planet TAFE

Another GIMP experiment. This time I took advantage of the cloudy weather to create a panorama of my workplace, Bathurst TAFE, before converting it to a planet (using Polar distortion) and plugging the result into fd’s Flickr Toys. The result: Planet TAFE.

Circling a star in the outer arm of a small spiral galaxy, planet TAFE is searching for intelligent life (’cos there’s bugger all down here)

Notes for future attempts:

1. Take the panorama on an overcast day, or at midday, to minimise variations in aperture/shutter speed. Don’t forget to set the camera to manual mode.
2. Don’t kick the tripod halfway through the panorama shot, or if you do, start over.
3. Make a generous overlap between shots, about 50% seems to work well.
4. Take the shots in an anti-clockwise direction (not essential, but it suits the default options for pandora)
5. Try to take the photos when there aren’t too many students walking around (it’s hard to match them up otherwise)
6. Start the panorama from an organic section (the trees would have been a much easier spot to blur and join the polar distortion than a section of architecture).

(tags: gimp photography tafe bathurst flickrtoys poster planetafe planet)

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On the professional development front, I found an interesting social website for educational bloggers: Popular Stories – EdBloggerNews. This is similar to Digg but for Education Blog posts, good for folks who love to read (and write) EduBlog posts but are finding it difficult to get through all of the articles in their RSS feeds. I’ll be watching it over the next few days to see if it’s got the critical mass necessary to be come a valuable resource.

(tags: aggregator blogging digg edtech education elearning news resources toread edublogs ***** TALO)

Vending Machines

Vending machines have been in my mind of late. It all started with a reference I found to an art vending machine in New York – $5 art from a defunct cigarette dispenser. “What a cool idea” I thought, and moved on to other distractions. Shortly thereafter, I spotted an article on book vending machines in Paris.

Thinks: if you wanted to build something like this for yourself, you might start with a search on eBay for vending machines – plenty there to choose from in a range of styles and prices. If you had enough second hand books you might decorate your vending machine in the style of Patrick Hall…

And that’s as far as I’ve come with this project Actually, I’ve looked into where you might plug a book vending machine in, and picked up an industrial strength guillotine for creating the decor, and have actually tossed out about 3 ute loads of paperbacks since then, but it’s still in my head. Why write about it now? Well, another bunch of vending machine pix took my fancy. Originally thunk up my the German employment agency, jobsintown, I thought the TAFE should use this idea for themselves – click on each for an enlargement.

Ah… magic boxes. You put your money in and stuff comes out, but how it happens is anyone’s guess.