For school work young Owen needed a photo of his family celebrating something, so a suitable photo from a recent birthday party was selected.

I figured I’d upload the photo to BigW photos the night before, to give them a chance to print them out before I arrived the next day.  I noticed the disclaimer “Delivery Times: Please allow approximately 10 working days for your order to arrive in the mail or to be ready to be picked up in store” but figured this was just legalese arse-covering, applicable to weird things like coffee mugs etc.

I fully expected to get an email five minutes after submission.

I wondered to myself how it is that they can make any money from a single 10c photo, paid for via PayPal.  I figure my order must be costing a buck or two in direct and indirect costs; the PayPal fees alone would be the entirety of the payment.

I didn’t get an email.  It’s been four days now, and the order is still “In production” leading me to believe that the order is going to be printed somewhere that isn’t my local BigW, and is then being shipped there.  Needless to say, I shan’t be collecting it; the day after the photo upload I went to Bunnings for a hinge and some storage boxes, and popped into Officeworks beforehand anticipating some delay in printing – alas, there was a sixty second delay, so that prudence wasn’t required.  Of course, I could have gone to Harvey Norman for the photos but it was an extra 100m walk and another 5c, even if their printing seems to be of a higher quality, a classroom of Prep students isn’t going to appreciate the difference.

Riddle me this: if my photos aren’t printed out at my local BigW, why would I upload them to BigW photos when I could drag myself there in person and collect them within the hour?

Photo caption — “Make: Canon Model: Canon EOS-1D Mark III Date/Time: 2009:11:30 10:57:33 Source: Herald Sun”

Source: Herald Sun

Pondering switching from expen$ive Photoshop to free Paint.Net, but want to be able to read all your Photoshop files?

Just download this plugin, unzip and copy the DLL into the Paint.Net Filetypes folder. Easy.

Caveat: it doesn’t support absolutely everything in PSD files flawlessly. Discussion here. But the files I’ve been dabbling with (actually converted from CPT to PSD using an ancient copy of Corel Photopaint) work fine.

Over the years, as new web services have come into prominence, there’s been a rush to get hold of the best IDs. Most people would chase something resembling their name, with those with popular names too late to the game being left with the lame IDs: nicknames, real name + licence plate number, or hackerz sp34k versions.

Some of the defunct web sites I got good IDs for include Excite and mail.com. Some I still use include Gmail (and all the other Google properties), Hotmail and Yahoo.

With the news that Microsoft will be supporting OpenId, I reckon the next big rush could be for this, particularly if Google and Yahoo are sensible and decide to jump on the bandwagon.

OpenID identifies you by a URL/URI, so it’s marginally less user-friendly than a conventional logon, but if it takes off (*if*) and gets widespread use around the web, from a user point of view, it could go a long way towards cutting down on the zillions of passwords people currently have to remember… and thus have to write them all down.

So I’ve got my OpenID already. Have you? Now, since Flickr are pissing everybody off with new limitations, maybe I’ll go over to Zooomr and take a look around there.

The missing elevator floor illusion – now here’s a business idea: sell this illusion to cash-rich, time-poor pranksters. Just make them measure the dimensions of the elevator in question, then print up a massive sticker for them to use.

Sweet merciful mind-melting God! Photos of Lego implementations of Escher drawings are back on the web.

People People People: the pural of Lego is Lego. Like with sheep. In fact, I think Lego likes their bricks to be called “LEGO bricks” (yelling and all), to distinguish from the company.

Check out photograph two of these unusual photographs.

I figure he’s got
150*12 = 1800
50*5 = 250
200*7 = 1400
100*3 = 300
100*8 = 800
150*4 = 600
=5150 points!

addedum: More unusual photographs.

Samples of this artist’s pavement art:

• Politicians Meeting Their End
• Big Box of crayons
• A Make Poverty History globe
• Swimming Pool in the High street

Ha! But, I guess that’s why they’re the Top Ten Stock Photography Cliches. But, still, funny.

An observation: iStockphoto has about an order of magnitude more photos that Yotophoto. Perhaps it’s because the photographers get rewarded for the photos used from iStockphoto.

Full, step-by-step instructions (with pcitures) on building your own cheap and easy Digital Picture Frame. Answering an unasked question on the selection of componentry, the author says:

Why a toggle switch? Because toggle switches rule, that’s why. We don’t want no puny sliding power switches. Oh no, this power switch is 25 percent functional, 75 percent hardcore awesome.

But why do this? You can buy one for a few hundred bucks. I guess it’s just the whole DIY thing, isn’t it? I guess you’re also recycling unloved tech into totally hardcore awesome tech.

Look, I know it’s just visual wankery, but it’s pretty and easy to use!

Watch the freaky interactive zoom-in photo mosaicphoto mosaic – makes upgrading to the next version of Macromedia Flash worth it!