Places

Taxidermy at the American Museum of Natural History, NYC

One of the most impressive exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC are the stuffed animals. The technical term is taxidermy, and if done right, it’s art. The pity is that it’s going extinct.

Of all the taxidermists listed on the AMNH website, only two are potentially living, and none of them work there anymore.

The last full-time taxidermist at the Smithsonian retired this year, which is a nice way of saying he was let go because there wasn’t work for him anymore. Did I mention his father and his grandfather were also taxidermists and also worked for the Smithsonian?

Perhaps most telling is that all of the taxidermists in the US can be listed on a single web page at Taxidermy Net. Now this is just a guess, but I bet most of them stick to fish and birds — you know, the kind of schmaltz you stick over the fireplace after you catch “the big one” — and they aren’t up to par with museum standards.

I suppose in the future, we’ll be dazzled with 3D computer renditions of animals when we go to museums. We’ll be able to pet them (or rather the air or the screen where they’re rendered), and they’ll react, but it’ll be a sad substitute. There’s nothing like seeing an animal in the flesh (in the skin, anyway). It stops you dead in your tracks to see the eyes, the texture of the skin or fur, the paws, the claws, the sheer brutality and mass of a beast that could tear you apart if it were alive. No computer will ever be able to replicate that.

Take your kids to see real taxidermy while it’s still around. It may not be around for their kids.

These last few photos aren’t examples of taxidermy, but they’re neat things to see at the AMNH.

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Thoughts

YouTube’s copyright claim process still needs some work

A while back, I edited and uploaded what I thought was a fairly innocuous video to YouTube, called A walk on Dania Beach. You can see it below. It shows a few clips of the beach that I took during two walks with my wife. It’s nothing special, really. The quality of the video isn’t even that good, because the camera I used at the time compressed the video too much.

Because there was a lot of wind noise from the in-camera microphone, I muted the sound on some portions of the video, and used the stock surf sound that ships with iMovie (as part of iLife).

You may or may not know (depending on whether you use a Mac) that the sounds that ship with iLife are free to use as you like in your videos, podcasts, presentations, etc. You paid for them when you purchased the software. While their creators retain copyright, in essence, by purchasing iLife, you have gained a license to use them as you see fit in your work.

And so I do use them, all the time. Many of the videos I uploaded to my YouTube channel contain either a sound or a clip from the iLife library, in order to enhance the video’s presentation. So far, so good.

Imagine my surprise when YouTube promptly informed me that this particular video contained copyrighted audio, and that I was welcome to file a copyright claim if I wanted to dispute their findings. They identified two entertainment companies, Go Digital and WMG, as the potential copyright holders. I did file a dispute, where I stated that I didn’t use their content. It took a few weeks, but their replies were finally posted.

GoDigital confirmed its claim to the sound recording, and WMG agreed with my dispute. It’s interesting to see that WMG, the far larger company, agreed with me, while GoDigital, a company I’ve never heard of, maintained their claim… to what? That’s really the question I’d like to ask them, but I can’t, because this is as far as I can go with YouTube’s claim dispute process.

If you’d like to learn how YouTube identifies potentially copyrighted material (video or audio) in the videos its users upload to the site every day, Margaret Stewart, YouTube’s head of user experience, gave a talk at TED about that very subject in June of this year.

Now that you’ve presumably watched that video and you understand how YouTube scans and identifies potential copyrighted assets, I’d still like to find out exactly what GoDigital sees in my not-so-special video that it thinks it owns. The sound of the waves I recorded with my camera? The sound of the waves from the iLife library? The seagulls I recorded? The sound of the wind, also recorded by me? What is it they think they own?

If someone at YouTube’s user experience team reads this, please, either enlighten me, or introduce an extra step in the copyright dispute process that allows the user to ask what particular piece of content was identified as copyrighted, or allows the company to specify it directly when they review the dispute and decide it’s still theirs. Then, for those special cases like mine, where I don’t see how the content is theirs, allow me to request a third-party review, by a human at YouTube, someone who could have a look at the video and see what’s going on.

Thanks.

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Thoughts

Where’s the SmugMug Publish Service for Lightroom?

I love the Flickr Publish Service in Lightroom 3, and would love to see SmugMug make their own.

The only thing missing for the Flickr service is for it to know which photos I’ve exported and uploaded to Flickr before the service became available, in previous versions of Lightroom. I for example have either tagged the photos uploaded to Flickr with, obviously enough, “Flickr”, or have added them to a Flickr collection in Lightroom, so I could easily find them.

Here’s where SmugMug has the chance to shine! I’d love to be able to publish my photos to SmugMug directly from Lightroom, using the Publish Services functionality, so I could always sync up any photos that I’ve re-developed or where I’ve updated the metadata. But for this service to really stand out, it needs to know which photos I’ve already uploaded.

You can see where this is going, right? I’ve already tagged all my SmugMug photos, and have already placed them in collection sets and collections that match my SmugMug categories breakdown exactly. With a little bit of computing power and some smart algorithms, the folks at SmugMug could put together a killer Publish Service for Lightroom that incorporates all the Flickr functionality and bests it by matching my already-uploaded photos.

What about the cost? The Flickr Publish Service is free to use for all Flickr users, but you cannot re-publish uploaded photos if you’ve changed them in Lightroom. (You can, but if you’re not a Pro, it’ll wipe out any comments and faves on the photo, so it’s not advisable.)

SmugMug could use a similar approach. Their Publish Service could be free for basic SmugMug users, with limited functionality, and it could offer full functionality to Power and Pro users. (I myself have the Pro membership.) I’d even be willing to pay a one-time fee to download and install the service, because I think the functionality would be amazing.

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Thoughts

The kittens at play

âť— Free kitten alert! âť—

We’re getting ready to say goodbye to our kittens. We’re going to give them away for adoption in the next week or two. If you’re in Romania and you’d like one, let us know. Otherwise, we’ll take them to a pet store in Sibiu or Tg. Mures, where eager children will surely squeal in delight and tug at their parents’ sleeves, wanting one.

We have four little tomcats and two kitties: two black males with white socks, two grey-brown striped males with white socks, one brown-beige striped kitten and one beige-orange striped kitten. They’ve been lovingly cared for since birth by our two cats, Mitzi and Trixie, who’ve shared responsibilities in grooming and feeding them. They have already visited the vet, have their health cards, have been treated for internal and external parasites, are weaned, eating solid food, and they’re ready to be welcomed into someone’s family.

Here are photos and a couple of videos of them. The first video shows them playing inside, and the other shows them playing and suckling outside, in our yard.

The photos were taken while they were playing and suckling inside one evening.

This last photo shows the two striped tomcats sleeping next to each other.

Just so there’s no confusion, let me make it clear that they’re free. If you want one, as long as you can come and pick it up, it’s yours.

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Exercise

After six weeks on the RPM System

I’m overdue to give my six week re-assessment of the RPM System — two weeks late to be precise, since I started on May 18th. I’ve had good reasons: travel, and some heavy-duty work to get my wife’s raw food recipe book ready for the printers. (I handled the photography, the layout and the design.)

I also haven’t (and I’m ashamed to admit this) worked out for the past two weeks, for the very same reasons. So the photos and measurements you’ll see below really are taken after a two week “break” from the workouts, which involved prolonged sitting at my computer and at the wheel of our car.

In spite of the circumstances that came together to sabotage my workouts, progress was made. I’m happy about that.

Here’s what I look like now. Compare the difference between these photos and the initial ones (taken after a week on the system).

Here are my re-assessment results (power score and measurements). Compare them with the initial ones.

I was pleased to see a marked improvement in my power score, which is now 76, up from the initial 64. My guess is these are beginner gains, and subsequent power score improvements will be harder to achieve. Still, I’m happy and willing to put in the extra work.

The new numbers are:

  • 33 pushups
  • 50 band standing reverse flyes
  • 70 seconds for the modified abdominal plank
  • 180 seconds for the wall sit

There were some surprises when it came to the measurements:

  • Weight: 159.8 lbs, up by about 1½ pounds; my guess is the extra weight is from muscle mass, since I lost fat, as you’ll see below
  • Shoulders: 47.5″, up by ½ inch
  • Chest: 39″, up by 1 inch
  • Arms: 12″, down by 1 inch; this was an unpleasant surprise, but my guess is I had extra fat in the triceps area, which went away.
  • Abdomen: 32″, down by 1 inch
  • Hips: 36.25″, down by 1Âľ inches, which was definitely a surprise.
  • Thighs: 19.5″, up by ½ inch

I guess all that sitting on a chair not only atrophied my muscles, but put extra fat on my arms, around my abdomen (which I already knew of) and my hips, which I didn’t know about.

I’ve got another couple of confessions to make:

  • I missed about a week’s worth of workouts during the 6 weeks, again due to travel. I asked the folks at RPM what to do, and they advised me to do one extra workout per week until I caught back up. That’s excellent advice, so if you’re in the same boat, do that, it’s going to be worth it.
  • I haven’t done my aerobic workouts at all. I’ve been too busy. You know how they say you should do three of their workouts per week, and on your off days, do half an hour of your favorite aerobic activity? Well, I skipped out on that entirely. Shame on me.

Still, in spite of cutting all those corners and missing out on plenty of workouts, look at the progress I made! Can you imagine how much more dramatic my progress would have been if I had followed their recipe?

I think this is really good proof of the program’s potential. I missed workouts, played catch-up, took a two week break, and still I made out really nicely.

Don’t take that to mean I fudged on the actual workouts though! Every time I worked out, I did every exercise and every rep indicated. On some exercises, I even did extra reps. The way I see it, if I didn’t give 100% with every workout, I’d have cheated myself.

If you have any doubts about the RPM System and whether it can work for you, I don’t think you need to worry any more. Try it out, you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s only $10/month, and you get two weeks free with this code: 553677456.

I intend to keep going, and will post future updates about my progress.

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