swami_worldtraveler's Most Recent Favorites

Stela "M"

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:32:29 Z

by xRez_Studio "This is Stela "M" from the National Geographic Channel's "Sunken Treasures of the Nile" http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/sunken-treasures-of-the-nile-5661/Overview#tab-Overview and Racines & Des Ailes "Le secret des Pharaons bâtisseurs" http://programmes.france3.fr/des-racines-et-des-ailes/index-fr.php?page=emission&id_article=539. The stela is unique because it is the first clear description ever found of how the Egyptians moved the large monuments (i.e. 1000 ton stone obelisks) and loaded them onto boats to take them from the quarries where they were mined to the destination cities where they would be installed. This was discovered in November of 2008 while filming a documentary for Racines & Des Ailes by Egyptologist Philippe Martinez and published in "Une commande royale pour le Ramesseum: une stèle inédite de Ramsès II au Gebel es Silsilah" xRez Studio was asked by Insight Digital (A Cultural Heritage Graphics and Documentation non-profit http://www.insightdigital.org/ ) to aid in the photogrammetric capture of multiple sites for the documentary that would be used to create the visual effects for the film. Photosynth played an unexpected key role in the film. We initially were using Photosynth to recover the point clouds and camera poses for creating 3D models, however we found that from the extracted point clouds we were able to create models and test the theories that the Egyptologist Philippe Martinez, the director Frédéric Wilner, and Kevin Cain from Insight Digital came up with during the day. By photographing the sites while the film crew filmed these experts we were able to test some of their theories in 3d by the evening, Photosynth not only played a role in the post for the film but was used in the film directly. More media and details are on http://www.xrez.com//case-studies/cultural-heritage/sunken-treasures-of-the-nile/ Special thanks to Bill Crow and the Photosynth team for making this happen!"

Lana's Face

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:36:29 Z

by bhowiebkr

San Francisco as seen from Twin Peaks

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 02:40:01 Z

by tiberius2oo5 "SF Downtown as seen from from Twin Peaks. Enjoy! 210 pictures Nikon D90 18-200mm VR"

Singapore

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:25:54 Z

by jafa "Mosaic created with the professional version of http://www.andreaplanet.com/andreamosaic buy it it's awesome! I shot this Panoramicof One Fullerton and the Singapore Merlion in December 2009. I thought it'd be fun to turn it into a 6.5 Gigapixel mosaic featuring all the other photos that I have uploaded to http://flickr.com/photos/kiwi over the last few years. It took a couple of days to build this and get it right (kinda like baking a cake, you check on it every few hours). I'll do a blog post on the process I took soon... You can see the original (non mosaic) version at http://is.gd/bdgMb and another smaller mosaic (800 Megapixels) I made of the cardrona pub at http://j.mp/PSmosaic"

Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon, Iceland

Sat, 16 May 2009 11:23:12 Z

by TonyErnst "Jökulsárlón is one of the handful of places I've been where I was completely overwhelmed by it's beauty. I clearly remember cresting a hill to get my first view of it, stopping in my tracks and, of all things, laughing like an idiot. Taken July 2, 2004 Jökulsárlón, Southern Iceland You can see more of my photography at: http://tonyernst.com"

Duckett's Grove

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:22:23 Z

by The.Rev "Ducketts Grove, Co. Carlow, Ireland was originally a Georgian home of noted Anglo Irish family, which was rebuilt in Gothic Revival style. Although burnt in 1933 the remaining towers and turrets, mostly ivy clad, give this enchanting structure a fairy tale air. Built in 1830 by William Duckett in an estate covering more than 5,000 acres. During the Troubles, Duckett was occupied by soldiers from the Irish Republican Army and many Nationalist leaders sought refuge here. The last male heir died in 1908, but his widow lived in the house until 1912. At its entrance is the most stupendous castellated gateway in southern Ireland. located in Co. Carlow. It was designed in a Castellated Gothic revival style by Thomas A. Cobden for John Davidson Duckett circa 1825. The building incorporates numerous towers and turrets of varying shapes – round, square and octagonal. One tall octagonal turret rises from the structure. Duckett’s Grove is elaborately ornamented with oriels and niches containing statues. Several statues on pedestals surrounded the building and lined the approaches. The house itself is situated in the townland of Rainstown, between Carlow and Tullow but the estate comprised several large townlands and parts of others. Following the departure of the Duckett's the estate was managed by an agent until 1921 then by local farmers and later by the Land Commission. The division of the lands was completed by 1930. Duckett’s Grove was destroyed by fire in April 1933 but the cause of the fire has not been determined."

Ear reddening game from 1846

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:36:26 Z

by K "In 1846 Shusaku played against Gennan Inseki. Shusaku was then 17 years old and 4 dan. Gennan on the other hand was close to 50 years old, an established 8 dan, and head of House Inoue. Thus, it was a great privilege for Shusaku to play Gennan. The first game was played with two stones handicap, but it became clear that Shusaku was too strong and that no handicap was needed. In their second game Shusaku took Black. After making a mistake in the taisha joseki played in the lower right corner, Shusaku played flawlessly. Yet Gennan held onto the lead. The game continued to the 127 move, the famous ear-reddening move. White had just played the marked stone as move 126, when Shusaku played B1. B1 is called the ear-reddening move. Gennan's disciples were watching the game and not one of them doubted that Gennan would win. But a doctor, who also had been watching the game, thought that Gennan would lose. When pressed for an answer he replied: I don't know much about the game, but when Shusaku played B1 Gennan's ears flushed red. This is a sign that he had been upset. The ear-reddening move B1 is a profound move having influence in all four directions. It expands black's moyo at the top, it helps the four black stones below, it reduces the influence of white's strong position to the right, and it also has an eye on white's moyo on the left side. In short B1 is the central point for attack and defence. Eventually Shusaku won this game by 2 points after 325 moves."

fisheye

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:05:41 Z

by K

Huge House (with highlights)

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:43:31 Z

by K "This is my brother's house in Benton Harbor, Michigan. It's a work in progress! It's gorgeous just as it is and very fun to explore both in person and via Photosynth. Even the attic and the basement are cool. Normally I wouldn't recommend synthing 1700 images, but I decided to give it a shot because a) I was curious to see if it'd work and b) to show off the capabilities of the new highlights feature. Obviously it did work so check on that front (I borrowed a few hours on a server with 8 cores and 8Gb RAM if you're curious). Finding your way between rooms without the highlights is difficult, it's so much more fun to just click the highlight buttons and fly there! The enormous size does expose the limits of the Photosynth viewer though, it just wasn't designed to scale to this level and sometimes it's slow even on a modern machine with a fast connection. I'd recommend 500 or 600 images as the upper practical limit for users to have a good viewing experience and 300 is even better."

Mountain Lake - Vachkazhets

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:26:42 Z

by kichik "There are amazing places in Kamchatka. Could your imagine all of this: green grass and trees, snow, sun, lakes, waterfalls, mountains and not a single soul - all in one place? How to find this place? 9-hour flight from Moscow to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, 2-hour transfer by minibus, 3-4-hour shift on foot in fishing rubber boots with 15-kg backpack thru hills - up and down, snow, swamps, few rivers and fords. And be careful - there live bears:) Going back we missed each other for only 30 minutes..."