Category: photos

pedal-powered LED Christmas display

On By Rick McIn photosLeave a comment

Considering our everyone’s infatuation with everything LED is fairly evident, we couldn’t help but stop and stare at a Canadian billboard sporting no fewer than 1,500 LED lights, all brightly shining to spread some holiday cheer. But the method to the madness is what’s important here, as this particular poster had no direct contact with an AC outlet, and reverted to getting its juice from some 120 pedal-pushing volunteers instead.

The DDB/Vancouver project was lit for five consecutive days on behalf of BC Hydro, and was setup to display just how efficient LED lighting really is. According to BC Hydro, the same amount of wheel-turning energy would’ve only lit up 120 incandescent bulbs, which would’ve left Rudolph a bit dimmer than expected.

Canadian billboard gets pedal-powered, shows off LED efficiency – Engadget

12.20.06---bchydrobillboard.jpg

iPhoto – 250,000 Photos?

On By Rick McIn Apple, photos, product complaintsLeave a comment

I’m still looking for a solution for organizing 30,000+ photos conveniently. And having them backed up.

Warren uses ACDsee to VIEW his images. But they do not make a Mac version.

I just tried putting 20,000 photos into one iPhoto library. It’s slow. Weird things are happening. It’s crashing when I try to import some file types.

I’m just about to give up.

Suggestions?

Don’t worry about giving iPhoto 6 too many images to handle. It’s just not going to happen.

With support for up to 250,000 photos, iPhoto 6 will elate even the most prolific shutterbugs. To capture that many photos, you’d have to shoot 1,000 a month for 20 years.

Apple – iLife – iPhoto – 250,000 Photos

250thousandphotos20060120.jpg

I’m looking at Portfolio. And iView Media Pro.

Flickr: search for photos you can use

On By Rick McIn photos, product complaintsLeave a comment

Services like YouTube and Flickr live a lie.

Many of their pages state that everything is copy protected — but then do everything they can to encourage “sharing”.

Flickr has a “Blog This” button. But … if you blog the photo it is slightly possible the original creator will be ticked-off.

But I finally discovered how to search flickr just for photos posted under a Creative Commons licence. Normally this means you can use the image under some restrictions. Usually you must give proper attribution and link back to the source.

If interested, here is the search page: flickr.com/creativecommons/

When I first tried the service, I searched for “West Coast Trail”. Look what came up:

wct-search.jpg

My own photos are licensed under Creative Commons.

Most Dangerous Roads of the World

On By Rick McIn photosLeave a comment

The best summary of photos I’ve seen so far on one of the top viral topics on the internet.

+ Guoliang Tunnel in Taihang mountains (China)
+ Taroko Gorge Road in Taiwan (Chungheng)
+ Pasubio (Vicenza), Northern Italy

Dark Roasted Blend: Dangerous Roads of the World, Part 2

+ Russian Siberian Road to Yakutsk
+ Bolivia’s World’s Most Dangerous Road (“Road of Death”)
+ Russian-Georgian “Military” Mountain Roads
+ Tibet & Bangladesh Roads
+ Most Dangerous Tourist Hiking Trail – Suan-kun (“The Hanging Temple”) Monastery, China

Dark Roasted Blend: The Most Dangerous Roads in the World

And a bonus photo.

mountain-toilet.jpg

flooding in Port Alberni

On By Rick McIn bad news, photosLeave a comment

… the water went up nearly 8 feet to typical winter high but it reached that height in two or three days rather than two or three months.

Hardy Fink, Port Alberni, British Colombia

port-alberni.jpg

Lots of flooding in Port Alberni

mystery solved – “Stremnaya Road”, Bolivia actually the Guoliang Tunnel in China

On By Rick McIn photos, travel41 Comments

Perhaps the LAST update to this, by far the most visited post on RickMcCharles.com:

location of Guoliang – Google Maps

If you use Google Earth software, a link to the location can be found on this page.

Google-Earth-snap.jpg

Aside from the location links, George Novak also found a 2003 travelogue posted on a Chinese website:

… there are two ways to get to the village. One is to climb the Tianti, a stairway cut into the rocky mountain, while another is to travel through the Guoliang Tunnel.

We chose the tunnel. Sitting by the elderly driver I was lucky to hear the story about the tunnel.

Before 1972, the path chiseled into the rock used to be the only access linking the village with the outside world. Then the villagers decided to dig a tunnel through the rocky cliff.

Led by Shen Mingxin, head of the village, they sold goats and herbs to buy hammers and steel tools. Thirteen strong villagers began the project.

It took them five years to finish the 1,200-metre-long tunnel which is about 5 meters high and 4 meters wide. Some of the villagers even gave their lives to it. On May 1, 1977, the tunnel was opened to traffic.

When I was mulling over what the tunnel looked like, the van started a very steep ascent.

I looked up and could not move my eyes away – it was so beautiful!

Natural Charms Soothe City Stress

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Nov 4, 2006

LoriMc found conclusive evidence:

Guoliang.jpg

The Light at the End of the Guoliang Tunnel – China Tourism magazine

More photos of the region on Jongo.com

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Not Bolivia, Peru, Taiwan nor Sichuan province in China.

How can it be so difficult to locate this amazing road?

LoriMc commented on this blog post, pointing to a flickr set including this image:

4129445_ee71464fe9_o.jpg

It appears this road is in Taihang Mountains of China. I ASSuME this because the photographer called his set Taihang – gorge hiking.

Not conclusive, but the best evidence so far. Thanks LoriMc!

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updated post from Nov. 3rd

Mystery solved (I think).

Overnight many including Warren Long discovered that these "Bolivian" road photos were actually taken in Sichuan province, China. These are the cliff roads of the Tibetan plateau, off-limits to tourists when I was hiking there in 1997.

At that time only military vehicles were allowed.

mystery-road2.jpg
more photos on Flickr

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original post from Nov. 2nd

Thousands of websites are tagging this the Stremnaya Road in Bolivia — the “road of death”.

I doubt that is correct. Locals have denied it on the Bolivia Web blog.

Sounds to me like people are confusing these photos with “the world’s most dangerous road” in Bolivia. I’ve been there. This photo was not taken there.

It’s not Cañon del Pato in Peru as some suggested. I’ve been there too and I’m pretty sure these photos were not taken on that road.

I expect it is in the Andes … somewhere.

mystery-road.jpg

Leave a comment if you solve the mystery.

George checked out the Central Cross-Island Highway (Chungheng) linking the east and west coasts of Taiwan. The highway cuts through some of its most rugged land, including the famous marble Toroko Gorge. <

photo – Jack in a hat

On By Rick McIn photosLeave a comment

.flickr-photo { border: solid 0px #000000; }
.flickr-yourcomment { }
.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 0px; }
.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

jack.jpg

100_5705.JPG, originally uploaded by Rick McCharles.

It’s FREEEEZING here in Calgary.

You need to dress for it.

More photos of American Thanksgiving and everything Masons.

I want photo synchronization: computer and the net

On By Rick McIn internet, photosLeave a comment

… Most people keep their photo libraries on their computers. And that’s the way it should be. While Web applications are great, there’s really nothing like desktop software for speed, especially when you are dealing with large files such as photos.

But to share images, we generally upload them to Web sites because it’s easier for our friends to get to those sites than to the images on our computers …

I believe you should be able to make changes to photos on your PC and have those changes automatically reflected in your online albums. You should also be able to make changes on the Web and see them on your PC. Anything else is a recipe for disaster or at least confusion. As users’ photo libraries grow and we all share more libraries online, it’s won’t be practical for us to keep track of the different versions of our media that we’re now storing in different places.

There are (at least) two tools that enable computer-to-Web photo synchronization now: Phanfare and Sharpcast. …

Works for Me: Photo synchronization: the right solution – CNET reviews

I checked out these two “killer apps“. Neither are good enough for me on a Mac.

I’m using flickr now. It does not have synchronization but will probably add it at some time in the future.

Even people who hate computers want to be able to see photos conveniently.

Leave a comment if you have a synchronization solution that works for you.