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Squeee!!

 http://tiltshiftmaker.com

Tiltshift photography is so super-nifty! It, of course, reminds me of so many old Japanese monster movies done with models and incorrect camera lenses. Tiltshiftmaker.com applies a filter to your images to make a nice tiltshift effect. To do the real thing you need to build yourself a tilt-shift camera.

Here is a Tiltshift Flickr group. (warning, some of the images are poorly done, some awsome).  And you have to check these out at  Laughing Squid, especially.

(click the thumbnails!)
My tiny balls

San Francisco 2008 Valentines Day Pillowfight

My Burning Man 2007 Camp

I got an iPhone 3G for Christmas (thanks mom & dad!)

Why must things be hard?

I had to google for 15 minutes to find instructions on putting my own ringtones on my phone. Most of the instructions started out, “Apple doesn’t allow changing your ringtone so you’ll have to jailbreak your phone. Just follow these 20 geeky steps and you’ll be playing ringtones in a few hours (until Apple cracks down on this method)”. So much for Apple being “clearly superior”. Well, in any case, here’s how to put your own ringtones on your iPhone 3G EASILY. I have iTunes 8.0.2.20 and this procedure worked fine:

Video on CNet: Make iPhone ringtones with iTunes 8.0

Short form:

1. Make an AAC sound file with iTunes “Advanced | Create AAC Version”
2. Drag the new file out of iTunes onto your desktop
3. Remove the sound file from iTunes (but don’t delete it)
4. Rename the sound file from *.m4a to *.m4r
5. Drag the file into iTunes and it will appear in a new “Ringtones” folder.
6. Sync your iPhone, go to your iPhone and you’ll see it as a ringtone choice.

Update 10-16-09: Look below,  modelwhisperer’s comment and/or ashlieaxandike’s comment  may help you get this working. Please comment and tell us what works for you!

Update 5-28-10: I had to reinstall Windows recently. I successfully put more ringtones on my Win XP, iTunes 9.1.1.12.

Some notes: Make sure you have selected “Sync Ringtones” on the Ringtones tab of the iPhone Device. See the image.

Bread is very simple.

Here is my new favorite bread recipe. I started with the Best Recipe recipe for “Rustic Bread” and simplified it because I’m lazy. It comes out terrific.

It takes less than 5 minutes work. Yes, really.

1. Put 6 cups all purpose flour, 2 tsp salt, 3 tsp yeast  in big bowl
2. Mix
3. Add 2 3/4 c water or so. 2.5 – 3.0 cups is fine
4. Mix with one hand until it’s gloopy, about 2 minutes. No, don’t kneed it
5. Cover the bowl with aluminum foil for 2 hrs in a warm place
6. Flour a baking sheet
7. Grab 1/2 the dough and plop it on the pan
8. Roll it around a tiny bit so it looks more like a loaf
9. Grab the other half of the dough and do the same
10. Turn on the oven to 450
11. When the oven comes up to temperature (10-20 minutes) put the pre-bread in
12. Take out the finished bread 45 minutes later
13. Eat it!

Here is “Bread Making Level 2”. If you want a really nice thick crust do this:

1. Put a heavy, oven safe pan in the oven below the bread.  (cast iron is good)  
2. Just before you put the pre-bread into the oven, pour some boiling water in the pan

The steam will give the bread a thick “meaty” crust.

See my notes about the price of yeast

That recipe comes from Cook’s Illustrated’s “Best Recipe” cookbook. It’s a rustic country bread recipe. I find it interesting that, first, one can distill their full-page recipe down to this, and second, this excellent recipe is so gosh darn simple.

Here are some comments on the recipe:

Yes, I just mix it until it’s goopy, like 3 minutes of stirring with one hand in a bowl. The dough will be very wet and it sticks to everything. There’s no point in getting any utensils all gooped up. And I didn’t “work” the dough at all.

There’s all kinds of yeast treatments, like letting it develop for days on end, sourdough starter and the like. I guess they do a little something but feh, just add yeast. And I’ve seen all kinds of yeast: instant, nearly instant, super instant, wet, slimy, goopy. I’ve never tasted or witnessed much of a difference. I used Fleishmann’s #2139 Instant Dry Yeast in a 1 lb vacuum sealed bag.

2 tickets ordered (15 seconds after sales went live)

Now… am I going?

This is totally random… I woke up a few weeks ago with memory of this random dream floating in my head. Continue reading ‘A Random Dream I Had’ »

I just placed my first order for a microcontroller… an Arduino-clone called RBBB (Really Bare Bones Board)

I’ve written about this before. Here is the latest installment…

Astra32 –  comprehensive information about the configuration of your system…. to help you get rid of driver problems for Windows

Combined Community Codec Pack: This lets Windows Media Player play pretty much any video format including DVDs. You install it and it JUST WORKS :-)

HOW TO – Put DVDs on the iPhone – the super simple way. Use Handbrake

How to archive your DVD collection. Use DVD Decrypter v 3.5.4.0 by Lightning UK! (find it at your favorite warez site) The author’s original site doesn’t work anymore.

Sysinternals File and Disk Utilities:  These tools are great! I’ve only listed the first couple categories of tools here. There are more, check it out.

When you are logged onto a computer via VNC, it can be hard to tell if the hard drive is busy since you can’t hear it remotely. Run DiskMon and you can see it!

Here’s the full list of disk tools:

AccessChk: This tool shows you the accesses the user or group you specify has to files, Registry keys or Windows services. Continue reading ‘Lee Recommends Computer Programs’ »

After an annoying time  (and  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) trying to voice my concerns with the image uploading interface in WordPress, I’ve installed a test version of WP 2.7.

Pros:

1. The Add New Post page is customizable so I can put items that I find useful near the top.

Cons:

1. The add image functionality is a bit worse. No improvements and now when you choose to show an image as a “thumbnail”, it isn’t created as a clickable thumbnail, just a small image.
2. There are always minor incompatibilities to fuss over

That’s a score of 1 to 2. The Cons win :-(

I went to Universal Cafe with Charlotte and Rick today. It was wonderful. Keywords: donuts: excellent texture, fresh, cakey, bacon flavored! Brunch, sunshine (just about too hot, phew), bike riding, murals, poached eggs, pretty people and food, good discussion, neighborhood orange trees dropping oranges :-)

Last night we all went to Ray’s Box-warming party. :-)

Dearest Lazyweb,

I have a bunch of mp3 music and podcasts that I download from a variety of sources . And I have a fancy mp3 player known as an iPhone. How do I put my tunes on iTunes without smashing the phone on the ground and jumping on the bits?  

Sincerely,

Frustrated in San Francisco