Sunday, January 31, 2010

Wobbly Bones

Mike Taylor at SVPOW has an interesting post on how to make red-cyan anaglyphs... you know, those pictures you look at through the red-blue green-glasses and see a 3-D image. Now here's the thing: I'm slightly red-green color blind, and I don't deal well with red-cyan anaglyphs- not dissing them, they just don't work very well for me. I can do the cross-eye technique, where my right eye is looking at the left image, and vice versa, though I never got the hang of "looking straight forward" (i.e. right eye looking at right image, etc.). I think the trick with the cross-eyed technique is learning to match the images up, and getting them to focus. Yes, of course you're welcome to address me as "master of the obvious," but I can't explain it any better than that.

Ideally, one has access to a decent stereoscope, but the cost of a professional stereoscopic viewer is pretty daunting (I'm not finding a source, but I recall them as being 300 to $400 and up, many years ago); a cheap student version, though, costs only 12.00, according to this site, or $5.95 here. The nice thing is that with digital photography, you can mess around and create your own 3-D pictures in whatever way works for you, and scrap the ones that don't. The cost is next to nothing (after you have a camera and a computer).

There is an even easier trick, though, which I had intended to post a comment on at SVPOW, but the very first commenter beat me to it.Above is a .gif animation of the two images used to illustrate the anaglyph process at SVPOW. First, you need to convert the original images to .gif format; I use Paint.net, a freeware download. And you need an applet to stitch the frames together. I've been playing with UnFREEz, a very small and simple program, that does this. Again, it's a freeware download. I'm not recommending either of these above others that do the same things, but they're free, my experience is limited, and I've been having fun with them.

While gifs have lots of shortcomings, one strength is that you can stitch together as many frames as you like. (actually, one frame by itself doesn't work very well) Here's the first such animation I put together; it still cracks me up.

Whoops, followup, I forgot that either blooger or firefox doesn't deal directly with animated gifs; the one linked above (my first one) is hosted at an external site... I'll fix the vertebra in a bit.

Sunday Funnies

And here we go with A Whole new set of Sunday Funnies...Criggo
Two weeks to Valentine's Day... one of my least favorite holidays. But I like this card idea. Skull Swap
A satirical map published in 1940 to discourage an Axis invasion of Ireland... apparently, it worked. Funny but also fascinating. Read the full article, "Dissuasive Cartography," at Strange Maps, and click here to see at full 1:1 scale (well, not quite).
Indexed
Sorry, it was only for sale on one day. Lol Cats
demotivational posters
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Skull Swap
Calamities of Nature
funny pictures of dogs with captions
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That'll keep the kids out of the field. Skull Swap
Viral Marketing, from EpicPonyz. (Black plague is actually caused by a baterium, but whatever.)
Cliff Chiang- one of three he created for the Topps trading card series debuting... tomorrow?
Skull Swap
epic fail pictures
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Skull Swap
Oddly Specific
dalai lama and archbishop desmond tutu
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OK, I'm convinced. Fail Blog

Chewbacca Power Window, via The Daily What
Oddly Specific
Oddly Specific
Epic Win
My First Dictionary; posted with the comment, "It's amazing what you can do with a spare comma."
Not Really, But Seriously
al gore
see more Political Pictures. Either that or really painful gas...
EpicPonyz. But it is asbestos free!
demotivational posters
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I have a feeling that if that headline made any sense, I wouldn't need to read the article. Criggo
Autocomplete Me
Savage Chickens
Criggo
demotivational posters
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demotivational posters
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Epic Duel! The Daily What (See the original in glorious full size here)
funny pictures of dogs with captions
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Going Out of Business sale? Criggo
Oddly Specific
Probably Bad News
Acting Like Animals
funny pictures of cats with captions
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That'll keep 'em busy until the next election. Criggo
Urban paleontological discovery from That Will Buff Out.
Rolfrazzi
Roflrazzi
abraham lincoln
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barack obama
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Skull Swap

Via EpicPonyz
I'm beginning to think there's just something intrinsically funny about watermelons. My First Fail
Married to the Sea, via Blackadder
Ah, The Great Banksy Quote
see more Friends of Irony
4 in 10 is also a majority in the Senate. Criggo
Criggo
"Don't struggle; You'll only sink faster." That Will Buff Out
I would watch the Miss America Pageant if they added that event. I'd record it and watch it repeatedly. The expressions would be priceless. Criggo
Oddly Specific
demotivational posters
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