N.E.R.D.

Project Pomegranate.....

2009-11-01T13:25:00.003-05:00

Had sometime to kill on the weekend and a couple of Pomegranates were asking to be eaten :-). So I decided to photograph their trip to my tummy....complete flickr set here.

Russian Lenses Rule :-)

2009-10-31T20:50:00.002-04:00

It's late fall here in Toronto and I thought I give my M42 Russian lens, Helios 40-2, one more test. This time going for colour and as much swirly bokeh as this thing can produce.....

The colour reproduction of this lens is muted. It needs a bit of a kick, but once you kick it up a notch and add some contrast, it rocks. Check out the swirly bokeh in the out of focus leaves. Full flickr set is here.

Fix Ctrl-Alt-Backspace problem with Ubuntu 9.10+

2009-10-31T13:58:00.005-04:00

Downloaded and installed 9.10 yesterday and what do you know, someone decided to take away Ctrl-Alt-Backspace -- or what I call "Three Finger Salute for Linux". Whhhaaattt!!!!

How the heck are you supposed to kill and restart X without that.....A coworker suggested Alt-PrintScreen-K, but that just restarts GDM, not really useful when X decides to go south. Damit!!

The reason given on Ubuntu wiki is that "This is due to the fact that DontZap is no longer an option in the X server and has become an option in XKB instead."

Well, fear not, whoever disabled it also created a easy way to reenable it again. Here is what you do:

In Gnome (Ubuntu):


* Get to the System->Preferences->Keyboard menu.
* Select the "Layouts" tab and click on the "Layout Options" button.
* Then select "Key sequence to kill the X server" and enable "Control + Alt + Backspace".

In KDE (Kubuntu):

* Launch "systemsettings"
* Select "Regional & Language".
* Select "Keyboard Layout".
* Click on "Enable keyboard layouts" (in the Layout tab).
* Select the "Advanced" tab. Then select "Key sequence to kill the X server" and enable "Control + Alt + Backspace".

Using Command-Line:

You can type the following command to enable Zapping immediately.

setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

If you're happy with the new behaviour you can add that command to your ~/.xinitrc in order to make the change permanent.

Using HAL:

You can add the following line in /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-x11-input.fdi (inside the <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keys"> section):

<merge key="input.xkb.options" type="string">terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp</merge>

TPMG Fall Colour drive....

2009-10-31T12:40:00.002-04:00

This is slightly old, but it's still officially fall.....so here are a bunch of fall colour shots from a recent Toronto Photographers Meetup Group trip to Hockley Valley, Cannings Falls, Hogg's Falls, Eugenia Falls and Old Baldy Lookout Point. Complete flickr set can be viewed here.....

More fall colours to come.....stay tuned...

Solaris 10 Configuration Notes: How the hell does this thing work again....

2009-10-30T12:17:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've had the pleasure (read: pain) of working with Sloowaris, but now that we have two 48TB Sun X4540 Thumpers in house, I have to.....Uggghhhh :-). Here are some notes:

Remember sudo -i does not work. Use "su -" to get the root environment through ssh (login as regular user).
The machine has 6 Controllers with 8 Disks each for a total of 48 disks.
To find out all the disks that are available on your system and their Labels.....root # format Searching for disks...done AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
To see the status of the zpool runroot # zpool status pool: pool1 state: ONLINE status: The pool is formatted using an older on-disk format. The pool can still be used, but some features are unavailable. action: Upgrade the pool using 'zpool upgrade'. Once this is done, the pool will no longer be accessible on older software versions. scrub: none requested config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM pool1 ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0 c0t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c1t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c2t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c3t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c4t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0 c5t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c0t7d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c1t7d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c2t7d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c3t7d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 spares c4t7d0 AVAIL c5t7d0 AVAIL errors: No known data errors
Our zpool is at version 10 and the latest is version 15, so we upgrade:root # zpool upgrade This system is currently running ZFS pool version 15. The following pools are out of date, and can be upgraded. After being upgraded, these pools will no longer be accessible by older software versions. VER POOL --- ------------ 10 pool1 Use 'zpool upgrade -v' for a list of available versions and their associated features. root # zpool upgrade -v This system is currently running ZFS pool version 15. The following versions are supported: VER DESCRIPTION --- -------------------------------------------------------- 1 Initial ZFS version 2 Ditto blocks (replicated metadata) 3 Hot spares and double parity RAID-Z 4 zpool history 5 Compression using the gzip algorithm 6 bootfs pool property 7 Separate intent log devices 8 Delegated administration 9 refquota and refreservation properties 10 Cache devices 11 Improved scrub performance 12 Snapshot properties 13 snapused property 14 passthrough-x aclinherit 15 user/group space accounting For more information on a particular version, including supported releases, see: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/version/N Where 'N' is the version number. root # root # zpool upgrade pool1 This system is currently running ZFS pool version 15. Successfully upgraded 'pool1' from version 10 to version 15
zpools are like autonomous raid subsystems that will eventually be added into a pool (which is similar to a LV). There are 3 types of pools raidz (raid-5 like), raidz2 (raid-6 like) and mirror.
C0T0D0 and C1T0D0 are kinda special and can't be included in a zpool.....something about SVM metadb.....blahblahblah. Leave it out.root # metadb -i flags first blk block count a m p luo 16 8192 /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s7 a p luo 8208 8192 /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s7 a p luo 16400 8192 /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s7 a p luo 16 8192 /dev/dsk/c1t0d0s7 a p luo 8208 8192 /dev/dsk/c1t0d0s7 a p luo 16400 8192 /dev/dsk/c1t0d0s7 r - replica does not have device relocation information o - replica active prior to last mddb configuration change u - replica is up to date l - locator for this replica was read successfully c - replica's location was in /etc/lvm/mddb.cf p - replica's location was patched in kernel m - replica is master, this is replica selected as input W - replica has device write errors a - replica is active, commits are occurring to this replica M - replica had problem with master blocks D - replica had problem with data blocks F - replica had format problems S - replica is too small to hold current data base R - replica had device read errors
The following commands created the extra zpools needed:root # zpool add pool1 raidz1 c2t0d0 c3t0d0 c4t0d0 c5t0d0 c0t1d0 root # zpool add pool1 raidz1 c1t1d0 c2t1d0 c3t1d0 c4t1d0 c5t1d0 root # zpool add pool1 raidz1 c0t2d0 c1t2d0 c2t2d0 c3t2d0 c4t2d0 root # zpool add pool1 raidz1 c1t4d0 c2t4d0 c3t4d0 c4t4d0 c5t4d0 root # zpool add pool1 raidz1 c0t5d0 c2t5d0 c3t5d0 c4t5d0 c5t5d0 root # zpool add pool1 raidz1 c0t6d0 c1t6d0 c3t6d0 c4t6d0 c5t6d0
This leaves the following 4 disks to be added to spare:root # zpool add pool1 spare c5t2d0 c0t4d0 c1t5d0 c2t6d0
Now for the fun part.....finding out what the heck all this did to the system:root # zpool status pool: pool1 state: ONLINE scrub: none requested config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM pool1 ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0 c0t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c1t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c2t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c3t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c4t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0 c5t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c0t7d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c1t7d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c2t7d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c3t7d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0 c2t0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c3t0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c4t0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c5t0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c0t1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0 c1t1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c2t1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c3t1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c4t1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c5t1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0 c0t2d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c1t2d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c2t2d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c3t2d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c4t2d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0 c1t4d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c2t4d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c3t4d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c4t4d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c5t4d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0 c0t5d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c2t5d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c3t5d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c4t5d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c5t5d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0 c0t6d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c1t6d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c3t6d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c4t6d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 c5t6d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 spares c4t7d0 AVAIL c5t7d0 AVAIL c5t2d0 AVAIL c0t4d0 AVAIL c1t5d0 AVAIL c2t6d0 AVAIL errors: No known data errors root # zpool list NAME SIZE USED AVAIL CAP HEALTH ALTROOT pool1 36.2T 222K 36.2T 0% ONLINE - root # zfs list NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT pool1 161K 28.5T 28.8K /vol1
To create a CX special mount point we do:root # zfs create pool1/CX root # zfs list NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT pool1 201K 28.5T 28.8K /vol1 pool1/CX 33.6K 28.5T 33.6K /vol1/CX
When compiling iRODS on X4540 you might/will get an error like "make: Fatal error in reader: config/config.mk.........Unexpected end of line seen". This is caused because by default the system is configured for Sun's make command (in /usr/ccs/bin/make) rather than the gnu make command which resides in /usr/sfw/bin/gmake under Solaris 10. To fix this add /usr/sfw/bin in front of your $PATH variable, export it and use gmake instead of make (read the INSTALL.txt file that comes with iRODS to find out how you can do the steps manually instead of using irodssetup command).

...and one final Windows 7 Launch Party Video.......

2009-10-23T11:57:00.000-04:00

MMmmmmm.....Windows 7 Space Cake.......MMmmmmmm :-)

Hosting Your Windows 7 Torrenting Party - watch more funny videos

Ninite: Number 1 application you need in Windows.....

2009-10-23T11:47:00.001-04:00

There are a lot of fantastic free software packages out there for the PC if you're running windows. VLC, Firefox come to mind. The problem is that it takes a long time to install all of them on your PC. You know the routine, click, wait for download, double click, next, next, next, etc......Well, why? Head over to Ninite's website, choose the applications you want and let them create a custom "Meta Installer" for all the applications in one package. Run the installer and wham, you got all those free/opensource apps downloaded and installed on your machine in one shot, with minimal clickage :-). No sign-up required, Free for personal use, Just in time for Windows 7 Upgrade (or potentially downgrade). Now if only someone would make something like this on OSX, so I can install Final Cut Pro Studio without having grass grow under my seat, that would be nice :-).

Windows Launch Party....maybe it wasn't such a good idea.....

2009-10-23T11:21:00.000-04:00

Here is a video for all the people who attended -- or god forbid hosted -- a windows 7 launch party yesterday. This will give you a rough idea of what people will think of your party video in about 17 years......hehehehe :-)

Microsoft Photocopies Apple Store.....Literally.

2009-10-22T17:15:00.001-04:00

Holy crap.....MS has literally photocopied the Apple Store, replaced the Genius Bar with "Answer Bar" and the Genius' with Guru's......Does Microsoft ever come up with something original? :-) Here comes "Attack of the Clones".....hehehehe

FastPictureViewer RAW Codec Pack....FREE

2009-10-22T17:01:00.001-04:00

If you're using any one of Windows XP, Vista or 7 Platforms in 32 or 64 bit mode, you might be interested in the FastPictureViewer RAW picture codec pack from Axel Rietschin Software Developments. They are FREE for personal and educations use and give you fast access to preview RAW images taken by just about any digital camera capable of shooting RAW in Explorer. It even supports the slideshow function in Photo Gallery and Photo Viewer. The fact that it supports 32 and 64 versions of Windows is a bonus since most camera manufacturers -- atleast up to now -- have been very slow in supporting 64-bit windows. Here is a list of supported RAW Formats:

Adobe Digital Negative (.dng)
Canon Raw Image (.cr2, .crw)
Fuji Raw Image (.raf)
Hasselblad Raw Image (.3pr, .fff)
Kodak Raw Image (.dcr, .kdc)
Leica Raw Image (.raw, .rwl)
Minolta Raw Image (.mrw)
Nikon Raw Image (.nef, .nrw)
Olympus Raw Image (.orf)
Panasonic Raw Image (.rw2)
Pentax Raw Image (.pef)
Sigma Raw Image (.x3f)
Sony Raw Image (.arw, .sr2, .srf)

For a Photographer -- specially if you own an SLR and shoot RAW -- this little Gem is a must.

Windows 7....Bad for your Health

2009-10-22T12:06:00.003-04:00

....Atleast if you're in Japan. Take a look at this monster...seven freaking patties stacked up in between two buns.....in time to celebrate Windows 7 launch. You'll pay (roughly) $17.10 for the pleasure of clogging your arteries with this 5.1 inch tall monster. Once you're done -- if you're still alive -- you'll finally understand how your computer feels after a windows installation :-).

National Film Board of Canada's New Iphone/Ipod Touch App....

2009-10-22T11:20:00.001-04:00

I usually don't tend to write about apps, but this one got my attention. Download the FREE NFB app and you get access to over a thousand films, documentaries, animations and trailers on your IPhone or Ipod Touch. I think (hope) that this move will be the trickle before the storm that will finally open the flood gates of media archives being made available to people everywhere. It is a real shame that these works are usually housed/guarded in some concrete bunker, being only available to specialists. I will not bore you with my opinions on archives/copyrights/rights management of our collective cultural treasures by the "high priests"......Let's just say I'm crawling out of my skin in joy that NFB has taken the (hopefully) first step :-).

ASCII Art at it's finest.....

2009-10-19T12:14:00.002-04:00

Not sure if this has already been mentioned somewhere.....It's pretty old, but I happen to come across it today. It's a great rendition of everyone's favorite space opera done by Simon Jansen in ASCII. Telenetification (is that even a word?) by Snore, with improvements by Mike Edwards. Anyways, use the following command, sit back and enjoy.....Star Wars in all its ASCII glory :-)
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

If you don't know how to telnet, click here to see it in your browser.

Got 20 minutes......you need to watch this.

2009-10-13T20:13:00.002-04:00

Here is a 20 minute video of a fantastic (stunning, mind blowing, awesome, whatever....) projection mapping performance put on during the Ingravid Festival in Figueres, Spain.

Telenoika Audiovisual Mapping @ Ingravid Festival, Figueres 9/2009 [FULL] from Telenoika on Vimeo.

// català
Mapeig audiovisual de l'Associació Cultural Telenoika a la façana del Teatre Jardí, en la primera edició del festival Ingravid de Figueres. 20 min.

// english
Audiovisual Mapping made by the Telenoika Cultural Association into the Jardí Theater facade, on the first edition of Ingravid Festival in Figueres. 20 min.

Crèdits / Credits :
Omar Àlvarez, Miki Arregui, Miguel Gozalbo, Kasero, Eloi Maduell, Santi Vilanova :: from Telenoika.NET -2009-

Agraiments / Thanks to :
Assoc.Cultural Telenoika
Mas Queló
Festival Ingràvid
LABfàbrica.NET
BAF General de Catalunya

Contact ? mapping@telenoika.net
www.telenoika.net
www.festivalingravid.cat
www.labfabrica.net
www.playmodes.com
www.baf.cat

[Warping and video-player software developped by Eloi Maduell from Playmodes.com with Openframeworks.cc libs. Software will be available for downloading soon at www.playmodes.com]

Helios 40-2 Test Shoot - Fall Garden

2009-10-10T13:14:00.000-04:00

I finally had a chance to take my newest acquisition -- a Helios 40-2 85mm/1.5 Lens -- out for a shoot. Nothing fancy just stuff in the backyard. This lens for those who don't know has a specific optical aberration that allows it to produce the so-called "swirly bokeh" effect. Check the out of focus shot of leaves below to get an idea of what it looks like. The complete set as usual is on flickr.

Chroma-key Genitals.....Next stop, DigiPorn©

2009-10-06T12:32:00.000-04:00

Everyone who's lived on this earth for the past 10 years or so should have heard of Peter Jackson. You know, the Director of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Well, Mr. Jackson's Effects house, Weta Workshop is at it again. This time pushing the envelope of what you can do with Digital Genitals. YEP, you heard right, green-screen naughty bits for indie-film maker Joe Swanberg. Gotta love technology.

Birthday Suit from Jason Lewis

Toronto Nuit Blanche 2009 - Ryerson University

2009-10-05T17:45:00.000-04:00

As you already know Mike Lawrie and I had a Art installation for Nuit Blanche 2009 called Multitorch. We spent the entire night at Ryerson University's Rogers Communications Centre where the installation was located. I found a few minutes to sneak away and take some pics of our installation and some of the other installations at Ryerson. You can find the full flickr set here.

inCENTive:
Multitorch:
Of Plastic Circumstance:
Rogers Communication Centre:

TPMG visits Toronto Zoo....

2009-10-05T17:10:00.000-04:00

This is a couple of weeks old, because it took a while to sort through all the pics. They are pictures from a recent visit to Toronto Zoo. The complete flickr set can be viewed here.

Nuit Blanche: Multitorch

2009-10-03T12:53:00.007-04:00

Toronto Nuit Blanche was a blast. For those of you who don't know:

Nuit Blanche (literally White Night or All-Nighter in French) is an annual all-night arts festival. Its exact beginning is disputed between Paris, St Petersburg, and Berlin, but, taking elements from all of these, the idea of a night-time festival of the arts has spread around the world since 1997, taking hold from Montreal to Madrid and Lima to Leeds. A Nuit Blanche will typically have museums, private and public art galleries, and other cultural institutions open and free of charge, with the centre of the city itself being turned into a de facto art gallery, providing space for art installations, performances (music, film, dance, performance art), themed social gatherings, and other activities.

This year the local Toronto Artist and Ryerson Image Arts Student, Mike Lawrie and I have entered a Independent project -- Multitorch -- under the Ryerson University/Faculty of Communications And Design's Lightup the Night. The project involves a 23'x13' (26' diagonal) projection weighing in at 4096x2048 pixels driven by a multitouch engine. Up to 10 Infrared LED torches are handed out to the audience and the system will allow them to interact with the projection in front of them. As far as we know this is the largest (and highest resolution) multitouch screen deployed to date. The project uses CCV (Community Core Vision) tool for tracking, OSC (Open Sound Control) for communication and a 4500 line custom java visual engine. Here is a short 5:00 minute Timelapse video.

TPMG Strobist Shoot......

2009-10-02T17:04:00.000-04:00

While I was on holidays (two weeks ago), TPMG (Toronto Photography Meetup Group) had a Strobist event that took place up at University of Toronto's Victoria College. We ended up shooting well into the night (12:30 am) and walked away with a nice set of Pics. Here is a sampling of the entire set located on flickr:

Secret Sauces....

2009-09-28T19:33:00.001-04:00

TPMG visits Canadian National Exhibition (CNE)

2009-09-28T12:49:00.000-04:00

This is a bit of a backlog clearing job. The Toronto Photography Meetup Group recently visited The EX (Canadian National Exhibition) in Toronto. I thought it was a good chance to try out my Lens Baby Composer Lens and do some weird black and white pics. Here are a couple of the good ones.....

The complete flickr set is here.

A couple of test shots with Minolta Rokkor 50mm/f1.2

2009-09-28T12:35:00.000-04:00

So the other day I had a bit of time and decided to paint the back of my Rokkor Lens. The lens originally had a Monilta mount, but with a lot of patience and tons of sanding I've modified it to fit the Canon EOS mount. The only thing that bugged me about the conversion was the fact that I was getting these weird flares in some of my shots and most of my "good" shots had really low contrast (washed out colours).

To remedy this I decided to grab some black car touch up paint from canadian tire and carefully touch up the inside of the new mount (which was silver since I sanded the aluminum down). Well I'm happy to report that everything went well (ie: I didn't destroy my baby) and the image quality has improved considerably. Here are a few test shots:

As you can see the depth-of-field is razor-thin, but once the contrast goes up the images are quite pleasing. The complete flickr set is here.

gksudo: Or how this old dog learned new tricks :-)

2009-09-28T12:19:00.000-04:00

Okay if you know about gksudo, fine. I just found out about it a little while back when I was trying to run ethereal. You see under Ubuntu (and a lot of other Linux distros) the concept of root user has been removed. There is no root (well there is, but you can't access it), unless you specifically modify your system to activate it. That's fine (most of the time), since you can use sudo to accomplish almost anything as the administrator. One thing that doesn't work properly are the graphical applications that need root access. So here is where gksudo comes to rescue. In the case of ethereal I would issue the following command to get it to prompt me for sudo and run as root user:
gksudo ethereal
So next time you get tempted to open up that root account on your Ubuntu install, don't, use gksudo and get those gui apps running as root.

How to change the default command line text editor in Ubuntu....

2009-09-28T12:10:00.000-04:00

I love Ubuntu, but there is one thing that really bugs the hell out of me. The default configured editor in Ubuntu is nano, a Pico clone. I hate Pico, therefor I hate nano :-). So how would you go about fixing this and changing the default editor to vi (or vim):

Issue the following command: sudo update-alternatives --config editor
Enter the superuser password when prompted.

At the following screen choose the number beside the editor you want as default or alternatively just press Enter to keep the default the same.

There are 3 alternatives which provide `editor'.

  Selection    Alternative
-----------------------------------------------
          1    /usr/bin/vim.tiny
          2    /bin/ed
*+        3    /bin/nano

Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number: 1
Using '/usr/bin/vim.tiny' to provide 'editor'.

That's it.....Have fun.