Google’s Image-a-Nation (spoilers, possibly)

Anyone working on the Google Image-a-Nation Challenge? Looks to me like a photomosaic, expressed in Google Image thumbnail IDs. Here’s what I’ve got so far: (edit: beaten by 20 minutes!)

Make AP Images photo captions readable with Greasemonkey

Howdy,

Afraid I find the new AP Images site unreadable. So, being a touch nerdy, I started tinkering with Greasemonkey.

Download “Make AP Text Readable” here.

This requires Firefox and Greasemonkey. You can turn it on and off anytime by clicking the monkey face in your status bar, or in Greasemonkey’s preferences.

before:

after:

Election Day

Huntington

Without coffee, this would never have been possible: yet there Rachel and I found ourselves, tumbling out the door at 5:50 A.M. to go vote. Our neighborhood in Huntington is best described as “sleepy,” even in bright sunlight, and the dim pre-dawn light wasn’t helping: trees loomed, streetlights flickered and buzzed, and we gradually grew aware of other people joining our pilgrimage.

The community center in Huntington is infamously hard to find, and we live about 500 feet from it.  Neither of us even noticed the place in our first three months of Huntington residency; it’s buried in the center of a long block of lush yards and tidy homes. This dim November morning, the alleys leading to the center had cheerful, G.I. Joe stenciled wood signs pointing the way. (We followed.)

Big, sleepy trees and backyard fences funneled us towards the community center and our chance to vote. Turns out the entrance we’d picked had been turned into an exit that day, with an arrow guiding us to the other side of the building. One guy in front of us followed the detour with fully-extended airplane arms. He was startled by our chuckles.

Even the Beltway’s muffled roar was subdued at mumble-mumble-o-clock in the morning, but there was little that could be described as “subdued” about the turnout. A line of at least fifty people yawned along behind the center, with another few dozen closing fast. After securing our place in line, I took a few photos at arm’s length, mostly out of surprise.

Huntington 2

It took about half an hour to get up to the center. No telling how long the line got behind us. On the way, we met more of our neighbors–a guy from Tennessee; a guy living in the expensive and sparsely-occupied new condo high-rise; a guy who’d just had open-heart surgery for his sickle-cell anemia. The time passed pretty quickly, with only one solicitor offering us a sample, pre-filled ballot. One tent of cheerful Obama people in fancy clothing was being manned; three other guys with fancy clothing and three-ring binders sat next to the entrance of the community center, looking intimidating and shifty. But they didn’t actually do anything, as far as we could tell.

And before we knew it, in the community center we found ourselves.  “Anyone A through L?”  Woosh, forward, through the sheep-gates and into the voting center. Sorry, new friends, see you later. A flash of the ID, a monotoned recitation of our full legal names, and an all-important question: “Paper ballot?” Oh, yes. I scribbled in my bubbles and fed the paper to a machine, and five minutes later we were tottering back home in the steadily brightening daylight.

Dear GoodReads: Don’t friggin’ do that

Hi all,

I am a book nerd, at times. I use GoodReads. GoodReads is good!

But today GoodReads is bad. Every time I’ve logged into GoodReads today, I’m greeted with this heinous prompt:

NO. NO NO NO. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA.

I absolutely do not want to update my GoodReads password to match my Gmail email account. That’s an incredibly shitty idea — last I checked, my ego list of Pynchon checkmarks is NOWHERE NEAR as important as the E-mail account full of bank statements and professional contacts.

And it DOESN’T GO AWAY!

Every time I log in!

(Worse than PayPal!)

NO NO NO. PUT IT BACK. PUT IT BACK. This is a deal-breaker.

(Image-impaired: it says “Click “next” to update your Goodreads password to match your Gmail email account.”)

Madonna

It is hard to find a picture of Madonna looking sad!

Artomatic!

I’m going to Artomatic!

 

Photoshop CS3 and Save for Web

A lot of hot air has been vented about how Photoshop CS3’s “Save for Web” makes everything look like Technicolor candy. Turned out in my case that it had imported the CS2 color settings… and added one:

What the hell, and why?? “Desaturate monitor colors” by 21% of my dead body!

Same problem? Color Settings, click More Options, gonuts.

Sorry about the nuclear-colored Express these last few days! Computers rock! (And blogs do too. I forgot that for a while. Hello again!)

Scrapple

Come check out the zany efforts of me and my cohort at Scrapple Spring Rolls.

Fort Hunt

Fort Hunt, Va.

Dunbar Senior High School