christopher's lives (v5.3)

(originally posted on Flickr – but, i wanted it here, too…)

first i want to point out that this is on a 42" lcd hdtv in the living room and i use a wireless kb and mouse…

second, pretty much everything you see is Yahoo! Widgets, Rainmeter, ObjectDock, and Stickies… if you want your desktop like mine, just google those names…

on the left is our budget for the month using Stickies, but, if you look, it is a bit transparent and you will see it is actually the top sticky atop a few others, but this is the only open one – they roll up… (i hide windows desktop icons under my sticky notes…) you can see i have another little note in the middle of the screen, at the top…
beneath the budget are a couple icons of stuff i need to do – check out the PlayOn app, put Iron Man on my mom’s psp, etc…. it’s sorta’ my to-do stack… and the bottom left hand corner – that little blue thing – i can drag a file onto that and it will auto-magically upload it to the ’stuff’ directory on my website…

ok, at the bottom edge is ObjectDock – ya’ know, like the dock on a mac… it is hidden until i hover my mouse at the bottom of the screen and, as my mouse moves, the icons under it enlarge… in this pic, i clicked on ‘APPS’ and it opened the assortment of apps i keep handy… not pictured is the other ObjectDock, which i have set up as the system tray/task bar – it’s hidden on the left… i have used ObjectDock (paid version) for years and can’t live without it… it does many more tricks i won’t get into here…

ok, the news headlines are Rainmeter – which is like a widget engine, but not for the faint-of-heart – it is very complex to customize and you need to have some coding knowledge… as you see, i have rss feeds from home-barista for coffee geek discussions, playstation lifestyle for ps3/psp stuff and google for "real" news…

in the middle, since i love love love photography, a Yahoo Widget showing recent popular photos posted on DeviantArt on the left and another Yahoo Widget on the right with recent popular photos posted to Flickr… they are set to change every few minutes… i leave room since the photos come in all shapes and sizes… both have very impressive customization settings as far as what kind of content to show… for instance, the deviantart widget, of course, has tons more types of art than photography and the flickr widget can show your own stream, favorites, photos from groups and/or contacts, and you can even use it to upload to flickr…

at the top, pretty obvious, Yahoo Widgets for date/time, cpu usage, and upload/download speed…

which brings us to the right edge… i have been a webcam junkie for years and this is a Yahoo Widget called WebImages – several instances of it, of course… i have used several methods for desktop webcam monitoring and this one blows all the others away… the depth of options and customization can be intimidating at first and there is a bit of a learning curve, but it is SOOOO worth it… the radar is the local weather radar, of course… the rest are cams that update once a minute… i have each set up to sort of a theme and each contains more than one cam – when it updates, it switches to the next cam that one monitors… for instance, the top is local – alternating between a cam in cloudcroft and one in las cruces… the next down is home – albuquerque – four different cams and once a minute, it shows a different view… the next three are assorted cool/interesting places – cams in las vegas, italy, california, and others – all three contain a list of all my favorite cams around the world and, once a minute (or whatever i choose to set it to from once a second to once a day) it cycles to the next cam in its list… or, if one of them has something really interesting going on, i stop the cycling and set it to update in near-real-time and each one has a button when you mouse over it to enlarge it as big as you like… you can hit another button to save the current image, even…
but, now i’m gushing ;P
oh, and the very bottom one is NASATV – the widget can stream the video, but, i just have it set to show a still every 15 seconds…

anyway… that’s my desktop…

Lifehacker just posted about PayPal starting a service for this:
PayPal via your cell phone – Lifehacker
and a commenter gives credit where credit is due, noting that TextPayMe.com was doing it first…

this is a trend i am really excited about… a logical step in technology… i never have cash on me anymore, just plastic, and there are so many times cash would come in handy, but, not enough of them to bother with carrying cash at all times… this would solve the whole thing…

i titled this entry “exchanging money via cell phones is coming” rather than “is here” because i doubt anyone i know, nor the majority of the population, is signed up for either service, so, let me be a voice shouting to everyone i know that reads my blog, encouraging you to sign up for one service or the other… at this point, pretty much EVERYONE has more than one reason to have a paypal account, and most people could find a reason or two to have text messaging…

so, please… do it…
and if you do, i promise no more excuses next time it comes to splitting the bill at starbucks :P

if you have been too busy playing with google earth to explore windows live local’s “bird’s eye” views, here’s a very cool way to get acquainted with it…

Bird’s Eye Tourist

From the site:

First Google brought us Google Local and Google Earth. Then Microsoft followed suit with Windows Live Local, featuring stunning new imagery. Bird’s Eye images provide a high-resolution, low-angle aerial view of a small area.

This website is the definitive guide and repository for the coolest Windows Live Local locations.

with a blog format and links divided into locations (where i found the sandia peak tramway) and categories (DO NOT miss “our favorites“), this is a very cool site…

at the moment the front page includes “the bat cave from the old TV show Batman“, “the Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park in Buena Park, CA”, “numerous hovercraft at the Little Creek Amphibious Base in Virginia, “The Simpsons mural at Fox Studios”, and “the fake McDonalds”…

oh, and they also have a list of all the cities covered by windows live local…  very cool – even microsoft doesn’t offer that anywhere, as far as i know…

this is one to keep an eye on…  (btw, they DO have an rss feed!)

Duke City Fix » Hiking to the TWA Wreck

Anyone who has taken the tram up to Sandia Crest has probably overheard a passenger or two asking about the ‘crash site.’ They are referring to the wreck of TWA flight 206; a twin engine Martin 404 that slammed in to the west face of Sandia Peak on February 19, 1955. Sixteen passengers and crew were killed. While all of the bodies were removed, the remote location and rugged terrain necessitated leaving the bulk of the aircraft on the mountain in the upper portion of Domingo Baca Canyon in area that has since become known as TWA Canyon. A hike to the site makes for a memorable, if tiring, day trip.

ok, so, the december pics are up…

most of them are from the two weeks of resets… overnight work in abq/etc., santa fe, gallup, and farmington, me as the boss with between two and four temps as my crew on any given night… see, i had to take my cam to take pics of the bays when we finished them, so, i used it as an opportunity to take pics of work, something i never had pics of before… of course, this is not what i normally do for a living, but, meh…
before i move on, let me point out that somehow, there are some mistakes in the chronology of pics… specifically, it has the pics taken at the bernalillo store dated dec22, when they are actually the night of the 15th/morning of the 16th… no idea how the heck that happened… that is the only error i noticed…
anyway, a bunch of pics of me, jim, nicole, natalie, and robert doing triple resets in nine stores… that makes up most of this month’s collection (though, that includes some nice scenic stuff during the drives between gallup, farmington, and back home)… on that note, the last page of pics has a folder called “for work” and it is all the post-reset pics… i wanted to save them for future reference, they are not at all interesting, which is why they are at the end of the collection…

however…
the folder at the beginning of the collection is quite interesting, which brings me to the next stuff i wanted to cover, that being the two cool programs i have been using this month…

on the first page of pics is a folder called “autostitch”… the last couple weeks i have been playing with this amazing new app called (as you may have guessed) AutoStitch…
From the official website:

Autostitch is the world’s first fully automatic 2D image stitcher. Capable of stitching full view panoramas without any user input whatsoever, Autostitch is a breakthrough technology for panoramic photography, VR and visualisation applications. This is the first solution to stitch any panorama completely automatically, whether 1D (horizontal) or 2D (horizontal and vertical).

see the new image at the top of my webpages? that’s a panoramic view from my balcony of the mountains, created by AutoStitch… in the folder, i have quite a few test shots – sunrises, sunsets, many of my apt… so, be sure to look through those and, if it’s your thing, download the program and have as much fun as i’ve been having…
i’m sure i’ll be posting many pics made with this app in the coming months… (um, and just to be clear, the pics i’ve made so far with it are nothing special, just trying it out… but, you’ll see the potential from the pics i posted…)
and, btw, BIG THANKS to SuperDaveNM for posting about this program over on flickr!

ok, also, now that i have been using Irfanview all month, i must say i highly recommend it… the quickest thing i can say about it is that so many pics i took this month, like every month, were absolutely hopeless… too dark, too blurry, too washed out, etc…. and, with this prog, i saved MANY of them… not to say that other programs can’t do this (feel free to let me know of better ones!), but, this is the first i have used and am loving it to death… it made a DRAMATIC impact on this month’s pics… the first two pics in the collection show a great example of a pic i would have, without any doubt, deleted, but thanks to irfanview it was made into a keeper… gamma correction, contrast, color saturation, many great settings to do some great photo manipulation… and it is even a very nice media viewer in general, i even downloaded a movie and watched it the other day and it ran much smoother than even winamp… it’s a “thousand and one uses” kinda’ program, for sure…

ok, i think that’s about it… first i said i started using JAlbum and wanted to go back an “JAlbumize” all my past pics… well, now i want to go back and “Irfanviewize” many from the past and even see which ones could be “pano’d” by autostitch…

until that far off day, you’ll have to settle for clicking here to see all the december pics…

F u t u r e M e . o r g » Public » Random

in my links on the sidebar, i have a special section just for random links… click on them to visit a random weblog, a random homepage, a random webcam, even a random page on wikipedia… i love random links and don’t come across them too often, but, now i have a new addition to the list…

do you know FutureMe?
it is a site that lets you send an email to the future… the link at the top of this post and soon to be on my randoms list allows you to see emails people have sent (they have been anonymized), with the date they wrote it and the date it will be sent…
i hit it a few times and there is some fascinating stuff… a parent’s email to their daughter for her 18th birthday, a guy entering medical school sending himself a message to be received after he graduates, someone on their first day quitting smoking, a wife on her 5-year wedding anniversary sending a message to her hubby for their 10-year anniversary, and of course, mundane things like reminders for a doctor’s appointment, and many many many that are not easily described…

they are small pieces of stories of dreams and wishes, hope after regret, breaking of cycles, escapes from the past, beginnings and endings and new beginnings… and you can’t help but imagine these people and their situations, and the more vague the message, the more interesting it is…

so, go check it out, and btw, this is the best kind of random link, the url itself has the command to randomize, so, you can go there and just keep hitting reload…

List of Galleries of Drops and Splashes [via fark]

i love this one so much, i just had to make a post…
it was just posted yesterday by phrog8v8r to the AIBF flickr pool…

*right click, save as, set as wallpaper* :)

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and, btw, not to take away from that pic, but while i am pointing out pics, this is one of the coolest special shapes i have ever seen… and be sure to read the comments under it…

and this one is like Skies of Arcadia come to life…

Beam your craigslist ad into space

WHAT: craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster won an eBay auction for the first private communication transmission light years into deep space, with the idea of offering this opportunity to craigslist users.

HOW: The friendly folks at Deep Space Communications Network (DSCN) will beam the postings trillions of miles into space using redundant klystron transmitters and a satellite dish.

HOW MUCH: The winning bid was $1225, but craigslist is negotiating with DSCN for extra capacity to accomodate the anticipated volume of craigslist postings to be transmitted – 10,000 ads were designated by users for transmission during the first 24 hours!

WHEN: The transmission is currently scheduled for May 15th, 2005, directly following the launch of the space shuttle Discovery.

WHERE: Cape Canaveral, FL

WHY: It seemed fitting for craigslist users to be the first to beam internet postings and classified ads into deep space.

The true cost of free iPods – Engadget

Boing Boing: Lucas put malicious Xbox trojan on Star Wars DVD
Star Wars DVD Grosses $115M

Google Search: star wars holiday special
[not only do i remember the fam rushing home so my brother and i could watch this over 25 years ago, i have always rather vividly remembered a couple moments from it (like the stormtroopers searching the wookie kid's room), and the images at these sites were so familiar i found myself saying "oh yeah, i forgot about that part"... yet i have trouble remembering my own phone number...]

ICQ Chat Request

A visual history of spam (and virus) email
The Spam Weblog

Boing Boing: Fave music site: Oddio Overplay

Play the PlayStation Portable — in Japan – Engadget
[um, yeah, i'd probably like to play with that... btw, best pics of the PSP i've seen yet...]

Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | Ruined by R ratings
[something of a history of not-safe-for-network-tv language in movies being dubbed for broadcast...]

NetRatings: Broadband users a majority in U.S.
[i somehow missed this news until now...]

The Making of a THX LaserDisc

Cities Collection [via RefDesk's SotD]
This NASA site offers outstanding astronaut photography of cities taken during space-flight.

craigslist – Gorgeous 2br Penthouse on Las Vegas Strip [sigh]