Since my primary camera was digital, I also took three sets of images which I would later reassemble. The largest of these sets was 41 fames and when finished, gave me an image 7128 x 8320. The individual images were photographed at F2.8 and 1/90sec using ISO100 using a 300mm lens. I probably should have used F32 or better, added a gradient filter, and used a long exposure but I didn’t realize some of the issues I would encounter in the post production.

While the photographs are good, they do not convey adequately convey the size, color, or quality of the quilt. I’ll continue to work the composite image to color match it to the actual quilt. At some point, I will do a full inspection for image aberrations and if I don’t find any, I will track down a customer photo lab that can handle a large print.

• hand made gifts
• shop at departments stores and malls
• buy direct from on-line stores
• Amazon
• eBay
• Woot

I won’t have too many hand crafted gifts this season but I will be making a few. Currently there is only one gift I plan to suffer the "bustling crowds" for. As much as possible I will shop on-line and watching for the best bargains.

Scene 2: The somewhat disheveled man stepped out of the shower and toweled off. He felt more human than 15 minutes before but hardly recognized himself when he wiped the steam from the mirror. Dragging a comb through his thinning hair, he straitened up and tried to no avail to pull in him roundness, his memories drifting back to when he was a young and lean figure. The man gathered his robe, and pushed the scale aside, not wanting to hear it’s cruel message. Back in the bedroom, he shuffled through the wardrobe for a clean set of clothes. He quickly discarded his first choice. He knew it would only tell that same tale as the scale to which he had turned a blind eye. Finally he settled on a well warn pair of trousers and wide striped jersey. They may not be the art of manliness but they gave him comfort.

Scene 3: The words of a past generation …

We are met together at a time when great exertions and a high constancy are required from all who cherish and sustain the Liberal cause. Difficulties surround us and dangers threaten from this side and from that. Exultant enemies are gathering: weak friends are nervous or disheartened. Voices are raised in counsels, both equally unwise, of impatience or of lassitude. From such a situation you may emerge triumphant, but to do that there will have to be, in leaders and in followers, shrewd clear plans of action, true stout-hearted comradeship, and unwearying determination.

- Winston Churchill

I found a solution with YAFMU- yet another free Microsoft utility. It’s called the Microsoft Image Composite Editor (the marketing guys had to work hard to make that name!).

First things first - it works.

To elaborate a bit - it does a rather good job, and given the price point I’d say it does an excellent job. In the example below, I threw 27 fames at it and didn’t both to tell it the layout. ICE took about 4 minutes to work everything out but the results can be seen. The only GIMP (aka the other Photoshop) work I did was to fill in a bit of sky that was missing (because I forgot to take one of the necessary frames) and fix a little parallax error. I should point out that ICE had to work hard to bend the images to line up so the parallax error was not the fault of ICE but rather the natural result of stitching a panning image.

 

WARNING: only click on the image if you have a high speed internet connection as the image is 8470×4494 pixels. I compressed it to 75% but that still leaves a 2.8MB file.

Here are three results. None of these have been “photoshopped” other than to crop, scale down the images for the blog, and add the drop-shadow effect.

My mom has been on a marathon this past year to finish the quilt and a few weeks ago the top was finished and the back was ready so she sat down with a person who does machine quilting and they planned out the assembly. Here is a montage of the quilt … the only work left is the border, which is not a small task given the size of the project but given how close the quilt is to “finished” there is more than enough inspiration.

Mom - Thanks and I love you !

So, could I possess the great American novel - who knows. Perhaps the answer is yes. Perhaps the answer is that I will find that great American novel in someone else and my role is like “boiling chips” - to provide the proper environment for water to take on energy, boil, and escape as steam.

Did you know that the fundamental tenant of mass - that it can be neither created nor destroyed - also might apply to green thumbs, creativity, trust, humility, and perseverance. If you add all of any one of these together from every person on earth, you get a fixed quantity. If someone stops trusting, then somewhere else, someone will have started to trust. If someone gives up hope, there will be a reciprocal increase in hope in someone else. There are documented rare cases where the two bodies transferring one of these properties actually come in contact with one another. But, unlike nuclear material, when hope and no-hope collide, there is the a moment of energy that is converting in hope rather than the other way around. … Perhaps that is all to metaphysical. Lets try something else - OLIVES.

Olives are a very flexible fruit. Yes, fruit. They complete a martini, soften bread, and, with sufficient quantity, can run your automobile - the result of which would make most Italians swoon. Olives, like people, come in many shapes, sizes, colors, and originate from many regions. Unlike, people - at least throughout most of the modern world - olives are food. The olive is referenced in the old testament and in Homer’s Iliad. It is hard to say just how old it is. The real question is when did it go from being just a plant, to being a crop. I guess the same could be asked of coffee. Personally, I would never have thought to take a bitter bean and heat it up, crush it, and then soak it in hot water. But then if people did not experiment, no one would have found the results of water, barley, hops, and yeast. So, back to olives. Someone found it growing wild and was lucky enough to encounter the tree when the olives were ripe. It was centuries later that someone experimented with olives and Gin.

I suspect that wealth is another one of those things that is neither created nor destroyed. What I can’t figure out is how, like the swirling mass surrounding a star just before it goes super nova, wealth can implode like it does. And it does it on a fairly regular basis. Fortunately, people still know how to get their hands dirty. Unfortunately, some people can’t actually produce anything but more dirt. If there were some way to convert filth (aka pollution) to dirt (aka a medium for growing plants)  we might be able to turn things around. At the very least, we could grown more olives. One can hope.

September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. To recognize this “art form” the following logo was posted for one day only …