Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo

This is an 8 minute demo from TED 2007 by Blaise Aguera y Arcas of some new software that Microsoft has acquired called SeaDragon and Photosynth. It explores some of the new possibilities that exist as we learn how to organize the incredible mountain of shared data that's posted on the Internet these days. This is an older video that's been around for a while, but both it and the implications it brings to the table are utterly amazing.

And Blaise is wearing an awesome T-shirt.

Global distribution of the world's water

(I just think the colors in this chart are pretty.)
(Click to enlarge.)

Recovering Pictures from a Memory Card

I had a few cases pop up recently where people had either accidentally deleted pictures from their camera's memory cards, or their memory card had become corrupted and unreadable. In either case there is a simple tool that works well to get your pictures back:

PC Inspector Smart Recovery (Click to download)

It runs on Windows and it's very straight forward. Just select the drive letter for your card, leave the format as JPG and choose a destination. Click "Start" and a while later you'll have recovered your pictures!

Here is another trick to keep your memory cards in top working order:
Flash memory is very susceptible to fragmentation, and with use the performance will degrade over time, eventually getting to the point where it will start failing and return errors. This applies to camera memory cards as well as USB flash drives. The fix for this is to pull all the data off of your flash memory device and format it once in a while.

Note that if you are formatting a memory card for your camera it's best to format it from inside your camera. Your camera's manual will tell you how to do this, or if you poke around in the menu system enough you should be able to figure it out. Just be sure to pull all your data off the camera before you do it! (Otherwise you'll need to refer back to the begining of this post where I talk about recovering your deleted pictures...)

One last note about memory cards: They're CHEAP! (If you know where to shop)
If you feel like your camera's memory card is a bit cramped lately, and would like to be able to fit more video onto it, 2GB SD cards are going for about $8 on NewEgg.com (at the time of this posting). They are an excellent online retailer and I stand by them completely. Here are some links to help you find one for your camera:
Secure Digital (SD) (most common)
Compact Flash (CF) (Older cameras and some DSLRs)
Memory Stick Pro Duo (Most newer Sony cameras take this type)
Extreme Digital (xD) (Some Olympus Fuji cameras take this type)

A Journey to the Center of Your Mind

This video is 24 minutes long; far too long to casually post on a blog. But I find it absolutely fascinating...

It's a talk given at TED in 2007 by Neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran about how brain damage can reveal the connections between the physical brain and the mind:



Here is a time code cheat sheet in case you want to skip to a specific topic:
2:10 - Capgrass Syndrome
9:30 - Phantom Limbs
17:50 - Synesthesia
Here is a link to the full TED page, with a bio of Dr. Ramachandran.

Edison's 1st Birthday

I know I said that my posts would trend towards the "geeky", and this falls way to the "nerdy" end of that scale, but what geek wouldn't want to know that we dress our cats up in little birthday hats and take pictures with them for their first birthdays? Isn't she cute...? CUTE little kitty in a hat!! Whoozah cyoot wittle kitty in a wittle birfday hat?? YOU are! Yes you are! Yes you are! Kissy kissy kiss kiss!!...