July 2005 Archives

It's been a while since I last dumped a bunch of links on me olde blogge, so I thought now would be a good time to share. Here are a few things I've come across:

• Virtual Street Reality: Impossibly cool 3D effects with sidewalk chalk.
• Photo Fakery from OE Magazine: "Identifying falsified images can be straightforward if you know a few tricks."
• Google Moon: The lunatics at Google have mapped the moon. Zoom in all the way for a little chuckle.
• Pedestrian Hacker Group Releases Crosswalk Button Hacks: "A shadowy group of pedestrian hackers called Cross Anytime announced their discovery of several back doors or 'cheats' using crosswalk buttons at many intersections.… The most popular hack, which works on most models, is the 'Instant Walk.' Three short clicks, followed by two long, one short, two long, and three short; turn any crosswalk signal from 'don't walk' to 'walk' with a matching change in the traffic signals." I don't know if this is for real or not, and I'm too lazy to find out for myself, so if anyone else wants to see if any of these hacks work and post a comment, I'd appreciate it. But then, why should I believe you any more than the person who put together that site? Hmmm.
• Phone Spell: "What does your phone number spell?" Find out.
• I Park Like An Idiot: "You suck at parking! Let the world know it!" Very funny bumper stickers, though I don't necessarily condone putting them on vehicles that don't belong to you.

Sara had just sat down with Ben and Lucy. The wedding was about to begin—an informal yet elegant evening ceremony on the beach of Lake Michigan. Ben leaned a bit closer to Sara and pointed out toward the horizon where rippling lake met sunburned sky.

Ben said, "Look at that, Mommy."
"Yes, I see it."
"You know what that's called?"
"What?"
"Breathtaking."

On Thursday night my family and I attended a beautiful wedding on the beach of Lake Michigan. The bride was a former student of mine, our kids' babysitter, and a dear friend, so I was especially anxious about being entrusted with the role of "official" photographer. I wanted to make sure that the bride and groom had a photographic record of the event that at least approximated what they remembered.

The night before the wedding I recharged the digital camera's battery and packed a film camera and an extra set of batteries, just in case something disastrous happened. I unloaded all the photos from the 6GB Hitachi microdrive and set it carefully back into the camera. Two 256MB CF cards would serve as backup. I felt pretty confident that everything would go smoothly.

The beach setting was gorgeous, and the bride and groom and all the attendants and families were gracious as I took some formal shots before the ceremony. Other than a few drops of rain, everything went off without a hitch—unless you count the one involving the bride and groom. The reception, too, was lovely, even during the 30 minutes or so of rain when the guests scrambled back to the cottage for cover.

But then something strange happened. The camera stopped working. No matter what I tried, it wouldn't snap any more pictures. When I looked at the LED screen, I saw a blinking "CHA." Could it mean the camera needed to be charged? No. It would have shown a blinking battery indicator. Was the memory card full? It was too unlikely that I'd filled 6GB in the few hours I was taking pictures. I pulled the card out and threw in a backup. Everything worked fine with the new card, which was a relief. But what was the problem with the other one? I'd have to wait until the next day to find out.

The next day I plugged the card into my computer to take a look at the files and transfer them over to my hard drive. I clicked on the folder containing the photos. Nothing happened. I clicked again. An error message popped up. The folder was unreadable; files were either corrupted or missing. Uh oh. The pit that had been forming in my stomach thrusted its way into my throat.

A quick check of the drive's properties showed that 4GB of its space had been filled. Clearly there was something on it. Little good it would do me, though, if I couldn't open the folder. Dragging the drive's contents over to the computer's hard drive didn't work either. So, I went to Google and searched for file recovery. The results were promising, as it looked like I was far from alone in my plight and a number of companies had created software to bring back files from the dead.

The first software I downloaded, a freeware program, balked about halfway through the scan of the microdrive and stopped working altogether in subsequent tries. The second and third programs allowed for the downloading of a demo version that would show me what they could recover but wouldn't let me save the files until I shelled out some bucks. Neither of them worked.

I decided to try one more before giving up, mostly because a couple other web sites had recommended it. The program, PHOTORECOVERY by LC Technology, operated the same way as the second and third programs, so I downloaded it and ran the scan, feeling not the least bit hopeful. To my surprise, though, it started showing the very first pictures I had taken with the microdrive— pictures that I had already deleted months ago. But the first program had shown a few pictures, too, before it crashed.

PHOTORECOVERY kept going and going. And going. I let it continue scanning in the background, and when I looked at it again a couple hours later it had completed its scouring of the drive and found over 1,600 photos. I zipped back to the LC Technology website, paid my $40, and scanned the microdrive again. This time, as it found the photos, it saved them to the hard drive folder of my choice. The photos were restored. All of them. Every photo from the wedding, and every other photo that I had ever taken with that memory card. For the first time since the ordeal began, I smiled.

I'm still not sure what corrupted the files in the first place, but after I got all the pictures off, I reformatted the microdrive from within the camera, and everything seems to be working fine again. A few websites recommend reformatting memory cards every once in a while anyway (keeping in mind that it erases everything currently on the card and makes it a LOT harder to recover those files later). Apparently, reformatting every so often helps avoid the kind of file corruption that happened with mine. The good news, though, is that if your photo files ever do get corrupted, or if you accidentally delete them, and you really, really need them, there is a good chance that you'll be able to get them back—with a little perseverance and luck.

Yesterday the neighbor boy two doors down turned 5, so his parents threw him a little birthday party—just a small, low-key gathering of friends and family to wish him well.

Ha! Really it was a total blowout, a superhero extravaganza. I must say that the things a few of us neighbors agreed to do for this party would be much too embarrassing for me to mention, if I had any shame left at all. But I don't, so here's a picture of three middle-aged Super Neighbors flying down the makeshift zip line across the backyard.

The kids were awed. The babies were terrified. The adults were doubled over with laughter. So it goes.

The other day I read an interesting entry on JD Lasica's weblog Darknet in which Lasica describes his attempt to put together a home movie "just for showing off to family or friends." The problems he faced were not technical, but legal, as he wanted to splice into his project a few seconds of video from a handful of movies. He could have simply inserted the clips without any fuss, and nobody who cared would have been the wiser, but Lasica, who wrote a book about the "personal media revolution," decided to play the game according to the rules of the media oligopoly. He sent formal requests to the seven major studios that own the movies.

Now, who in their right mind would have a problem with someone wanting to use a few seconds of film footage for a home movie? Apparently the movie studios would. Here is how things shook out:

Granted, Lasica was baiting these companies. But, really, isn't it ridiculous that, as Lasica notes, "Hollywood studios demand that we ask for permission to borrow from their works – and then they deny our requests as a matter of course"? Only one of these studios, Columbi TriStar, had the good sense and decency to acknowledge fair use. The others don't look arrogant or overly protective as much as frightened—scared of the effect that all this new personal technology will continue to have on their bottom line.

Read JD Lasica's full weblog entry with all the gory details: When the studios won't give permission.

Ever since Google released their Maps site, people have been creating "mashups," overlaying all sorts of data on the U.S. map or parts of it. Last month CNN ran a story about these Google Maps tinkerers, and the weblog Google Maps Mania announces new mashups as they appear on the web. The best of the new sites tap into the flexibility and power of Google Maps to allow visitors to click and drag around an area and zoom in and out of any location. Here are a few of my favorites:

• gMaps Pedometer: Double-click points on the map to measure a route. This site is great for runners who want to measure their training distances. If you want to see what this looks like in use, take a look at the 3.2 mile bus route I take to work each morning.
• gCensus: Get U.S. census data—population, housing units, land area, and water area—for any slice of the map. Zoom in on your neighborhood to see how many people liver there.
• Google Maps Transparencies: Cool page that blends the street map view and satellite view into a combined view. "Click and drag anywhere, just like normal Google Maps, and see how the Map View matches the Satellite View (or vice-versa). Control the level of transparency with the slider control at bottom."
• Housing Maps: View homes for sale or apartments for rent that have been listed on craigslist. Choose a city (from a limited list) and price range to see where your next home may be.
• Iraq War Casualties: "This page shows the progession of US military casualties from the Iraq war. Each click of the (+) displays 30 more casualties, starting from the beginning of the war." Click an icon to see a soldier's name, rank, home town, and date and place of death. The interface is a little frustrating because you have to start with zero casualties and work your way up in 30-soldier increments, instead of allowing you, for example, to instantly see the map with all casualties to date. Still, it's an interesting and sobering site, well worth checking out.
• Chicago Crime Database: See where crimes have been committed in the Chicago area, and get fairly detailed information about them. You can filter the items that appear on the map by type of crime, date, street, police beat, type of location (e.g. ATM, gas station, bowling alley), and so on. They should have one of these for every city.

It's time once again for the monthly stanza. This one appears at the end of a poem by W. H. Auden, one of the great 20th century poets. Some of you may remember the Auden poem that the Scottish chap read for his dead friend in Four Weddings and a Funeral. This is a different poem.

Here's what the Breughel painting looks like:

If you look carefully, you can see the legs of Icarus in the lower-right corner. His dive had a high degree of difficulty, but he over-rotated a bit, and there was too much splash on the landing.