terrill.ca

The world from recollection

Blank paper and pencil crayons usually lead to foliage and large cats. This time I decided to draw as much of the world as possible from memory, and found the results noteworthy.

Drawn with pencil crayon, touched up in Photoshop

The equator (drawn first, and edited out in Ps) provided perspective. In order I drew Africa, South America, North America, the Mediterranean, south Asia, Australia, Europe and finally northern Asia. The hardest part was trying to remember what the northern European countries like Sweden and Scandinavia look like.

I would like to do this in a vector program so that I could go into infinite detail, but that would probably consume more time than it's worth. Never the less it would be uber-cool to have a complete picture of my knowledge of the world I live in.

Kite V1

This week was really windy, so we tried to make a kite. From scratch. I only got a chance to fly it in the late afternoon when the wind was less than optimal. It suffered a fatal blow shortly after launch. It was unbalanced. It was Kite V1. We nursed it the first night and and for a breif moment in the late-afternoon emptiness of a RIM parking lot it did take flight (there are witnesses too!).

This afternoon I re-inforced the corners, and ran some string around the diamond shape connecting all four corners of the frame. I re-attached the flying line, this time to a 'bridal' which connects to the spine at multiple positions then I took it out for another flight. I also moved the spar closer to the top of the spine making the diamond shape more oblong. It still has a tendency to turn upside down which makes me think the spar should be on the top of the kite rather than on the bottom. Can anyone confirm?

Looks like a new summer hobby's been found. Watch the skies for Kite V2.

Photosynth == incredible

Every once in a while a new technology comes along that re-writes what you thought was possible. I'd heard of Photosynth, Microsoft's uber-cool software masterpiece a few months ago. I didn't see the demo video, and I most certainly didn't know it RUNS IN A BROWSER, otherwise you would have seen it here sooner.

Screenshot of Photosynth running in Internet Explorer

I urge you to go try it. The demo is amazing.