Monthly rainfall tallies (in millimetres) for the past 10 years, as measured 20 km (12.5 miles) east of Armidale, NSW.

      Jan   Feb   Mar   Apr   May   Jun   Jul   Aug   Sep   Oct   Nov   Dec   Total
2002  50.0  80.0  78.7   3.5   4.3  21.9  10.3  58.2  26.7  25.0  83.2  75.6  517.4
2003  51.6 144.5  52.7 108.7  39.1  31.8  18.9  23.0   5.7  91.3  55.9  71.1  694.3
2004 192.1  77.8  65.2  22.4   5.4  20.4  43.3  49.6  45.9 111.2  69.0 133.8  836.0
2005  92.9  66.3  16.2  13.2  18.8  82.6  20.9  13.4  87.1  60.2 154.3  98.7  724.6
2006 109.5 115.2 110.2  22.5   3.6  45.8  46.4  30.8  44.8  29.8 133.6  43.8  735.0
2007  98.1 137.1  95.4  43.6  21.7  39.9   8.7 105.4  13.8  95.7 102.8 127.7  889.9
2008 133.6 203.0   3.8  68.9  10.9  60.4  25.8  35.0  54.5  57.1 119.4  61.2  833.6
2009  67.8 160.4  56.6  67.1 121.1  46.1  23.4  18.2  31.3  53.7  52.2 138.4  836.3
2010 134.7  63.4  86.0  53.9  47.3  38.0  68.2  48.8  59.1  59.0 128.6  67.1  854.1
2011 151.6  58.4  87.8  69.3  50.6 156.5  11.7  76.4  70.9  64.3 241.2 116.4 1155.1

The 135 year average for Armidale (in millimetres) is:

Avg  104.5  87.1  65.0  45.9  44.4  56.9  49.2  48.4  51.6  67.8  80.4  89.2  790.1

Photographs, as made by the technology found it today’s cameras, aren’t very good when capturing scenes which have a High Dynamic Range (HDR). Such scenes will typically have areas that are extremely bright, and areas that are very dark. Cameras can do a reasonable job of capturing detail in one or other of those areas, but not both at the same time.

That’s where the concept of HDR photography comes in to play. The idea is that if the camera makes several images, one after the other and each one exposed slightly differently (between one and two stops apart), then collectively they will have captured all the detail in a given scene.

Sophisticated software exists whereby these several images can be overlaid and the software selects which part of each image it will use, or even merge a few images and extrapolate those parts it wants. Tone mapping may also be applied.

Now, enter stage left, the iPhone.

Mobile phones have become part of the everyday lives of many people; in particular, the camera found thereon is used to record minutiae of everyday life. But most mobile phone cameras aren’t very sophisticated – they’re built to a price.

Like their bigger brothers, these cameras aren’t very good at recording detail in the bright and the dark parts on a scene.

That’s where “Pro HDR” for the iPhone comes to the fore, and is worth much more than you pay for it.

In my opinion “Pro HDR” operates best on “live” images – that is to say, in place of the Camera app already found on the iPhone. “Pro HDR”, when operating in automatic mode, will determine the brightest and the darkest parts of a scene, and then make two images, one exposed for the bright, and one for the dark. It then creates a blend of the two to give a single “HDR” version.

So, I purchased “Pro HDR” then installed it on my iPhone 4 (it also works with iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 4G) and put it to the test.

Three images follow. The first is the image made when exposing for the brightest part of the scene – in this case, the clouds. Details of the clouds are clearly visible.

The next image is one which has been exposed for the darker parts of the image – in this case it’s pretty much everything other than the clouds. As you might expect, the sky is overexposed and lacks detail.

The third image is the composite automatically created by “Pro HDR” and which is an amalgam of the previous two images.

I am impressed! And the cost? $2.49 in the Australian iTunes store. Definitely one the the few real bargains in life.

[All of the above images are as taken by "Pro HDR", no adjustments were made other than to resize the images.]

“PLEASE NOTE: If you used the old Angus & Robertson web site you will need to re-register your details below. Our new site does not contain any information you registered with us previously and does not have any information about any orders you may have placed previously.”

There’s no apology, no explanation, no conciliatory statement, just a cold announcement of fact. They’ve made a (hopefully calculated) business decision here, that it would be cheaper and/or easier to leave the flotsam or jetsam behind and start afresh, but at what overall cost?

Do you see the problem with their customer relationship management? Can you imagine, from a customer’s perspective, the outcry if Amazon did exactly this?

[I acknowledge that my comment makes the assumption that they previously had a nontrivial number of customers who registered and who made purchases].

My own view is that content providers are (or should be) more interested in maximising the number of eyeballs viewing their content rather than only utilising a single technology that a subset of consumers will see.

In order to be more aware of just exactly where the flash content lay, I installed the ClickToFlash plugin for the Safari web browser. ClickToFlash will block flash-based material from loading automatically, and will offer you the option of viewing it by clicking on the icon that’s presented to you in place of the flash content. Further, ClickToFlash will offer you the option of playing that blocked material via Quicktime, rather than as flash, if that’s possible.

In short, I’ve discovered that I’ve yet to find a single piece of flash-based content that I really, really wanted to view. Those YouTube videos that I did want to view were able to be displayed in-situ via QuickTime.

I’m pretty sure that when the iPad comes along, I won’t be crying in my tea about the lack of flash-playing capability.

Yesterday Steve Jobs introduced the iPad to the world (but really just the USA). The single most anticipated feature for me was the iBooks app. That’s the feature that will leap-frog the iPad above and beyond Amazon’s kindle.

And then what happens? Apple’s Australian web site, after it finally got the iPad page up, tell us in the footnotes that iBooks is available in the US only. The New Zealand site says the same. Apple’s UK site avoids the issue by not mentioning iBooks at all.

I do understand the reasons. It comes down to territorial publishing rights (and that’s a whole different debate). But my issue with Steve Jobs is that of expectation management. My expectation was built up during his presentation. Now he’s failed me.

The world hasn’t fallen in though. Once the dust has settled we’ll no doubt hear about local arrangements for book availability. Amazon has the same issues so it’s nothing new.

Tangential niggle: so if Australia has a “free trade” agreement with the USA, why isn’t there free trade.

I used to subscribe to 360 blogs. I’m recovering now. My subscription count is down to 202. It’s better. I almost have the time to read the material from those 202 RSS feeds.

I have a quirk, though. It you only publish a partial-content RSS feed in the hope of making me click through to your actual blog to read the rest of the article, then – FAIL! I don’t do partial feeds. If you think you need me to click through so that I’ll see the advertising that you have on your blog to generate income, then – FAIL! You don’t need me to go to the blog – if you really must, you can insert advertisements (eg Google ads) into the RSS feed.

The only time I visit a blog in person is if it’s a click-through from another blog (via Google Reader, of course), or from Twitter (for example). If I like what I see, I might subscribe – if it’s a full feed.

Many shelves of paperbacks were recycled, as were old magazines. While reflecting on the magazine situation, and accepting of the fact that while I flicked through every page of every magazine that I received I didn’t read very much of them, I also accepted that even though I stored them on shelves I didn’t revisit them. With that in mind I resolved to not renew subscriptions to all but one magazine during the next 12 months. My book shelves look quite sparse now (and wonderful).

Given that we don’t have a video-tape player any longer, the small pile of video tapes can be placed in the landfill pile (I don’t think there’s any second-hand value in VHS tapes these days).

My old collection of around 120 LPs was, without any sign of emotional attachment from me, consigned to landfill. If I ever find that I want to listen again to some of the tracks that I at one time enjoyed, I’ll visit the iTunes Store and purchase the track.

I’ve now done a first sort through the audio CD collection. My CD collection began in 1985, nearly 25 years ago. My taste in music, though still eclectic, has moved on from those days. I’ve not listened to many of those CDs for decades. So, accepting of that situation, I now have a pile of 170 CDs that will be relocated (thrown out, sold, or given away). The pile of CDs that I’m considering copying to hard disk (ripping) numbers about 130. More than likely, I’ll further reduce that number. After ripping, the physical CDs will then be moved out.

On the subject of music, rather than CDs, my two sources of audio these last few years have been a) per-track purchases from beatport.com, and b) a premium subscription to Digitally Imported and SKY.fm which gives me access to over 60 24-hour per day music streams of a wide variety of genres.

Next, once the scanner I’ve ordered arrives, I’ll begin to digitise paper-based records and photographic negatives and slides. Once appropriate numbers of backup copies have been made, the originals will be destroyed.

Ever onwards …

We purchase books instead of borrowing them from a library, we purchase CD’s when, in reality we might only like one track on them, we purchase two items instead of one because we’re being given, we’re told, “a special price”.  Western society is a consumer society – that’s what it’s evolved to become.  That’s well and good from the perspective of it being a democracy – people are free to do what they feel they must – but it’s my choice to withdraw from that consumer society.

This isn’t just something I’ve recently worked out or discovered. It’s 30-something years since I first pushed back against the commercialism of Christmas (for example).

Just over a year ago I had these feelings reinforced in general by articles on Dave Bruno’s blog, and, in particular, by his “100 Thing Challenge“.

Similarly, over a year ago now, I first came across various blogs describing living simply – in particular, living a small houses – tiny houses in fact. For example, the likes of: “Tiny House Design“, “Tiny House Blog“, and “The Tiny Life” .

More recently I subscribed to various blogs which embraced minimalism as a lifestyle – something I’ve thought about for some years now. Some examples: “Mnmlist“, “Miss Minimalist“, and “Becoming Minimalist“.

And so it came to pass …

All of these influences finally came together a week or so ago when it struck me that there’s no time like the present, that the time to act was now. So, over the past week, I’ve been actively “de-cluttering”.  I’ve been identifying those belongings that I’ve no longer want (their time has past), those things that I though that I wanted but may not have used for several years or longer, and those items which have become orphans (eg power packs for long since broken electronics, video cassettes, and out-of-date technical manuals, cassette tape Walkman).

I’ve now made three trips to the recycling/landfill depot and made my deposits.  I’ll sell some remaining belongings (if I can).

I’ve now made a first pass list of “things” as per Dave Bruno’s “100 Thing Challenge”.  This list is a work-in-progress and will over the coming days and weeks be refined and reduced.  I’m not counting shared household items such as furniture, refrigerator, beds and linen, etc. And I am counting my remaining book collection as one item, my audio CD collection as one item, etc.

There are currently 110 items on the list with a further 30 items identified as being candidates for removal.  And do I really need 14 pairs of socks

As Dave says, it’s not a hard and fast list and the rules can be defined by me, but it’s a starting point, and a means to an end,  At the end of it, I’ll be in a good position to begin the rest of my life as a non-consumer.  I’ll think more about those items that I’ll purchase, and require more justification to myself before I purchase something.  This isn’t about not spending money, it’s more about not wasting money and not consuming for the sake of it, and it’s about purchasing quality not quantity.

Onwards …

]]> http://blog.macalba.net/2010/01/03/de-cluttering-minimalism-and-the-100-thing-challenge/feed/ 2 macalba http://blog.macalba.net/2009/03/09/mapping-where-i-live-part-1/ http://blog.macalba.net/2009/03/09/mapping-where-i-live-part-1/#comments Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:09:41 +0000 macalba http://macalba.wordpress.com/?p=423 ]]> I’ve had a healthy relationship with maps since I was a teenager. Living in Scotland at the time, I used to purchase Ordnance Survey maps of the local area and pore over the paper – just looking at this and that. Then, in my early 20′s, I’d go hill walking and learn the names of the hills, find old and ancient ruins, monuments and stone circles, then use the maps to find my way home.

So how does this translate to the digital age?

I’ve been collecting tracks with my GPS receiver for some years now. Initially I didn’t know what I’d end up doing with the tracks though I did submit a set of Outback Australia tracks to the Tracks4Australia project. Tracks4Australia, being essentially a one-man operation, and having a slow turn-around, didn’t give me the outcome that I was interested in which was to see the result of my efforts appear on a map.

Some time passed and I became acquainted with the OpenStreetMap project. OpenStreetMap is a community-driven venture to create a set of geographic data from scratch that can then be used for any purpose without restriction.

The outcome is a global map. It will continue to evolve as further contributions are made to it. New streets, new housing developments, changes in land-use, and points-of-interest are examples of data that are being, and will continue to be, added.

A key restriction to what can be contributed is that new data may not itself be taken from copyrighted data or data which cannot be re-used for any other reason (eg it doesn’t permit derived works).

For my own part, over the past year or more, I have generated data that I have uploaded and annotated to create a map of the city of Armidale, bush-walking tracks in and around many National Parks in the area, and major and rural roads around the region.

The map of Armidale, for example, can be viewed at:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-30.5146&lon=151.6711&zoom=14&layers=B000FTF

It may take a while to load initially; after it loads try zooming in to see street detail (click-and-drag the map too), then zoom out to see how Armidale relates geographically to the rest of the region.

To generate the data used to create the map of Armidale I drove, over a period of months, every street in the city. I initially just varied my way to and from work, and to and from the CDB. Then, at lunchtimes, towards the end of the mapping period, I would just go for drives around the remaining streets.

As an example of the type of use to which such maps can be put, if the local newspaper wanted to include a map of part of the local area to illustrate a story, they’d be free to generate it from OpenStreetMap and not incur licensing costs that may normally be associated with using third-party maps.

Another way in which this data can be used is to generate an image file that can be displayed on a Garmin GPSr. More on this later.

Hmmmm. Which one do you think I’d go for?

I’m usually always a person who will shop locally to support local businesses, but there is a limit to my support of businesses where the cost is double.

[Price comparison correct using the exchange rate as at Dec 20, 2008]