Creating Panoramas for the Web

I intend to create several panoramas during my next holiday, so I'm investigating the possibilities for presenting them on my website. Several pieces of software are under investigation, and so far Zoomify is the only one which is relatively simple to operate.

AutopanoGiga is probably the buggiest software I've used (it crashed almost every other panorama), but creates the best panoramas in my opinion. Better than PTGui, but that one is 100% stable. Somehow you can't have everything :-)

The other pieces of software for creating interactive flash/QuickTime movies from panoramas are:

• AutoPanoPro / Giga with the AutopanoTour as the flash export module
• Pano2VR

Results (read: experiments) can be found on my Panoramas page in the Photography section of this website.

Note that the Zoomify versions are stored on a sub-domain outside of the SquareSpace domain. Since the sub-domain hasn't the best of up-time, you might be looking at a relatively blank page. The reason for this is a silly limit on uploading ZIP files to the SquareSpace backend. These ZIP files may contain up to 100 files. The entire Zoomify environment contains over 6500 files, and I don't feel like uploading these by hand....

If all goes well, the Pano2VR panoramas will be stored on the SquareSpace backend, and therefore be better accessible.

Adobe Coldfusion 9 on CentOS 5.4 (x64)

Updated on Monday, April 5, 2010 at 18:53 by Willem

A while back I figured out how to install Adobe (could have been Macromedia back then) Coldfusion MX on an Ubuntu linux server. This config still runs as it should, but in the mean time several things have changed in the world of software. I've been leaning towards Centos 5.4, and Adobe released Coldfusion 9 somewhere in 2009. These two 'events' made me decide to combine the two.

Before I continue, I must warn you that the Coldfusion installer is still broken..... So there's some manipulation of code involved.

Since the new 'server' is going to run in a virtual environment I started in a VMWare Workstation. This way I could make snapshots of my progress. This made it easier to start from scratch. The problem with Linux and me is that I tend to reinstall the OS when things go haywire. So VMWare is a safe way out in this case.

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Apple Released OS X Update 10.6.3

Apple released the .3 update to Snow Leopard (10.6) today. You can find this update under the Software Update menu, or on the Apple website as a single (combo) download [.dmg].

The update was ~450MB, and took about ten minutes to install. After the reboot everything seemed to work fine. Some applications (I guess the ones that got updated) reverted back to their default settings. E.g. Firefox wasn't my default browser anymore, but NetNewsWire was still my default RSS reader.

I also thought that QuickTime X (how I dislike that app....) reverted back to its default settings, since my pr0n..... euh movies started opening in different windows. Since I can't find a Terminal command for this on the Internet, I guess that I'm mistaken on that. I might be confusing the excellent QuickTime Pro v7.x with this piece of whatever.
There are no visible enhancements on QuickTime X

An annoyance that got fixed is the deletion on SMB shares (Windows 2003 Server). Without the update, the files got deleted, but the directory they were in stayed behind. When you tried to remove this directory, you got this fancy error code.

The important pieces of software that functioned properly after the update uncluded:

• Adobe Photoshop CS4
• Adobe Lightroom v2.6
• BBEdit v9.2.1

Anyway, (more) updates will follow when I run into unexpected behavior.

Update on Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 8:42 by Willem

Apple also released a security update for OSX 10.5.8 (Security Update 2010-002). The update (in my case) was 210MB and installed without (a noticable) flaw on my iMac.

Nikon Learn & Explore iPhone App (part deux)

It took them long enough, but they finally released the Nikon Learn & Explore app for the iPhone in the Dutch iTunes store. I'm still wondering why it took them a couple of months to do so.

Enough negativity for now. Initial impression is that it gives you something nice to read with excellent (example) photos. No matter if you're just starting or a more advanced photographer, there's always something to learn (and explore).

Windows Phone 7 Series

Windows Phone 7 SeriesMicrosoft will be shipping a new phone operating system this year. After the Windows Mobile brand, they're switching to an alternate name; Windows Phone 7 Series. And obviously, with a new name comes a new website; http://www.windowsphone7series.com.

I can't really see why they keep bothering trying to access the phone market. Every single Windows Mobile (or Windows CE as it was called in the old days) device I've owned crashed more frequently than the 'good old' Windows Millennium Edition on an average Sunday. I can't count the number of times that I received a phonecall while doing something else (e.g. playing solitaire, or reading e-mail) and that the call finally went to voicemail. Why? because the phone froze, crashed, or answer button was unresponsive.

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Lens and Focal Length Statistics

Have you ever wondered which lens you used the most? Or what focal length is your favorite? The results of these queries can be used to decide what new lens to get; a (ultra)wide-angle, normal, or telephoto lens.
Well, there is an answer for both questions. The first (which lens) is relatively easy when you're using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Just select the metadata filter in the library view and examine the results.

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iPhone Firmware Update 3.1.3

Apple released an update for the iPhone. Release 3.1.3 fixes some issues like;

• improves accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS
• resolves issue where 3rd party apps would not launch in some instances
• fixes bug that may cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard
• Tethering is back (even on the non exclusive carriers)....
  Results may vary since not every carrier allows tethering (like T-Mobile in the Netherlands).

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Extend Windows System Partition under VMWare

When working with Virtual Machines (VM's) you probably work with templates (and/or) clones to create new VM's. When you do this, you basically get a fixed drive with this. The size of the drives are basically the size from when you created them in the past. Since people put more and more crap programs in these VM's, you'll need more, and more diskspace.

Under VMWare it's relatively simple to add space to a virtual disk (vmdk), or even add an additional disk to the VM. The problem is that this works for creating additional partitions or extend existing NON primary system partitions. This means that you can't enlarge your C: partition, a partition where (under normal circumstances) all your programs are installed.

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Apple Snow Leopard and FileVault (part deux)

Updated on Monday, March 29, 2010 at 23:04 by Willem

A while back, I wrote a couple of blog posts about the FileVault quirks in OSX. The problems seemed to be gone with the upgrade to Snow Leopard, but this week I ran into a (new??) 'feature'?

When I remove a directory on a (SMB) file-share it removes the files and directory (or so it seems). But after a couple of seconds the (empty) directory re-appears.

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Backupify Cloud Backup

Updated on Monday, January 11, 2010 at 16:32 by Willem

There's a new service around called Backupify. It's an online backup system for your online identities/services (free usage till January 31, 2010). It provides automated online backup for the following online services:

• Gmail
• Twitter
• Google Docs
• Flickr
• Facebook
• Basecamp
• Wordpress
• Delicious
• Photobucket
• Blogger
• FriendFeed
• More coming soon...

On itself a nice service, since cloud services aren't invulnerable to customer data lose. This way you have a online backup in case Flickr or Twitter 'decides' to purge your data.

There are some 'drawbacks' though (in my opinion).....

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