Flickr badge

Just trying out the flickr flash badge:

www.flickr.com

Darn. Blogger doesn't let it work.

Passive solar homes video

This video is about passive solar houses from a company called enertia. They use an interesting design technique described in the video to make the houses provide all the heating and cooling needs from the power of the sun.

Here's a more detailed explanation of how it works.

Interesting videos about energy efficiency

RMI.org (Rocky Mountain Institute) is an organization about energy efficiency in design. They have five videos of lectures given at Stanford university. The speaker tells how energy efficient designs can actually be cheaper to build in some cases. Add that to the savings in energy costs, you have a very appealing situation.

Best looking photos on the web

The dude over at XKCD has made a web program that uses user input to find the best looking picutres on the web. It's called thefairest.info. The page of the 'Fairest'.
There are some really great photos there. None of them are mine.....

Makeing a fake HDR in the GIMP part 2

Last time I told you a way to make a HDR (or an image that looks like one) from a single JPEG.
Since then, I've made a few modifications to the process. This tutorial is for those who are very familiar with their image editor (I used the GIMP, but Photoshop works just as well).

1. Decompose HSV
2. Duplicate value layer
3. Invert new layer, then blur (5 to 20 px is good, depending on size of image)
4. Set mode of new layer to soft light, then duplicate it.
5. Merge down the first new layer, then the second (It gets messed up if you do it the other way around)
6. You are now back down to the Value, Hue, and Saturation layers.
   
7. Turn up the contrast of the value layer until it looks bad, then bring it back just until it looks OK.
8. Re-compose the image. You're Done!

Here is an image I used this technique on:
Before:

After:

Making a fake HDR in the GIMP

I just was over at digg and I saw these steps for making a fake HDR (Thanks, Elliuotatar).
By doing this, you can make an HDR from a single JPEG, instead of needing a bunch of files (the quality is not as good, though).
1. Duplicate image to a second layer.
2. Image->Adjustments->Desaturate second layer. (Make it black and white.)
3. Image->Adjustments->Invert second layer. (Make it a negative.)
4. Do a 64 pixel gaussian blur on the second layer. (Low pass filter. Prevents loss of high frequncy contrast on surfaces.) Edit: You can just use regular gaussian blur at about 5 to 15 pixels.
5. Set the second layer to soft light.

This works in Photoshop or The GIMP.
And there you have it. If you want to see some real HDR images, Stuck in Customs from flickr has over one thousand of them.

Most diggs ever

As far as I know, this story has gotten the most diggs of any ever submitted.







Update: The story has passed 30,000 diggs. This is almost twice the previous record.

Spreading the number

I'm spreading The number (Follow the like to find out why).
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I hope my blog doesn't get taken down..

Age of empires II (AOE 2) tip

You know when you have been playing an age of empires game for a while, and you are low on gold but there is none left on the map? Try this tip:
When starting a game, always have one or more ally. Then, when you get past the dark age, build a market. In the market build trade carts, with the gather point on your ally's market. The trade carts will go back and forth, bringing you gold each time. More trade carts = more gold per minute. You will continue to receive gold until either your carts, your market, or their market is destroyed, or the way between the two markets is blocked. NOTE: building your market close to your ally's market will dramatically reduce the amount of gold you receive.
This works in age of kings or in the conquers expansion pack.

Last.fm down?

Is it just me, or is last.fm very broken right now? If I try to get to any page other than 'My last.fm page', the page is blank. There isn't even any HTML in the pages. Very odd.

technorati tags:last.fm, html