October 1, 2007
Mind = Blown (seam carving)
I just came across an amazing technique for image manipulation called "seam carving" that lets you shrink (or grow) the dimensions of an image without cropping the photo or shrinking the elements of it. If that sounds a little hard to understand, the best way to grasp what this means is to watch the demo video. There is also a free web-based tool where you can play with the technique on your own photos.
The computer science guy in me is totally geeked on this cool use of math for a practical application. Here is an example picture that I shrunk:
HT: Photojojo
Posted by jvp at 8:49 AM | Comments (2)
November 1, 2006
Bell Smith Springs
Last Saturday, the guys from my F3 Group took a day hiking trip to the Bell Smith Springs area in Shawnee National Forest. I had never been to this area, but it was highly recommended by a friend who has spent a lot of time there (thanks, Chris!). It was well worth the visit--it's truly an amazing area. The trip was originally going to be a camping trip, but because of the weather and our desire to get back for church on Sunday morning, we switched it to just a day trip.
The only down side was that it had been such a wet fall that the creeks were all up really high. The normal places where you would cross them were all underwater, and we decided to stay dry and not try a crossing. This meant we didn't get to see what are probably the two best-known landmarks of the area, Devil's Backbone and the natural bridge.
But regardless of these setbacks, there was still plenty to explore. We had a great time rambling around the area, enjoying lots of diverse plant life, and even got to see a couple of deer up close. After a couple of hikes, we settled down at a campsite, built a fire, and enjoyed some fellowship.
The one geeky thing I tried on this trip was geotagging my photos. I didn't have any fancy device, I just left the GPS on all day, and then coordinated the photo timestamps with the GPS track log. It's a pretty crude process, but the results aren't bad. I even threw together a Google map of our two hikes (#1 in Red, #2 in Blue), with photos displayed along the way. There were a few anomalies in the GPS track data, which is why some of the pictures are off of the track lines. I could fix that but I am too lazy to do it right now.
For the non-geeky, there is also just a regular photo album for this entry. You can view it here.
Posted by jvp at 12:53 AM | Comments (0)