My opinions on all things tech related
There are 271 posts filed in Tech (this is page 21 of 28).
I got a great chance to visit the Wired Nextfest this morning before the ALA conference opened. Check out the pictures by clicking on the Skycar:
Flying cars, a cloned cat, robotic Philip K. Dick, Mythbusters, and more!
Lots of fun, though since it was Education Day and the ‘fest isn’t officially open yet, not all the exhibits were up and functional yet.
Today I discovered AutoStitch, a free panoramic image maker. You take a number of pictures of one subject, put them all in the program, and it does the rest. I’m rather impressed with the results, even when I’m not trying too hard to take good source images.
Here’s a composite of four separate pictures of the Cathedral of Learning:
(click for different sizes)
Don’t really have time to comment, but I greatly enjoyed D-Lib Magazine’s new article on personal digital libraries and collections.
Link comes from the Library Journal TechBlog. Which, you know, I write for now and again 🙂
In related linkage, “Generation C”. The C is for Content, not Cookie. And that’s good enough for me.
Need a good replacement for MS Paint? Don’t have a lot of money to spend on Photoshop?
Paint.NET looks like a pretty good solution to me so far. First of all, its free. And it actually has some support from Microsoft, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if something like it shows up in Longhorn.
The biggest feature of note is that layers are included. It starts up rather quickly too, and has a couple of nice UI touches like transparent menus. The menu structure and navigation mirrors Photoshop pretty well too, so if you’re familiar with PS its a nice bonus.
Of course, its not 100% Photoshop. Altering text after it is created, for example, is something I can’t figure out how to do.
But still, not a bad start!
Can you think of a major print novel simultaneously released digitally under the creative commons license?
Charles Strauss’ Accelerando is the first I’ve heard of. Strauss is a sci-fi writer, and I’ve seen a number of positive advance reviews around the ‘net. Stumbled across his site for the novel, and was astonished to see that “later this month” the entire text will be available on the site for download!
I’d love to know how he got the publishers to go along with this idea. Can’t wait to load it on my REB1100!
Plus, the title is tons of fun to say.
It’s alive!
Today Library Journal put up the new Techblog as part of their whole site revamp. I’m lucky enough to count myself among the nine or so contributors, who you can read more about under the ‘about us’ page on the blog.
We’ve even got our own RSS feed and everything. Posts are a little scarce at the moment, but given time I’m sure it’ll fill up.
The LJ Techblog is my first experience with group blogging, and I’m really excited to see how it goes!
I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this in coming times. But for now, I just wanted to get the word out there – the blog seems to be rather buried and not linked from the front page. Again I’m not sure how permanent that placement is; any new site has its share of growing pains.
I think I’ll be largely unplugging myself this weekend. Cell phone off, limited computer checks beyond coursework issues, less gaming time, etc. Just enjoying plenty of time with family and friends.
I’ll probably have a big (for me anyway) announcement here sometime soon.
Oh, but of course I’ll make an unplugged exception for my shiny new iPod 🙂
I just noticed today that the Wired NextFest is coming up! Better yet, its in Chicago at the same time as the ALA conference! Best yet, that Friday is a students and press only day!
I really hope I can fit in some time to attend.
My mom now owns an iPod. I’m jealous.
The RSS problem I mentioned the other day was not limited to just me. The WordPress 1.5.1 upgrade had a major RSS bug. If I understand correctly, the RSS feed was only generated for 24 hours after a new post was made. After that, it just returned a blank page.
Official bug fix:
Replace your wp-blog-header.php in your root WordPress directory with this one.
I ran across this fix here. Thanks for the pointer!
