Photosynth

Microsoft has a really interesting way to share and display your photographs. It is called Photosynth. Microsoft says this about Photosynth:

"Photosynth is a potent mixture of two independent breakthroughs: the ability to reconstruct the scene or object from a bunch of flat photographs, and the technology to bring that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet.

Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point each photo was taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos. Photosynth was inspired by the breakthrough research on Photo Tourism from the University of Washington and Microsoft Research. This work pioneered the use of photogrammetry to power a cinematic and immersive experience

Providing that experience requires viewing a LOT of data though—much more than you generally get at any one time by surfing someone’s photo album on the web. That’s where our Seadragon™ technology comes in: delivering just the pixels you need, exactly when you need them. It allows you to browse through dozens of 5, 10, or 100(!) megapixel photos effortlessly, without fiddling with a bunch of thumbnails and waiting around for everything to load.

More information on the history of Photosynth is available here.

I have experimented with Photosynth this past weekend. You can see the result by going to the Photosynth web site and typing SNAPDRAGONS in the search box. When the results appear click on the Synth titled Snapdragons and enjoy the results of my experiment and my snapdragons.

© 2009 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

Saturday Trip To The Shale Pit

On Saturday the family took a short excursion to The Shale Pit at Lake Waco. The shale pit was formed when the Corps of Engineers used it as a source for fill dirt in construction of the Lake Waco Dam. Back in the early 70's my best friend, Mark and I would venture to the pit and explore and look for fossils. Thirty plus years ago you could go to the pit anytime you wanted and explore. At the time I imagined that the surface of the moon must look like the pit, desolate and barren. As I grew up, entered college and began a family I never went back to the pit. In the intervening years it changed. It came under stricter control of the Corps of Engineers and life started to blossom in the pit. I would occasionally think of the pit and recently even drove out to the area only to find that it was fenced off and gated.

Then , last week Julie announced that she wanted to go to the Shale Pit at the lake. It seems that she had been there before with one of her college classes. So she contacted the Corps and got the necessary permits and away we went on Saturday. Julie, Scott, Jess, Jace, Chris, and myself piled into the truck and went to the pit.

My how it has changed in the last 35 years. There were cedar trees, grasses, flowers, cattails, water, and wildlife. I never saw them but I found tracks for deer and raccoon. We found skinks, frogs, crickets, and minnows. There was even a waterfall, probably from recent rains. What an amazing transformation for the apparent surface of the moon in my eyes 35+ years ago to something that appears to be teeming with life.

I loved it.

And to think that my daughter discovered the very place 35 years later that Mark and I had discovered oh so many years ago.

Below are a few pictures that I took of the day.

From Lake Waco Shale Pit

From Lake Waco Shale Pit

From Lake Waco Shale Pit

From Lake Waco Shale Pit

For more pictures visit my slideshow of the trip at Visions of My World.

For more interesting reading concerning Lake Waco and the dam visit the Waco History Project: Places in Time page and click on Lake Waco.


© 2009 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

Beautiful

It's amazing the difference a couple of days makes. A hurricane came through and on it's heels a welcome cool front settled into Central Texas. All this in the middle of September.

Hurricane Ike blew through on Saturday and pretty much was out of the way on Sunday and helped to pull the cool front down our way. For the past several weeks the temps were in the 90's for highs. Especially prior to the hurricane.

Sometimes it felt like we were in Arizona.

Yesterday the high was in the 80's. That's downright cool according to our standards; especially with that nice dry northeren breeze. The low last night was in the 50's.

Brrrrr! Chilly weather, but it's nice on the AC bill.

© 2008 Barry T Horst

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.