I've been working on an automated panorama head for a while (more about that in a later post), and wanted to see how far I could push it. This weekend, the Red Bull Air Race in Rotterdam provided an interesting view, and after a lot of stitching my very first gigapixel panorama was the result.

Click the image for a zoomable version.

In november, VRMag returned with a brand new issue. Marco Trezzini chose one of my Sziget panoramas for the interactive index of the issue. The issue got a very nice mention on boingboing. If you just glance over the article on boingboing, it is almost as if John Gaeta is talking about my panorama ;-)

Click the image for the interactive panorama.

This post is a reprint of the VRMag article, including some bonus images.

The good news I have is not the imminent release of Apple's new version of OS X.

You see, I really like my HP TC1100 tablet PC. But it was getting very sluggish, sometimes flaking out on me during presentations etc. Unfortunately, there has been very little in terms of an upgrade to that particular tablet; HP have moved away from the tablet formfactor and only have 'convertibles' these days. And I was not looking forward to Windows Vista on the new machine either. But I finally gave in and ordered a HP 2710p. I am still in the process of transfering my daily life to the new machine, but there's enough to like to this machine. I am keeping the TC1100 around though...

The great news for Mac lovers around the world is, that after a couple of days of use I am starting to get used to the ugglyness and inconsistencies that are Vista. So now that Leopard is picking up some of the same transparency ugliness and inexplicable inconsistency, there is hope for you yet: You'll get over it!

I warned you about this: I am getting famous! I got featured on the front page of the blog of Dutch technology lifestyle magazine Bright!

Here's a couple of videos of me at this summer's panorama conferences, showing the setup I brouight to Bright, as well as some others:

When I've been working too hard on projects that take a lot of energy, I often indulge myself in doing something completely different (though Tessa would argue that it's still behind a computer, so it is not all that different).

Ian Wood showed me some nice workflow tools for Aperture, and I wanted to do something similar with Bridge. Bridge, unlike Adobe Lightroom, was built from the ground up to be extensible; many of Adobe's own applications use javascript to plug into Bridge, and they have a very nice SDK. There's even an embedded browser available in Bridge, based on Opera.

To celebrate our upcoming vacation, Tessa and I went to see the movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest'. Having had great laughs watching Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow in the first movie, both of us found the sequel disappointing.

The evening was not a total loss though; after the movie I had a spare few minutes waiting for Tessa, and was attracted to one of those Playstation stands we have in our cinemas. It turned out not to have a PS2, but a PSP instead. The PSP was running a game with cute yellow blobs rolling around, and I was sold in an instant. Everything from the intuitive controls, to the convincing physics based animation and the ever so cute music made perfect sense.

Microsoft released beta 2 of Windows Vista to the public. Curious as I am, I decided to see if I could download the 3.12 GB DVD image. I got a decent 200-180 Kb/s (hey, the whole world is downloading the file), but look at the progress I am making:

Negative 22 percent? The number actually went down when the download progressed (ie: it started at -1%). Internet Explorer must be cleaning up my computer before I can download Vista. Or someone's using a 'signed long' for the filesize and download that should be unsigned... A signed long can represents a maximum number of 2 'giga' (2*1024*1024*1024). Values above that are represented as negative. Ofcourse, the really interesting question is, what happens in IE if you try to download a file larger than 4 GB?

When Apple released the Mac Mini last year, I immediately wanted one (and bought one too). Over the past couple of weeks, rumors arose that a new, Intel based mac mini was to be released at yesterday's Apple Special Event. And it was.

Few people may have noticed though, that there are clear signs that the end of the world is upon us. Steve 'I-wear-sneakers-because-I-am-vegan' Jobs presented a leather pouch for the iPod, and the mac mini has a green led! Or has it?

One of my last activities before I switched jobs was to attend the 3AD conference, the 3rd conference for Appliance Design. At 3AD I presented some of the aesthetic interaction features of SPi-V. The conference also included a design competition, and the entry by dear friend and ex-collegue Ianus Keller, cowritten by myself and Aadjan van der Helm, won first place.

Tessa is not the only one at Hoeben.net who's enjoying a fresh new job. Around november last year, my "company" studioPKO (note the quotes) contracted a big job at the Digital Home group at Conexant in Bilthoven. When the group started to spin off, I was asked to join the technology startup 'Avinity'. I really like doing my panoramic work, and like how that is finally picking up, so I decided to drop my job at the ID-Studiolab and join Avinity part time.