Keith’s Amusing Musings

Happy Independence Day, America!

One of the more interesting Deep Zoom examples I have seen since Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia, the Deep Zoom Obama Fan Site is also a great homage to presidential hopeful, Barack Obama. Consisting of over 12,000 individual pictures uploaded by Obama supporters, this massive composite in Senator Obama’s likeness provides a sense of his broad appeal and the universality of his message.

Fan sites like these tend to go away as quickly as they appear so I recorded a short video—about 70 seconds—showing the site in action.

[Warning: The following video may contain embedded ads. I am helping beta test Microsoft’s ad publishing platform. Hide the ads by clicking the ‘X’.]

Read about how a fire destroyed my beloved Vista Media Center and the saga and expense of rebuilding it the last few weeks.

If I had hair I would have pulled it all out.

Not cool.

I finally got around to updating my blog to comply with the Beta 2 release of Silverlight 2. This affects anyone who wants to view any new or existing posts containing Deep Zoom content. You must upgrade to Silverlight 2 Beta 2 (or later) to see this content.

Click here to check what version of Silverlight you have installed—you will need 2.0.30523.6 or higher.

You will know everything is working if you can see the galleries in any of these posts. Otherwise, click the “Install Microsoft Silverlight” badge in any of those posts to upgrade today…it only takes a few seconds.

I wanted to share the pictures from my first trip to China (Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai) and Korea (Seoul). I decided to employ the latest hotness in Web-based, high-resolution image visualization: Silverlight Deep Zoom. It is something you have to see to fully appreciate. Here’s what you need to do to get started:

Installation

1. Install Silverlight 2 (currently in Beta but it’s safe and will auto-update).
2. Return to this page and hit F5 to refresh.

The above steps only need to be done once. If you see the images below, you already have Silverlight installed.

Navigation

1. Pan around the image by click-dragging (like Live/Google Maps).
2. If your mouse has a wheel: Use the wheel to zoom in/out for more/less detail.
3. If your mouse does not have a wheel: Left-click to zoom in, hold down Shift then left-click to zoom out.

I hope you enjoy the photos and Deep Zoom. Let me know what you think.

I completed my first road run today. It is 80 degrees in Seattle today, much too beautiful to do the treadmill thing I normally prefer. TB and my mother-in-law, MommaB, looked legitimately concerned for my health and safety when I laced up and told them to come looking for me if I wasn’t back in 90 minutes. I ended up running 7.5 miles in 84 minutes—my longest run yet.

The first thing I noticed about running outside is it feels a lot slower but actually is a lot harder. This is a hilly area and the terrain changes often compared to the dialed-in settings of a treadmill in a temperature-controlled environment.

The second thing is running in the 80 degree afternoon sun with no water is no joke. Luckily my route took me through Bridal Trails which is shaded by the dense foliage of towering evergreen trees. TB and MommaB were much smarter. They went running earlier in the day when it was much cooler.

The third thing—don’t tell TB I admitted it—is running outdoors is more fun than running indoors.

In other running news, Nike released the Nike+ Sportband this week. Essentially, it eliminates the iPod from the Nike+ equation which is great if you don’t want or need music while you run. Dropping the iPod also lowers the price to get started with Nike+ as the Sportband is $59 at the Nike store.