After hearing Kevin Rose mention Photosynth on Diggnation, I thought it sounded cool so I checked it out. Photosynth is a project in the Microsoft Live Labs where you traverse through or look around 3D landscapes that are built using 2D images. The first downsides of it are quite apparent as you enter the site and use it. It requires you to install software on your computer to get this to work, and it is Windows only. I decided to go ahead anyway. I had a look at some of the featured Synths on the home page and they looked pretty cool.  It was cool to have a look around a city using this thing. It was also cool to see how it did this weird 3D dotty thing to represent an object from a 2D environment, such as a statue.

I decided I would try and make one. I spend a bit of time thinking of an interesting scene or object to take picture of that would work in Photosynth and look pretty cool. After a little while thinking, I remembered a spot close to where I live where I could see my whole suburb and the houses and surrounding. I decided that I would go up there with the camera and take heaps of shots, the way the instructional video said. I took 74 shots from up there. I decided to put them into Photosynth. It takes quite a while to do its magic and upload it to the internet, so don’t expect results straight away because it can take 1-5 hours. Mine took under 3 which wasn’t bad. I could wait.

After it had done everything, it was available for viewing online. I like to think I had done a good Synth, and the thing told me it was 100% Synth. You can check it out on the Photosynth site, it is publicly viewable. Photosynth is a really hard thing to describe. It is really something you have to see, and play with for yourself. This technology is really exciting and I look forward to seeing it evolve and get better, and then applied to useful applications, such as a mapping application or a virtual store or something of the sort. This is just the beginning of what this technology can offer and bring to the table.

It only took me one hour of playing with Google’s new web browser, Chrome, to realize that its just a web browser. I already have 2 web browsers installed on my machine (on good, the other not so much) so why do I need a third? The very short amount of time trialing Chrome was enough to give me a good feel for what Chrome is. To conclude here, I like the browser, but it just doesn’t offer me the same experience I get from Firefox, or the experience I expect from a traditional web browser. Although I have to say, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The things I like about Chrome is the way it manages tabs. Each tab is a new process. This is something I wish my main browser had so I can figure out what is causing it to use all my resources on the machine, and also protect the other pages I have open in case one causes a crash. Another thing I like about Chrome is its speed. It works pretty fast, although after importing my bucket loads of Bookmarks and History, it did effect the way Chrome handled, which could be why I have trouble with Firefox at times.

To be honest, I don’t really feel this as a true competitor in the browser space. I feel this is a spec browser which is to force Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and whatever to adopt Google’s features to make the browsers better. Google’s platform is the internet, so pushing out their vision of an ideal browser which enables access to their services makes sense that they want to make it a good experience from both the access program and the web service.

Even though I love Firefox and will continue using it as my primary web browser, I will still keep Chrome on my system. This is a perfect secondary browser for when you just want to quickly access a webpage without waiting for your browser to load and the two dozen tabs that come with it. Just click, wait a second and you’re all ready to zap onto a page. It’s really that fast and simple, which makes it the perfect quick and go browser. Other than that, it’s going to be interesting to see what else they will bring to the table.

Last week was mock end of year exams. This is a chance for us to sit the papers we are going to be doing at the end of the year in exam conditions. These run for the whole week and you only have to be there when you have an exam. I only had 3 subjects with exams and two were on the same day, so I only had to show up for 2 days, one being Monday and the other Wednesday. I was lucky enough to get a nice long 4 day weekend.

My first exam was on Monday afternoon and it was for Geography. We only had to do 2 papers, one for skills and the other for cultural processes. I spend most of the 2 hours allocated doing the skills paper thoroughly but didn’t even write my name on the second paper because I couldn’t be bothered writing lots, and I couldn’t remember anything because I didn’t do any study.

And on Wednesday I had one exam in the morning, which was Statistics, and another one in the afternoon, which was Physics. I hadn’t studied for either of them so I knew I wouldn’t do that well. The Stats papers were relatively straight forward, with the Probability paper being the most difficult of the three. In Physics, I was completely lost. I had no idea what I was doing and knew as soon as I looked through the papers I was screwed. I still tried to answer as many questions as I could in case I could fluke a grade.

Well today i got my results back from all my exams. For the Geography paper I did do, I got an Excellence for it, which was well above the expected Achieved/Merit I would have expected. In Stats, I managed to get once of each, an Achieved, Merit and Excellence for each of the papers. In Physics, I flat out failed! This is what you get when you do absolutely no study. Although I justify the lack of study for having other priorities, my reading log assignment which is due in a few days. I will try and study for the real exams and hopefully get good grades in those ones!

Last week, Apple hosted an event to show off their new music stuff. This included a new version of iTunes, a range of new iPods, and new software for iPhone and iPod Touch. I didn’t get up a 5am like the last event to see what Apple was announcing, I could wait till later because I don’t need an iPod and also a lot of the announcements were already rumored around the internet, mainly due to a Kevin Rose inside source.

To sum up everything in a paragraph, new version of iTunes, 8.0. Adds grid album art view and Genius which makes playlists from songs similar to the one chosen. New iPod Nano, old slim design, accelerometer and Genius plus also a gimmicky (useless) feature, shake to shuffle. New iPod Touch, same as old one, slight design changes, Nike+ built in, volume on side. 2.1 software for iPhone/iPod Touch, fixes the bugs in 2.0 and adds Genius. The only things that interest me is the iTunes 8.0 update and the 2.1 software.

I installed iTunes straight away and I have noticed that it works better than 7.7 did in Vista. It still isn’t perfect but I guess the only way to make iTunes work perfectly is to get a Mac. As you know, I prefer to play my music by album so the album art grid view is great for me. It allows me to select an album to play pretty quickly. I also had a quick play with genius. I was happy with the selection it made, although it could probably have made better choices here and there, but I’m sure it’s playlist selections will get better as time goes on. I think Genius is a great way to find similar songs that go together in your library in a quick and easy way. It also allows to rediscover some of the music that has been buried in your library for a while. I think it is great alternative over Party Shuffle in iTunes and definitely the shuffle mode.

I have yet to upgrade my iPhone to 2.1 but I am really looking forward to being able to. Genius on it is going to be great, although I am a bit worried about how well it would work with only one third of my music collection on it. In saying that, it has most of the songs, well albums, I enjoy listening to anyway. Also the bug fixes to the keyboard lag, random app crashes and long sync/backup time will be greatly appreciated. I’m just waiting for QuickPwn for Windows to get released and I’m on the bandwagon. I need the unofficial third party apps as much as I need the official ones, that is why I haven’t gone through with the upgrade already.

So the event was prety dull. I think it would have been more exciting if the products hadn’t been rumored in such great detail beforehand. It kind of ruined the anticipation of the announcements. Although I wasn’t expecting any new computers (MacBook please!) to be announced, that will be the thing I am looking forward to the most. I think I am turning towards the Apple side!

A fortnight ago, it was the first of September. At the start of every month, it has become routine to change my desktop wallpaper and take a nice screenshot which I then uploaded to Flickr. I only have a few icons permanently on my desktop, such as My Computer, TV Shows, Podcasts, Notes and the Recycling Bin. I do however use my desktop as a temporary place to put files, which either have to be used, or sorted and put somewhere else. I use the desktop because I see them there everyday and remember the task yet to be done.

So anyway, I had some extra stuff on my desktop. Some TV shows and podcasts that had to be watched and some files that needed to be attended to soon. Now I didn’t want these files on my screenshot to be uploaded to Flickr so for some reason I moved them into the recycling bin. Well the total size of all the files exceeded the recycling bin space, so most of the files I moved there got deleted. Normally I would put them in a folder and put that folder in one of the other folders that is on my desktop, but for some reason I didn’t do that this time.

As an person online would, I tweeted my stupidity for the Twitter world to see (or the friends that follow me.) I wasn’t expecting to get any of these files back and I would have to re-download the files that could be downloaded again, and the others (either unrecoverable to I forgot what I had) would just be my loss. To my surprise, my good friend Rowan replied to my tweet with a link to a piece of Windows recovery software called Recuva.

After you download and install Recuva, when you execute it, you are greeted with an easy wizard to guide you through the recovery process. You can get it to find only certain types of files, such as Pictures, Videos, Music, Documents or all files. This is good for say if you delete all the pictures off your camera memory stick. Next you can specify where the files were. If you are unsure, you can do a full scan of everything. There are two types of scans, a normal scan and a deep scan. The regular scan is faster, but it finds far less than the slower deep scan. I required a deep scan to recover my files. Then after the scan is done, you select the files you want to recover from the ones its found and you are all sweet.

Recuva managed to save most of the files I had lost, with the exception of a folder with a season of a television series, but that is easy enough to download again when I actually have time to watch it. I also lost my Notes text document. The document the software recovered was somehow corrupted and had text from an html/css document. I don’t think there was anything of great importance in it anyway. Thanks to Rowan for helping me recover, or at least identify what I had lost. The most annoying part about losing files isn’t the fact that they are gone (although it is annoying,) it’s the fact that you don’t know what you have lost. Well that applies for me anyway.

A couple of days ago, when I was browsing the deep space of Tumblr, I stumbled across an interesting post. I thought it seemed pretty cool so I gave it a try to see what results I would get and here is is as follows. If you would also like to try it out, and maybe post it on my blog or tumblelog or whatever, the instructions are also below. If you do, please pingback or leave a comment so I can see your results.

Type your answer to the questions into flickr search
-Using only the first page, pick an image
-Copy and paste each of the urls in the Mosaic Maker

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to do when you grow up?
10. Who / what do you love most in life?
11. Choose one word that describes you?
12. What is your Flickr name?

1. Jonathan Coulton’s GlaDOS Rock Band, 2. Melting Chocolate, 3. Robotic Lego, 4. Berlin blues, 5. Masi Oka and Hayden Panettiere – Interview (1), 6. Raspberry Coke, 7. Berlin, Germany, 8. Miniature Cakes, 9. My Computer, 10. Internet!!!, 11. ultimate geek nook, 12. Leopard

After the big blog update a week ago, a few more updates have happened elsewhere. The first is the yum9me.com main page. The old page has gone and been replaced by a simple page, written by TheSkorm in a few seconds. I like it over the older one because it is much cleaner, it works correctly on more browsers (curse you Internet Explorer!) and there is less clutter and jankness to it.

The second update was to my tumblelog theme. After using the dashboard theme for a little while, I started to lose interest in it and wanted a new theme, I just hadn’t seen any that I liked. That was until I saw a theme ported from a WordPress theme on Alisha’s tumblelog, that’s when I knew what I wanted. I decided that I would use the WordPress theme on this blog, and hopefully one day, she would be able to release the theme to the public.

Well that day did come shortly after, and managed to get back on my radar so I grabbed it. It wasn’t exactly how I wanted it so I modified it a little. The main modifications are the removal of the Disqus comment integration, and the Last.Fm and other site integrations. I also removed the followers down the sidebar. My intentions were to have a few links down the side for Mobile, Archives, RSS ect. I did have this working for a moment until during some other edit of the theme, it broke, so I completely removed it.

I also changed the description down the bottom of the theme to match that of the one on my blog, except with a couple of appropriate word changes and rearrangements. This is also where the about button will jump down to, if clicked. I also decided to have the links under the title be for my main page (or as I decided to call it, Portal,) my blog and my tumblelog. I also applied this to my blog.

I like how they both use the same theme because now they seem more unified and part of one system, which they are, instead of two separate unrelated sites. So hopefully all the changes can last a year or so before I decided to change them.