I have been looking out for a video of the kind that forces us to reflect about our place in the universe, and on this planet. This clip is a really good example of such message, and on top of that, is mediated in a pretty humorous way. Doit!
Some cool pictures of some monster Audi’s are available in the picture gallery! The story behind it all: as a way to earn some extra cash I drive these cars from point A to point B all over Sweden. So far I’ve had the pleasure to drive the following cars:
Ahh, life’s good.
I just read a news about a Windows-based development environment for robotic applications that has just been released by Microsoft; Microsoft Robotics Studio. The environment will allow anyone (hobbyists to professionals) to develop their own robotics software with Microsoft-ease (hopefully), using well known programming languages as e.g. Visual Basic and C#.
Another interesting addition is the release of the upcoming Lego Mindstorms NXT (seen in the picture above), which will incoroporate the Robotics Studio development environment, making its way to the broad mass later this year. Keep an eye out for that in August - December. I know I will.
Related links
While I’m at it: here is a good robotic simulation environment for Linux (et al.) called Player/Stage (supports both Java and C/C++). Doit.
I was listening to the radio (P3 to be precise) and heard a story about these three Swedish people sailing around the world in a not-the-sturdiest-boat-I’ve-ever-seen kind of vessel. They have been traveling since September 2005 and have already crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Apparently they are crossing the Pacific Ocean at this moment. If you have the slightest interest in this endeavor then point your browser to their page and read up on what they up to right now! Their address on the Internet is runtjorden.com. Do it!
Update 2006-05-07:
The latest news is that they are in Equador and not quite crossing the Pacific Ocean yet, as I wrote earlier.
I have been playing around with HDR-imaging, lately! HDRI is short for High Dynamic Range Imaging which is a way to produce images that look much more natural - thanks to more dynamic lighting. Usually, when you’re photographing in difficult lighting conditions, you always have to compromise between the dark and the bright areas. Taking pictures inside during a sunny day (longer exposure) will most likely result in blown out windows, to keep the room light-up, while taking a picture straight at the window (shorter exposure) will make the room totally dark. There are ways of overcoming this by using a flash (not the crappy ones on most consumer cameras), but the result will not be as good as using the HDR-technique.
The HDR-technique implies using multiple pictures, of the same scene, but at different exposures, so that the whole spectrum of light is saved and recorded in the series of shots (from the darkest to the brightest). So, instead of just taking one picture of the scene you’ll have to take a series of shots to cover the whole light span.
To try this technique out I used my trusty ol’ Panasonic DMC-FZ3 to take the following series of pictures:
For the experiment I took 12 pictures in total. You could probably use more, but I figured 12 should be more than enough. The next step was to merge them all together to one HDR-image. There is a good tutorial on how this is done on this page (covers how the process is done in Photoshop CS2).
After the merge I ended up with the following picture:
As can be seen in the HDR-picture (top), the tree outside the window is still visible at the same time as the room is properly lighted. As a comparison I added the two extremes (darkest[left] vs brightest[right]) at slightly higher resolution.
The HDR-technique is amazing! I can’t even remember how many times I cursed about my pictures being either too bright or too dark, when photographing in difficult lighting conditions. Even with the drawbacks (photographing dynamic environments, having to take multiple pictures, heavier memory usage etc) this technique is most welcome.
Recently I tried the massive multiplayer online game called EVE Online. Some of you may have heard about it, and some of you not. If you are into MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) then you probably have. For the rest of you I recommend that you head to this article to read all about it (I actually started to explain it here, but my knowledge in these kind of games aren’t sufficient enough).
So, what is EVE Online? Short answer: A truly MASSIVE online space-shooter/trade simulation/resource gathering game. Add the total freedom, space pirates, traders, police and YOU, and you got yourself an excellent time-killer. Right now, all I DON’T need is to get stuck in one of these games since they really craves a lot of time, but if you got it.. then go for it!
If you are a space-buff, love sci-fi, and have always been dreaming of commanding your own battle cruiser, then EVE Online probably is the experience that has been missing in your life. No doubt.
Right now the good guys at eve-online.com are giving away 14-days of free playtime as a way for you to try it out (and hopefully get hooked). Follow this link to get there.
This joke by far the best Blond Joke I ever encountered! Click here to check it out!
I added links to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) in my picture gallery. Beneath most of the pictures is a link that sends you to the satellite image of the object or area where the picture was taken. Check it out in my Picture Gallery!
Now the gallery is up! I found a pretty nice picture gallery called Photostack (http://photostack.org/), which I now have put online. Click on “Picture Gallery” in the Menu section here to the right, or click on this url.
Welcome to my new page. I decided to make a total renovation and ended up using wordpress (wordpress.org), which allows me to update my page much easier than before. Hopefully this will result in me actually updating this page more often! If so: Hurray!
At the moment I’m trying to find a good picture gallery plugin, and so far I haven’t been able to find a decent one. I will try my best to find one though, and hence be able to upload lots and lots of pictures.