Webcams As Cameras, Webcams As Mirrors

So, do the majority of webcams display an image of you as if you are having your picture taken, or do they show you as if you are looking in the mirror?

I have seen people use webcam pics on their websites, as their avatar, etc. Often times when there's writing in the picture, it's horizontally flipped. This ANNOYS me.

Despite my annoyance, I'm genuinely unqualified to make a judgment regarding what looks "right" and "wrong". What's more natural? To see one's self as a camera does, or as in a mirror?

Let's throw out the obvious flipped nature of mirrored text. What is more natural to you? If you spend a fair amount of time talking to others via your webcam, wouldn't the webcam-as-camera be more natural to them? Do they care either way?

Is a mirrored webcam a tool of the ego? Am I crazy?

This beat-up old Dell laptop I am using has a checkbox by which you can choose to flip the webcam image horizontally. I think it defaults to *not* flipping the image, but I'm not entirely sure. That's what it was when I first went into its settings.

I have no doubt that most webcams give you control over the mirror/camera nature of the picture.

From what I have seen, Mac laptops display a mirror image by default. Are Mac users more narcissitic? OF COURSE. THEY ARE MAC USERS.

Splotchy learns something in the midst of making this post

I was looking at myself in the webcam and moving around a bit. The webcam was set as a camera, not a mirror. When I went left, my image went right. I went right, my image went left. It was disconcerting! Okay, I can see why people might want to have the webcam be a mirror image. When they are obsessively looking into their own eyes, preening, making kissy-faces, it can be helpful to see the image move the same direction.

Now what you've been waiting for, but didn't know it - a terrible camera filter

I have played around with the preset webcam filters on a Mac laptop. It has some nice effects (stretchy stuff, sepia, comic book, etc.).

When I was playing around with the webcam for this post, I noticed this Dell laptop *also* has some "nice" effects. I would be remiss if I didn't at least give you one sample. It's called "ArtyFarty" under the "Fashionista" category. YES, REALLY.

Note, the playing card isn't part of the filter -- that's me. The sneer is all me. But the beret, luxurious hair and sexy glasses? Filter. ALL filter.



Happy birthday, Internet!

41,132 Rickrolls And Counting

You know about Rickrolling, right? (e.g. Here, this is my theory on quantum physics)

Okay.

On the Twitter I use a URL-shortening service called Bit.ly. It takes long URLs and scrunches them. There are other websites like Tinyurl and the even slightly shorter Ow.ly, but I like using Bit.ly for some reason.

Bit.ly (and the other URL-shortening websites, I presume) use some sort of algorithm to reduce URLs to their small form. It really has nothing to do with *who* is requesting the shortened URL -- the smaller URL will be the same.

One thing neat about Bit.ly is it will show you how many clicks have gone through one of their shortened URLs.

Out of curiousity, I picked the most-viewed video of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" (over 18M views thus far) and Bit.ly'ed it.



I personally want to thank Bit.ly and the other URL-shortening services for making Rickrolling possible.

The IT Worker's Credo

Don't presume anyone is an idiot, and don't be surprised when they turn out to be one.

A Change To How Blogger Parses Comments

You may or may not know this, but you can do limited HTML markup in comments on blogs that run on the Blogger software (*.blogspot.com websites).

I will occasionally use <i> </i> tags (you can use lower-case or upper-case i's, it doesn't matter) to italicize text in a comment. I like to do this to another person's text that I am responding to, so it's clear the text wasn't written by me.


Example:
What I type:
<i>Hey, how's it going, Splotchy?</i>

Fine, thanks for asking!


The text above gets displayed in the comment as:
Hey, how's it going, Splotchy?

Fine, thanks for asking!


Well, I noticed when I tried to italicize some text in a comment earlier this week that things are a little different. When I previewed the comment it looked fine, but when I actually published the thing there were no line breaks.

Instead, the comment appeared like this:
Hey, how's it going, Splotchy?Fine, thanks for asking!

Icky, eh?

Previously, Blogger was converting my line breaks into HTML line breaks, which are represented by the <BR/> tag. Now, it appears that they have modified their software. If Blogger now sees an HTML tag included in a comment, it no longer converts line breaks to the <BR/> tags recognized by browsers.

A little sidenote for those who want to know. A line break in an HTML source file does not equal a line break in a browser. Blogger does the heavy lifting of converting the line breaks that you make in your blog posts to HTML line breaks (<BR/> -- case doesn't matter here -- it could just as well be <br/>).

So, you have the option of giving up your use of italics in comments, or you can be a little amateur HTML coder and add a <BR/> to force a line break yourself.


Here's an example how to do it:
What I type:
<i>Hey, how's it going, Splotchy?</i>
<BR/><BR/>
Fine, thanks for asking!

Which will display in a comment as:
Hey, how's it going, Splotchy?

Fine, thanks for asking!


Anyways, I'm a geek. Happy commenting! Feel free to give this a try on this post, you nice people, you.

Try it with and without the <BR/> tags if'n you don't believe me.

We Are Came Back!

Today, we finally have a new, garbled English phrase to supplant "All your base are belong to us!".

A Turkish hacker group hosed the popular image hosting site Photobucket yesterday, pointing people's browsers to a server with their own page.

Click for larger image




More on the hackery here.

I'm A Twitter

I signed up for Twitter today (I also added a little Twittery sidebar on the right).

This will be used for dealing with the detritus too insignificant for my blog (yes, my blog is significant).

I'm In Your Address Bar

I was futzing around with my template, and thought I'd try creating an ICO file that is displayed on a browser address bar when someone browses a page on my blog.

You're welcome!


UPDATE:

Hmmm, I dunno if using the .ico file works in Internet Explorer. It's not showing up for me in IE 6. Well, it works in Firefox, at least.

Google Begins Blurring Faces In Street View

Via Slashdot:

Google has begun blurring faces in its Street View service, which has spawned privacy concerns since its introduction last year. Google has been working for a couple of years to advance the state of the art of face recognition. Quoting News.com: 'The technology uses a computer algorithm to scour Google's image database for faces, then blurs them, said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps, in an interview at the Where 2.0 conference...' Google wrote about the program in their Lat/Long blog.

Of course, geek that I am, I immediately thought about advertising billboards with people's faces on them. I look forward to many blurred ads in our Google Street View future.

We Have Been Street Viewed!

The other day I popped my home address into Google Maps search and was surprised to find my street and home visible on Google Maps Street View.

Here's one of the cars Google employs to take its pictures of streets like mine (and possibly yours). There is a multiple-camera doohickey on the top of the car that enables the capturing of 360 degree composite images.



Here's a zoomed-in picture of my living room window. A little invasive, no? Is that someone lurking among the curtains?


Rotating the view around, I can see that the Google Street View car must have been by our house in late summer/early fall, as the leaves are changing on the maple across the street from us.



There's helpful pointers on the web instructing one how to use Street View, but I'd figure I'd include my own sample Street View, for the lovely Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs.

Search for Wrigley Field!


Found it! Now click the Street view link!


Look at that throng of people! Perhaps a Cubs game was in progress, or had just let out? (click on pic for a much larger image)


Rotating the view, we see a shocking scene. Either one of the Street View Car's cameras malfunctioned, or there was a disruption in the space-time continuum at the Wrigleyville Taco Bell! (click for bigger)


I'll be attending a Cubs game tomorrow night, so I will inform you of what I find, assuming I don't get sucked into a black hole.


If any Cubs fans want to take a stab at what game is happening in the Google Street Views, please feel free to do so.

I did see a helpful message on the Cubby Bear's ticker sign (click for bigger):
The sign is congratulating swimmer Christina Loukas on winning a silver medal.

Help, My Font Is Too Big

My choice for a RSS feed reader, the Google Reader app, with really, really big letters.

I did the font-enlargening on purpose. Please don't worry.

You can click on each Reader image to see the font rendered in its proper behemoth size -- each image represents a maximized browser window on a 1280 x 960 monitor.

Big

Bigger

Biggest

The

Okay, one last test. Though I am not promising this is my last test.

I predict that if there is only one word in a post title and it's a normally omitted word, it will be used in the HTML filename regardless.

I imagine they have some extra little bit of logic in the Blogger code to handle this situation.


UPDATE:

Interesting! They actually don't keep the omitted word, but substituted a generic "blog-post.html" as the HTML filename.

I imagine no one reading these test posts think they are remotely interesting, but I'm all geekily proud of myself. Good job, L'il Splotchy!

A An The A An The A An The

Another test.

This one is going to rawk.


UPDATE:

Oh Blogger I am so on to you.

The HTML file name is "an-a-the-an.html".

A An The A An The A An The

The The The The The The The

Another test. You're enjoying this, aren't you?

UPDATE:

Name of the HTML filename is "the-the-the.html".

I think my theory may be correct.

The The The The The The The

The The The The The

Hi, I'm just testing something here.

I don't know if you notice this kinda stuff, but I do.

If you have "Enable Post Pages" set to Yes on the Archive section of your blog settings, each post you create actually results in the creation of a separate webpage.

The name of the webpage filename will be some form of what the title of your post is.

For example, for my Negative Space Signage Update post, the name of its HTML page is "negative-space-signage-update.html".

There are rules which cause deviations from this naming convention. For example, if your post title is really long, your HTML filename will just use the first handful of words (if I am bored at some point, maybe I'll figure out the length where the cutoff occurs). If your post title has punctuation, the punctuation is omitted from the HTML filename.

I have also noticed some common words ("a", "an", "the") are omitted as well. For example, Here Come The Birds becomes "here-come-birds.html".

Which brings us to this post. What if I have a post that only consists of words that are normally omitted?

I don't know what's going to happen.

So, I publish this, and hope Blogger doesn't break. Although it would be kinda cool if I broke Blogger.


UPDATE:

Crazy... The title of the webpage of this post is "the-the.html".

I'm wondering if the first "The" is disregarded, then it takes whatever follows the "The" as a word for the post title.

Something like this

The The The The The

Oh you can bet I'll be testing this some more. More excitement to follow!

UNIX Script Goodness And Variable Prefix/Suffix Stripping Fun

Here's something you probably have no interest in, but it's a script I wrote to help me with UNIX shell programming that I engage in from time to time.

There's a nice way of easily taking a piece of text (often called a "String" by programmer-types) and stripping off pieces of it, either from the front or the back, using variable evaluation.

One thing to note about UNIX is that are many, many different ways to do the same thing. This is just one little feature of UNIX I like to use.

I wrote a script to help me when I want to do this prefix/suffix stripping kind of variable evaluation.

Here is the script in its entirety:


function showUsage {
print
print 'USAGE:'
print 'ksh -f variableTest.sh '
print
print '============================================================================================================='
print '${variable#pattern} evaluates variable, but removes the smallest portion of its prefix which matches pattern.'
print '${variable##pattern} evaluates variable, but removes the largest portion of its prefix which matches pattern.'
print '${variable%pattern} evaluates variable, but removes the smallest portion of its suffix which matches pattern.'
print '${variable%%pattern} evaluates variable, but removes the largest portion of its suffix which matches pattern.'
print '============================================================================================================='
print
print 'Special instructions:'
print '======================'
print 'To stop the shell from interpreting wildcards you may use for patterns,'
print 'run this script like the following:'
print
print 'ksh -f variableTest.sh '
print
print EXAMPLE: ksh -f variableTest.sh aabbcc \'a*\'
print
print
exit 1
}

clear

if [ $# -ne 2 ]
then
showUsage
fi

variable=$1
pattern=$2

print
print '============================================================================================================='
print '${variable#pattern} evaluates variable, but removes the smallest portion of its prefix which matches pattern.'
print '${variable##pattern} evaluates variable, but removes the largest portion of its prefix which matches pattern.'
print '${variable%pattern} evaluates variable, but removes the smallest portion of its suffix which matches pattern.'
print '${variable%%pattern} evaluates variable, but removes the largest portion of its suffix which matches pattern.'
print '============================================================================================================='
print
print 'variable: ' $variable
print 'pattern: ' $pattern
print
print '${variable#pattern} ' ${variable#$pattern}
print '${variable##pattern} ' ${variable##$pattern}
print '${variable%pattern} ' ${variable%$pattern}
print '${variable%%pattern} ' ${variable%%$pattern}



Most of this script is just printing stuff out to the screen. There's a whole big piece of code that just tells you how to run the script.

Anyways, say you want to find out what directory you are in on a UNIX file system, and want to save this off in a variable, but without all the nested subdirectories your directory rests in (UNIX is all about the nested subdirectories).

You can use this script to figure out the right pattern to get your current directory minus the path.

Example:

Let's say I'm in:
/usr/appl/abc/very/very/long/directory

After some trial and error running my script, I can eventually figure out how to get my current directory, minus the path.


>ksh -f variableTest.sh /usr/appl/abc/very/very/long/directory '*/'

variable: /usr/appl/abc/very/very/long/directory
pattern: */

${variable#pattern} usr/appl/abc/very/very/long/directory
${variable##pattern} directory
${variable%pattern} /usr/appl/abc/very/very/long/directory
${variable%%pattern} /usr/appl/abc/very/very/long/directory



Your current working directory (including the path) is stored in a variable called $PWD.

So, to get your current working directory only in a script you are writing, you can just write the following line:


MY_DIRECTORY=${PWD##*/}


Why did I write a script to do this? Because I can never remember how the pattern matching works, and thought it would be easier to write a script to show me instead.

Now, you're probably asking me, "Splotchy, why would you put something in a program that many, including you, do not fully understand or remember how it works?"

As Matty Boy would say, that's a great question, hypothetical question asker!

One thing that I neglected to mention about UNIX programming is that it is notoriously squirrelly. And this feature I am making use of is pretty damned squirrelly, too.

They're So Incredible

Oh my I'm in heaven.

There are cheesy soundtrack songs that form the core of my being. This is one of them.

Until today I did not know this video existed.

God Bless You, Internet!

Revenge - They're So Incredible (from the film Revenge of the Nerds)

A Table Full Of Colors

Just an HTML table full of colors.

What's In Your Clipboard?

Enough time has passed since the first time I asked the question, What's In Your Clipboard?

Seeing as it's 2008, I feel it's safe to ask again.

Here's what's in mine:

get....


So, what's in your clipboard?

How Computer Programming Pollutes The Mind

This post will probably not make sense to you. Still, I'll soldier on.

As I had a quick lunch over at the UIC cafeteria today while picking up a schoolbook for MizSplotchy, I noticed a Studs Terkel autograph on a poster where he had also scrawled "Peace = Sanity".

The first thought that popped into my head was, to properly indicate equality and not assignment, he should have used "==" instead of "=".

What's In Your Clipboard?

I was working on an issue at work and thought I had a file system's subdirectory in my clipboard (the mysterious place that data goes when you "Cut" or "Copy" it on a computer) which I needed to paste in at a UNIX prompt.

But, what I pasted was:
http://samuraifrog.blogspot.com/

So, what's in your clipboard?