The Starrenburg’s Website

This is an example panoramic 360º photograph. The picture is created from a number of photographs taken with a normal camera (a digital SLR is best) using a ‘panoramic head’, and then processed in special software to ’stitch and blend’ the photographs. The pictures give an amazing immersive experience. Click on the picture below to view online (the picture will take a little while to load). I’m still trying out the software as you will see, the sample picture(s) are from one of the panoramic head companies. You can also download and view the picture full-screen in QuickTime on your computer. To move around you click and drag with the left mouse button, left-right & up-down. Shift key to zoom in and Ctrl key to zoom out.

And if you want to get an ideal of just how stunning 360º panoramic photography can be… have a look here. When the window opens make sure you select “high” up in the top right corner to get a high resolution image. Note this high resolution QuickTime source file is only 3.4 MB in size!

If you are a Windows user and don’t have QuickTime (Macs come with QuickTime automatically) then you can download the free QuickTime player here. If you are a Linux desktop user… why don’t you go all the way and get a Mac? After all, the Mac is Unix with a decent desktop - something most Unix/Linux distros have not come anywhere near achieving yet. Ooops - flame wars! Please guys… don’t hurt me, I’m one of you, my web server is running on Gentoo, a real geeks distro - if you’ve ever done “emerge -puv world” on an out of date Gentoo box you’ll know what I mean! Anyway… at least the Mac is not Windows!

Came across this the other day - “The PC Decrapifier” software. Looking at this one can only say “what the…”

Dear oh dear, you know things are bad when a situation gets to the point where someone writes a piece of software (and is no doubt making tidy profit out of it) specifically to address (exploit) a situation in Windows computers caused by PC manufacturers, and Microsoft themselves, exploiting PC purchasers. Before you can even begin to use the computer you paid for, you have to pay someone else to get rid of stuff which shouldn’t have been put on it in the first place!

Reminds me of the war between telemarketing companies in the U.S. who employed automated diallers to ring people’s home phones. Then companies came along which made a very tidy living distributing hardware which could pick up on the telephone line the fact that these automated calling machines were calling, and then trashing the call, thus helping to save the sanity of the poor person in their home. Then it got to an escalating technology war between A - the telemarketers, and B - the hardware anti-telemarketers, with A dreaming up ways to circumvent B’s blocking technology, and B upgrading their equipment. All the while the bunny in the middle had to keep on upgrading their gear to preserve some privacy from the telemarketers. Crazy.

So same situation here, when the solution is… don’t allow it in the first place!

Of course this mostly only happens in the “land of the free…”

p.s. for anyone who’s suffering from this, here you go.

I just love these things… but I hear Bill Gates hates them - surprise, surprise! There were three new ads added to the Apple website ‘Get a Mac’ page today : ‘Choose a Vista’, ‘Genius’ and ‘Party is Over’.

‘Choose a Vista’ highlights the fiasco facing people trying to choose which version of Vista to upgrade to. Many people are making the best decision and saying “none of them!”

One of the ads I love the most however is an earlier one ‘Computer Cart’. This one is so painfully true, yet funny, that I had to stop watching it before I did myself an injury. Look for the “fatal error” part. Click on the thumbnails to watch the ads in HD in a new window.

Enjoy!

After many years using Microsoft Windows, I came to the conclusion that I had looked through too many ‘windows’ when I saw the latest ‘vista’ on offer from Microsoft.

It was… a vista too far.

I finally decided to go with the the best graphical user interface, on top of the best operating system (Unix/Linux) = Mac OS X, and buy a Mac!

I have now moved the whole family over to Macintoshes - and we haven’t looked back!

p.s. apologies to Cornelius Ryan (look at the title of the post), I’m sure he didn’t use Windows either.