irrelevancy

I was getting burnt playing around with the GIMP, finally just selecting random plug-ins and filters and I liked this one.

Posturized Poolballs

I took a few sequence shots with the purpose of trying out Hugin (available in the Ubuntu repositories) to make panoramas. I had a cursory knowledge of how the program worked, picking control spots and stitching an image together, but I had no idea how easy it was when you just let it do it automatically.

I threw 8 pictures at it, it worked for about 10-15 minutes, and out came a fairly nice panorama. The first wasn’t perfect as it seems like it used the first photo as a starting point, where it seems like it would have better to use one of the middle photos to start with. The only real problem I had was with the seams. It applies some blending, which helped, but the white bands are noticeable.

Sedona Panorama – 8 pictures

I tried again with only 5 pictures and it did a much better job, both with the seams and the perspective. Thanks to SJ for tips on color correction.

Sedona Panorama – 5 pictures, heavily cropped

Woke up very early, wasn’t excited about getting back to Chicago. Fought through some traffic, returned the car, and had plenty of time to wait for our plane to board. Ate the turkey sandwiches my grandmother made us. You’d think we’d be sick to death of turkey by now.

Boarded the plane and was a little disappointed we were in the first row. While it was also Economy Plus, there was wall in front of us, instead of a seat that I could slide my feet under. Thankfully, there was an Asian women sitting next us with a cute little baby. Her husband and other child were placed a few seats behind across the isle. The child refused to sit across the aisle from his father, so the plane couldn’t take off. We gladly switched seats so they could sit together and I could have some more leg room. They were very appreciative and thanked me a few times before exiting the plane.

We saw ‘Hot Rod’ on way back. It was okay, a little silly. Walked out of the airport and was disappointed it was a grim 30 degrees. I instantly missed the warm weather. Got home and had to buy some batteries for my dead camera for the picture upload to my PC. Instead of the crappy alkaline batteries, I went for the Ni-MH and some fancy charger. Used the excellent Digikam to upload the photos and F-Spot to make the nice static gallery here: Thanksgiving in Arizona.

We planned to take the scenic route to Sedona, so we left as early as we could. We drove through some little towns, some pretty isolated from civilization. Ventured through some beautiful mountains.

Stopped in Prescott, AZ to find something to eat. Picked a small locally-owned pizzeria, Tastebud’s Pizza While it was a small place, they seemed to take a lot of pride in their work. All the names had an art reference. We chose the “Veggie Picasso”. It was the best damn pizza I’ve ever had. Vegetables were very fresh. Even my mom, who doesn’t typically eat pizza, felt compelled to eat her half.

We drove through more mountains to reach Jerome, AZ. It was a cute little town in the mountains, with narrow winding streets filled with little shops. There was a large hotel there where my grandparents were married.

I guess there was lots of development on the way to Sedona, as the towns were pretty busy and had just about everything else a civilized town would have. Sedona was beautiful even if it was filled with tourists. Stopped at a shopping complex to browse around and snap some pictures. I bought a small necklace.

It had been a long day, as we took the long way to Sedona were exhausted by the time we arrived back at my grandparents’ house. Went to bed early because we also had to get started early to return the car and catch a flight back.

Woke up to another big breakfast. Hung around for a while before we left to see some of the sights. We drove through the neighborhood we lived in when I was a child and I could see why we left. Drove to and through Camelback Mountain. Saw some beautiful houses.

Drove over to Papago Mountain, which wasn’t very far away. Had a nice park area with a lagoon and lots of palm trees. Walked up Papago to the “Hole in the Rock”. Which is, as you could guess, a hole in the rock. You walk through and can see the park on the other side. There were a handful of people up here taking pictures and I guess we got there on a light day, as there were many more people expected.

Next, we set out to find the nearest Pancho’s Mexican Restaurant. While I prefer eating at locally-owned establishment’s, Pancho’s was my favorite place to go as a child and haven’t eaten there in at least 20 years. I expected to not like it as much as I did. I figured that it was just better in my memory, but everything was very good. I took a little much on the first time through, so I didn’t get a chance to raise the flag and have the waitress bring me another plate of whatever I wanted.

We get back and I figured I should get to work fixing my grandmother’s PC. She runs Windows XP, finally got rid of AOL, and uses the most obnoxious software. Cleaned up spyware and the registry. Installed Firefox and imported her Internet Explorer settings. Installed Thunderbird and imported her Outlook Express settings. Installed OpenOffice as she only had the pre-installed MS Works. Replaced the annoying AOL Instant Messenger with Pidgin. Fixing printer issues and other hardware issues was a nightmare. I’m so spoiled as an Ubuntu user. I unfortunately forgot to bring an Ubuntu live CD.

I spent most of the night attempting to show my grandmother around with the new programs. She did fine, but just freaked out a bit at something new. Also, it was difficult as all she wanted to do was create Elf Yourself animations. Sigh.