I recently came across a free program by the name of AutoStitch, developed by a couple of guys at the University of British Columbia, in Canada.

The point of this software is to “stitch” — or join up — multiple protographs into one; “stitching” is generally used for one of two things: panoramic photographs, and virtual tours (such as the IPIX tour of Stonington Mansion hosted on my work’s website). I’m not interested in the virtual tour aspect right now, since I don’t think it’s the greatest thing out there anyway; interesting, yes, but not as good as panoramic photos.

Unfortunately, after looking through my digital photos, I’ve not been able to find many photos which were able to be stitched into a decent picture — they were either not overlapping or there simply wasn’t enough photos.

I did, however, happen to take a few shots which were usable when we visited the Dandenong Ranges a few weeks back.

Sadly, the panorama stitched together doesn’t look that interesting, so I decided to fiddle with the software and tried making another. I came up with this one, which shows almost the entire room where our computers (and the spare bed) live; the only things not visible in the room are a bookcase and cupboard.

Note the “ghosting” on the chair in the foreground. It’s occured because either I moved, or I moved the chair while I was taking the series of photographs. Normally, I would use this for landscape photos, but there’s not really anywhere close I’m interested in photographing in this manner.

There are other software packages out there that perform the task of stitching; some probably do it better, most have more options. This however, is free, and the only other program I’ve tried (I forget the name right now) didn’t produce as good a result as AutoStitch did with the same inputs.

I would like to go out and about again, with the view of producing photos such as these, though of landscapes and a little bit more interesting.

As I mentioned the other day, I’ve been making my way through the first (and only) season of Firefly. This series was pretty much doomed from the outset by FOX. Possibly as a “hey, we’re sorry” by FOX type deal, Joss Whedon has made a feature-length film based in the Firefly universe.

The movie is called Serenity (the name of the space ship in the series), and is due for release at the end of September in the US. The main point of this post is that if you like the series, the trailer is out now for your downloading pleasure.

Like I said, the show’s a bit cheesy, but it’s good fun. If you like sci-fi or Whedon’s other shows (Buffy, Angel… I don’t like either of them), go out and rent the DVDs.

Justine leaves early for work on Wednesday mornings, since she works from 7 - 2:30 (or something similarly early). Upon leaving this morning, she advised me that my clock radio was flashing. Hmm, must have been a power outage. “Never mind,” I thought, and drifted back off to sleep.

After sleeping through a few of my alarm’s feeble attempts at waking me up, I rolled over and checked the clock (radio). 7:48. Maybe I should get up. I turned off my alarm and rolled out of bed, and straight into the shower.

I’d finished my shower and was dressed before I checked any clock again. The clock said 8:01. A bit later than I like but I still had plenty of time. I picked up my mobile phone and it advised me the time was 7:35. Oh dear.

Obviously there had been a power outage at around 11:30 last night, putting the clock radio around 25-30 minutes fast. If the time had been right on the clock radio, I would have simply slept longer. I contemplated leaving the clock radio run fast but shortly after, realised that my brain would account for it and I’d be getting up at the same time.

Ah well, may as well make use of the extra time (and post useless posts on my website!).

Due to the way work’s EBA is structured, the ANZAC long weekend is the last long weekend I’ll have until Christmas. Of course, I’m able to use my leave to take long weekends whenever I desire and I do get extra days at Christmas and Easter to make up for it… though working straight through from the end of April to the end of December is a pretty long haul.

Nevertheless, I spent this weekend how I try to spend most of my weekends, doing as little as possible.

On Friday night, Justine and I saw Sin City, which isn’t due for release here until August (go figure). I haven’t read the comics graphic novels on which the film is very strongly based, though I have flicked through them on occasion. The film basically has three stories which mostly don’t intertwine, though do a little; these stories are told in a rather gruesome, gritty manner — which, to my understanding, emulates the graphic novels quite closely. The majority of the film is in black and white, though some parts of the screen are colour — certain characters (such as ‘Yellow Bastard’, played by Nick Stahl, who was John Connor in Terminator 3 and Ben Hawkins in the fantastic Carnivale [which I haven't yet talked about here]), for instance. Many of the scenes and angles look like they have been ripped straight from the graphic novels, and they appear almost like a living comic to great effect. If you like comic book movies, see it. If you don’t like gore (even though it’s in black and white, and mostly stylised), don’t see it.

On Saturday night, we had planned to go to Sweet Basil restaurant (one of the first restaurants Justine and I went to); they weren’t answering the phone though the message on the phone claimed there were open for lunch and dinner. So, we decided to go to Tokyo Teppanyaki (not to be confused with Ginza Teppanyaki which I’ve talked about before) along with Kat and her new bloke, Warren (who happens to be good friends with the son of Ginza Teppanyaki’s manager, eesh). This place was a bit more expensive than the previous place; the food was probably on par though I particularly enjoyed the prawns. I would love to go back and get the ‘expensive’ banquet, which includes lobster and Patagonian Tooth Fish (as well as tempura ice cream… yum!) in the menu.

Afterwards, we made our way to Bridie O’Reilly’s and hung out in the beer garden for a while, and had a few drinks and more than a few laughs before heading home.

We had plans of some sort on Sunday, but I forget what they were. In the end we just bludged around all day, watching TV and the like. Nice and relaxing. For some reason, all day it felt like Saturday to me. Not sure why, but it felt like I hadn’t had enough time off. If it were a normal weekend it would have seemed far too short.

Luckily, we also had Monday off. I could really get used to three day weekends; hell, I could get used to five day weekends, I’m sure. Since I hadn’t undergone the pain for a while, we decided to go shopping at the DFO mall since it was open and I hadn’t been there since before they’d started the refurbishments (i.e. adding more shops on the outside). We spent a couple of hours there; I purchased a pair of jeans, t-shirt and shirt. Justine purchased a… well, pair of jeans, t-shirt and shirt… strange really. Since shopping tires me out much more than it does Justine, I managed to dictate when we went home.

Not really thrilling, but since I didn’t post all weekend I thought I’d squish it all into one post. I’m quite glad this week is a four-day week too; four days too many but I’ll survive.

This is not the first time I’ve noticed it, and I’m sure it will most definitely not be the last. Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched a number of TV series which seem to have been cancelled way before their time.

The first such instance of a show where I was conscious of it’s cancellation was a few years back with Greg the Bunny, which didn’t quite make it all the way through it’s first season, much to our disappointment, as we were following the show.

More recently, I’ve been watching Firefly which was originally aired around the same time. I’m not a big fan of a lot of Joss Whedon’s biggest hits, Buffy and Angel. Firefly is best described as a sci-fi western in space. It’s pretty cheesy, but really quite fun. Like Greg the Bunny, it didn’t make it through it’s first season either.

Next up comes Dead Like Me, which was airing on FOX8 though I can no longer find it. Basically, the show is about a young girl (18) who dies — she’s hit by a toilet seat which has fallen from Mir space station — and rather than passing to heaven or hell, is a grim reaper. Hilarity ensues. This show made it through two seasons, and since I haven’t yet seen both, don’t know if it had run it’s course. It is quite enjoyable though.

The guy who created Dead Like Me, also recently created another great show — Wonderfalls. The lead — another young female, though slightly older — is in a dead-end job and proud of it. Inanimate objects start talking to her and guide her through life in a strange, strange way. Very enjoyable, but it made it through a record four episodes… oh yeah!

I’ve saved the best ’til last (at least in my opinion). Arrested Development is — as I’ve mentioned before an excellent show which deserves to have been far more popular than it is. It’s won Emmy awards, has heaps of critical acclaim, is airing (in the US) after what has to be one of the most popular shows around, and it’s still being cancelled. That said, it hasn’t actually been cancelled yet; they just haven’t ordered any more episodes. In fact, they cut the second season (which just finished Sunday in the US; great episode too!) order down from 22 to 18 episodes — which was turned into a great gag within the show. This one may be possible to save — if you go to getarrested.com you can vocalise your support for the show. It’d be a real pity to see Arrested Development go, there are just so many things it does right.

This is the second post in the ‘Take that’ series. As the post on the other end of that previous link shows, I managed to get my credit card balance owing back down to $0, once upon a time.

That previous time was Visa. This time, it’s the Commonwealth Bank that is taking… erm… that. Over the past couple of months, I’d been trying to decide whether I should use my savings to pay off my car loan early, go on a holiday, or buy a nice TV (unfortunately, it wouldn’t have been one as nice as Sony’s Qualia 006). Since I want to wait a little longer to get a new TV, and I’m not sure where we’d go on a holiday yet, I decided to pay off my car loan early. I figured that I will have saved myself somewhere in the region of $500-700 in interest by paying it off slightly more than a year early.

A few months back, I called the bank to find out how to go about closing the account. The first answer I got is that I’d called too late, and would have to call earlier to close it. Oh well then. Some time passed, and I attempted to close the account on Monday in the branch. Unfortunately, I hadn’t initiated the transfer of money from my savings account so I didn’t actually have the money, and using my credit card (while giving me lots of points) would have cost a lot of money. D’oh. So I transferred the money Monday afternoon.

Today, I called again to close the account. This time, I was told I had to go into the branch to sign “end of loan paperwork”. News to me. Not only that, I had to actively cancel the fortnightly payment into the other account, even though I would have gotten the balance to $0, effectively ending the loan. Right.

At the bank, I filled out a withdrawl and deposit form which was actioned. Then, I signed one form to end the fortnightly payment; no “end of loan paperwork” in sight. How stupid.

Never mind. I am finally, currently pretty-much debt free for a while! I know it won’t be for long (maybe a few years at most, if I’m lucky) so I might just try to enjoy it. My car might not be great, but not having to pay it off any more is a great load off my mind!

Over the weekend, I acquired the second half of the reason that I bought an Xbox, Jade Empire.

I managed to squeeze a few hours of play in, and at this point, I feel that the game seems pretty much like “Knights of the Old Republic, in Asia”. The main difference — besides the completely different setting, story, characters and so on — is that the combat is real-time, action combat. Once I’d gotten used to the control scheme and figured out the best way to defeat the evil minions of whoever-is-sending-them, I’ve found most of the battles aren’t too difficult. I have still ‘died’ a few times since but overall they’re not too taxing.

Unlike Fable, which I was a bit disappointed with, Jade Empire has been pretty good so far. BioWare has a history of releasing quality video games, and this game is no exception (their reputation isn’t quite as solid as Blizzard’s, who — in the eyes of many gamers — could release a game where you control a grain of dirt through the sea and it would still sell millions of copies).

As usual, I am finding that my character is a good-guy, but so far I fully intend to return to the game and be an evil character again — it depends on whether I feel it’s worth playing through again.

The next game I’m waiting for is Forza Motorsport, which is being developed by Microsoft and touted as a contender for more realistic driving ‘game’. BioWare should be releasing Neverwinter Nights 2 next year, which should also be a big release.