September 2010's last sunset....

This is "Goodbye, September" folks. It was nice while it lasted.

_____________________________________________________

Example of 24X zoom on Pentax X70

Fishermen on the Capilano River this afternoon.

This is the same scene without the 24X zoom. The picture above this one is that area at the far end of the visible river water, just before it disappears around the bend in the distance.

________________________________________________________

Another example of image splicing -

Tommy was wondering how a panorama might look when assembled using that program I mentioned the other day, created at a local university.

This above was put together from 8 images, and the program did the work without me doing any positioning or dragging of the parts. The images were numbered consecutively, but otherwise the program did the sorting and joining. When it was finished, I moved it into another editor program to do some resizing and even off the edges of the finished panorama - but the 8 parts of it were assembled quite seamlessly by the program itself.

This is a large curved building somewhere in England, photographed in parts by a friend while there on vacation a few years ago. When he took these separate pictures, this program hadn't been invented yet. Now, we can see the whole building in one picture, instead of 8 pieces.


_________________________________________

Tonight's sunset.....

Another nice day ending with a nice sunset.

__________________________________________

Must be autumn.....

Alas, fellow girl-watchers, the Bikini Season is over - here's the proof.

_________________________________________________________

Not a great day for pictures....

The above panorama is all the proof we need, I'm sure. This came about because just after breakfast, a friend in the building here sent me some examples of pictures which had been 'photoshopped' beyond belief. I decided to try out one my programs, which could best be called 'a poor man's photoshop' and one of them didn't have a feature for splicing or merging images. That in turn got me looking for freebies on the web which might do that, aside from Canon's nice little PhotoStitch, which I already have.


I found a freebie demo made locally at the University of British Columbia, which is called 'Autostitch', and while it lacks a few bells and whistles, like an editing feature to clean up ragged edges in merged masterpieces like the above (just kidding, critics!) it does something Canon's program can't - it takes a whole bunch of images, in this case 13 of them, and automatically sorts them and then assembles them into one continuous panorama like the above. It then has to be trimmed in another editor program to even out the edges, but so what? It does the heavy lifting all by itself, and I think that's quite amazing. It's now being used as the basis for commercially sold programs, but this free demo is neat, and it won't bend your budget.

Want one? Have a look here for it.

__________________________________________

Better than yesterday....

Today has been much better than yesterday. I hope it continues....

_______________________________________________________

Weekend weather forecast....

Not improving much it seems.

_____________________________________________________

Another handy program

This is a handy free program for easily converting videos from one format to another. There's just three easy steps: (1) Choose the file and add it to the program's list. (2) Click on the Edit button to choose which format you want it converted into. (3) Click the Convert button and then click on the  button below that to begin the conversion. Progress is indicated in the black window.

Click here for their website and download.

_______________________________________________________

How 'TinEye' works......the results page

I right-clicked the upper image on the website of the Globe and Mail, and chose TinEye's search, and it found one similar image, shown in the lower part of its window. It identifies images by their unique 'fingerprint' rather than searching by key words or phrases, and it works.

You can find it here.

________________________________________________________

Another 'moody mountains' picture...

Another in the series of mood shots at the nearby hills. It's that kind of day.

______________________________________________________

Reverse Image Search

If you have an image, and would like to know where on the web it came from, or if there is a better one available, you should try this little program. It also has a plug-in for Firefox and some other browsers. Give it an image, and it will show you others like it, if there are any available. This is like Google Search, but for images. 

_________________________________________________________

Today's pictures...

The Gabriel's Trumpet in full bloom.

A web in the sunlight, with its owner in the middle.

A bee making its rounds on a hanging basket.

__________________________________________________________

Heading home for the night....

Some of our local crows heading home for the night after another busy day.

______________________________________________________

This morning's view....

The morning mist is clearing, and it promises to be a nice day.

Down here where most of us are, it's not bad already.... enjoy your day, everyone.

_______________________________________________________

"September Morn" local style

This was taken about 7:20 a.m., so hopefully it will improve as it gets older.

___________________________________________________________

Now that the fog has lifted, here's the previous view...

This is how it looks without the fog and rain....

_______________________________________________________

What a difference a day makes....

The fog rolls in across West Vancouver. A good day to visit the mall.

__________________________________________________

More flowers....

We still have some nice flowers, and the Magnolia has another new bloom coming on.

_________________________________________________

The blooming continues....

As the season progresses, it's getting harder to find nice pictures of flowers.


_______________________________________________________

Just passing by -

This time, I got a picture of the plane making the trail.... at 24x optical on a Pentax X70.

___________________________________________________

Along the walk....

We've still got a few nice blooms beside the building.

__________________________________________________

I hope......

I hope these big square chairs are more comfortable than they look. Differences of opinion are what make horse races and missionaries, as Mark Twain once said.

___________________________________

Another from the hanging baskets

There's still some of these looking quite good.

___________________________________

More pictures

Close-up of one of the hanging baskets along the way coming in here.

 

Four Bluejays in a tree near the building, taking a break from making noise.

____________________________________

In the paper the other day, they asked:

"When do you consider it the end of summer?" - Looking outside this morning, with the temperature 55 F, and it raining lightly, I'd have to say, "Right about now." We get weather this good in November and February. But we did have a really nice summer, so we can't complain.

___________________________________

Tonight's sunset

Sunset, with some of our local crows heading for their roost for the night.

A bit later, the sky above Georgia Strait and Vancouver Island.

____________________________________

This and that -

At last, I got a picture of some white roses without the result being just one big blob of white. Years ago, White Rose was a famous brand of gasoline, and also one of the first ones.

We do have a few fan palms here too. These are two of them. Some years, they have blooms close to the trunk at the top, and other years they don't.  Not sure why, so if you know, please tell us.

____________________________________________________

Rose or Magnolia ?

I think I prefer the Rose..........

But this late-blooming Magnolia is nice too.

___________________________________________________