From the category archives:
Gone are the days when you had to clip letters from different newspapers and magazines to get a mix of fonts. This nifty tool lets you write out words with letter images from Flickr. (I assume the images have to be tagged with a letter to be part of the pool from which the program draws photos.) If you don’t like a particular letter design, you can click on just that one to get a different image.
For more Flickr goodness, you can keep track of the time using Clockr.
Retrievr is an interesting experiment in matching up people’s sketches with photos on the photo-sharing site Flickr (granted, for now limited to a small segment of images on the service based on interestingness). There is definitely room for improvement, but it’s an interesting idea even if a bit off the mark regarding the matches for now.
I tried the service by creating some sketches of Christmas trees thinking there should be plenty in the recent Flickr pool.
Of these four, only the last one yielded any Christmas trees as results (only one of which was not itself just a drawing). The other hits were pretty random both in terms of shape and color depicting anything from cats and birds to close-up shots of flowers. One architecture image did make sense since it really does look like a tree (as noted by its creator in the photo’s title as well).
I played around with the system a bit more and realized that it may be most interesting for retrieving pictures based on color distribution. A blue-orange square yielded photos dominated by related colors.
It’s easy to find photos on Flickr based on topic (e.g. using tags or groups), but less obvious to find images based on color combination (there are exceptions, but these modes are less widespread). It is perhaps in that realm that Retrievr holds the most promise for now.
Lifehacker Editor Gina Trapani is hosting a holiday giveaway around the topic of efficient desktop uses. She has created a group on photo-sharing site Flickr for people to post annotated pictures of their desktops: Lifehacker Desktop Show and Tell. The idea is to see how people maximize this work space for productivity. I like the idea, but it seems to me that there are alternative ways of going about this. After all, how often do you even look at your desktop? I don’t look at it much. My default screen is Firefox.
So I propose an alternative: Firefox Show and Tell. Unlike Gina, I don’t have goodies to give away, but if you are interested in taking part regardless then share your annotated screenshots of your Firefox screen in the Firefox Show and Tell Flickr photo pool. I find that most productivity tools I have on my computer are embedded into Firefox anyway so it seems like an appropriate focus. Perhaps reliance on one’s desktop – or lack thereof – depends on the operating system. (No, I am not proposing we get in an OS fight over this.) In any case, I think Gina is right that there is much to learn from how other people have optimized their settings for various applications so sharing could be helpful.
If you don’t have a Flickr account, you can create one for free. To add a photo to a group pool, first visit the group page (here in this case) while logged in as a Flickr user. To the right will be a big bold link “Join this group?”, click on that. On the next page confirm that you want to join the group. Next, head to the photo you want to add to the group. While viewing the photo’s page, click on the “Send to Group” icon toward the left above the image. Then choose the group to which you want to post the picture. This may sound complicated, but it should be pretty painless once you have an account and are looking at actual pages instead of following this abstract description.
Maybe Gina at Lifehacker will consider sending some goodies to helpful screens from this photo pool as well.:)
.. when you’ll be getting more solicitations than usual from organizations asking for your donations. Obviously, there are lots of worthy causes. I thought I’d put in a plug for Creative Commons. They are having a Fall fundraising drive. Given that we discuss and use CC here on CT and given that many of us benefit from the work that they do, I thought it was appropriate to mention the campaign here. If you missed John’s post about Creative Commons as a default rule this would be a good time to catch up on that reading.
One of my favorite applications of CC is its use on Flickr. I use the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License as the default in my photostream. Occasionally I’ll change it to Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs. But so far I have come up with no reason to post anything specified as All Rights Reserved. It is really heartening to see that millions (over six million and constantly growing) of photos on Flickr are posted using a Creative Commons license. Of course, many many are posted under the traditional circled C license. I sometimes wonder if at least some of those people opted for C over CC, because they don’t know enough about the latter. If I hadn’t known about CC before starting to use Flickr, I am not sure I would have thought to or gotten around to specifying the above-mentioned licenses.
Larry Lessig comments that one of the reasons CC launched such a fundraising campaign this Fall is that the IRS requires this kind of public support for non-profits in addition to donations they may get from foundations. Please consider supporting this cause.
Browsing people’s Flickr accounts I came across pictures from CANstruction.
Canstruction® combines the competitive spirit of a design/build competition with a unique way to help feed hungry people. Competing teams, lead by architects and engineers, showcase their talents by designing giant sculptures made entirely out of canned foods. At the close of the exhibitions all of the food used in the structures is donated to local food banks for distribution to pantries, shelters, soup kitchens, elderly and day care centers.
The official Web site has pictures of this year’s winners, but I think it’s much more fun just to browse the Flickr photos tagged with “canstruction”. Check out the list of participating cities to see whether you can still catch the show somewhere.
Following up on the last post regarding dissertation completion, I thought I would acknowledge the role of paper that came up as a theme in the panel this morning. There were two of us recent PhDs on the panel and it turns out both of us turned to playing with paper as a way to take breaks from our dissertation writing. I picked up papier mache the Spring of 2003. Given the results, it is not surprising that I gave it up after the dissertation was complete. The other recent graduate on the panel, Ted Striphas said he was doing lots of origami at the time. Go figure.
All of this relates to keeping healthy during the process. It is important to take breaks. In fact, I do not believe it is possible to do good work without taking breaks. So what is your preferred break activity? I am especially interested in responses other than “blogging”.;)
Wow, there is some serious pumpkin-carving talent out there.
Anyone see any interesting costumes this year? One of my students had two “ears” on her head and pasted a “left click” and “right click” sign on her shirt. I thought that was cute.
I printed out a bunch of signs saying ebay, PayPal, some emails, some instructions to enter your password, and some login screens. I put those on my clothes and also had a plastic fish in my hand. What was I?
Via Andrew Sullivan (and Hit and Run) this fine, fine video. You have to watch the whole thing, because it really grows on you. I agree with scruffy hipster Julian Sanchez: “Anyone who can watch this and complain about the pernicious effects of cultural globalization has no soul.” Finally, a Numa Numa dance video for the generation that grew up 30 seconds ago.
Do you like to play sudoku? Do you prefer images over numbers? You may for this game. Picture sudoku lets you choose images from photo-sharing site Flickr with which to fill your sudoku puzzle. You can specify the tag and/or the user whose images you want to integrate into the game.
Examples:
Chicagoland sudoku (with just my photos)
turtle sudoku (with everyone’s photos)
long-shadow sudoku (with everyone’s photos)
chocolate sudoku (with everyone’s photos)
As you can see, the possibilities are endless.
The game also gives you a “blank” with which to erase placement of photos. If you are intrigued by a picture and want to see it in full size on Flickr then just click on the asterisk next to its name in the left-hand column.
Have fun!
[thanks]
Wow, sign me up.
A leading architect of the intelligent-design movement defended his ideas in a federal courtroom on Tuesday and acknowledged that under his definition of a scientific theory, astrology would fit as neatly as intelligent design….
Listening from the front row of the courtroom, a school board member said he found Professor Behe’s testimony reaffirming. “Doesn’t it sound like he knows what he’s talking about?” said the Rev. Ed Rowand, a board member and church pastor.
Yeah, dude. It totally sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Also, did I ever tell you about the time I made a gravity bong? I cut off the bottom of a 2-liter bottle, and put it in the pool, and then….
Damn you, liberal elites!!
Wait, did you know that you can use a fish tank compressor and a gas mask to make an electric bong? Seriously dude, you have to listen to this. OMG, and did I ever tell you about this amazing juice fast I went on? You just use Grade B maple syrup and lemon juice… No, you have to promise me you’ll try this juice fast!
I must’ve taken an alternate route on the evolutionary path since I still hate beer for the most part. Regardless, I did enjoy watching this Guiness ad. [link to .mov file] You can read a bit about the video creation process here.
UPDATE: Oops, sorry, this is a CT dupe! I knew I had seen “Noitulove” somewhere recently.:) When I saw Kieran’s post I was on a machine that couldn’t deal with a .mov file so I never clicked through and by now it’s off the front page. (As has been noted we’ve been quite busy around here recently. And as has not been noted – because I have been too busy to note – I’m too overwhelmed with deadlines right now to spend much time on CT these days. I shouldn’t have broken my vow to stay away for a few more days. Oh well, at least I made CT history.:)
In case anyone else missed it the first time around, I recommend clicking through now.:-)
It’s been a while since I posted one of these. Of course now that I have several immediate deadlines these things find their way to me again.
Not too easy, not too hard.
If you get stuck on Level 3 then try the hint here.
The hosting site has links to dozens of other games. I won’t even go there though (not now anyway). I really do have to get a lot done in the next few days especially since I just found out that I have to be orientating our incoming grad students on Monday.
I’ve been very busy over at Lifehacker. A friend of mine says it’s like “quirky academic meets Martha Stewart”. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but it’s a reasonable description of what I’ve been up to. Here are some posts I put up in the past couple of days. I will have a roundup of all the free downloads later in the week. If you can’t wait, feel free to check out the site directly.
General tips
GMail/Flickr tips
Belle is rightly indignant about fathers put off sex by witnessing the birth of their children, and asks if there is such a thing as childbirth porn. There is. Well, in the sense that Mills & Boon and other softly-softly girl-targetted erotic fiction can be called porn, there also exists an analogous form of childbirth porn. I should know.
[click to continue…]
The photo-sharing site Flickr has come out with some nifty features recently that make it even more fun to browse pictures on the site than before. Beware, there are hundreds of thousands of photos to see, and more ways to navigate the Web site than before so a simple click can take you away from whatever it is that you were doing for longer than what you might expect. Of course, just like with blogs and many other things, there is a lot of uninteresting mediocre material. But there are also great pictures to view. To help find these, Flickr came out with the interestingness feature. To figure out what gets highlighted in this section, they are using “a ranking algorithm based on user behavior around the photos taking into account some obvious things like how many users add the photo to their favorites and some subtle things like the relationship between the person who uploaded the photo and the people who are commenting (plus a whole bunch of secret sauce)”. There is a calendar feature that lets you browse the interestingness category by day.
Another new feature is their clustering of tags. First, let me take a step back for those who are not familiar with the service at all. When users upload photos to the system they can tag them with descriptors such as name of location, type of event, etc. Photos across the entire site can be viewed by tags. Say you are interested in viewing photos of Chicago. There are over 70,000 photos tagged with “chicago” so you are likely shown many that are not of interest. Tags in and of themselves are only so useful since someone may tag all their private party photos with the name of the city in which the party took place, but that won’t be of much interest to someone looking for pictures of the urban landscape. This is where the new clustering feature comes in handy. For popular tags, the system now offers you related tags so you can be sure that you’ll be viewing pictures of the Chicago skyline, buildings or Millennium Park if that is what’s of interest. (Note that when looking for something specific, it’s worth checking alternate spellings/specifications. For example, you’ll get more pictures of Millennium Park under the misspelled tag milleniumpark than under the correct spelling millenniumpark.)
Some basics about Flickr: anyone can create a free account, which comes with the ability to feature 200 photos organized in up to three sets with a 20MB upload limit per month. For $24.95/year you get much more (unlimited storage, 2GB upload limit, no ads, etc.). You can add contacts and specify them as acquaintances or friends. When you upload photos, you can specify them as public or restricted to your contacts. You can join communities based on interest and affiliation. You can mark photos as your favorite and find them easily later. You can add notes to photos. You can leave comments on people’s photo pages. It’s a neat service, I recommend giving it a try.
When you upload photos, you can either reserve all rights or specify a Creative Commons license for them. Although many people – especially those who seem to be pros – reserve all rights, many do not. Thanks to the Creative Commons licenses, the site offers great illustrations for those in need of adding some photos to other sites, presentations or whatnot without worrying about copyright infringement.
I really enjoy browsing the site aimlessly, but I also appreciate viewing pictures from people to whom I have some connection. So if you happen to have a flickr account, how about posting a link in the comments? My album is here.
Realistically speaking, I better put the Time Sink button on this post. Enjoy!