In a word – “ego”. I was listening to a podcast about Microsoft’s Windows 7, bing and Windows Security software. (podcast embedded below)

One of the opening comments was “bing yourself”. So I did. I rank much lower on bing than I do on Google. Like I said, “ego” … at least for a weak moment. I understand why the search results are so different. Google has been pinging blogs – mine and those of people I know for a few years now. Before I started blogging, all you would find from my name is the latest stats and performance of a South African footballer – definitely not me as I’m middle aged and graying and not a threat on any pitch.

Have you “binged” yourself ?

Download this MP3 – (right click)

I’ve been using Image Composite Editor (ICE) for a while now to stick together the farmhouse project pictures. Until just recently I did not notice I could export the results as a multi-layer Photoshop file. I don’t use Photoshop but GIMP, my graphics editor of choice, can import Photoshop files. Here is the utility room image and I’ve slid the layers apart so you can se exactly where ICE did the stitching. Unlike some old tools, ICE does not use straight lines at the stitch boundaries.

s mentioned previously, I’ve been taking a number of fractional images and then having to stitch them together on the computer. I was using a utility that came with my Canon point-n-shoot. Simply put, I have not likes the results. But, given I am frugal (outside of the farmhouse project), I was not about to splurge on one of the nicer professional tools.

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.

I may be late to the party as I just discovered, if you have a Windows folder of links to websites and you switch to “thumbnails” view, you actually get thumbnails of the web sites !

I like a clean desktop. However, I occasionally want to grab a URL off a website to be used over the next few days. I don’t want to bookmark it because I will be throwing it away after a short time. Also, putting them on my desktop (directly or indirectly) serves as a reminder or to-do. Today I was looking at the 7 or 8 URLs and they all just blurred together on me. It was not quickly evident which was which. Then it struck me – “what are the odds that switching the folder view to thumbnails would actually show me the website?” – IT DID !

Here is a folder of 30 links. I used the Windows XP Power Toy, TweakUI so the thumbnails are 128 px. If I am doing research, I occasionally have a temporary fold for links. I’ll be using this same trick for those as well.

I’ve been told that in the broadcast media, there are contract clauses that stipulate what ads can run side by side. For instance, if you are Honda, you probably don’t want the TV network running a Toyota Prius ad right next to your Civic Hybrid spot.

I’m guessing the same rules do not apply to web advertising. I don’t think it was coincidence that sitting right next to the article about IBM/Lotus Sametime telephony integration was a video ad spot for Microsoft VoIP. Something tells me the marketing guys are both sides will get an earful – The blue team may want to call in sick while the red team is probably getting high-fives.