Horst Happenings....

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Gee, It Must Have Been Nice

I recently found this old school film about being quiet at school. It is worth a watch to see how things have changed in the last 56 years.

© 2009 Barry T Horst

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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.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Picture Monday, March 30, 2009; Notgeld #15

This particular issue of Notgeld is from Rudolstadt. The Obverse of each note has the Coat of Arms in the center, a bell in the upper two corners, and the denomination in the bottom two corners. The bell must be important, perhaps from the bell tower of the Stadtkirche in Rudolstadt. This image is repeated on the reverse of one of the 50 Pfg. and one of the 100 Pfg. notes. The Stadtkirche also appears in several of the notes. The first series is the 50 pfg. notes. The obverse is the same for all 4 of the 50 pfg. notes.

The next set of notes is the 75 Pfg series. Again the obverse of each 75 Pfg. notes is the same.

Finally, I have the 100 Pfg. notes. There are only 2 of these notes. I am note sure if they made more or just these two.

It is interesting to note that the serial number on the obverse of each note is the same (3044o).I am not sure of the significance of this and why all 10 notes would have the same serial number unless they were provided as a set this way.

Remember to visit my other Notgeld posts. Go to the left sidebar and scroll down to find the links to my other Notgeld posts complete with pictures.At this point I have obviously made 14 posts with pictures of Notgeld. This has been approximately 5 pages out of my 40 page collection. As you can see, I will be at this for some time.

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.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

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.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Picture Monday, March 23, 2009; Notgeld #14

This week our Notgeld comes from Hildburghausen. I have 4 separate notes this week; two 25 Pfennig and two 50 Pfennig notes. It is interesting to note that all four notes carry the Coat of Arms of Hildburghausen on the obverse.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

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

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