According to comedian Adam Carolla,  the internet is like chapstick, lotion and sunglasses – you don’t really need them until you get used to them and are then forced to go without them.  It probably isn’t a stretch to say that this statement is true for me, and I would even say that my computer could be substituted for the internet.  Even if I don’t have an internet connection, I can find ways to kill time on my computer.

I just got a computer at work that has been collecting dust but will now be my “work only” computer, and I’ll see how long I can go without one at home.  I like to think of it as a chance to get in touch with other non-computer parts of my life, so hopefully I’ll be back with an enlightened outlook on life.  Perhaps I’ll have read a book, spent quality time with my wife and cat, started my new workout plan, or cooked some fantastic recipes.  Or maybe I’ll just use my work computer.  Or the Wordpress App for my Android phone.  Either way, I’ll be sure to report.

Originally running from 2002-2008, I had only heard of the show because it followed my previous favorite TV series (The Sopranos), and I had a few friends that raved about it.  Fast forward to 2010, Chelsea and I were looking for a new series to get in to, so I convinced her to try it out.  We started watching occasionally back in May, and finished the very last episode this weekend.  I think I can speak for the two of us when I say that it is definitely an amazing series, and one we would recommend watching.

The show is set in Baltimore, Maryland and follows the Baltimore police department around through various investigations and wire-taps.  But it is so much more than that.  It isn’t your typical cop drama with a series of self-contained episodes and a general theme.  Each season in centered on, and tackles, a particular theme ranging from drugs to shipping to schools to politics to media.  Pictured above are two of the main characters, and two of our favorites.  And for a fun fact, at least two of the major characters in the series are British, (one of them above) but you might not be able to tell because their accents are so good.

Many critics agree that the writing on the show is outstanding, not only for its character development and storytelling, but also because of the realism it portrays and the issues it addresses.  They even managed to make shotgun-toting gangster Omar pictured above, and the drug kingpin Prop Joe below, likable guys.

I have two basic criteria for what makes for a good TV series.  The first is that when watching, I lose track of time.  Each episode actually goes by so quickly, that when I get around to looking up on the display of the DVD player, there are only 5 minutes left.  This is a testament to the writing really drawing me in.  I only remember this happening with two other series: The X-files, which I made Chelsea watch with me, and The Sopranos, which I’ll make her watch in the future.  Actually, the moment with the X-files always happened during the last commercial break, right as each episode really heated up.

The second basic criterion is that you get so involved with each of the characters, that you feel like you know them.  Another example of excellent writing.  This happened with The Sopranos in college to the point where one of my roomates started smoking cigarettes like Silvio, and we started calling him Bohmassio instead of Bohm.  Well it has happened again with “The Wire”.  Knowing that we only had one episode left, we were still curious how they would handle the rest of the storylines.  I’m happy how everything tied together in the end, but a little sad because Jimmy McNulty and crew won’t be around anymore.

The good news is that we have plenty of other series to fill the void.  Next on our list are: Dexter, Mad Med, and Breaking Bad in no particular order, along with some “girly” series to lighten the mood a little.  If you have any other suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

Before the software was officially released, this new content-aware feature was very much hyped and parodied.  Naturally, once I got the program for myself, it was one of the first things I tried out.  Let me tell you, it is magic.

For example, check out this picture below.  Notice anything funny about it?  This is the beach in Barcelona, it looks like the beach in Barcelona.

Now, take a look at the original image.  There is a giant sign in the way.  If you look close enough at the first picture, you might be able to convince yourself that the “filled in” part is darker.  But if I just showed it to you alone, you might not right?

The coolest part is, I deleted that sign with 4 clicks through menus.  I just had to highlight it, and then tell the program to fill that area in using its content-aware engine.  Not bad huh?

That picture worked out well, but it should be easy to make water and blue sky blend with water and blue sky.  So I thought I’d try a more difficult image.  As with the first set of images, here is the aftermath.  Looks like a trail looking down on a city and sea right?

Well this is one of our many pictures of Edinburgh (more coming soon).  We hiked up an inactive volcano for some amazing views of the city.  The only problem was, many people had the same idea, so it was hard to take a picture without a fellow tourist in it.  Not a problem for Photoshop CS5, I just removed the people in the image below.

Now for another example from the same hike.  Here in this picture you can see two people that actually take up much more space than I would have liked when I snapped it.  This might be more difficult to handle, since the software has to handle many aspects in order to “delete” them.

And the results are:

Not bad.  It’s not a perfect way to delete unwanted tourists, but I am pretty satisfied with how well it turned out.

OK, now for the overkill test.  Since I was able to remove a sign, and some random people successfully, I thought I’d try something more extreme.  Again, I’ll Tarantino it, here is the end result first.  See if you can find areas that don’t quite look right.  Its sort of like photo hunt we played as kids at the dentist or in the bar as adults.

And here is the original:

As I hope you can see, I removed three people and two trees.  That is a lot of stuff to edit out of a picture and still have it look semi-normal.  While I don’t doubt that these capabilities were present in the previous versions of Photoshop or other image editing software, I am quite sure this process was never this easy.  Our vacations will  never look the same again.

]]> http://njbrideau.com/?feed=rss2&p=825 3 http://njbrideau.com/?p=515 http://njbrideau.com/?p=515#comments Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:30:35 +0000 admin http://njbrideau.com/?p=515 The question above pops into my head whenever I think about driving a car – and I’m never quite sure which to pick.  Every man should be able to drive a manual transmission vehicle.  Its sort of a right of passage, and I think if you polled most guys they would be able to.  Ladies on the other hand, I am indifferent about.  If they can, its a bonus, but I’m not too concerned if not.

Here in England, the majority of cars are manual transmission – or what they call “standard”.  Similar to buying a car, you pay a premium to rent a car that has an automatic transmission.  So being poor, and a man, I opted to rent the cheapest van possible a few weeks back when we moved.

I took this picture right when I got into the van.  I was worried because in addition to driving on the other side of the road, and sitting on the other side of the car, I had to learn to shift with my other hand.  Determined to prove to Chelsea I am all that is man, I took it for a test run in the parking lot across the street from the rental place before picking her up from work.  I found it surprisingly easy to drive.  I suppose it helps that the pedals and the gear positions on the shifter are in the same orientation as back home in the US.  And having the wheel on the other side of the car actually made it EASIER to drive on the other side of the road.  I just had to remember that as a driver I am always in the middle of the road, and I only punched the door with my right hand once or twice.

Which brings me back to my original point.  Manual or automatic?  After driving this van, I’m now pushing that our next car be a manual transmission.  Why?  It just feels more like driving when you have to change gears by hand.  I could go into the benefits behind it too, but because we will be moving somewhere warm, I’m not so worried about slowing down a car in the snow/ice by downshifting rather than braking.  Of course I could go with another alternative:

The semi-automatic transmission.  This is a manual transmission of sorts, but is built on torque rather than a clutch.  This means that you can drive it like a manual, and shift on your own, but don’t have to deal with any extra pedals and getting the balance between the clutch and the accelerator correct.  All you have to do when the car is ready to shift, is bump the shifter up toward the “+”.  And these types of transmissions even have a built in failsafe, that will shift for you if you redline too long, or forget to shift.

There also happens to be a more expensive version of the semi-automatic transmission above:

Paddle shifters.  I’ll call your attention to the two little buttons positioned for your thumbs to press on the steering wheel above.  I have never used paddle shifters, but what I can gather from Top Gear, they are the hot new accessory to any high end sports car.  Essentially the manufacturer wants the everyday driver to feel more like a racecar driver, and put shift buttons on the steering wheel, allowing the driver to have video game like control.  (Bonus points if you can guess the emblem on the wheel above).

And now we have our last category, the automatic transmission.  I have only owned an automatic transmission car.  My family only drives automatics.  Why?  Convenience.  I’m guessing Mom and Dad got sick of shifting all the time, and wanted to go with a much more simple way to drive.  I can’t blame them.  Unless of course they decide to buy a car with a gear shift that looks like this:

I think this is what many Toyota’s are set up like, and boy do I dislike this design.  I’m sure it is designed so that you can’t accidentally knock the car from one gear to the next by hitting it with something, but I find it annoying to get the car in gear and make it go.  So annoying that I meant to post on it last time I rented a Toyota, but got sidetracked with moving to another country and lost most of my vitriol.

Well thanks if you have made it this far.  And if you have, why not drop a line in the comments regarding your thoughts or preferences for manual or automatic transmissions.

Our trip to the capital city of Ireland started as a birthday surprise to Chelsea.  Because of all the stress and trouble here in Oxford, I wanted to get Chels out of town for a few days to clear our minds and hopefully help her enjoy a birthday weekend.  She knew we were going out of town, but didn’t know the destination.  I tried my best to convince her that we were going to France, until one evening after a few pints, one of our friends asked her: “You are going to Dooooblin?” (try to say that with a French accent).  Well, she figured it out a few seconds later, but that didn’t stop us from having a good time.

I created an online gallery through Google, that is complete with photo captions.  Click here to check it out.

Otherwise, here are a few other pictures that should summarize our trip.

And a trip to new city wouldn’t be complete without a panorama from a high vantage point.  Here are two, taken from the bar on top of the Guinness brewery (click to enlarge).

We searched for new flats for about 2  months straight.  Scouring the letting agent sites, dailyinfo (craiglist), walking around looking for signs, etc.  The process of finding an affordable place with the specifications we wanted, within walking distance, and that allowed us to have a cat, was very difficult.  We even toyed with the idea of buying a place here because our search was so hard, and rent prices are so high.

In the end though, we managed to find a place that fit our needs perfectly:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And to think, that this new place is only 30 pounds more per month than our old flat is being advertised at!  I don’t need to sell you on any of the positive points our new flat has, the video should speak for itself.  We now live very close to city centre, within 5 minutes walk of both the bus and train stations, yet have plenty of peace and quiet.  Hopefully we’ll be here for a few years now that we have taken the time to find and furnish the place.  Please let us know if you need an updated address.

This year though, our 4th of July was a little different.  We are now living in the country that the USA fought for its independence from, so it was a little difficult to find people interested in our celebration.  We also noticed a lack of the FOURTH OF JULY sales and promotions.  We did meet up with some American friends though, and have a little get together.

Chelsea posing with Seriph.  She really misses having dogs, so she’s glad to have made a new friend for life.  Unfortunately I didn’t manage to take any good pictures of the rest of the group, but our friends Josh and Jenna played hosts, and two of their friends from home were also in town.

Here is Josh showing off the fireworks he managed to find.  I think he’s a little excited because he didn’t anticipate finding rockets of this caliber here.  He did tell a story of being called out for being American by the clerk at the store he got them at, but not much flak after that.

Toward the end of the night, we were getting excited to light our fireworks so we headed up the hill from Josh and Jenna’s place to a park.  They live in Botley, which is supposed to have some of the best views in Oxford.  Its no mountain, but I think I managed to capture a good picture on our way up.

As with all my new panoramas, click the image above to get a higher resolution version.

I also managed to piece together a video showing some of the highlights of our fireworks show:

Click here to view the embedded video.

We grilled some food, had some beers, listened to baseball on the (internet) radio, and launched some fireworks.  Actually, I guess that our 4th of July wasn’t that different after all.

Unlike the flat we first lived in, our new place came completely unfurnished.  We were initially concerned about the price of buying everything we need to live with, but everything worked out for us for less than one months rent.  I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say that it is way easier to furnish an apartment in a foreign country than it was probably not all that  long ago.  We found that the craigslist equivalents and internet searches were essential, and scored some really nice stuff at bargain prices.

Plus, we had to go to IKEA.  The picture above is the aftermath of our trip to beacon of Swedish efficiency.  Actually, our trip to IKEA wasn’t nearly as painful on the wallet as I had estimated, and we got to eat some Swedish meatballs as a bonus.

More to come later, hopefully a video tour.  I’ll leave you with Gato enjoying his new backyard.

This is hands down (sorry) my favorite restroom hand dryer.  Apparently, they were announced back in 2006, but I didn’t see any in the USA.  Well, they are everywhere here, and they are amazing.  A jet of air shoots out of a 0.3mm gap at 400mph to create a “blade” of air, that really effectively dries your hands.

If I ever When I get laughable amounts of money, there are a few items that I would really like to buy.  The first is my own meat slicer and deli fridge, but the second might just have to be a Dyson airblade.  Hypothetically speaking, if you come visit me in my man-cave, wouldn’t you rather dry your hands in this thing than a measly hand towel?  I sure would.

The methods to my music are a mix of all of the above, but I most often listen through my iPod.  Loyal readers of this site may remember that topics such as music delivery and my dependence on music are not new subjects.  I did however want to bring it up again because I may have found yet another new way to enjoy music – Spotify.

So what is Spotify?  Well, it is a new way to listen to music.  Click here to go to their website and read more about it. I first ready about Spotify on one of the many tech blogs that I frequent, and was thoroughly intrigued.  In short – it is a combination of many of the ways you may listen to music now.  The software looks eerily similar to Apple’s iTunes software in layout, but tries to do more than iTunes does.

First, this software is a way to play the music you already have on your computer.  The cool part is that it is also a streaming service of sorts, and plugged into social networks.  So instead of the 2,000 songs on your hard drive, you can listen to some 8 million songs they have on their servers.  The only catch is that you need an internet connection.  Its amazing.  I can search for (almost) any song that I can think of and then drag it to a playlist and play it.  The whole song.  Free.  I can then make all kinds of playlists of individual songs, or listen to full albums.

I can also share playlists, songs etc with other people and likewise, browse their interests.  AND if you have a strong interest in a song, there are options to purchase it.

Right now the only drawback is the price.  I happen to use the free service, but similar to services such as Pandora, I am limited to 20 hours per month.  There is an option to purchase a full featured version, complete with streaming to mobile devices like your Android phone, and some offline functions as well.  The price of the full featured version is a little too steep for me right now (~$22 per month), but if when it goes down, I might reconsider based on my usage.

This post may sound like a bit of a plug for this new service, but I am generally excited about the new opportunity – and you should be too.  The major problem for most of the readers of this site is that right now Spotify is limited to Europe.  Hopefully it makes its way over to the States, maybe around the time we make our way back there.  Until then, I’ll keep you posted.

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