Diary of a Network Geek

I would imagine by now the few regular readers of this blog have figured out that I love both photography and free software.

I, personally, use Lightroom.  And, yes, I paid for it.  I’ve gotten used to it and I understand the workflow and I can get the little bit of editing I do to photos done that way.  But, I am always on the look out for software that I can recommend to people unwilling to make that kind of…
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Yeah, you read that right.

It’s no secret that I love my digital camera.  Not quite enough to give it a name, like some photographers I know, but, still, I love the little fist-full of magic that lets me take amazingly detailed digital photographs.  I remember when my ex-wife got her digital camera, it was a big deal that it was something like 3-megapixels.  Now, my iPhone has a camera at least as good as that built into it!  The camera I use now is a 10 megapixel camera and that’s really just an entry-level DSLR, which is 3 years old.  The better cameras start at 20 megapixels and go up from there these days.  That, let me assure you, is capturing a lot of data.  We’ve come a long way in a short time.

But, researchers are working on cameras that make those look primitive.
According to Scientific American, DARPA researchers are experimenting with gigapixel cameras.  That’s over a billion pixels.  That’s like 333 times better resolution than an iPhone camera.  That, in short, is pretty amazing.  And, not only does the camera take amazing shots, but it looks amazing, too.  Check out the slideshow at Scientific American that shows the camera and a picture it’s taken.

There’s something to think about as you snap photos of your friends this weekend!

No, not a cad program by the flat-pack king.

Rather cad files of 21 of IKEA’s designs.  Yep, now you can suck those ubiquitous IKEA designs right into your high-end architect’s cad program and use them to design your house.  ‘Cause, you know, after paying for an architect in this economy, how much money are you going to have left over for fancy furniture?

No, seriously, I just thought it was fun that someone had made cad drawings of IKEA stuff in 3D so you can use it to lay out your house or apartment.  The files are actually in Google Sketchup format, for guys like me who are always trying to do more with less, especially less expensive software!