Yearly Archives: 2008

dnalounge update

31 Dec 2008
DNA Lounge update, wherein we  REDACTED .
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: | 26 Comments
Current Music: Fujiya & Miyagi -- Sucker Punch

Mark your calendars: celebrate the Leap Second!

30 Dec 2008
According to Bulletin C of the International Earth Rotation Service:

A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2008. The sequence of dates of the UTC second markers will be:
    2008 December 31, 23h 59m 59s
    2008 December 31, 23h 59m 60s
    2009 January     1,   0h   0m   0s
The difference between UTC and the International Atomic Time TAI is:
    from 2006 January 1, 0h UTC, to 2009 January 1 0h UTC : UTC-TAI = - 33s
    from 2009 January 1, 0h UTC, until further notice           : UTC-TAI = - 34s

This means that tomorrow, 3:59:59 PM PST will be followed by 3:59:60 PM PST prior to the advent of 4:00:00 PM PST.

Previously, previously.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , | 10 Comments
Current Music: Tuxedomoon -- 59 to 1

Paper Street Oil Company

30 Dec 2008
Good gas mileage my ass
For a time, Beverly Hills doctor Craig Alan Bittner turned the fat he removed from patients into biodiesel that fueled his Ford SUV and his girlfriend's Lincoln Navigator.

Using fat to fuel cars might be environmentally friendly, but it's definitely illegal in California to use human medical waste to power vehicles, and Bittner is being investigated by the state's public health department.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: | 17 Comments
Current Music: The Jesus and Mary Chain -- Snakedriver

mixtape 063

28 Dec 2008
Please enjoy jwz mixtape 063.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , | 3 Comments
Current Music: as noted

XScreenSaver 5.08

28 Dec 2008
XScreenSaver 5.08 out now.

A bunch of bug fixes, but most notably this time, I finally retired a bunch of screen savers that suck. Also I rewrote Jigsaw and Sonar as OpenGL programs, and they are a lot slicker now. The pieces in Jigsaw come in many more varieties, and it rotates the pieces as well.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 26 Comments
Current Music: School of Seven Bells -- Wired for Light

Cocoa EXIF rotation

27 Dec 2008
Dear Lazyweb,

How do you load an NSImage with proper EXIF rotation applied? I can't figure out how to determine the correct rotation. The following doesn't work. I get a dictionary containing a bunch of EXIF keys like exposure and shutter speed, but the "Orientation" tag is notably missing, and the image is displayed sideways. Preview and Finder display it properly, and exiftool says the field is there. 


  NSImage *img = [[NSImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:filename];
  NSArray *reps = [img representations];
  NSBitmapImageRep *rep = reps ? [reps objectAtIndex:0] : 0;
  if (rep) {
    NSDictionary *exif = [rep valueForProperty: @"NSImageEXIFData"];
    if (exif) {
      NSString *rot = [exif objectForKey:@"Orientation"];
      NSLog (@"rot = %@", rot);
      NSEnumerator *e = [exif keyEnumerator];
      id key;
      while ((key = [e nextObject])) {
        NSLog (@"%@ = %@", key, [exif objectForKey:key]);
      }
    }
  }
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 8 Comments
Current Music: Cabaret Voltaire -- Motion Rotation

I built an ornithopter.

26 Dec 2008

I think it turned out pretty well.

( --More--(10%) )

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 15 Comments
Current Music: Curve -- The Birds They Do Fly

dnalounge update

26 Dec 2008
DNA Lounge update, wherein we find pigs and elves.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: | 1 Comment
Current Music: Boys Noize -- Superfresh

My personal robotic assistant was not quite right.

25 Dec 2008
So I fixed it.

With EYES.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , | 17 Comments
Current Music: School of Seven Bells -- Wired for Light

You stay classy, Music Industry.

24 Dec 2008
Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls says:
if you hadn't noticed, all of the dresden dolls and amanda palmer official videos have been taken off youtube.

yes, folks...girl anachronism, coin-operated boy, shores of california, almost everything from who killed amanda palmer....pretty much the whole deal. all gone. go look for yourself. and you ask...wtf? this is why: nytimes, wired.

basically: "Unable to reach new licensing terms, the Warner Music Group has demanded that thousands of its videos be removed from YouTube, which is owned by Google. Warner Music's videos, the source of a billion views on YouTube, gradually began disappearing from the site on Saturday, although many remained online Sunday evening."

in other words, roadrunner is a subsidiary of warner and i'm stuck in hell with madonna and the other poor bastards, because warner wants more money. even worse, warner has almost no bargaining power...they're not even in the top ten of labels who have huge artists with material streaming on youtube. they're just starving for cash right now and they're doing anything they can think of to come up with cash. it's abSURD. they are looking for money in a totally backwards way.

money that, i should point out, i would NEVER see as an artist. if they got their way and youtube decided to give them a larger revenue share of the videos, it;s very unlikely it would ever make it's way into the artists' bank accounts.

damn, man. this shit is fucked UP.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , | 20 Comments
Current Music: Robots In Disguise -- We're in the Music Biz