Ok, I think its highly likely that this blog stuff is highly addictive. However, its a real spin out running into a friends that already know what I have been up to.

The Technology bit:

Anyhow, ego tripping aside, for your viewing pleasure I have been working towards stitching the panorama photos we took while on our trip around the world. Yesterday I reviewed some panorama software for OS X that does automatically (guesses) at how to stitch the photos together. I trailed:

Adobe Photoshop CS2 (Commercial)
DoubleTake (Shareware)
hugin - Panorama Tools GUI (Open Source)
Kekus Digital (Shareware)

I ended up settling on DoubleTake because it has a nice user interface, unlike hugin or Kekus, and Photoshop is to bulky for my needs and I wasn’t happy with the results. My trails were not by any means extensive and should serve as a guide for your own research. I wanted something simple and fast, light weigh (as I’m running it on my laptop). On principle I would prefer to use hugin because of the open source nature of the project, however I couldn’t justify the time to read the manuals and work it out.

Here is a sample of the panorama photos to come.

Note for above image: Mouse Click & Drag to Look Up, Down, Left, or Right.
Control to Zoom In, and Option to Zoom Out

Note: Click to see full image (not as cool as first image)

In the Gulf of Thailand, just a couple of hours north of Koh Samui, lies the island of Ko Tao. Once the haunt of sea-turtles, this small island with its quiet beaches has become a favorite destination both of paradise seekers and divers who come for the best coral diving in the area.

This is where I spent my birthday while on the road over summer. We had to hold our stomachs for the trip out to the island, as being monsoon season, there was some bad weather. The waves were so large that a couple of local fishing boats almost flipped over. This prompted all the boats in the region to head for safer waters, which just happened to be the cove where we planted our selfs for a few days (also waiting for calmer waters before heading back to the main land).

I also stumbled across another neat little module for my blog. You can now see map of the world in my right sidebar. This will let me (and you know) where in the world people are reading my blog from. Neat, hu? Will require a bit of road testing before I give it the thumbs up though.

The travel bit

Anyway, I’m back in Tubingen now catching up of a few odds and ends and waiting for Ellie to get back so we can get some FOOD!!! We had to split up and get separate rides back from Hanover because we could not find a lift with two seats. I scored a lift of the train accompanying a disabled person who was really lovely, studying economics near by. If you are in Germany and looking for (or can offer) a lift, its well worth checking out http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/. (Thanks Seven for the tip! Saved us a couple of hundred in just one trip)

Back to ar…. procrastinating I guess… it the only way to get things done.

Cheers,

Nathan

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Posted on April 12th, 2007 :: Filed under Technology, Travel
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