Remember back in August when I was so delighted with the paper and demonstration video on seam carving technology? Well, now I can play with that technology. And so can you. Or, at least, you can if you use the Gimp, since the Liquid Rescale Plugin now puts that algorithm into it. (And why wouldn’t you be using the Gimp… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
Making The Point With Art
I could write a dozen blog posts about living in the surveillance society, and not make the point as clearly as Michael Zoellner did by writing SurveillanceSaver. There’s nothing that will drive home the point that we’re in the midst of omni-surveillance like someone adapting some of the information flowing from that constant surveillance into casual artOK, maybe it’s a… Read more →
Just In Time For Christmas
One of the online fora I am active on included a pointer this week to a blog post showing some interesting Laotian rice wine: (You can see an even bigger version of that photo at the author’s Flickr page.) I’m not opposed to liquor with stuff in it generally–but there is some stuff that probably doesn’t belong in my booze.… Read more →
Maybe There’s A Reason We Associate Wisdom With Age
I’m leaving the title off of this until the end–read it first. Doctor, you say there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and… Read more →
On cross-border shopping and smuggling
So, during a particularly boring meeting today, I ran the numbers on the recent smuggling effort. I ordered 32 items from Amazon.com and had them shipped to a friend in Boston. Of those, one item is one that for some reason isn’t available from Amazon.ca (and indeed, can’t be ordered from Amazon.com to a Canadian address!), so we’re going to… Read more →
A small discussion on US$ and Canadian$
While I was in Boston last week I took advantage of the relative strength of the Canadian dollar versus the US dollar to purchase a pretty large set of stuff. I made a 32 item order from Amazon, which I had delivered to a friend’s house, and I suspect the savings of doing this were vast: I got the benefit… Read more →
Maybe I should reconsider that whole law school thing
Well, that was a waste of time. Oh, and irony. (Of course there was already irony and detailed irony.) Read more →
Halifax Harbour
I’ve been messing around with some software to do image stitching, for the purposes of creating panoramic images from a series of simple digital snaps. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but tonight was the first time I’ve had a moment in several weeks. So, here’s my first test image: a view of the south east end… Read more →
The perils of the dark side
So, if you are the sort of person who has a fair bit of interaction with the shady computer underworld–you know where to find a download of anything, or a way to find a crack or a serial number for anything, etc, it is almost unavoidable that at some point you’re going to step into the crap and run into… Read more →
Coincidence
Bush hits record disapproval ratings on the same day that oil gets within spitting distance of $100 a barrel? Sure, he can fake a country into a war, run a torture prison, admit that he tortures people, run a special program to extradite people for torture, remove all civil rights, spy on citizens without any warrants, arrange massive scams to… Read more →
I Am Not Making This Up
When I first checked into the hotel on Sunday, I noticed that across the hall from my suite was a door marked “Maintenance Office”. I had an offhand thought about it being odd to find that on the 3rd floor–you’d think it would be on the first floor, or possibly in the basement–and thought no more about it. This morning… Read more →
Update
We did in fact lose power at around 3AM (or 2AM, depending when I was supposed to set my clock back, I guess.) It was still off when I woke up, which made packing for Boston a pain in the ass. The power company was claiming that it would be back by 6PM on Monday, and the news that it… Read more →
“The illest weatherman in the biz”
Well, we did the whole checklist of simple preparations today, so hopefully the Umbrella Theory will kick in and the storm won’t cause any serious effects. Although I will honestly be severely shocked if we don’t lose power–even though the storm appears to have shifted slightly westward, meaning we might only get 100km/h winds (what the locals would refer to… Read more →
Bah. The Last Thing I Need.
I have been in a very black mood since midday Friday, and this is the last thing I need: Since Nova Scotia Power is so incompetentThis is the short version of “behaves as a economically rational actor in a profit-based system which does not assign any intrinsic value to providing an essential public service, where a monopoly is held”. Essential… Read more →
A Litigious Society (is occasionally a plus)
I believe my thoughts on Fred Phelps and his hateful clan are on record. So, you can probably understand why I’m going to sit on my normal rant about ridiculous jury awards in America, and just enjoy this bit of news: Jury awards father $11M in funeral case By ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 31, 6:23 PM ET… Read more →
