-level understanding without getting too bogged down with the details. Anyone curious about the nature of the universe needs to read this book. Highly recommended.

Rating: 9/10

Links:

• Amazon.ca
• LibraryThing

Related:

• Book: Programming the Universe

This article examines the emotional bond that soldiers are forming with their autonomous teammates.

Even more startling than these machines’ capabilities, however, are the effects they have on their friendly keepers who, for example, award their bots “battlefield promotions” and “purple hearts.” “Ours was called Sgt. Talon,” says Sgt. Michael Maxson of the 737th Ordnance Company (EOD). “We always wanted him as our main robot. Every time he was working, nothing bad ever happened. He always got the job done. He took a couple of detonations in front of his face and didn’t stop working. One time, he actually did break down in a mission, and we sent another robot in and it got blown to pieces. It’s like he shut down because he knew something bad would happen.” The troops promoted the robot to staff sergeant — a high honor, since that usually means a squad leader. They also awarded it three “purple hearts.”

• Link (via Slashdot)

This firmware hack for some models of Canon A- and S-series cameras with DIGIC II processors adds additional functionality to your camera - the biggest being the ability to shoot in RAW format. You also get a battery indicator - I can’t believe Canon doesn’t put this feature in by default.

The good thing about this hack is that you load it off your of memory card every time you turn your camera on (in some cases you can also enable auto-loading) so the original firmware of the camera is not touched, making this a fairly safe hack.

Q. What does the HDK firmware do?

A. After loading of HDK firmware you can get the following functionality:

• Shooting in RAW
• Live histogram (RGB, blended, luminance and for each RGB channel)
• Zebra mode (blinking highlights and shadows)
• DOF-calculator
• Battery indicator
• Scripts execution (exposure/focus/… bracketing, intervalometer and more)
• File browser
• Text reader
• Calendar
• Some fun tools and games

• CHDK FAQ
• Shooting to RAW with Canon PowerShot (DIGIC II - based only)
• (via hack a day)

Earlier this year, there were reports that U.S. Department of Defense contractors had been bugged with suspicious looking Canadian coins. Now we find out what the real culprit was.

The odd-looking — but harmless — “poppy coin” was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors travelling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors described the coins as “anomalous” and “filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology,” according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by the AP.

• Link (via Slashdot)

• Link [xkcd.com]

Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos
Seth Lloyd

This book from Seth Lloyd, a Professor of Quantum-Mechanical Engineering at MIT, aims to promote a quantum computational model of the universe. He argues that using information theory, we can resolve the problems that currently exist between Einstein’s theories of relativity, and quantum mechanics. By thinking of the universe as a very large information processing system, i.e. a quantum computer, we may be able to create a new Theory of Everything that unifies all of physics. Of course, this work is relatively new, so many details still need to be worked out. While the first half of the book does a great job of explaining quantum mechanics, the latter half of the book wanders into hand-waving territory when trying to explain the new model. However, the writer’s explanations are clear and concise and I found it hard to put this book down.

Rating: 8/10

• Amazon.ca
• LibraryThing

Just got back from the book signing for Rollback, Sawyer’s latest novel, here in Calgary. Not only is he a brilliant hard sci-fi writer, but he is also very charismatic and friendly in person, as well as a great public speaker with lots of interesting ideas. He really puts a lot of thought into the moral and societal implications of new technologies in his books. He also happens to be Canadian. I can’t wait to read his latest book.

I Am a Strange Loop
Douglas Hofstadter

This latest book from cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, while not quite as much fun as his mind-bending classic, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, in some ways goes further and is more focused in explaining how consciousness might arise as an emergent property from the chemistry and biology of the brain. The author’s tone here is much more contemplative, philosophical and personal, while the previous work explored many diverse topics including mathematics, art, music, language, illusions, computational theory, and of course intelligence and consciousness. I would recommend reading the earlier work first, which has become a true classic, but this latest book is probably much more accessible to a general audience.

Rating: 8/10

• Amazon.ca
• LibraryThing

This free program makes it easy to remove objects from photos.

PhotoWipe is a revolutionary image processing tool that magically removes unwanted objects from your photos. Just paint over them in black, and click go! Uncovers hidden details in your photos. Sit back and watch as cage bars disappear from the zoo, and your old girlfriend or boyfriend fades away. It removes wrinkles, or it can remove entire facial features.

• Link (via Freewaregenius)