Odd One Out

On my way home from my morning run I realized I wasn't going blind. There, on a bench, an older woman dressed in pink was sucking on a dummy. Her dog was as impassive as its giant wannabe-baby owner. My first thought was: Poor woman. My second thought was: Do I smell bacon? And my third thought was: Help! This is one of the kinds of people I will help as a future doctor.

On my final sprint I told myself to calm down. I don't have to think of this now; they will certainly teach me how to interact with people like her in medical school. With a pulse of 190 BPM and panting like a dog with a hyperactivity disorder, I felt completely calm: No need to plan for tomorrow when you can't. Or that's what I told my imaginary girlfriend when she told me she was pregnant.

My HDR Photos

Internet: Freedom of Speech or Loss of Etiquette?

Internet has without a doubt given normal people (with access to a computer and internet) the chance to express ourselves freely on the net. This blog is, in fact, one of the best examples I can think of. But YouTube is of course another brilliant example. On YouTube you are not only limited to words and pictures but can air thoughts and feelings through the medium of video. To be frank, not every person out there is a video persona. I have seen some creepy videos out there, but never have I had the urge to spat out something like "Idiot" or "You need help, you psycho" - like the majority of YouTube visitors seem to have.

So why is it that when we are left with an opportunity to say something useful we revert back into 6^th graders bullying other kids. Well, it is quite easy to write obscenities in the comment section when all you have left behind is a cryptic nickname like HitMan26 or MisterDonkey87. My mind first wanted to correlate these internet comments with prank calls, which gives you a similar anonymity, but prank calls are just jokes while a comment like "Idiot" or "Take off your clothes and have sex" (which was a recent comment to a video of two girls pretending to be Sarah Palin's daughter and her friend) are just… preposterous.

So that's it then; when we are faced with an opportunity to choose a new internet personality we choose the identity of the bully and know-it-all with a my-dick-is-so-small-and-I-haven't-got-some-in-ages complex so deeply rooted that not even the brightest psychiatrist could help this poor SOB. I sincerely hope that dictatorship is not the answer to this misuse of free speech. (But if it is the only way out I would like to apply for the job as a dictator or mad scientist, please get back to me @: ruben.la.clae+dictator@gmail.com)

Laptop: It has Survived!

As you might have figured out from my header, VAIO now celebrates its 10th birthday. And my VAIO laptop, on which I am now writing this post, just turned two years old. Which reminds me of someone who claimed that laptops couldn't live longer than a year. It did, and I will be surprised if this laptop won't see its 3rd birthday.

Personally I like the FE series (which I have) and it has been replaced by the newer FZ series, and the newest FW series which looks really rediculous. I get the point of having a 16:9 form factor on a multimedia notebook but 16.4 inches is way too big. 15.4" is almost too big in my opinion, but I guess VAIO can pull this one off too, since its sleek, metally design cannot be compared to anything else on the notebook market today.  

More Cars on the Road, Less Competent Drivers

I recently read in Time magazine that roundabouts are becoming a huge success in the US. They have approximately 1000 roundabouts over there. I know at least 10 roundabouts in the city Helsingborg, where I live. 

I am forced to idle thus forced to kill the Earth

I really understand the popularity of the roundabout; it is time efficient (no idling), good for the environment (no idling) and sometimes they are even pretty, decorated with ornaments and the occasional roundabout dog (Swedes had a tradition of putting a dog in the center of the roundabout, not a real one obviously). So far so good.

But what is the point of having a roundabout if people cannot show where they are going. Yes, I am speaking of something as fundamental as an indicator. By turning on your indicator just before exiting the roundabout you can inform people that you are on your way out thus leaving space for other vehicles to enter the roundabout. This is what I have learnt to do in driving school, but older and more "skilled" drivers seem to think it is cool not to show where you are going.

I realize when I write this that I am starting to sound like a grumpy old man although I am just 20. But come on people, the point of roundabouts is to decrease, and often eliminate, idling time but by not showing where you are going I am forced to idle thus forced to kill the Earth. I usually find myself stopping although I had not needed to, had the incompetent driver just used his indicators. I do not mind starting and stopping a lot (but Al Gore does) but I rather cruise at constant speed than to stop when I really do not have to.

HDR, a New Artform?

To be honest I have seen more wacky HDR images than good ones since I discovered this technique of enhancing the range of exposures in a digital image. HDR is short for, High Dynamic Range, and means that bigger range of values between light and dark parts of the image. When you take a photo of a building the exposure will be adapted to the building, the lighting and colours are shown correct. But if you look at the scene with your own eyes you will probably notice the bright blue sky and maybe some clouds in the background. This is not shown in the image because the camera has a limited range of intensities for a given exposure. By taking multiple shots of the same scene with different exposures, and later merge them into a HDR image you can see a wider range of intensities.

So when I tried this for myself I started to understand why I have seen so many wacky HDR pictures. It is not easy to do (especially if you cannot afford the right software) but there are some guides out there. Personally I like Paint.NET which is a free and very competent program. Unfortunately it cannot merge HDR images natively like Photoshop CS2 and CS3 or Photomatix. Before you run out taking pictures like a madman, remember to bring a tripod. Yes, I know you might feel geeky putting a compact camera on a tripod but it is the only way to take three or more photos looking exactly the same, except for the exposure. Tip number two: don't try to make a HDR picture of moving things, unless you spent £350+ on a camera that saves pictures in RAW.

• Paint.NET HDR Tutorial
  
• Photomatix Tutorial
  
• Photoshop CS2 Tutorial
  

Those of you who are just too lazy or do not want to spend too much time can check out this tutorial, which only requires one picture. The tutorial is for Photoshop but it works in Paint.NET too. Just make sure to use Overlay instead of Soft Light and put the Opacity level to 110ish for a good effect.

Privacy Issues

Google Chrome has apparently security issues. Among other things your surfing habits could be stored by Google since the information is not anonymous. And I am afraid opening an incognito window will not be solving this issue. Google however promises that this will be fixed along with some other security issues. In the meantime you should think of which parts of the web you browse and maybe limit your browsing to some test sites, like www.google.com.

This will be all of my blogging for today. But stay tuned for a HDRI special. For those of you who do not know what HDRI is, check out this site.

Google Chrome: How fast is it?

As I started tweaking with HTML-settings in Blogger I realized how different IE7 and Firefox really are. I know they render web pages differently but I have (still) no idea how it's done. I instead decided to check the speed difference between the two browsers. But what if I added another browser? Since I have a few (very few) blog readers who use Safari, I decided to test the Vista version of this Konqueror offspring. It turned out that I was luckier still. Apparently, to my surprise, Google has decided to launch its own browser Chrome. It is of course in this test.

Test specs:

• OS: Vista Ultimate 32-bit SP1
  


• CPU: Intel Core Duo T2300 @ 1.66GHz
  


• RAM: 2 Gb
  


• HDD: Samsung HM320JI
  


• Internet connection: ADSL 8Mbit/s
  


• Time of test 8AM – 9AM GMT Tuesday and Wednesday
  

No other computers were connected to the network at the time of the tests. No other computer program, than the browsers, took up network space.

Round1 (Startup and Shutdown):

If you're like me you hate waiting for programs to start up. The first start up is a cold start, which means that the browser is started as the first program after OS boot. After that I measured the time to warm start the browsers (running it for a second time). And finally I measured how fast they all shut down. These are the results.

Browser:	Cold Start (s):	Warm Start (s):	Shutdown (s):
Internet Explorer 7	10,5	6,5	1,3
Firefox 3	8,9	4,6	0,5
Safari	15	8,3	0,2
Chrome Beta	2,2	2	0,2

Round2 (Average Page Load Time):

87 random pages were loaded in each browser. Internet cache was cleared in each browser before loading a new page. The time was taken with a standard stopwatch (this is not a proper way of calculating the time, I know) from the push of the enter button until all content on the page was loaded (including ads, no ad-blockers were used). The average time to load a page was calculated:

• Internet Explorer 7 – Average Page Load in Seconds – 4.3
  


• Firefox 3 – Average Page Load in Seconds – 4.0
  


• Safari 525.21 – Average Page Load in Seconds – 3.4
  


• Chrome Beta – Average Page Load in Seconds – 3.2
  

Round3 (To Tweak or Not to Tweak):

Only 5 pages were loaded by each browser, otherwise same setup as above. Only the first three browsers were tested since Chrome had not yet been released.

• Internet Explorer 7 – 7.2% faster
  


• Firefox 3 – 17.2% faster
  


• Safari 525.21 – 29.4% faster
  

So it looks like you should apply those tweaks if you don't want to be waiting forever.

Round4 (Security):

The following page was used: http://bcheck.scanit.be/bcheck/ to check browser vulnerability.

• Internet Explorer 7 – Passed
  


• Firefox 3 – Passed
  


• Safari 525.21 – Passed
  


• Chrome Beta – Test didn't start
  

Conclusion:

This test really changed my view on browsers. Chrome proves to be a worthy competitor in the browser challenge. It is the faster browser, but its usability is yet to be proved. The other eye-opener in this little test was Safari. I haven't really bothered to check it out before. I knew Konqueror was fast so why not Safari too? Still, it is not the browser I would choose for now. The bookmark menu, among other things, needs improving. Firefox and Internet Explorer have great bookmark menus and I think that Firefox is the overall winner (from my viewpoint). It's a balance between speed and usability that I like. A final note to the Microsoft guys: Work, work, work… unless you want IE8 to do as badly in a browser comparison next time (but I still like IE7 for making my blog look pretty).

Update1: I guess I need to say one other thing. Google Chrome is a revolution in the sense it can treat web applications as if they were programs on your hard disk drive. I am sure Chrome will evolve to a point where we don't need IE7 or any other browser for that matter. But Chrome is still beta so don't expect wonders just yet.