Following up on the PictLens posting, I have two other cool bits of photo tech (admittedly the photos that you’ll see are not the best). First I give you a snowy RIT night:

What makes this unique is not what you can see, but what’s buried in the metadata:

Latitude: N 43° 5′ 16.844″
Longitude: W 77° 40′ 36.637″

This photo was take by my phone (which now has an active GPS chip in it thanks to the excellent work of others) and my coordinates were then encoded into it’s .EXIF file header and uploaded directly from the phone to Flickr. The only thing that currently stinks in this process is that Flickr didn’t recognize the GPS data when I attempted to place this picture on my map.

Here’s the second picture:

Alberto here is noteworthy because of the workflow that got him to Flickr. This picture was shot using my Kodak V705 and uploaded directly to Flickr thanks to the Eye-Fi Smart Media (SD/SSHD) card inside of it. Function both as memory and as a wireless modem, the Eye-Fi card routed the picture, via our home WiFi network, to the Eye-Fi site, and then pushed copies both to Flickr and the hard drive of the laptop I’m presently working on.

Both of these technologies have some interesting implications and tie into things that I’m working on at RIT, but I can’t quite talk about just yet. Soon though. Real soon.

My office mate just introduced me to the PicLens web browser plug-in. It’s pretty incredible. This cross platform plug in can grab a collection of photos, like those in my flickr account above, and converts them into an interactive (Apple aesthetic) gallery. The resulting user experience is elegant and totally engaging. Give it a try!

ljc and Aaron’s Halloween dinner was last night. A great time was had by all! We’re all trying to get the sauce recipe… a secret that Aaron’s grandfather made him swear not to share under the threat of “dying ’till he’s dead.”

This past weekend was the Renaissance Martial Arts festival, an event we’ve been running out of our Kung Fu school for the past 7 years. Below is a slide show of pictures from the festival. Since I was typically behind the camera I only appear in one of these pictures.

Flickr continues to impress me. While it has some draw backs, galleries that used to take me hours, if not days, come together in under 60 minutes. Which is a nice thing, especially since my work as the RMA webmaster is purely voluntary.

LJC organized “Mexican Museum Night” in honor of an exhibit of Mexican Wrestling Photography that just opened at the Eastman House and a show of Latin American and Latino art at the Memorial Art Gallery.

Dre and I agreed that, of the two shows, the MAG’s TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, is the one to see. While I loved the Mexican Wrestling photos, that exhibit was marred by some of the worst signage I’ve ever seen. Not only were the notes written in incomprehensible academic speak (and I’ve read many of the works they were referencing), but they were full of typos and mispellings (enough that I even I noticed). It was pretty embarrassing all things considered.

TRANSactions, on the other hand, was uniformly excellent. The art was really challenging (its one of the more “gutsy” shows I’ve seen at the MAG) and the presentation was excellent.

After the museums, we headed across the street to Selena’s. Aaron’s new friend Domo came along for the ride. Unforunately, when Aaron’s back was turned, Domo got a little frisky with Jenny. I’ve been told that Domo has chalked up this unfortunate incident to the booze.

This was the week of getting to see Internet luminaries.

On Wednesday, Ze Frank lectured at RIT. Throughout the course of a very manic and funny talk, he shared his thoughts about the online content space and discussed his experiences producing his daily video podcast, the show. Both his presentation and his ideas were excellent.

Then, thanks to Liz Lawley, on Saturday, Dre and I got the chance to chow on BBQ with Technorati founder Dave Sifry. It was an awesome night of sharing ideas and great food. Dave and I had a great conversation about some of the things I’m working on with the Open Publishing Lab. He also confirmed that others feel the same rss guilt that I do when unread post counts get into the hundreds.

Dave’s shot of all of us.

Dave enjoying some excellent ribs (shot by your’s truly)

Today, outside the bookstore at Cornell I was hugged by Touchdown, Cornell’s mascot. It was purely platonic.

All I know is that it was like 90+ degrees out. As you can see I was sweating from walking around campus. I can’t imagine what it was like inside that costume. But one thing I can say, at least on the outside, Touchdown had… well… some B.O. problems…

I’m back from vacation, and sitting in my office trying to get used to my new Mac laptop. Our short vacation was great. And Dre and I have passed the one-year marriage milestone with no frying pans being embedded into my skull. Good times!

Here are some photos from today at RIT:

Tomorrow I’m at Cornell to start classes there.

A little levity from last week. Free single scoop ice cream cones were handed out for Ben and Jerry’s customer appreciation day.

These pictures were taken with my cell phone. The mix of ice cream and academia brought back fond memories of $1 shakes at the U of C.

Notice anything funny outside the office window?

A deer decided to bed down today outside the office of Professor Williams and Vogl. We’re not quite sure how long it was there for. It must have felt the row of small hedges gave it some protection from the elements (and the students). As for us professors, clearly aren’t perceived as a threat by anything — my students could have told you that.