What happens when you submit a link to Reddit

Last Sunday evening, instead of doing homework, just for the fun of it I decided to submit this entry about the awkwardly explicit TShirt found in Shibuya to reddit.com. Not expecting much out of it, I was surprised by how rapidly the number of hits increased. The influx of visitors has almost returned to the normal 10 hits a day, so to reminisce in the good old times, here are some stats from StatCounter.

The total number of visitors as a result of me posting the link to reddit ~39'000 people.



Front page of Reddit on late Saturday night.



A map of the latest 500 visitors at 18:30 GMT on Sunday, November 16, 2008. Mostly people from the US, Canada, and Western Europe



Where the latest 500 visitors came from on Friday, November 21st.

On creating composite images

I have lately been obsessed with creating composite images of various things. I already posted a hand-made composite image of Parrish Hall (Swarthmore College), that took at least 3 hours to do. Here it is again.



All in all, I think it was a success. There is a problem with the precise alignment of the details, and some of the lines that should be straight are not. Besides that, the lighting varies among the images themselves.

Last Saturday I went to Kinkakuji (The Golden Pavilion Temple). The scenery was really beautiful, so I took a series of photos from one spot, looking out at the Golden Pavilion and the Mirror Pond.

Then came the interesting part. I wanted to create the composite picture the same way I did with the one of Parrish Hall. However, I soon understood that this would not be possible. Just importing the pictures made it clear that there would be too much disparity between the lighting and proportions.



To be honest, I didn't want to spend that much time on the image, and I knew that even if I did, the result might not be pleasant.

Then, lo and behold, I found out that Photoshop is pretty good at doing composite images all by itself! Here is the result:



I started off with 25 images of Kinkakuji, resized them so that they would be easier to process, then using the File>Automate>Photomerge option, I imported the images and let Photoshop do its job. The first resulting image was disappointing because the geometry was messed up. When I removed the awkwardly placed image from the set and ran Photomerge again, it came back with this beautiful picture.

The processing took close to 10 minutes, and Photoshop used up to 4GB of disk space, but I think it was totally worth it. The result is not perfect, as there are some spots where the transition is not seamless (look at the water on the lower left side of the image), but I think it is still worth it. And it is fully automated, so you don't even have to do much...

Here is a cropped version, which looks more like a panorama-type image.



Give panoramic compositions a try and let me know how it works.

Location of the store where they sell the weird t-shirt

With more than 10'000 hits in the last 3 hours from reddit.com and other places online concerning this previous blog post, I must say that I am very surprised.

One person asked in the comments about where I took the picture. So here goes. Remeber that this happened about 2 weeks ago, so my memory might not be perfect here.

So once you get out of Shibuya station (Hachiko exit), you should be facing the big intersection. Right in front of you is a tall building with a screen from the 4th to the 6th floor, or so. This same building has a Starbucks, so it should be obvious. Next you walk across the intersection, and walk down the street that is to the RIGHT from the big building (i.e. the big Starbucks building is now on your left) on your right side there should be a clothing store, but you should walk 10 meters and then go in here. They have the guys section in here.

The outfits are quite absurd. Go to the 3rd or 4th floor, and one of the stores has the TShirt.

This is my futile attempt to point out the store on Google Maps.


Skatīt lielāku karti

Tokyo

We will be able to do it because we are Japan. A new Olypics.

Weirdest Tshirt I've seen

Seen at a guys' clothing store in Shibuya. Pure awesomeness.

EDIT: Replying to Anonymous in the comments, here is an attempt to give directions to the store.

Tokyo - Miraikan

So suppose you go to Tokyo, the vibrant capital of Japan, but you don't really know where to go. You've been to all the popular places, including, but not limited to, Akihabara, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku (Gwen Stefani was totally on crack when she wrote those songs about the Harajuku girls. Not worth it), but that just doesn't seem exciting enough. So what do you do? Yes, that is correct, you go to a geeky museum! The one museum that you definitely have to go to is the Miraikan, the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation.

First of all, to get there, you have to take the monorail to Odaiba, which is awesome in and of itself.

The museum itself is mostly full of kids, at least on weekdays, so beware.

Inside the museum, you get to see:

Miniature magnetic trains.

A huge globe with moving images with various types of information, including today's global cloud cover, the water temperature in the oceans around the year, and others.

Cute animations.

Insightful explanations in both Japanese and English.

A couple of robots.

And then, the most awesome exhibit of all, a hands on simulation of the Internet, although, Computer Network would be a more appropriate name.

What it is is an installation, containing five tables (let's call these 'computers'), that are connected to vertical pillars (switches), which are interconnected by tracks (wires). The 'information' itself that is sent among the 5 computers is realized in the form of black and white balls - each representing one bit.

Let me clarify:

A schematic drawing of the whole network, containing the 5 computers (labeled A through E)

The table, or computer, call it whatever you like

Balls rolling on the tracks, representing information being sent through the network.

So how does it work, you might ask. Well, it is really simple.

First, you choose which one of the 5 stations you want to send your information to. You do this by moving the lever next to number 1. Next, you decide which symbol to send, which is done by the large wheel on the right. Now, the empty row has lit up as a hint to the operator as to which balls should be sent. So you fill in the row with 16 balls, the first 8 representing the destination address, and the last 8 representing the symbol. You then press that big round black button, and watch as the balls roll down under the table, up the vertical pillar in front of you, end up on one of the tracks that connect the pillars, maybe goes through this iteration a couple of times, and then ends up at antother table. There, the balls end up in a little Connect-4 type frame, with the meaning of the 8 balls being displayed on the right.

Of course, my inner child was going crazy about this installation, so I politely pushed some Japanese elementary school students off of one of the workstations, and started working on sending a paramount message.

This is the end result. The message is supposed to be read from the bottom up.

Oh, how much fun that was!

These kids figured out that if you send the message in reverse, it will be easier to read.

Oh, kids these days...

In all this excitement, I even ended up taking a video!

In this video, the kids mess up the address part of the message, so this 'packet' gets dumped back at the computer, but this workstation is successful in receiving a message from another workstation, the message being ハ ("ha" in Japanese).



But that is not all, the Miraikan has other stuff.

A 1000 LED cube, supposedly showing 3D animation.

A life sized model of the International Space Station.

This is the toilet!

Braaaainsss!

An enormous screen, showing earthquakes all around Japan. Sadly, no big ones that day...

Another model of some space machine...

So the next time you are in Tokyo, don't hesitate to visit this museum. Lots of fun for at least 3 hours straight!

More photos of the Miraikan