ceramic owl mug

I am fat.

Michael Baird March 12th, 2007

Here’s the deal.

I am fat.

I overeat. Regularly.

I am six feet tall and weigh roughly 245 pounds.

I do not like myself because of the way I look.

I am going to change this.

Fitness , Health , Thoughts
Comments(3)

I have been messing around with taking photos in RAW format and tweaking exposures, trying to figure out how to make some nice looking HDR images. My biggest challenge right now is the lack of a tripod.

This is one of my first attempts at a multiple exposure HDR image, and I am pretty happy with the colors. I need one of those tripods and a remote.

Download, convert & sync videos to your iPod – without touching your computer

Michael Baird March 6th, 2007

I think the title says it all, but in case you hate titles and skip right to the meat of these posts; this write-up is going to walk you through getting videos from the internets automatically (for those without a DVR that lets you keep your vids), convert them to an ipod compatible file (automatically), then add the new video files to iTunes (again automatically) to sync with your ipod the next time you plug it in.

Once you have this set up and running, the only thing you have to do is plug in your ipod and it will sync your new videos. It’s like the “set it and forget it” for ipod videos.

Work , technology , tutorial , video
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Hackberry, not Blackberry, using Gmail & any cel phone

Michael Baird February 21st, 2007

So I was helping a friend at work try and set up his new cel phone to send emails and I got to thinking about how losers (like me) that don’t have fancy pda phones can get important email pushed to them.

The key is that most cel phones on major networks have a built in capability to receive emails, so everyone who has a phone has a mobile email address (i think). Take my provider, Cingular, for example; you can send a short text message to anyone on the cingular network by entering their phone number @cingularme.com. i.e. 3335551234@cingularme.com

The way I have it working is that Gmail forwards email to my phone’s email address. But I don’t want gmail to send every email I get to my phone, so I set up an email filter in Gmail.

Under the ‘create a filter’ section of Gmail, type a word in the ‘Has the words’ section. Make it something relevant, but somewhat uncommon, so you don’t gut accidental forwards to your phone.

Click on ‘Next Step’ and check the box next to ‘Forward it to:’ and type in your phones email address.

Now all you have to do is tell anyone you want to be able to email you in important situations to include that word in their subject or email body. Tada! Somewhat instant round-a-bout gmail mobile email push thing.

Great for:

Send quick address info
Brief turn by turn directions
A phone number
Bank account updates (you will need to set up your online bank account to notify you when your balance drops dangerously low)
Grocery lists (an ongoing obsession of mine)

A small caveat regarding this method, mobile text messages are restricted in length, so tell yer peeps to keep it short, and to remove any lengthy signatures or those pesky legal disclaimers, otherwise you will receive the entire email in a series of chopped messages.

UPDATE: For those interested in trying this out, you can try to find your phone’s email address here. It looks like each provider has multiple email setups, so i would try emailing your phone until it buzzes. Also, when trying out different email addresses for my phone, some arrived with better formatting than others. i.e. @cingularme.com arrives in a better layout than @mobile.mycingular.com Ymmv

Work , technology
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Melitta Teapot

Michael Baird February 12th, 2007

Isn’t this the sweetest teapot you have ever seen? (and yes it is real, no CG here)

If you have ever used an appliction that does 3D renderings like 3ds Max then this teapot is pretty familiar to you. It is known as the Utah Teapot or Newell Teapot and was originally created as a benchmark to test out different rendering engines.

If you are not familiar with it, you still might have seen it if you were looking for it. The 3D version has made cameo appearances in Toy Story and Monsters, Inc.

The actual teapot used to create the original 3d model now resides in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. I got mine off ebay, w00t!

And here is an example of the standard object built in to 3ds Max:

3D , Photos , Work , technology
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Quite a piece of work

Michael Baird February 7th, 2007

I threw this together yesterday to help out my sister-in-law with her ongoing quest to be the most popular girl ~~in high-school~~ on flickr. Flickr is a photo sharing website, and so much more. I like to think of flickr as a double headed dragon. On one head, it is a normal photo-sharing site. People can upload photos, share them with friends and family and print them extremely easily. On the other head is this weird competitive/narcissistic communist marching comment squad, where people are subscribed to hundreds of group photo pools to show other complete strangers that they are creative too, have thousands of contacts who they don’t know, yet are compelled to leave suspicious non-comments about other people photos. Comments like ‘interesting idea’ or ‘nice angle’.

I originally signed up for the ease of use and sharing and I admit I do sometimes submit my photos to groups to show my stuff, but I’m not really sure why. What I do know is that jumping from the first head of the dragon to the second is all to easy, and a slippery slope at that. It only takes one comment from some anonymous person on one of your photos, and all of a sudden, you think you ~~need~~ deserve more comments from strangers. Next thing you know you submit every photo to a group, then you stop posting photos as regularly, thinking what if some anonymous person sees that not all of my photos are fabulous (sharing with family & friends goes right down the drain).

Next the thought creeps into your head that maybe you aren’t posting enough, and people you don’t even know, who thought you were creative, might forget about you if you don’t prove on a regular basis that you do belong and are part of the group.

It is at this point that you join the 365 pool, where you force yourself to post a photo everyday and submit it to the group for review and comments. Don’t get me wrong, I think chronicling your life is a great and fascinating idea, it can be extremely introspective, especially upon review. What I don’t always get is the need to showcase your life.

Then again maybe I’m just jealous of the attention that other people get…I mean, I do have a blog for god sakes (though i’m pretty sure no one reads it).

3D , Photos , Thoughts
Comments(1)

Setting up a grocery list

Michael Baird January 24th, 2007

Here’s the deal. I don’t really work close to home, the drive can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half depending. So if I need to run any errands, I like to do them before I get home. Often times grocery shopping is one of these errands, but the problem is that I am not in the habit of carrying the grocery list around, mostly because it stays in the kitchen so things can be added as they run out. I have been racking my brain, trying to think of an easy way for my wife and myself to add to a central list that can be accessed almost anywhere.

What I came up with is a Grocery List website for us. It’s basically a SQL database with a PHP front end, very simple to set up, very simple to use. There is a box to type in the quantity, a drop down to select common items and an empty box to type any items not in the drop down.

To run this setup you need a web hosting service that lets you create your own SQL databases. The setup I am using is basically a hacked up version of Todo List borrowed from ulyssesonline.com

I personally barely know anything about PHP or SQL for that matter, and I am struggling to find a way to add a ‘Clear Entire List’ function. So if you are interesting in adding something like this to your own website, I can share my edited php files, but you might want to go to ulyssesonline.com and give him a shout too.

If you are interested in using this script, my altered files are available for download here

Food , Work , technology
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a fun little thing

Michael Baird January 19th, 2007

A tshirt design for a friend who is trying out for the World Series of Pop Culture 2 on VH1. I really like how the blood turned out on this.

the full version can be seen by clicking on the image

3D , art , cg , design
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A minor update

Michael Baird January 12th, 2007

My pet project functionFORWARD is nearing completion. The front page is pretty well set. The next steps are to create an ‘about’ page, add more recent pieces to the portfolio and make a contact page that pops.