hexstatik

I’ve finally finished uploading my pics from costa rica. you can check them out here.

today steve jobs unveiled the 3G iphone at WWDC ‘08 and made it official that the iphone will be arriving in canada on july 11th through rogers or fido. the last piece of the puzzle left to be revealed are the plans that rogers and fido will offer for the phone. I have high hopes that a decent data plan will be available so that i can take full advantage of the data features, but then again, this is canada and we seem to like to pay more for everything here.

while i am happy that the new iphone has better battery life (up to 300 hrs on standby, 5 hrs talk on 3G, 10  talk on 2G), GPS, automatic geotagging of photos and 3rd party apps, i was disappointed to find out that they neglected to upgrade the camera and instead stuck with the current 2MP still camera. granted, the photos from the iphone’s camera aren’t that bad, especially when you compare them to other camera phone pics.

either way, i am very excited to be finally getting my own iphone, especially after my experience in washington state this weekend with my bell prepaid phone.

i woke up yesterday morning to find a note from crystal saying that she was gone to starbucks to do some reading. i quickly had a shower and got dressed, but just as i was about to leave to make my way over, crystal walked in and proclaimed “i know what i’m doing today! i am going to take a time lapse video on the skytrain, are you in?”.

“sure!”, i said.

she had after all decided to take my idea of taking a time lapse of the sky train, so there was no way i was going let her go without me. we made a quick trip to london drugs to pick up a USB cable, had a bite to eat, installed the required software, and charged our batteries before finally making our way to waterfront station.

once we arrived, we spent a few minutes on the platform to do some prep work to get ready and organized. i headed to the back of the train, while crystal stayed up at the front. she nodded and we both boarded. since we were at a terminus station, we were able to get on before the train switched tracks to head in the opposite direction. this gave us a few extra seconds to set up the tripod, connect the cable to the laptop, start the software and make some final adjustments.

at my end of train, everything was working perfectly and i was snapping photos in no time. suddently, my phone rang - it was crystal. she hadn’t set up her software, so we needed to get off the next station and restart. this time, we both got everything up and running on time.

immediately, other people on the train wanted to know what we were doing. at the front, i was approached by 3 different people. the first told me he had always wanted to do the same thing. the other was a film student who wanted to know if i had gone to school for film too and wished me luck, and finally an older man returning home from the auto show with his son who told me that i should “put some ghosts and throw some ads” into my movie to make a bunch of money.

after about an hour, our trip around the millenium line was just over. after a brief encounter with a skytrain attendant, we headed home to create the following movie with the resulting 729 images.

first and foremost, let me start off by saying that i did in fact pay for today’s trip on the sky train. thank very much.

there i was at the front of the train, on the phone with crystal, who was at the back. we were both taking a series of photos for a time lapse video project we were working on. having almost reached the end of the line, we were trying to coordinate out next move - get off now and go home, or go around again and do it reverse.

suddenly, i saw a blue jacket walking on the platform looking into the train. he spotted me and stepped onto the train while talking on his radio “hold the westbound at commercial”.

“what are you doing?”, he asked.

“just taking some photos”, i replied.

“do you have a permit for that?”, he asked

“why do i need a permit?” i hung up the phone on crystal. (read here for crystal’s story from the front of the train.)

he informed me, “you need to have a permit. you’re going to have to leave.”

“sure, ok. just let me get my stuff.” just then the doors closed on the attendant and the train started to move, so i let my camera finish the series of shots between commercial station and the last stop on the line, VCC-Clark.

during the short trip to VCC-Clark, the gentleman was getting more and more flustered with me, as was i with him. i asked him what rule i had broken, and to produce proof that i was in fact doing something against the “rules”. he then replied it was posted on the “translink website”.

“really? so you just post all of your ‘rules’ on the website where people can see them?”

“do you want to speak to the police, sir?”

by now, i had started to get my bag ready while the attendant began to speak into his radio and turned to the front of the train where he suddenly spotted crystal and her set up. he immediately turned to me and asked ,

“you have another one set up there?”

“no, that’s my partner.”

“do you have any ID on you?”

“for what? no!”

it was definitely time to go.

i tried to call crystal, but my phone was taking too long. i shoved the phone in my pocket, unplugged my gear, packed my laptop and grabbed my camera on it’s tripod and headed to the back of the train to get crystal. luckily, during my initial phone call, crystal heard the attendant ask “… you have a permit?” and was on high alert. as i was approaching the rear, i called out for her to “grab your stuff. we have to leave.” she was off the train before i arrived.

as she tried to leave the station, the attendant told her;

“you’re going to have to wait here.”

“don’t stop, keep going” i yelled out.

as we were briskly descending the stairs, i glanced back to see if he was following us. he was standing at the top of the stairs ,still talking into his radio. the look of disbelief on his face was priceless.

as many of you know, I’m a technology junkie. i love all things “tech” and the things that technology enables us to do. I love seeing massive computer power put to cool uses. Today, the term massive computing power applies to almost any desktop computer when compared to computers from as little as 10 years ago. Granted, our desktop computers look like simple digital watches in terms of computing power when compared to today’s super computers, but they are still very very powerful none the less.

Some of the coolest technologies that are pushing the limits are happening in visualization. for example, it is now possible to take photos from flickr, analyze them and create a 3 dimension model of objects or space, like microsoft labs’ photosynth project, which was first demoed at TED 2007 by Blaise Aguera y Arcas. If you have 7 or 8 minutes to spare, I highly recomment watching this. After you’re done, you can actually play with a live demo of photosynth here.

Finally, the last thing that I wanted to mention is a little more photography oriented. It’s called Image Resizer, and it’s going to be in the next version of Photoshop. The video demo below is a quick 4:28, and if you’re interested in photography at all, you should check it out.