CogBlogged from ‘September, 2008’

I’m not even home yet from the CogDogBlog Asia tour and I am remotely buying tickets for a new adventure in November. A few weeks ago a friend sent me an email from someone he knew who needed someone to house sit and watch their dog for a month. Ahhh, not any house, but this one is the home of architect. Since the house has high speed internet, it is no problem for me to work from there. Ahhh, but not just any architect’s house…. this one is in…. Iceland! I’ll be somewhere out in the country an hour from Reykjavik with promised great views of the Northern Lights. It shall be a camera fest.

First Picture with New Camera by cogdogblog posted 30 Sep ’08, 9.10am MDT PST on flickr Here is the first photo taken with my new Canon IXY 3000IS, purchased in Japan– the subject is the camera it is replacing. The new max image size is 4416×3312 pixels, quite a jump from the SD800. From the camera metadata, I see this is the first flickr photo posted using this model, I do not see the IXY Digital 3000 IS nor its US counterpart the PowerShot SD 990is. Something about being in Japan makes a geek go dizzy when exposed to the electronics stores. Once I saw they were selling a new compact Canon that shot 14.7 MP images, I could not stop thinking about it… So I got it today! This picture is NOT it (see below) but the first photo taken with it. We visited 2 stores until we found [...]

On his custom tour of Shanghai a few weeks back, Jeff Utecht provided sufficient warning to be wary of “Stinky Tofu” on sale in the streets. I never had the pleasure there, but cleaning out the email inbox brings up similar thoughts. A few weeks ago I dutifully ignored and filed in the unwanted trash bin this random ad blurb generated mush: I’d like the opportunity to introduce myself and my organization with the hopes of establishing a dialogue centered on exploring incremental revenue models for your CogDogBlog.com. Conceptually, I’d like to focus on integrating our free publication content feeds into relevant areas of your site. We offer a very compelling model that could seamlessly integrate into your site offering your audience high-quality content while also offering your organization a lucrative incremental revenue stream. Maybe mroe translated would be, “Put adds for irrelevant crap on your site”. So by not [...]

Can You Say Ixy? by cogdogblog posted 29 Sep ’08, 8.20am MDT PST on flickr Japanese electronics stores carry many new camera models before they hit the states. This new pocket digital camera form Canon, the IXY series, can take images in 14.7 MegaPixels and 3200 ISO. Wow! 14.7 MegaPixels in a pocket camera! That would boost my GigaPixel image size, plus it has a 4x optical zoom. That’s about US$432

My photographic and geek bents have been intrigued by learnig (and still learning) how to capture immersive high res GigaPan images, which is fun enough in its own right. This is a combination of a special camera control rig and software that takes a series of images with a standard compact digital camera that gives them essentially super resolution by stitching a large number of overlapping photos. I captured a few in Shanghai last week, and in one day in Hong Kong, got 3 more scenes: Top of Peak Tram Hong Kong Construction Site View from Pier 9 The effect of exploring the online ones (pan and zoom to incredible detail). There’s a wow factor, as I am getting feedback (and then there is Carl Berger who ran out and got his own). But I am hoping to see if people can think of some more edu-applicable ways of using [...]

Shopping for Horizon Project Items by cogdogblog posted 25 Sep ’08, 7.52pm MDT PST on flickr This is where we get stuff for horizon.nmc.org/ So what do you want this year? Cloud Computing? PLE? Mobile virtual worlds?

How cool and fast is the net connected world? Last night I snapped a photo on my iPhone, uploaded it to flickr via MobileFotos app, and today it is part of a story on the Discover Magazine Blog: Last night, I guess I was at Mission Control in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, at a Korean restuarant: I had gone for dinner with my friend from here, Nick Noakes and his wife, and over the table top frying of spicy beef and bacon wrapped mushrooms and ribs and thin sliced steak and prawns and… , we looked up and noticed a rocket on the TV screen. I asked when it was lifting off, and someone said, “now!” And sure enough, up went the rocket, and off go 3 Chinese ‘nauts in space, to do some spacewalking and other stuff- see Shenzhou VII Liftoff. Great news day for China (despite snickering about [...]

Sept 2006 037 by madaise posted 5 Sep ’06, 8.37pm MDT PST on flickr Peanut butter (2/3 c.) and chocolate chips (1 c.) – headed for the microwave. See Puppy Chow Recipe. Better than mixing peanut butter and chocolate, and much more logical… digital cameras and GPS chips. I’m very keen on what creative things can happen when we can connect photos with places (alas, had Google bought flickr instead of Yahoo….), but I really really really do not want to manually geocode latitude/longitude, or peck around maps to find a location. I also don’t want to bolt on some GPS device to my camera- I want my camera to have that chip built in. This is a job that cries out for automation, and is close, maybe with the iPhone, but again, it is not automatic. When an image file is created, it should just tap into a GPS [...]

Thanks for the Typhoon by cogdogblog posted 23 Sep ’08, 8.11am MDT PST on flickr Nick Noakes is the optimal host- he has even arranged a typhoon here in Hong Kong for my entertainment, Now perhaps I can say I am big winded. My timing was good to arrive in Hong Kong Monday afternoon, when it were merely inhumanely hot and humid. It felt like cars were melting. As the old saying goes, “but it’s a wet heat!” Colleague and fiend Nick Noakes met me at the airport and provided a crash course in Hong Kong 101 on the drive up to his campus at the Honk Kong University of Science & Technology. We spent a little time at the uni and then drifted down the hill to a “small” mall (hah) where we had a feast and a half at a Thai restaurant. Mmmm, curry crab. Say that three [...]

Where All the Cool Trends Come From by cogdogblog posted 22 Sep ’08, 8.06am MDT PST on flickr They have a store here in Hong Kong! Get yout trends! We have fashion trends, technology trends, economic trends (oops, those are selling badly now). Why waste time doing research? Just hope down to your local Trendyland to get the latest trends for your business or organization. I am hoping for the NMC Horizon Project I can find a MetaTrendyLand http://horizon.nmc.org/wiki/Metatrends