Tempus Fugit

Latin (tem-pu̇s-ˈfü-git): Time Flies

Month: January 2012

  • Bus Rider

    I know a lot of people ride the bus, but not me, not until yesterday that is.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about the cost of operating a vehicle lately and when you add up the payments, insurance, parking, and repairs it’s an amazing amount per month. So, yesterday was the start of my bus adventures for commuting to work.

    I needed to take the truck in to have the windshield replaced, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to start riding. Armed with bus tickets and an app to find my rides I set out on the #57 Express from Southdale to downtown. Nice ride, not crowded, as fast or faster than driving and strangely relaxing. Perhaps it’s just the 1st time novelty.

    Going home was equally good. The stop is a block from my office and the bus was exactly on time.

    Today I’m on the #19, not an express but moving well. Oops, spoke too soon! We’re jammed up on Archibald with all those darn cars!

    Giving up the truck and going to a one vehicle family will be a big change for me. Bussing in the winter seems like it will be OK, and way less expensive. From early spring to late fall I can be on the bike so that will be excellent. I think I’ll turn the mountain bike into more of a commuter bike with fenders and skinny tires and perhaps the reward for my new transportation style will be a new full suspension 29er.

  • IBM to Launch IBM Docs with a Collaborative Service Similar to Google Apps

    IBM to Launch IBM Docs with a Collaborative Service Similar to Google Apps | ServicesANGLE

    IBM is set to launch IBM Docs as part a collaborative service similar to Google Apps that it is calling the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business. As part of the effort, IBM is placing its LotusLive services under the SmartCloud name, which now encompasses IBM’s “smarter commerce,” brand, analytics and industry specific solutions such as its Smarter Cities efforts.

  • Melt Down

    20120104-185416.jpg

    What’s going on? It’s January and there is virtually no snow in Winnipeg and tomorrow the forecast is for +7. Thought these ice candles would be fine until late March, but at this rate they will just be a puddle of water by tomorrow night.

  • Geotagging photographs with gps4cam

    QR Code by Big Dadoo
    QR Code, a photo by Big Dadoo on Flickr.

    I’ve spent a good part of the last day of Christmas holidays playing around with the computer. Well, not so much playing as learning some new stuff in Lightroom 3, which triggered exploring a whole bunch of other stuff, mainly around GPS, geotagging and the iPhone. You see, Lightroom exposes the GPS metadata of a picture and there is a small little arrow next to the GPS coordinates that launches a Google Map of where that photograph was taken. Similarly, geotagged photos sent to photo sharing sites like Flickr use this GPS info to put your photo on the map.

    While iPhone photographs are self-geotagging (GPS coordinates can be automatically associated with the picture when it’s taken) my other cameras, like the Canon 7D, can’t do this on their own. It is possible to geotag photos from DLSRs like the Canon 7D and store that information as part of the image but there are quite a few different approaches and hardware/software options to get the job done.

    After a little googling around and reviewing a number of approaches, I settled on gps4cam, an iPhone app, to help me get the job done. Primary criteria were low cost, after all this is the post-Christams period, it had to be easy to use, preferably self contained, not requiring yet another online service and be easy to use in my Lightroom workflow.

    The 2D bar code in the picture is my 1st test of gps4cam and it contains GPS locations sampled on a 5 minute interval of my afternoon photo shoot expedition to Whittier Park. At the end of your “photo trip” you export the GPS information from the iPhone and it produces one or more 2D bar codes, which you simple photograph and add to the photos that you’re planning to geotag. The photos are then processed with the gps4cam desktop software. It looks at your photos and finds the 2D barcode info and extracts the GPS data and then inserts the appropriate GPS data into the appropriate photo, it’s simple “magic”!. The nice part is that you don’t need to synchronize the clock on the iPhone with the clock on the camera, which is what a lot of other solutions require when using a GPX file to attach the GPS info to a photo.

    So far, I’m quite pleased with the gps4cam software and I’m looking forward to testing it out on a longer photo shooting expedition.