Update a photoshop plugin to do this is now available.

I saw a post on Make today of a collection of high-resolution (2750×2300) image scans of the 30 color plates from Alexander Jamieson’s 1822 (almost 200 years old!) star atlas. Couresy of the United States Naval Observatory Library. I’m sure many can think of lots of ways to use this beautiful antique art.

Anyway, while perusing antique star charts it reminded me that I had come across a really cool little application recently that I haven’t heard much about. Celestia, written by Chris Laurel, is like Google Earth for space. Even if you are not an astronomer, this little graphics application offers the opportunity to see the galaxy in a totally different way.

First, I’ve installed Office 2007 beta2 and have been trying to use it as my RSS reader. I’m sure with all the eye-candy the new version of Outlook will appeal to many, but I was looking for something that would make my life easier. I originally sought out the beta after hearing it mentioned on an episode of The TabletPC Show podcast. The feature mentioned that sounded so cool was that the new Outlook would not only scan your RSS feeds, but download the actual webpage as an attachment so you could read it offline. I thought if that was possible, I could consider taking public transportation to work. The reason I don’t now is that it takes me 15 minutes to drive to work, but for some reason our public transportation system require 45-75 minutes and two bus changes to accomplish this feet. If I could use that time to read my feeds then I wouldn’t be wasting the time. Anyway after days to wrestling, the beta version of Outlook will indeed download the webpage and save it as an attachment, but there is no way to display that attachment in Outlook. It’s just like Microsoft to go 95% of the way to an awesome solution and leave the last 5% hanging. I guess if I was an entrepreneur I could get rich doing the last 5%, I just don’t have the time.

Within all this, one of my favorite little companies goes and acquires the US portion of a company that owns a graphics program I’ve been dying to try out. DAZ Productions is one of the few purely internet companies that I have ever been a repeat and delighted customer of. I’ve been a Poser user since version 3, back when DAZ was part of Zygote and Poser was made by MetaCreations. Anyway, MetaCreations imploded after Kai Krause (an awesome software architect, best remembered for Kai’s Power Tools) left in 1999 and his legacy of fine graphics packages were scattered to the four corners of the internet. But that is a matter worthy of a much larger post altogether. Since then I have continued to use Poser as it passed from hand to hand and along the way became a loyal and repeat customer of DAZ Productions. I have an Outlook reminder that fires every Monday morning to remind me to go out and download the weekly free model there and in the past I have joined the Platinum Club for a year so I could buy a bunch of models at fantastic discounts. Anyway, the first thing DAZ did after acquiring Eovia was to celebrate by selling Hexagon for $1.99 to all existing Platinum Club members. After downloading the trial version. I reinstated my Platinum Club membership for another year ($99.95) and got my copy of Hexagon. For those used to doing surface modeling ala Wings3D, Hexagon rocks! Then DAZ announced that they were selling Carrara for $99 (after Platinum Club discount), I was in heaven. Now, with Hexagon, Poser and Carrara, I have an arsenal of 3D Modeling tools, not to mention a slew of free models that DAZ gave me for renewing my membership, plus more that I bought with their $35 voucher.

To top that all off, I’m becoming a Second Life addict. I read a blog from my favorite Co-host of my favorite podcast where he said he had bought land in SecondLife. So I have been hanging out at his place, building and scripting. At one point I started working on a skyscraper, but I quickly hit his prim limit and was stopped at the first floor, I don’t yet understand what that is, but I’m learning. Anyway, I left him an orb with a greeting card, but as near as I can figure he hasn’t seen it yet. It’s still there, so he hasn’t deleted it. I don’t want to make it so big that you can see from space or anything so I guess I’ll just have to be patient. Aside from that I’ve been wondering around (you can cover a lot of ground with a teleporter) like a Pack Rat collecting virtual copies of every free model, texture and animation there is and then spending hours organizing and sorting and culling duplicates. I’m sure this behavior is OCAR related but I can’t help it.

So this turned out longer than I thought, but there you go. That’s why I haven’t been blogging recently.