A post-processing example

Published by dara on 10 November, 2011 in Photo. Closed

Serious photographers are careful planners.  Photography is basically about light, so timing and positioning can be key.  I’m just an amateur though, and most of my photographs are taken in the pursuit of other activities.  Consequently, I don’t always plan things right.

Consider the shot below.  It was taken on a hiking trip to Telescope Peak, almost two years ago.  The purpose of the trip was to reach the peak, so I didn’t have time to carefully compose the photo or wait for the sun to move to a better position.  I’d call it a nice scene, but not a particularly striking photograph.

Unmodified

 

This is precisely the sort of situation where post processing, using a tool like Lightroom, can make a huge difference.

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Take out your ice skates

Published by dara on 9 November, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed

No, not winter yet.  But if your feet are itching for skates, there’s at least one place in NYC you can go out for a spin.

Central Park

Android out

Published by dara on 8 November, 2011 in Tech. Closed

I’ve had my Nexus S phone for only about 3 weeks, but at this point its main purpose is decorating a drawer in my desk.  That wasn’t exactly my plan, but it looks like it will soon be back on eBay, from whence it came.  There are two real problems I have with it.

1) It’s not a good phone.

I’ve dropped goodness knows how many calls in the past week.  It got so bad that for long conversations, I just started using Skype and paying by the minute.  I have one call that got interrupted 4 times in 15 minutes.  Granted, the reception isn’t great in my room, but the little Samsung dumb phone I borrowed before getting the Nexus had no such problems.  Other annoyances include limited battery life and the fact that the phone gets noticeably warm during long calls.

2) Application quality is mediocre.

This is a slightly unfair generalization, but of the basic apps I use, every single one is clunkier than on the iPhone, starting with the Browser and Mail apps.  It is frankly a little surprising given how slick Chrome is on the desktop, but there it is.

I guess the moral of the story is that mobile platforms are difficult, and even large successful companies like Google are still figuring things out.  I hope they figure out fast though.  I’d hate for Android to wind up being the Windows 95 of the 2010s.

Getting Colorful

Published by dara on 4 November, 2011 in Daily. Closed

The leaves are about to ‘peak’ here in southern New York state.  I made a short detour to Rockefeller State Park this morning (Westchester, near Briarcliff Manor).  It was a scenic but crunchy walk.

Leaves

Autumn Weather

Published by dara on 29 October, 2011 in Daily and Photo. Closed

Two days before Halloween in New York City, and there’s 3 inches of snow on the ground.  I’m sure there’s a good explanation for this.  In the mean time, I’m glad I have winter hiking gear.

Snow in NYC

Unimpressed with Android

Published by dara on 28 October, 2011 in Tech. Closed

Android

I’ve been curious about Google’s Android for some time.  Technically, it’s an interesting design – a curious amalgam of Linux, free software packages, and a custom Java runtime.  Moreover, unlike Apple’s iOS, Android isn’t a closed system.  You can more or less run whatever you want on the phone.  In fact last winter I installed an x86 port of Android in VMWare as part of a class project.

Meanwhile, my iPhone has remained essentially unusable at my apartment (thanks AT&T).

So when I found I could get a Nexus S with a prepaid phone plan that was both cheaper than my current plan and offered coverage at home, it seemed like a good idea.

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Fall is Here

Published by dara on 22 October, 2011 in Daily. Closed

Fall is Here

 

Fall is arriving in New York.  Sadly so are midterm exams, term projects and an ample number of problem sets, but it’s nice to see a little color on the occasions that I manage to escape the city for a bit.

Fun with OpenVPN

Published by dara on 16 October, 2011 in Tech. Closed

OpenVPN

One of the disadvantages of working from places like the library and the train is that the wireless network connections aren’t exactly secure.  For casual browsing, that’s not terribly important, but even for stuff like Facebook and GMail it would be nice to have a way of ensuring the connection is secure.  Unfortunately, it’s not always possible or practical to use HTTPS connections for such things.

The obvious solution is a secure point-to-point connection to another machine on a wired network – in other words a VPN.  The secured machine will act as an IP routing gateway, so that any insecure traffic that is intercepted will appear to be coming from that machine.

While I was at the library yesterday I created just such a setup using OpenVPN.  As usual, it was more complicated to configure than I’d anticipated.

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MacOS X 10.7 compilers

Published by dara on 15 October, 2011 in Programming and Tech. Closed

Compile window

As part of a little project to make detecting memory/pointer errors easier for beginning C/C++ programmers, I’ve installed a number of different compilers on my system.  I wanted to make sure that my approach was widely applicable.

At this point, there are 4 (3.5 really) major C/C++ compilers available for MacOS X 10.7.  What follows is a brief description of each, and some background as to how we got here.

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Building gcc on MacOS X

Published by dara on 14 October, 2011 in Computers and Programming. Closed

Apple has never included a stock version of GCC with their development tools, but now with the current version of Xcode, they don’t even include a modified version.  Seeing as their plan going forward is to move entirely to Clang/LLVM, if you intend to use GCC on OS X, you’ll have to build it yourself.  It’s not a terribly difficult process, but it can be a bit tricky the first few times around, particularly when it comes to configuring the build.

Instructions follow.

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