Posts

Blender from a recovering POV-Ray user

2011-02-07

This is about the tenth time I’ve tried to learn Blender. Judging by the notes I’ve accumulated so far, I’ve been at it this time for about a month and a half. From what I remember, what spurred me to try this time was either known-Blender-guru Craig from Hive13 mentioning Voodoo Camera Tracker (which can output to a Blender-readable format), or my search for something that would make it easier to do the 2D visualizations and algorithmic art I always end up doing (and I heard Blender had some crazy node-based texturing system……more

Cyanotypes & better results

2010-12-30

Lack of some amount of sunshine is rarely a problem here, it seems. I did this next cyanotype outdoors in very overcast light while it was snowing lightly. The snow was minor since a sheet of glass covered everything, and overcast light possibly was perfect because of how even and omnidirectional it was.…more

Macro photography, attempts #1 and #2

2010-12-30

I picked up some very cheap extension tubes and a reversing ring for my DSLR, hoping to do some macro photography with them. However, I sort of ignored that both my lenses default to having their apertures at their narrowest setting (rather than their largest, which for some reason I assumed) until instructed otherwise whether electronically or via the aperture lever.…more

Cyanotypes, first attempt

2010-12-05

Having procrastinated for around a month, I finally got around to acquiring the chemicals for a standard cyanotype (I went with digitaltruth.com) and followed the method given in “The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes” by Christopher James, which my friend Lea loaned me.…more

Venue 222 rooftop

2010-11-19

Gawd, it’s been forever since I’ve posted. Seeing Mandy post wonderful pictures regularly at http://kalpanasutra.wordpress.com/ has been an inspiration, but alas, I am still incredibly lazy when it comes to blog posting. I’m working on it. In the midst of an eggnog party at Venue 222 I found myself on the roof of the 5-story building, and I absolutely loved the view of downtown Cincinnati from up there.…more

Processing: DLA, quadtrees

2010-07-04

I first dabbled with Diffusion-Limited Aggregation algorithms some 5 years back when I read about them in a book (later note: that book was Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks). The version I wrote was monumentally slow because it was a crappy implementation in a slow language for heavy computations (i.…more

Angry Rants, 2010 Summer edition

2010-06-09

Apparently I have written a lot of angry rants this quarter while I was supposed to be studying. Since I’m throwing the paper away anyhow, I’ll go ahead and put its contents here: If its creators pay it little respect, do I really owe it any respect beyond this? Every hour I work in the world of numbers, algorithms, and electronics convinces me further of the value of humans.…more

Hacked infrared camera, attempt #1

2010-04-03

This page at GeekTechnique discusses how most digital cameras are easily turned into infrared cameras by removing the IR blocking filter in front of the CCD, and replacing it with a filter that blocks visible light but passes IR. As luck would have it, exposed film negatives work very well as such a filter.…more

Fun with NX stuff

2009-10-15

So, I was trying out various NX servers because I’d had very good luck with NX in the past and generally found it faster than VNC, RDP, or X11 over SSH. My options appeared to be: NoMachine’s server (here), which is free-as-in-beer but supports only 2 simultaneous sessions. FreeNX made from the components that NoMachine GPLed. It’s open souce, but apparently is a total mess and notoriously hard to set up.…more

2009.08.12

2009-08-14

videos,paranoia Here and here - videos from Prof. James Duane and Officer George Bruch about why talking to the police is almost never a good idea. software omploader - A place to upload files. It can also be done with a firefox extension or in a script. Paperback, from the OllyDbg guy. This lets you store data on paper (about 500 KB for A4 at 600 DPI).…more