Samoth

Last week's Show With No Name:

3rd November 2009 part 1

3rd November 2009 part 2

Sorry for the delay - this is last wek's show with Charlie & Ben from Proud Lion filling in for me and doing a splendid job too!

Tune in tomorrow (10/11/09) when I'll be back in the hot seat for 2 hours of fun from 8pm.

Thanks for listening!

The problem with cold clear evenings like this is that they make me want to drag my tripod and camera into the City with me after work, to get long exposure¹ shots of the offices and streets at night (or to play around with bracketing for exposure blending). Unfortunately, this is probably not the week for such hijinks - I've got something lined up every evening.

¹ Though, given how the weather feels, exposure's possibly the word.

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/11/alien_hands_in_ficti.html

Alien or anarchic hand syndrome is where you lose conscious control of one of your hands after brain damage to the point where it seems to have a 'will of its own'. There's a great short article in this month's Cortex examining how this curious phenomenon has appeared in fiction.

Famously, something similar appears in the film Dr Strangelove to the point where the disorder is sometimes called the 'Dr Strangelove syndrome'.

But it turns out that self-directed hands have also appeared in numerous other works of fiction. I was particularly taken by this plot device:

The phenomenon is usually accounted for as resulting from lesions to the contralateral Supplementary Motor Area (SMA). However, it has also been associated to the severance of the Corpus Callosum and William Boyd, in his short story, ‘‘Bizarre Situations’’, from the collection ‘‘On the Yankee Station’’, embraced this anatomical interpretation of the syndrome. The main character of this novel, who underwent a callosotomy, does not know whether or not his left hand shot his best friend’s wife dead.

The Cortex article is by neuropsychologist Sergio Della Salla who has done a great deal of the research on this condition himself and who also wrote a great article on the condition for The Psychologist back in 2005.

However, it misses out one of the most famous depictions of a hand with a 'mind of its own' - from the film The Evil Dead II - where Ash's hand becomes possessed and he ends up having to chainsaw it off. There's a clip of the scene here, which is a bit icky if you're not into that sort of thing.

Link to 'Dr Strangelove syndrome' in literature.

because it`s a bloody miserable day and we all need cheering. NSFW.

augh!

Any Objective-C coders lend me a hand?

All of my static arrays get warns as being not used (they're all used, trust me).

I think it's a scoping issue, that they're defined in the C-like context, not belonging to any Objective-C object, then referred to within Objective-C classes, but as they're not touched in the context they were created in, they somehow get flagged as unused.

It's not fatal, but it's making a fucking mess of my output window, with hundreds of unnecessary warn lines.

Anyone got a clue?

Yours,

Little Scotty Codepants (33 1/3)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AdobeLightroomKillerTips/~3/CE8G9Y6pGiM/

http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/?p=1807

If you haven't seen it already, Scott Kelby posted a "10 Things I Would Tell New Lightroom Users" over on his blog today. Its a must read if you're a new-ish Lightroom user and I'll be you'll find something cool on there even if you've been using Lightroom for a while. However, I wanted to add 3 of my own.

1) Lightroom saves all of your history states... forever!
Ever notice that when you're working in Lightroom you never actually have to save your image? In Photoshop we're always going to File > Save but not in LR. That's because Lightroom has a History panel in the Develop module (on the left side panel group). It automatically saves every single thing you do to your photos. The cool part is that unlike Photoshop (which discards your history when you quit the program), Lightroom saves this forever so you can always go back to it.

2) Lightroom's Backup feature only backs up your catalog, not your photos.
Don't forget that Lightroom's backup feature only backs up the catalog - not the photos. So if your computer crashed and you had your backup, you could reinstall Lightroom and revert to the backup you created from Lightroom. But you'd only have your catalog with all the "stuff" you've done to your photos. You wouldn't have your actual photos unless you've specifically backed them up separately (which is really easy if you follow Scott's advice on where to store your photos).

3) No matter what you do, if you shoot in raw, editing in Photoshop will create a copy of your image.
I hear this one a lot. People are surprised that after they go to edit a raw photo in Photoshop, there's a copy of the photo when they return to Lightroom. This will always happen. You can't change it because you can't edit the original raw photo in Photoshop. Lightroom has to render a copy of the image out and you'll have that copy (in PSD or TIFF format) when you return to Lightroom. Your raw photo is still there, by the way, and it will still have all of your Lightroom-related changes in it, but only the copy will contain any Photoshop edits you've done.

So there's my 3 add-ons to Scott's post. Take care!

http://community.the-digital-picture.com/blogs/news/archive/2009/11/09/new-to-the-site-camera-lens-product-image-comparison.aspx

New to the site: Camera Lens Product Image Comparison
 
I have the images for most of the Canon lenses shot. Many are on the site now and the balance will be available soon.
 
Using mouseover links, the new Camera Lens Product Image Comparison feature makes it easy to compare the size/shape of a lens to other lenses.

Today's Whiteboard strip has been produced in two versions - standard and Mythbusters ...

( Standard )

( Mythbusters version )

Today's fun webcomic find from IRC:



John and John

It's crude and crass and takes a while to get funny, but has given me a few real belly laughs :)

Quite similar to the often excellent explosm in places.

syndicated at: johnandjohn

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/004051.php

There may be a better product here and there in a particular piece of luggage, but it’s just not worth my time messing around to find out. I’ve replaced all of my duffels, carry-ons and backpacks with Eagle Creek products, and have been using them for the past two years. I’ve standardized on Eagle Creek luggage because I've found their stuff to be uniformly excellent, and it just saves me the frustration of trying stuff out and finding it has deficiencies.

Eagle Creek makes a handful of practical accessories for space-saving and orderly packing. Their Pack-It Folders compress lots of shirts, pants or skirts into a compact, wrinkle-free stack. And their Cubes are ideal for organizing underwear and socks while compressing them and maximizing space. They also offer Compression Sacs, giant Ziploc-like bags with one-way air valves that can compress your dirties into a fraction of their uncompressed size. All of these accessories work quite well with other brands of luggage; they are by no means specific to Eagle Creek.

Another reason I’ve chosen Eagle Creek: the company’s products are extremely rugged and have a lifetime warranty. I took them up on their warranty on a bag that got slashed. I live in San Diego and found that I could just take it by their headquarters rather than mail it in. They gave me a new bag, no questions asked.

Just to qualify as an experienced traveler, I’ve accumulated more than 6 million lifetime miles in the American Airlines AAdvantage program, more than two million on United, and a million on two or three others.

-- Don Lyle

Eagle Creek Universal Traveler Backpack
$120

Available from Amazon

Eagle Creek Travel Gear Pack-It Folder 20 Organizer
$30

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Eagle Creek

Hmmmm....
$colleague has had his hair cut off (he had hair just below shoulder length). $LoudAnnoyingFemaleColleague hasn't said a single word all morning. $PRColleague has just told us not to worry about a bit of work, it can wait until the new year. The cleaners cleaned the floor and desks (rather than just empty the waste bins). There's actually coffee available in the kitchen (rather than just instant). $QuietColleague is making jokes and chatting with people.

I think I may have come into the wrong office by mistake or something... *looks around nervously* Or maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the dimensions?

ION: I'm going to Prague in 2 weeks!1!!1!eleven XD

Oh yeah, I should actually try and learn some Czech... Bugger, I completely forgot about that bit. Ah well, 2 weeks should be MORE than enough time to learn a few basics! :)

My little nephew is in hospital today to have a growth removed from his neck. Hope everything goes well for the little guy! *frets*

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

http://xkcd.com/660/

http://community.the-digital-picture.com/blogs/news/archive/2009/11/08/chuck-westfall-s-november-tech-tips.aspx

Chuck Westfall's November Tech Tips are online at TheDigitalJournalist.

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/11/straight_outta_bedla.html

I've just found an odd study on whether rap and heavy rock music encourages 'inappropriate behaviour' in psychiatric patients when compared to easy listening and country tunes.

It sounds like it could be something from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest but as I don't have access to the full text, I'm still not sure what the 'inappropriate behaviours' were (air guitar? MC Hammer trousers?)

A comparison of the effects of hard rock and easy listening on the frequency of observed inappropriate behaviors: control of environmental antecedents in a large public area.

Journal of Music Therapy. 1992 Spring;29(1):6-17.

Harris CS, Bradley RJ, Titus SK.

Observation of clients at a state mental health hospital by direct care staff indicated that they appeared to act in more inappropriate ways when "hard rock" or "rap" music was played in an open courtyard than when "easy listening" or "country" music was played. A study was conducted to compare the inappropriate behavior of clients when hard rock and rap music were played (21 days), followed by easy listening and country and western music (21 days). This comparison was followed by a reversal phase in which hard rock and rap music were again played (18 days). The behaviors of the clients were observed and recorded via a controlled methodology. The results demonstrated that more inappropriate behavior was observed under conditions in which hard rock and rap music were played than when easy listening and country western music were played. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Link to PubMed entry for music study.

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/11/psychiatric_tales.html

Darryl Cunningham draws amazing comics about psychiatry and mental illness, drawn from his time working as a student nurse on psychiatric wards.

His comic strip Psychiatric Tales has been regularly appearing online and he's just posted the amazing and heartfelt last chapter along with an announcement that the series is to be published as a book by Blank Slate Publishing in February.

If you want to get a feel for Cunningham's work, set aside some time and have a look at some of the piece at the links below - they're well worth the time.

People With Mental Illness Enhance Our Lives

Dementia Ward

Suicide

Schizophrenia

Cut and Delusions

Last Chapter

The strips are brilliantly written and drawn, and do something quite rare in discussion of mental illness - they manage to capture both the experience of people with psychiatric difficulties and the experience of the staff caring for them.

There are other chapters on his website so do go and have a look. Fantastic stuff.

Link to Darryl Cunningham's blog.

Finished watching Hellraiser III, it was excellently crap :) I love things that reek of the 90s. You could tell from the awful font at the very start that you were about to watch some Quality.

Also, this evening, I bought iSequence for the iPod Touch (/iPhone), made a little tune on it in about 20 mins. It's good fun! Another ace toy to make musical sketches with, which I can develop into full songs later.

DeathBoy - Hypnobeat (sketch)

As I say, this was less than a half hour's noodling, uses 5 channels (the app only has 5!), and just 4 patterns, with me riding the volume levels to give it a bit of song texture / bring elements in and out.


(not my video, but a good demo)

The built in soft synth sounds are good, lots of decent lead synths, pads, basslines, etc, and some meaty drum kit noises.

In terms of sequencing, it resembles a tracker with a horizontal time graph.

So yar. Pleasant ending to a basically shit day, thanks to new software toys and awful horror movies.

Just waiting up to see if kirsten appears before I go to bed.

I shall read the next Polity book by Neal Asher, as I just finished the 1st one, Prador Moon, and quite enjoyed it.

Night night, ballbags!