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Ok, so it’s been over a month since my last post. Yeah, yeah, I know… it’s like my posting schedule when I was in college all over again.

Whatever.

Apparently, the quiz I posted in my last post about real vs. CG images wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I even tried to trick you. Images 1, 2 and 5 were CG, images 3 and 4 were photographs. The way I cheated was to use HDR images for the photos – images of the same scene that are taken at different exposure settings and then combined to form a composite image. I did this because traditional photography (especially with film) has difficulty with scenes that have a wide range of brightness – usually they are either skewed toward dark, light, or straddle the middle and lack contrast. CG doesn’t have this constraint, and this difference is one of the primary ways of easily differentiating between real and CG. Also (especially in the case of the river photo), HDR images often have interesting colorization, making them appear unnatural.

Purists might argue that calling the HDR images “photographs”  was misleading. It probably was. However, they were in fact images of the real world, and were not the result of computer rendering.

The impressive thing to me was the fact that the CG images I presented were generated in real time – not pre-rendered. Pre-rendering can achieve amazing quality, with results that can be deceptively life like. Up to this point, real time rendered images were significantly lacking in realism. The images of the girl were screen shots of a digital model of model Adrianne Curry created by NVidia to demonstrate the capabilities of their new graphics processor. I have to say, I’m impressed. While not perfect, the progress is impressive. At this rate, it might not be long before scenarios such as S1m0ne (imdb.com) become a reality.

Ok, so I have something different today than my usual rambling about my life. Actually, I’m not going to ramble at all. Below are 5 images. Some are actual photographs; some are computer generated. Leave a comment saying which images are real and which aren’t.

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5

Happy guessing!

…or why fixing things sometimes means doing thing the wrong way.

There are just some things you’re not supposed to do. Abusing people, abusing animals, and abusing electronics. Now I certainly haven’t abused any people, nor have I abused any animals. I’m not that  horrible.

Abusing electronics is another matter, however. Let me back up.

I’ve had my iPod for a couple of years now. If you ask my coworkers at DCO, I was positively horrible to it. It’s scratched (front and back), and it’s been dropped quite a few times. It’s not uncommon for me to set it down less than gently. During school I used it pretty much every day, turning it on and off within a short period of time (to and from class, etc.) There was an entire summer where it sat in the dock at home, but didn’t charge at all. That pretty much killed the battery. By Christmas of my senior year, it wouldn’t stay on for more than 10 minutes. Sometimes less than 5. I bought a new battery (there was no way I was paying Apple to replace it). Replacing the battery wasn’t exactly gentle either. Basically it involved prying the metal back off from the front using a couple of nylon prying tools. I don’t think it deformed the metal back too much, but there’s no doubt that it did a little.

Basically, it’s taken 2 or 3 years of hard use, and some abuse. None the less, it still worked pretty well.

Until recently.

I first started noticing a problem when I tried to sync it to my computer. It was fine when i was using it, but as soon as iTunes tried to use it, it would freeze. I’m talking total freeze. iTunes would just stop where it was, and the screen on the iPod would just stop updating.

The first time this happened, I was able to resurrect pretty easily. It took a little effort to get it going again, but I was able to reflash it using the software updater and it came back to life. I should have known it wouldn’t last.

Things were good for a while. But last night I hooked it up to charge it and because I had gotten some new songs I wanted to add. When the hard drive started to click loudly, I knew I was in trouble. Sure enough, a few clicks later it froze.

Now anyone who’s ever worked tech support can tell you, when a hard drive or other magnetic drive starts clicking loudly, you’re in trouble.

They don’t call it “the click-of-death” for nothing.

The first thing I tried was reflashing it the way I did last time it started freezing on me. No such luck. So I jumped on google. I knew that I had read about a similar problem on the web before. As it turned out, there were two suggested solutions.

The first was to open it up, disconnect the hard drive from the logic board, and plug it all back together. Several people had reported having luck with that solution. So I dug out my trusty prying tools that came with my battery, and cracked it open. Unplug, replug. Hook it back up to the computer.

Same thing. Click – click – click – freeze.

/sigh

You see, I had really been hoping that would fix it. I’d read the other possible fix for this problem. It wasn’t something I wanted to do.

But there was no other choice. I was leaving for Texas for Labor Day weekend the next day, and there was no way I was going to face airports and airplanes without my iPod.

So, I gritted my teeth, and apologized to my iPod.

You see, the proposed fix was to hit the iPod, in an less than gentle method, against a flat table top. I’ll say that again. Slam the back of the iPod against a table. Again, several people had reported success with this method.

So I did. I didn’t really have any other choice. Hit it, and check to see if it was fixed. Hit, check, hit, check. In the end, I hit my iPod on the desk a fair number of times. Nothing.

I hadn’t wanted it to come to this. I really hadn’t. But whatever.

The next few hits would better be described as slams. Hard slams. If Brandon or Kyle had seen me treating my iPod this way, they probably would have fainted. Or cried. Or something.

There were several times that it almost finished syncing, but would stop again. It was always the same thing, click-click-click-freeze.

The last time, I had an idea. Maybe it was more sensitive to certain orientations.

In the end, I got it working. I’m not sure if the final smack on the table fixed it, or if it liked being upside down. I hooked it up to the computer, turned it upside down, leaning against the screen, and it worked. I’m glad it did.

But I still feel bad for the abuse it suffered at my hand. After all, applying violent shock to delicate electronics is one of those things you’re just not supposed to do.

Kinda like kicking your dog. But not quite.