Speaking of high-definition scans of old art, has anyone else looked at the varnish crackle in the scan of Rembrandt's Night Watch? Literally, you can look down into the cracks. The resolution is 200 dots per millimeter, or about 5100 dpi. They used a $48,000 Hasselblad 100MP camera and a $6,000 macro lens. The museum doesn't talk about how much the positioning framework cost to build, or how long to write the software that checked the focus on every one of the ~8,500 individual photos that were pieced together to make the final image.
Thank you all for the information and suggestions.
I suppose you could say I'm at least somewhat into this stuff. Since I'm undertaking to produce a scroll which is in that mode, albeit with very different content. I've done such in the past, but I'm seriously out of practice. Like three decades out of practice. So I need all the help I can get.
wj, if you're into this type of thing don't miss out on the Chester Beatty museum and library. Among many other artefacts, they have a lot of ancient books, illustrations and manuscripts. Incidentally, they have an exhibition on "Manuscripts and the Mind" at the moment:
wonkie, what do you miss about the old cameras? When I bought my micro 4/3 camera before the Iceland trip, I played around with lens adapters and older lenses from the '70s. Throw the settings on manual and you barely notice that it's a modern digital camera. Doubly so when I pull up the photos in DXO photo lab and use their film stock modeling to give the pics the same light contours as a classic Fujifilm stock.
Send 'em off to an online photo processor for printing and you would barely notice the difference. The feel and the look are there.
Meanwhile, I've been converting my older mountain bike into a gravel oriented bike for when it rains and the roads are closed. I put lighter tires and some new TPU tubes on the bike and took 1.5 pounds of rotating weight and sticky rubber drag out of the equation. It's feeling fast and light. Just waiting on handlebar tape to put the new alt handlebars on to get a more drop bar like position on the ride.
ps You can see every page of the Book of Kells in high res in TCD's Digital Collection - i can't remember where I learnt this years ago, but it might well have been here!
I miss the old cameras. I'm a painter and I used to use photos as a starting point. It just isn't the same trying to use a computer.
Lately I've been doing abstracts based on aerial views of the desert--I use mapquest to find images. I'm trying to get that magical, mysterious feeling of all that raw geology. It's annoying when the screen keeps going black.
Also what an amazing experience to see the Book of Kells!
I love the book of Kells! Did you see the Long Room? It's the platonic ideal...I'm down with a very grim flu, so nothing interesting to report I'm afraid.
Just for something completely different, I'm in Dublin, Ireland this week (conference). So I wandered over to Trinity College to check out The Book of Kells Experience.
A nicely done exhibition. I was particularly pleased to be able to see the Book itself. In a darkened room, and only the page it happened to be turned to. But still beautiful. And lots of other stuff from the book and about it. Way cool!
i'm working on a program to automate the application of large collection of image effects i've written over the years (mostly back when i had a software business). i've called the program "Director", as in "movie director" and it's based around the metaphor of shooting a movie.
there's a Script (JSON) which describes the Cast (a list of Actors (an effect) and the name of their roles (nickname, for easier typing)), and some production info (where to get source images, etc). then, there's a list of Scenes. a Scene is a list of Actors and the Actions they take (turn on/off, change a parameter, etc.) at a given frame in the video.
run it and it reads source frames, applies effects, displays them and saves them.
the Script is just text, so it's not very sexy. but, it does work. the application as a whole is very close to being elegant, internally, which pleases me greatly.
Did you go with the iphone 17? For me, the battery is the key driver of a new phone, and the current phone I have is a 13, and my wife and I will probably get a 17 now. I realize that it is not just the battery, chip and phone design makes a huge difference, but it's surprising to me that the models cycle thru without much improvement, so I can't imagine just going up one or 2 model numbers
I'm consistently amazed and annoyed by the distorted photos of photos I see people posting on social media.
They take the photos at angles that make people's heads huge or tiny. They don't crop out whatever's outside the original photo - usually a tablecloth or some such. They seem to be completely unconcerned about glare. The photos are often crooked.
I'm extremely anal about those things when taking photos of photos, so it drives me nuts. I'll sometimes take several photos until I'm satisfied.
I'd like to think of myself as the Stanley Kubrick of taking photos of photos.
I think we should take all their money and use it for education, infrastructure and health care.
It's all a big scam and at the root of the class society which is detrimental to the nation's psyche. (And it's not only them: look at the Duke of Westminster etc.)
All of that said, from this side of the pond the UK royals seem to have this weird dichotomony between the ones who are actually king or queen (or in line to be), and who seem to take the responsibilities of their office seriously, and the rest of the family, who end up having too much money and privilege and not enough to do so they end up behaving badly.
Well, not always by a long shot. Princess Anne is an absolute workhorse, carries out more duties than any of the others and is much admired by the majority of the public. She also refused to let her two children be given titles. And Edward the VIII was the opposite in every way. In the current generation of the King's sibs, Prince Edward (now Duke of Edinburgh) and his wife appear to have come rather dutifully good. It's a weird old system, for sure. But even republicans of my acquaintance, looking at e.g. Trump, have started shuddering at the idea of an elected head of state.
Ya know, it was really handy to be able to preview comments. Just to keep control over italics.
At least in my browser, the comment edit box properly shows me all of the text formatting. Preview would seem to be redundant, at least for that purpose.
The writer’s thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president’s role more that of a policy wonk.
I don't want a President who is a policy wonk. I want a President who's good at administering policy set by Congress. A policy wonk President who doesn't get what he wants from Congress is tempted to find ways around them. Trump has yielded to that temptation, bigly.
I spent the entire time my we watched "Downton Abbey" annoying my wife by yelling at the Crawley's to learn how to put on their own damned clothes. So I'm probably not the person most likely to have a positive opinion of the royal family.
All of that said, from this side of the pond the UK royals seem to have this weird dichotomony between the ones who are actually king or queen (or in line to be), and who seem to take the responsibilities of their office seriously, and the rest of the family, who end up having too much money and privilege and not enough to do so they end up behaving badly.
Over here, we've had Billy Beer, the wild and crazy Bush twins, Hunter Biden, and Uday and Qusay Trump. So I'm not sure we're in a position to point fingers.
If it's working for you all, carry on. Seems expensive, though. And they should all learn to put on their own clothes.
wj, I seem to have mastered the italics and bold thing: you put your text in as normal, then highlight whichever text you want to alter, and then press the relevant button along the bottom. And then you exit the text and it lasts.
Off topic
Ya know, it was really handy to be able to preview comments. Just to keep control over italics. So far, I haven't grasped what I'm doing wrong. But sometimes I get the bar with a choice of such things, and sometimes I don't.
The writer’s thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president’s role more that of a policy wonk.
Perhaps a better, i.e. less contentious, way to put this is: There are advantages to separating the job of head of state from the job of head of government. One spends most of his time on ceremonial functions. The other spends most of his time managing the executive branch of the (typically national) government. (Not to say that there might be something to be said for taking the same principle down to the state/province/region level.)
The first question someone proposing such a system needs to answer is: How do you pick those two people? In Britain, for example, the chief of state, the monarch, is a hereditary position, while the head of government is (indirectly**) elected. My impression is that the other (nominal) monarchies in Europe do something similar. There are doubtless other approaches, but I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable in the field to know of examples.
And this leads to the question for Britain, if they decide to abolish their monarchy: How do you choose a new chief of state going forward? I mean, you could just dump the necessary tasks in the PM. But have recent ones really demonstrated that they have the bandwidth to take in the additional work?
** It would be rude for someone from outside to describe the method as a kludge. Which is why I resisted the temptation.
>I live in north central Texas, and I never see anything like that.
i'm in central NC and i seen it now and then.
there was a big anti-Trump rally in town before the last election and all the local rednecks got their trucks fitted with their Trump & confederate flags and rolled coal up and down the street in front of the anti-Trump folks.
on one of the two main roads into town, there's an ancient and crumbling cinder-block garage with a huge confederate flag flying on a giant metal pole next to it. the person who owns the property (whose last name is "White" and who lives on "White's Way") had a billboard on the property for years, and it showed normal advertisements though an ad agency.
but one day. a local BLM group rented the sign space and put up a "Black Lives Matter" billboard. that sign lasted a few days. but then, Mr White cancelled his contract with the ad agency, and tore down the billboard. then he put a bunch of hand-painted racist signs on top of the garage, and put a fence around his flagpole.
occasionally, he also holds little rallies in front of the garage - all his dim-witted racist buddy line up and wave confederate flags and shout at passing cars.
it's directly across the street from a "Christian" retirement community. they don't seem to mind.
every single time i drive by, day or night, rain or shine, i roll down my window and give that flag the one finger salute. one day, that angered some jackhole in a truck in back of me, and he got on my tail and honked and ranted and raved at me until i got near the police station.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Something Different”
Speaking of high-definition scans of old art, has anyone else looked at the varnish crackle in the scan of Rembrandt's Night Watch? Literally, you can look down into the cracks. The resolution is 200 dots per millimeter, or about 5100 dpi. They used a $48,000 Hasselblad 100MP camera and a $6,000 macro lens. The museum doesn't talk about how much the positioning framework cost to build, or how long to write the software that checked the focus on every one of the ~8,500 individual photos that were pieced together to make the final image.
"
Thank you all for the information and suggestions.
I suppose you could say I'm at least somewhat into this stuff. Since I'm undertaking to produce a scroll which is in that mode, albeit with very different content. I've done such in the past, but I'm seriously out of practice. Like three decades out of practice. So I need all the help I can get.
"
there's an amazing animated movie about the Book Of Kells.very cool.
"
wj, if you're into this type of thing don't miss out on the Chester Beatty museum and library. Among many other artefacts, they have a lot of ancient books, illustrations and manuscripts. Incidentally, they have an exhibition on "Manuscripts and the Mind" at the moment:
https://chesterbeatty.ie/exhibitions/manuscripts-and-the-mind/
"
wonkie, what do you miss about the old cameras? When I bought my micro 4/3 camera before the Iceland trip, I played around with lens adapters and older lenses from the '70s. Throw the settings on manual and you barely notice that it's a modern digital camera. Doubly so when I pull up the photos in DXO photo lab and use their film stock modeling to give the pics the same light contours as a classic Fujifilm stock.
Send 'em off to an online photo processor for printing and you would barely notice the difference. The feel and the look are there.
Meanwhile, I've been converting my older mountain bike into a gravel oriented bike for when it rains and the roads are closed. I put lighter tires and some new TPU tubes on the bike and took 1.5 pounds of rotating weight and sticky rubber drag out of the equation. It's feeling fast and light. Just waiting on handlebar tape to put the new alt handlebars on to get a more drop bar like position on the ride.
Fun times.
"
ps You can see every page of the Book of Kells in high res in TCD's Digital Collection - i can't remember where I learnt this years ago, but it might well have been here!
"
I miss the old cameras. I'm a painter and I used to use photos as a starting point. It just isn't the same trying to use a computer.
Lately I've been doing abstracts based on aerial views of the desert--I use mapquest to find images. I'm trying to get that magical, mysterious feeling of all that raw geology. It's annoying when the screen keeps going black.
Also what an amazing experience to see the Book of Kells!
"
I love the book of Kells! Did you see the Long Room? It's the platonic ideal...I'm down with a very grim flu, so nothing interesting to report I'm afraid.
"
Just for something completely different, I'm in Dublin, Ireland this week (conference). So I wandered over to Trinity College to check out The Book of Kells Experience.
A nicely done exhibition. I was particularly pleased to be able to see the Book itself. In a darkened room, and only the page it happened to be turned to. But still beautiful. And lots of other stuff from the book and about it. Way cool!
"
i'm working on a program to automate the application of large collection of image effects i've written over the years (mostly back when i had a software business). i've called the program "Director", as in "movie director" and it's based around the metaphor of shooting a movie.
there's a Script (JSON) which describes the Cast (a list of Actors (an effect) and the name of their roles (nickname, for easier typing)), and some production info (where to get source images, etc). then, there's a list of Scenes. a Scene is a list of Actors and the Actions they take (turn on/off, change a parameter, etc.) at a given frame in the video.
run it and it reads source frames, applies effects, displays them and saves them.
the Script is just text, so it's not very sexy. but, it does work. the application as a whole is very close to being elegant, internally, which pleases me greatly.
i plan to use it to create videos for songs.
now i just need to write some songs.
"
Yes, the base iPhone 17.
"
Did you go with the iphone 17? For me, the battery is the key driver of a new phone, and the current phone I have is a 13, and my wife and I will probably get a 17 now. I realize that it is not just the battery, chip and phone design makes a huge difference, but it's surprising to me that the models cycle thru without much improvement, so I can't imagine just going up one or 2 model numbers
"
Other people must be doing interesting and/or useful things beyond politics.
I've been cleaning black mold out of the basement. Big fun!!
:(
Also, went to a two-day reiki class over the weekend, which was actually kind of profound. And fun. Profound fun.
Looking forward to getting the basement wrapped up so I can get back to the vibes.
On “Monarchy in the UK”
Well, not always by a long shot.
I stand corrected!
On “Something Different”
I'm consistently amazed and annoyed by the distorted photos of photos I see people posting on social media.
They take the photos at angles that make people's heads huge or tiny. They don't crop out whatever's outside the original photo - usually a tablecloth or some such. They seem to be completely unconcerned about glare. The photos are often crooked.
I'm extremely anal about those things when taking photos of photos, so it drives me nuts. I'll sometimes take several photos until I'm satisfied.
I'd like to think of myself as the Stanley Kubrick of taking photos of photos.
On “Monarchy in the UK”
I think we should take all their money and use it for education, infrastructure and health care.
It's all a big scam and at the root of the class society which is detrimental to the nation's psyche. (And it's not only them: look at the Duke of Westminster etc.)
"
All of that said, from this side of the pond the UK royals seem to have this weird dichotomony between the ones who are actually king or queen (or in line to be), and who seem to take the responsibilities of their office seriously, and the rest of the family, who end up having too much money and privilege and not enough to do so they end up behaving badly.
Well, not always by a long shot. Princess Anne is an absolute workhorse, carries out more duties than any of the others and is much admired by the majority of the public. She also refused to let her two children be given titles. And Edward the VIII was the opposite in every way. In the current generation of the King's sibs, Prince Edward (now Duke of Edinburgh) and his wife appear to have come rather dutifully good. It's a weird old system, for sure. But even republicans of my acquaintance, looking at e.g. Trump, have started shuddering at the idea of an elected head of state.
"
Ya know, it was really handy to be able to preview comments. Just to keep control over italics.
At least in my browser, the comment edit box properly shows me all of the text formatting. Preview would seem to be redundant, at least for that purpose.
"
The writer’s thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president’s role more that of a policy wonk.
I don't want a President who is a policy wonk. I want a President who's good at administering policy set by Congress. A policy wonk President who doesn't get what he wants from Congress is tempted to find ways around them. Trump has yielded to that temptation, bigly.
"
I spent the entire time my we watched "Downton Abbey" annoying my wife by yelling at the Crawley's to learn how to put on their own damned clothes. So I'm probably not the person most likely to have a positive opinion of the royal family.
All of that said, from this side of the pond the UK royals seem to have this weird dichotomony between the ones who are actually king or queen (or in line to be), and who seem to take the responsibilities of their office seriously, and the rest of the family, who end up having too much money and privilege and not enough to do so they end up behaving badly.
Over here, we've had Billy Beer, the wild and crazy Bush twins, Hunter Biden, and Uday and Qusay Trump. So I'm not sure we're in a position to point fingers.
If it's working for you all, carry on. Seems expensive, though. And they should all learn to put on their own clothes.
"
Also, I really miss the preview button too!
"
wj, I seem to have mastered the italics and bold thing: you put your text in as normal, then highlight whichever text you want to alter, and then press the relevant button along the bottom. And then you exit the text and it lasts.
"
Off topic
Ya know, it was really handy to be able to preview comments. Just to keep control over italics. So far, I haven't grasped what I'm doing wrong. But sometimes I get the bar with a choice of such things, and sometimes I don't.
"
The writer’s thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president’s role more that of a policy wonk.
Perhaps a better, i.e. less contentious, way to put this is: There are advantages to separating the job of head of state from the job of head of government. One spends most of his time on ceremonial functions. The other spends most of his time managing the executive branch of the (typically national) government. (Not to say that there might be something to be said for taking the same principle down to the state/province/region level.)
The first question someone proposing such a system needs to answer is: How do you pick those two people? In Britain, for example, the chief of state, the monarch, is a hereditary position, while the head of government is (indirectly**) elected. My impression is that the other (nominal) monarchies in Europe do something similar. There are doubtless other approaches, but I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable in the field to know of examples.
And this leads to the question for Britain, if they decide to abolish their monarchy: How do you choose a new chief of state going forward? I mean, you could just dump the necessary tasks in the PM. But have recent ones really demonstrated that they have the bandwidth to take in the additional work?
** It would be rude for someone from outside to describe the method as a kludge. Which is why I resisted the temptation.
On “The South shall writhe again”
>I live in north central Texas, and I never see anything like that.
i'm in central NC and i seen it now and then.
there was a big anti-Trump rally in town before the last election and all the local rednecks got their trucks fitted with their Trump & confederate flags and rolled coal up and down the street in front of the anti-Trump folks.
on one of the two main roads into town, there's an ancient and crumbling cinder-block garage with a huge confederate flag flying on a giant metal pole next to it. the person who owns the property (whose last name is "White" and who lives on "White's Way") had a billboard on the property for years, and it showed normal advertisements though an ad agency.
but one day. a local BLM group rented the sign space and put up a "Black Lives Matter" billboard. that sign lasted a few days. but then, Mr White cancelled his contract with the ad agency, and tore down the billboard. then he put a bunch of hand-painted racist signs on top of the garage, and put a fence around his flagpole.
occasionally, he also holds little rallies in front of the garage - all his dim-witted racist buddy line up and wave confederate flags and shout at passing cars.
it's directly across the street from a "Christian" retirement community. they don't seem to mind.
every single time i drive by, day or night, rain or shine, i roll down my window and give that flag the one finger salute. one day, that angered some jackhole in a truck in back of me, and he got on my tail and honked and ranted and raved at me until i got near the police station.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.