Because no one reads my blog anyway...

Because no one reads my blog anyway, it can't hurt to express my less-than popular political views here. I can't lose readers, right?

Firearms refresher course
1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
Guns have a perfectly legitimate use as defense weapons; they've saved lives.

2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
The response time of a .357 is far grater than that of the police, even if they are next door.

3. Colt: The original point and click interface.

4. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.

5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
If you outlaw guns, outlaw will continue using them. If you get rid of all guns, they will just find another way (or make their own guns).

6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.
Crime is caused when people choose to do bad things, not when a gun chooses to fire.

7. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
I believe we have a right to own and operate any mechanical device, regardless of what it does.

8. If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.

9. Those who trade liberty for security have neither.

10. The United States Constitution 1791. All Rights Reserved.

11. What part of "shall not be infringed" do you not understand?

12. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the
others.

13. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.
Guns kill far less people each day than cars. So lets outlaw cars, and see where that gets us, eh?

14. Guns only have two enemies; rust and politicians.

15. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.

16. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.

17. 911: Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer.
How many times have the police ever prevented a crime in progress, instead of just catching the criminal?

18. Assault is a behavior, not a device.

19. Criminals love gun control; it makes their jobs safer.
If you were a criminal, you would not care weather or not the law says you can carry a gun, you'll carry one anyway. You do care if your target has a gun.

20. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.

21. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control
them.

22. You have only the rights you are willing to fight for.

23. Enforce the gun control laws we ALREADY have; don't make more.

24. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.

25. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.


If you say we should outlaw guns because they are dangerous (or because they can be used for crime), then by that logic you should outlaw matches. You can get hurt with them, and you can commit a crime using them. They have useful purpose, starting fires, and so do guns, shooting things.

Flickr widget

For fun, I just made a flickr widget:

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..