Week 3 - Flickr quickr pickr uppr

I always thought the Bounty paper towel slogan and Flickr should team up...Anyways....


This weeks fun thing was Flickr. I did start playing with flickr about a month ago to try and get my lame photography a few more hits. Flickr is a fun little tool. I don't find it quite as convenient as using my own website to host Picassa slideshows of my work, but Picassa is more of a desktop application that, if you have your own webpage, will format the photos into a simple presentation for you.



So well first here is a picture I took at Assateague Island of a young boy playing in the surf:



So I post that, image is hosted by flickr. I liked this photo alot for some reason. I'm not particularly drawn to young boys or them playing in water, but theres a certain memory in it for me, of when I was that young and going to the ocean for the first time and how exciting and frightening it was.

Anyways, back on topic. I decided to play around with the "Color Fields Colr" 3rd party utility for flickr. This utility makes something very complex, very simple. You choose a color from the palette presented you and it then scans flickr for a photo where that color is the dominant element in the photo. A simple example is, you click green, and you get pictures of limes and grass.

This was quite interesting and could actually serve multiple purposes. It could help children to learn how to associate colors with certain things. Also help an artist get idea of color usage. This site though also stems to an idea I once had but lack the knowledge to follow through on it. I once thought of a search engine to where you would upload your photo of something and the search tool would locate what it could possibly be in the photo, details about it, and then add your photo to its database so others can reference it as well.

That might not be clear, so let me give an example. Suppose a person flying over Baltimore takes a photo of Fort McHenry from the air.

(well not exactly a satelite image but you know what I mean)
This guy gets home and goes "wow, I wonder what that is in my picture!?"
He would upload the image to (insert catchy, cliche search engine name here).com and the search results would first turn up Fort McHenry, Baltimore, War of 1812, National Anthem, Francis Scott Key, Fort McHenry Tunnel, I-95, Pentagon (The maybe but just wrong result), Starfish (random 5 legged creature that is the good intention result), Hot Babes of Fort McHenry (porn always has to turn up in a search result, its the American Way), and ilovehotdogs.com (the "oh my god, how is this even possible but I must click" search result).

Then this image would also be stored for reference by the engine, so then people will get multiple photos of fort mchenry, and its hot babes that are waiting for you!

Needless to say this technology probably is just starting to be made, if things like the color search is on the net and works fairly well, now its just getting something to recognize shapes and then unique features.

I don't know why I go off on these tangents, but its an idea, and thats what this thing is all about right?

And in other news, the iPhone I believe went on sale the other day. So much hype for a cellphone that can do other things you shouldn't do while driving. Toys like these, though awesome, are leading away from a techological innocence people had and turning more into ignorance. For a little bit of time, it was understandabe that people didn't realize driving and being on the phone could be dangerous. People know it now and still do dumb things even more.
My time on the Internet Help Desk really showed this. Pop-up ads, trojan horses, viruses, stealth dialers, and other "mal-ware" have been around since before I got my first computer with Internet capabilities connected in 1996. I learned quick at the age of 16 that sites with lots of pictures take a long time to load, pages with pop-ups are annoying and slow. Eventually you notice the computer is slower and realize those pages install things on your computer. So, you find them, clean them and avoid them in the future. This issue, when I was answering calls from 2004-2006, was the primary reason why people were talking to me. But, it wasn't different people, it was the same 1% of the customer base calling everyday to tell me WE installed this ugly stuff on their computer. I can forgive one or two calls, but after 5, you aren't innocent anymore, you are ignorant. The whole point of this program so far, seems to try and fight this and make us take responsibility for our own ignorance. Take for instance the case of the person driving a car over a spike strip. One time, its ok, you didn't see the sign to go the other way and blow out your tires. The mechanic gets a good laugh out of it, and so does the person. Say this pattern continues for 5 days. The mechanic, though making a great business off of tire sales to this special customer, is going to get angry and frustrated because he is tired of the fact that this person is not learning. There are two failures here; the patron is dumb and fails to learn, and the mechanic is failing to educate. At some point the mechanic needs to grab the customer by the shoulders, shake them violently, and tell them not to go out of the lot that way any more. This applies to us in that we must learn these things not for us (Imagine if that mechanic didn't know how to change a tire, you wouldn't ask him for help for other things, would you), but we must learn these things so we can educate those who don't know. This story does backhandedly say that theres a real potential that with some customers I was a bad technician, that I didn't properly educate the customer to get them to solve this issue on their own. This program isn't just to make us more tech savvy, but make us educators for those less savvy than us. There will always be someone with a question to which we don't know the answer, we must accept that, but ignorance on our part leads to closed mindedness, while the innocent approach will lead us to learning along with the customer and generally preparing us for the next.

More on this topic in later posts. Have a good one, be safe. Peace


Special Thanks to:
http://www.geocities.com/baltforts/
http://www.krazydad.com/colrpickr/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8763101@N02/ - my flickr site
http://sig.bounceme.net/sig -my personal website where I use Picassa to create slideshows

I've been tagged, 0h Noes!

Alright so heres 8 things about me due to the tagging
1. I have a music performance degree
2. I am 27 years old
3. I can make some pretty weird sound effects
4. I own 6 trumpets, a euphonium, a keyboard, and a theremin
5. I built my own computer
6. I am the first generation born in the US on my fathers natural side of the family
7. I am phobic of needles
8. I consider myself fairly professional at guitar hero

7 and a half habits

So I have just watched the 7 and a half habits of successful people tutorial. I actually use many of these in my own life philosophy and teaching. My trumpet student is always hearing me tell him "think of the final product, but pay attention to the skills you must learn to get there, because that is where the satisfaction and the ability to do something else comes from".

Habit 2 especially hits home, "Accept responsibility in your learning". I use a bit of a different approach with this. This can be used as a guilt factor on yourself. Its a "Why Not do it" clause. I use this in many facets, whether its to get over stage fright or performance anxiety, concern over the quality of a new project, a weak photo subject, or an arrangement for my band that didn't turn out quite right. It has to be tried, and you have to put confidence behind what you do. This is where I feel Habit 4 "Have Confidence" comes in. But the other thing with confidence is never thinking your idea is bad. Its a bit ridiculous, but I start and pursue just about any idea I have, creatively. Say I want to play "More Than a Feeling" by Boston, in my brass quintet. That song isn't exactly chamber music. I sit down with a recording of the song and start breaking it down as to how I can simulate it on brass instruments. I start transcribing the music. Now this project of mine, I abandoned. It was going to be too dificult and just wasn't going to sound right with a brass quintet. But I had to start it, you never know. My friends tend to ask me why and how about a lot of the stuff I do. My basic answer is "Why not?". Theres no reason to not try. I find it exciting and fun to jump into things like that. I am self taught with most of the stuff I do. Photography, videography, writing, building a website, building computers, all of it I taught myself by telling myself theres no reason why I can't I do that, and do that well. I find myself feeling very satisfied about those things, but the backlash is always the emotional feeling of "I can do better".

on a side note, the narrators voice was pretty annoying I thought, other than that though, good little program.

Amendment Number 1

After re-reading my post, I realized I probably shoud have provided some URLs to my accounts on Youtube and Flickr. I must insert this disclaimer, especially for the Youtube account. The majority of my videos contain coarse and infantile humor that my former college friends thought was brilliant at the time. Also there are signs of possible serious mental illness in some of the postings. I also am a natural performer and will sacrifice some dignity in the name of entertainment. Some video on my account will shock you at some point, normally at the level I am willing to insult "myself". My youtube profile can be found at:

http://youtube.com/elsigwaldio

My Flickr account is far more tasteful and really requires no disclaimer besides I'm sorry about the poor photography attempts. My Flickr can be found:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8763101@N02/

Have a safe one folks, Peace

The cherry post

Alright so this is the first postings of probably many for this Maryland 23 Things technology training program. This blog's intention is to chart my progress through the steps of the program. Popular web services such as Youtube, Flickr, and RSS feeds will be discussed.

I am somewhat familiar already with Youtube, having a director's account, which allows posting of videos longer than 10 minutes. I also have a Flickr account as well posting some of my photography. I have really no idea how RSS feeds work though which is one reason why I signed up for this. The primary reason I signed up for this though is I feel that it seems that the library is about 10 years behind in technology and this program will really help catch it up and since I have interest in this field, I feel it can help me help my coworkers understand these great tools better. The blending of technology and creativity is a great thing and I feel the library can be the catalyst of encouraging youth and adults alike to explore their imagination and assist them in sharing their talents and thoughts with the world.

For example, my friends and I made a silly video. I was tinkering on the Internet this weekend and actually found a Cuban version of Youtube was linking to my video. So people in Cuba were able to "enjoy" this silly little movie that my friends and I made in a dark parking lot one night. I feel that if my friends and I can reach an international audience, imagine the knowledge, wisdom, and spirit a whole library system can share with the world.