xRez.com gigapixel photography is live!

Collegue Greg Downing recently got his new site up displaying years of expertise in gigapixel photography.

Best to be viewed on multiple big screens or projected in high definition! I watched it at my desk at Sony, enjoying all this eyecandy on a double +20 inch flatpanel monitor with a superfast internetconnection. Having been to Yosemite myself mutiple times I had the feeling as if I got teletransported back by watching this amazing piece of techno art.

Here is Greg's introduction:

After a few years of work I have finally posted some of the gigapixel photography that I have been creating with my business partner and buddy Eric Hanson and I thought it would be a good time to let my friends and colleagues know about it. I used a pan and tilt technique with a motion control head to assemble 350 16 mega pixel images into a single 3.8 gigapixel 360 degree spherical panorama of Yosemite as well as some other locations. I then took the image and split it up into over 100,000 256x256 jpg tiles and used the google maps api to point at my tiles instead of googles map tiles. Now anyone can navigate them. Each time you reload the home page you will find one of 5 of our gigapixel images, and more are coming in the next few weeks.

One of the photos is taken from the same spot that Ansel Adams shot "Monolith, the Face of Half Dome" on a spot called "the diving board". From this one spot you can see 9 waterfalls, hikers in the valley below, big and little Yosemite valleys and even a rock climber on the face of half dome almost a mile away. There are 7 other images of this resolution on the site and some interesting movies of time-lapse w/ DEM integration that is interesting too.

This is our second attempt at a launch, the first one was last week. Within a few hours of posting it on a few visual effects studios internal mailing lists the response was like an avalanche. We were serving 22 gigabytes an hour and we were using our entire ISPs bandwidth, they basically kicked us off since they could not serve their other customers. We have since found an ISP with a dedicated connection with 60 times the bandwidth and are on our own dedicated server, so we should be up to the task this time around!

www.xrez.com

The last knit : cool CG short film

Pixar Animation Studios as an employer.

Some interesting figures about Pixar as an employer.

Pixar, the creator of the mega-hits Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and The Incredibles is more than just a computer animation studio. It stands poised to become one of the largest entertainment forces of the 21st century. Born in the 1980s as the special effects division of Lucasfilm, the company was spun off in 1986 and acquired by Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, for a cool $10 million. The new company was dubbed Pixar, after the first 3-D graphics system (the Pixar Image Computer) developed by the computer scientists and animators that worked there.

Uppers Undisputed innovator in its field Stock options that millionaires are made of Ultra creative, cute bags

Downers Fickleness of showbiz One location

http://www.vault.com/companies/company_main.jsp?co_page=1&product_id=1006

First real rain.

This morning we woke up with rain. Real rain, more than the few drops we have seen a couple of times. It had actually begun during the night from sunday to monday. Real pouring rain. First time since we arrived at the beginning of April. Can you believe that?

Happy thanksgiving!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. A typical US holiday which we don't celebrate in Europe. This morning when driving to work I was struck by how big a deal it is. The city was extremely busy, similar by the madness we see around Christmas and New Year: everyone is out on a shopping spree. Traffic is congested because people visit familie and friends to devour stuffed turkey's. In the office we have a big argument (friendly be it) between the only American guy in our cubicle and 2 canadians, the latter claim their fellow country men were the first to celibrate Thanksgiving. Canadian Thanksgiving is a couple of weeks earlier too. So actually these Canadian guys take best of 2 worlds and celebrate twice. Anyways, we decided to flee the city and are heading for a hopefully quite long weekend in the Big Sur, Monetery and Carmel area. We planned a visit to the worldrenown Monetery Aqaurium, will of course stop for a coffee on Lucia Lodge's deck overlooking the Pacific and hope to spot some migrating whales from the shore since it is the time of the great trek of the whales.

Back on sunday!

Happy Feet : great numbers!

Happy Feet, aka "that other penguin flick" has opened last weekend and did extremely well. It came out first in the boxoffice ranking grossing well over 41 million dollar, beating the new James Bond Casino Royale by almost a million.

All media have rave reviews about the dancing penguins. Fingers crossed for the surfing ones that are to take the world next summer.

http://movies2.nytimes.com
http://www.boxofficeguru.com

#	Title	Nov 17 - 19	Nov 10 - 12		Theaters	Weeks	AVG	Cumulative	Distributor
1	Happy Feet	$ 41,533,432			3,804	1	$ 10,918	$ 41,533,432	Warner Bros.
2	Casino Royale	40,833,156			3,434	1	11,891	40,833,156	Sony
3	Borat	14,602,874	28,269,900		2,611	3	5,593	90,757,366	Fox

Farce of the Penguins

The quest for penguin action...

www.farceofthepenguins.com

Joshua Tree September trip photos online

Finally finished the photoset of our camping and climbing trip to Joshua Tree National park in September. Some of the picture have been online for a while, but here is the complete set in chronological order:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/esse/sets/72157594301679439/

PS: I geotagged the entire set in Flickr, so you can pretty well see on the map and satelite images where we were abouts. Click on the (map) link in the lower riht corner, in the Additional Information section.

Playstation 3 ( PS3) US launch madness.

Lat night at midnight local shops in California and throughout the United States started selling Sony long awaited and much hyped Playstation 3 console. A technological marvel which makes many gamers drool. But it will be scarce for the first couple of months. Only 400.000 units were available for the US. People have been standing in lines for days, eBay auctions at which the console get's sold (or should I say offered) at mutiple times the ticket price are popping up by the minute.

One guy in the office slept outside for a night and was able to get hold of 2! He told me that there were a bunch of trucks of news station present to get all the madness on tape.

Check some out:

Magic numbers part 1

I am writing down some magic numbers which will help me remember milestones, great moments, things worth remembering. I cannot elaborate them now, but will be able to when the project I am working on is finished.

65 anim
333 sh fin
200 Gb bbrk
21 TB >95%
+400 ft asap

Arthur And The Invisibles

Luc Besson's next movie. An entertaining story and great looking movie if you ask me. Wondering who's working on it. Anyone an idea? Is it done in Europe?

http://www.apple.com/trailers/mgm/arthurandtheinvisibles/hd/

New Spiderman 3 trailer

Spiderman 3 production runs almost almost parallel with Surf's Up production at Imageworks. Check out their mindblowing new trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/spider-man_3/

Torn with special guest live 2006

The extremely talented mime in this video is called David Armand.

LAPD's latest toy : interactive crimemaps.

How safe is your neighbourhood? Go check it out with LAPD's latest online tool: www.lapdonline.org/crimemap/

Here is how West-Hollywood scores.

$2000 / 2br - *JIM MORRISON "THE DOORS" last U.S. home!*

I was toying around with Rentslicer. The real estate site that offers just a tad more by linking their offerings to Google maps. It allows you to discover a neighbourhood and see what the local real estate market has to offer.

While virtually wandering around are hood I discovered that Jim Morrisons last US home is just a few blocks away. It's a small world.

http://www.rentslicer.com/view-listing.html?id=771379

Rock Legend JIM MORRISON "THE DOORS" former West Hollywood apartment is available for month to month. It is located in the landmark building, Cheri Amour, known as "JIM MORRISON'S LAST KNOWN U.S. RESIDENCE" where he resided from 1970- March 1971, 4 months prior to going to Paris, where he reportedly died.
Following Jim's departure, there have only been a couple tenants, as they chose to remain longterm tenants. In 2005, for the first time in history, the building was opened up for tours, along with daily or weekly lodging in Jim's former apartment.
Only for the most discerning individual(s), Jim's former unit will be shown by appointment only. Since we provide daily tours of the property for $10 per person, in order to view the apartment you must pay the tour fee. We do not accept credit cards or personal checks. You also have the option to submit a rental application sight unseen. Only qualified applicants will be considered. (Note: the interior of the Jim Morrison unit will NOT be included in the tours, once the unit is rented.)
Recognized globally amongst rock 'n roll fans, the rental price for this special fully furnished turnkey 2 BR/ 1 1/4 bath celebrity apartment is $2,000 per month. In the case of multiple applicants, priority will be given to the best offer above the asking price.
For tour details & to learn more about this landmark building, go to our website: CHERIWOODS.COM and click on "THE DOORS" link. To schedule a tour for viewing:
Phone: (818)225-5347 daily after 10:00 AM
E-Mail: CHERIWOODS1@YAHOO.COM

Flickr retrievr Sketch tool : awesome technology

Combine a webbased sketch tool and patern recognition and you get : Flickr retrievr. An online tool that lets you draft and on the fly analyzes your dribbles and scans for similar paterns in Flickr's extensive Interestingness library.

http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/