Author Archives: Andrew

A Bit Stretched!

The Opera House in Prague: Kolor stitching 4 pictures | FOV: 131.87 x 47.47 ~ 24.87 | Projection: Mercator | Color: LDR
Camera: Panasonic DMC-GX8 | Date: 30-06-2016 21:35 | Resolution: 9183 x 3804 | ISO: 3200 | Exp. bias: 0 EV | Exp. Time: 1/25s | Aperture: 5.6 | Focal Length: 12.0mm | State/Province: Prague | See map

Apologies if there hasn’t been much activity on the blog lately. I’m deep into the invention of the expert system I wrote about previously, and that’s filling the relatively small brain of this bear, and not leaving much space for other creative activities. However, I am gently working on a couple of longer articles I hope to share with you soon.

Meanwhile, I am working here and there to catch up on the photographic backlog. Frances and I had a couple of days in Prague about a month ago, and predictably I took a fair few photographs. What was interesting was the dynamic of the type of shots: I did relatively little close-up or 3D photography, but the opportunity to generate big panoramas positively abounds, especially if, as I did, you get up to the top of several of the towers open to the public. I’ve recently switched my panoramic development to Kolor’s Autopano Giga, which coupled with Capture One makes the whole process very quick and painless, effortlessly adjusting and stitching even images taken with a moving camera (moving from the waist, rather than rotating the camera around its optical centre as per correct technique), and those requiring substantial perspective correction.

The attached was taken from a point where the main entrance of the opera house filled the frame, and the two sides stretched away from me down two streets orthogonal to each other. It was also taken late at night, hand-held by available light but the Panasonic GX8 has made a decent job of managing highlights even if the sky does fall away to black. I think it works.

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Posted in Photography, Thoughts on the World, Website & Blog | Leave a comment

Fashion Makes Doing IT Harder

I’m about to start building an expert system. Or maybe I might call it a "knowledge base", or a "rule based system". It’s not an "AI", as at least in its early life it won’t have any self-learning capability, but Continue reading

Wednesday, July 6, 2016 in Agile & Architecture, Thoughts on the World

Does Your Broadband Beat a Carrier Pigeon?

There’s a famous quote "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes bowling down a highway". Musing on this I decided to try and estimate the bandwidth of a carrier pigeon, given modern storage technology. According to Continue reading

Friday, May 6, 2016 in Agile & Architecture, Thoughts on the World

Going Greener!

After talking about it for over a year, I decided that my transport needed to be “greener”, and finally bit the bullet on the respray. This is “Vivianite Green”, actually an official Mercedes colour in the late 90s, but for Continue reading

Wednesday, May 4, 2016 in Thoughts on the World

All Tide Up

Like it’s predecessor, Man Up!, this is a knock-about farce based around the capable but somewhat cursed sports agent, Patrick Flynn. This time the key protegé is a nymphomaniac Russian tennis player, but otherwise the cast of gangsters, hit-men (& Continue reading

Monday, April 25, 2016 in Reviews, Thoughts on the World

The Eerie Silence

This book is a review, at the 50 year point, of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and a consideration of how it may evolve in the future, by the scientist who heads several of its key committees. It’s a Continue reading

Saturday, April 23, 2016 in Reviews

Creating 3D Images for On-Screen Display

There’s a significant dearth of information on the internet regarding how to create high-resolution 3D images for display on a suitable TV. While many of us regularly enjoy watching visually stunning 3D movies both in cinemas and also on television, Continue reading

Monday, April 18, 2016 in Photography

Influx

Daniel Suarez is billed as the new Michael Crichton. While a few of his novels have come onto my radar, this is the first I have read. Based on this showing there’s a great deal of promise, but the fairly Continue reading

Friday, April 15, 2016 in Reviews

Mother Tongue

Amusing exploration of the English Languge, but needs a refresh Continue reading

Wednesday, April 13, 2016 in Reviews

Twin Tales of Sporting Daring-Do

The 1988 Winter Olympics brought us not only one, but two heart-warming stories of sporting heroism by unconventional outsiders. The story of the Jamaican Bobsleigh Team was told promptly in the wonderful 1993 Disney picture Cool Runnings, but we’ve had Continue reading

Monday, April 4, 2016 in Reviews, Thoughts on the World

Does a Photograph Portray the Subject, or the Photographer?

Mike Johnston (no relation) over at The Online Photographer has recently run a number of articles discussing the extent to which the photographer adjusts the “look” of a photograph (see What Should a Photo Look Like?) His primary examples were Continue reading

Monday, March 28, 2016 in Cuba Travel Blog, Photography, Travel

My Travel Page

Some things don’t scale. You start off doing something, but before you know it it’s outgrown its usefulness and needs to change. So it is with website design… I started off with lists in a couple of places on this Continue reading

Thursday, March 10, 2016 in Photography, Travel, Website & Blog