Blue Mouse Monkey Blog

I’m telling myself that it’s art. Or could be, at a higher resolution. Whatever way you look at it, I spent the evening making these images using effects you can add to Mac’s Photo Booth application. Some of them are downright creepy. How to here. Thanks to Jimmy Thomas for the tip — and the one at the bottom is us at work today through the ‘compound eye’ effect. The rest are using the ‘kaleidoscope’ effect.

starteeth

chins

mouth quatrefoil

sauron's eyes

fingerstar

she who watches

chewie

pucker up

mouth quatrefoil 2

fingertip flower

gum wrapper blue

Gladly the cross-eyed bear

magic pink pen

inner glow

Julia and Jimmy

See the vertical division? The stuff on the left is my files. The stuff on the right is the system, including applications, in orange near the top.

I was down to 4 remaining GB on my laptop. Photoshop groaned. Final Cut creaked. New client content threatened to fill up the remaining few slots. The situation was dire. Then I discovered Disk Inventory X. The way it works is to graphically show your files in a color-coded tile-like pattern. The color of a box shows the file type, and its size represents how much space each file is taking up on your hard drive. Click on the box and you learn exactly what the file is, and where it is. Thus I found and deleted such things as identical copies of videos used in long-ago job-applications. After a few such clean-ups my happy laptop hard drive is back to 53 GB! 

While trying to figure out how to dump a large and mysterious file not of my own making, I also learned about the sleepimage file. It’s a Mac system file that contains a copy of the contents of your RAM when you put the beast to sleep. The info is thus restorable if the juice runs out while sleeping. The sleepimage file is always as big a the amount of RAM you have installed, which in my laptop’s case is 4 GB. So that’s the big green rectangle near the bottom right. The other green things under it are other systems files. I *could* get rid of it by turning off the hibernation feature, but I think I’ll leave it be.

This also explains why it takes my laptop so damn long to properly go to sleep. Every time it does so, it first copies the RAM into sleepimage. I’d learned early on not to try and re-wake it during the first minute of sleep, because that sometimes caused it to get stuck for ages. It’s good to know the sleep delay has a reason other than sheer digital obstinacy.

A typical mis-typing of ‘does not’ is ‘doe snot’. Google this for some funny sentences, particularly when viewed in their truncated search-results form:

 
“Garage Door opener doe snot close the door” (It’s a new lubricant. Works great)

“suspend doe snot work when X is running” (I try to suspend doe snot work at every opportunity)

“The PC doe snot boot” (There’s a hose out the back you can use for that)

“Widows Explorer doe snot open” (and when it does, it works like doe snot)

“Windows Media Player doe snot work” (seems to be pretty cervid and gummy up there in Redmond)

“Autumn Doe Snot Return” (It’s inevitable, I’m afraid)

“view doe snot copy” (or if you’d prefer to see the original doe snot…)

“Extreme 2000 doe snot show anything” (Extreme doe snot?)

“For Everone Who Doe Snot Like Me” (Hmm)

“Doe snot wirth the money” (That one’s from a hotel review)

“my subwoofer doe snot make any sound” (that’s because it has exceptional muffling effects)

“thanks - but no this doe snot help” (and neither did the buffalo snot)

“My niece is going to court for DWI and doe snot have a attorney” (Yikes. Just one shot of doe snot will put you over the legal limit)

“A team hat doe snot communicate and talk to each other about what the next move will be is going to lose.” (Mostly because doe snot makes a lousy hat)

“quality doe snot seem to suffer” (the cheap stuff, though, bounces right back!)

“instead just doe snot load the page” (that’s if you have no intention of ever reading it again)

“They only have a peace-keeping force that doe snot compbat terror” (Now why didn’t the UN think of this first?)

“remember that doe snot give you the right to be condescending and cocky” (or snotty)

“to ensure development doe snot” (this is critical for societal progress)

“Anarchy doe snot equal chaos” (Capitalist doe snot is worse, though)

“OH WAIT IT DOE SNOT FIT IN MY IPHONE” (That was the last call she made from that phone)

“As long as Valve doe snot articficially raise the dollar prices for people from Europe I still prefer Steam” (I’m watching the exchange rate and keeping my fingers crossed)

“the little bit of static that may be in the background doe snot” (which is kind of like the background cosmic radiation -  it’s everywhere)

Banana tree in snow. Our neighbors have a banana tree. Which is pretty ambitious here above the 45th parallel. Every winter it disappears, and every summer it pops back up over the top of the fence. Here it is receiving the shock of its life.

Swirly snow. A study in movement.

Hummingbird in snow. I hope it survives the upcoming week of below-freezing temps.

moss

Walking in Washington Park today, my zoomy eye spied these secret and magical worlds. 

Okay, so my new camera has a macro function. Now that I’m losing the closeup range of my eyesight (just old age, nothing serious), this camera will have to fill in for me!

pine

It doesn’t do raw, but it does a lot of other things. Here it is chatting with PhotoBooth. I think they liked each other.

Tonight I installed the driver for my new graphics tablet, installed After Effects CS4, and filled out my elections ballot, in between shoving candy at costumed kids who knocked at the door.  I think I got the better end of the exchange.

(Particularly since I got the tablet and the application on an education discount, because I ordered them during the week I was enrolled in an After Effects workshop and was thus officially, for one week only, a student again.)