Slashdot Mirror
Clouds, The Collaborative Photo Mosiac
jaric writes "Over at peffis.com users post their cell phone photos to a shared photo blog. The creator of the open source site now has invented what he calls Clouds. It is a combination of all the posted photos into one cloud, or mosaic. The result is quite fascinating. You can see the current cloud."
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
This site looks like a meltdown waiting to happen...
Current cloud temporary mirror. Be aware that this won't update hourly as the site one does...
...It almost looks like someone spent an hour making a website and 20 minutes in photoshop and went live with it. Sorta neat lookin' but hardly decent /. material...(IMHO of course)
Never has something so useless looked so cool... I now require some manner of OSS that can do this, and I needs it now!
--
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, where does the road paved with evil intentions lead to?
a dark grey cloud has taken peffis.com
High resolution Photomontage posted on Slashdot. Now after 5 comments the site won't even load up at all. This has to be the evilist news post ever!
You can see the current cloud.
Not any more you can't. The Slashdot effect: It's like night-time, but for web servers!
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Mirror: 5light.com/cloud.jpg
Mosaic even!
Now I can literally have my head in the clouds...
Buh-Bye!
It's like "looking busy" at your employment - it's actually easier to do real work than to fake it. - bmo
You can see the current cloud.
No, no I don't think we can. Unless the current cloud looks a little something like a "Request to server timed out" window.
Do not read this sig.
What the hell was that? I interpreted "cell phone pictures" to mean a mosaic comprised of little images of Nokias & Sony Ericssons. Now that would've been cool.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
there are many photos in that mosaic
- I got my free iPod and a free Nintendo DS....why not
then again, I'm posting on slashdot.org...nevermind
I'm guessing the current image is looking like a giant /. symbol or a flaming server, since I'm already unable to get to it five minutes after the article post.
/usr/X11R6/lib/xscreensaver/webcollage - comes with xscreensaver. Written in perl, easy enough to give it new methids to find photos.
Nick Waterman, Sr Tech Director, #include <stddisclaimer>
1.) Thanks for the mirror. The cloud image wasn't so special, but it was nice to see it...
2.) Why on EARTH (or off it) would you use the domain "www.wetsexygirl.com" only for mirroring an image for a /. story?!?! Yeah, so I'm a horn-dog and checked out the top of the domain, and what did I find?:
No offense, but man, that is just a tease...Don't tease us with "wetsexygirl.com" unless you are going to give us a Wet, Sexy Girl or two or ten or hundred...yes I have karma to burn and this OT, so mod me down if you please...
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
My God, it's full of crap!
That is, when it's not timing out from too many requests..
Come on, confess.
Does it look to anyone else like the kid with the shotgun is trying to kill off the baby?
What we really need is a ten day waiting period and a background check before you can buy a congressman.
... They Do Nothing!!!
(nt)
There are no boobies in the mosaic, people. Nothing to see here.
I might be an AC, but is this article totally boring, and unoriginal, and just basically worthless? Why do dull low quality moblog photos suddenly become front page news when combined together into a mosaic with fadey edges? Is image blending really all that revolutionary?
The probabilty of a decent story being posted to the front page of Slashdot obviously must decrease as the age of Slashdot increases.
uh oh... is that a pict of the table tennis olympics? better hope nbc doesnt find out
That little boy is shooting that woman!
eom
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
I want a photo mosaic of the cloud of smoke the slashdot effect just reduced their server to.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Looking at these pictures, they all look like they were taken with a 2+ megapixel camera. I've seen pics from a dozen camera phones, none of them were this good. What's the real source of these pictures?
It might be nice if the cloud had more pcitures in it. As it is, it's not much of a mosaic. According to Dictionary.com, a Mosaic is:
# A picture or decorative design made by setting small colored pieces, as of stone or tile, into a surface.
I don't think it's much of a mosaic, as it doesn't form a large picture. I just don't get it.
"I don't really care if they label me a Jesus Freak / There aint no disguising the truth!" - DC Talk
It's like staring into the puke of a goat that broke into a photo lab...
bye
Mark
Looks like JWZ's WebCollage, but with cell phone pictures. And more ugly added.
You got the post all wrong.
The subject should say The whole idea is crazy and the comment should be I don't get it.
Looks ok but is totally useless. It must be art then
This "cloud" thing is kinda nifty, kinda goofy. Some of the images are crappy but the technique is interesting. Maybe it's a good idea that just needs expanding. You need better images to start with, if you want a better end result.
"We are the first generation to influence the climate and the last generation to escape the consequences." - John McCain
Somebody go find an egg timer. As a requiem, we really should record the time it takes for the Cloud to be astroturfed, spammed, p0rned, and otherwise made to resemble the online equivalent of a univeristy-district telephone pole.
Requiescat In Pace, Nebula.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
"It's like that drug trip in that movie I saw when I was on that drug trip."
./ headline?
Seriously though, what is this p.o.s? My first photoshop day? Or have the olympics inspired a world record attempt for the destruction of a perfectly good web server in the shortest time possible by linking to a high resolution image directly in a
Read Pynchon.
For those of you that haven't seen it:
http://www.edit.ne.jp/~katsu/image/cloud.jpg
My girlfriend participates in something a little more structured than this, but similar. Sito has a number of projects such as (descriptions taken from Sito) -
Hygrid: "This collaborative art project has been evolving since December 1995. The idea behind this project is to create a "hyperlinked grid of visually interlocked images". Each square on the grid is a small image created by a participating artist. Each square is adjacent to another artist's square in the structure, appearing on the top, right, bottom or left side."
Gridcosm: "Gridcosm is a collaborative art project in which artists from around the world contribute images to a compounding series of graphical squares."
Those are the two most active and interesting ones. For those that enjoy recursive acronyms, you'll definitely like Gridcosm (like a recursive acronym.. FOR YOUR MIND). Some of the levels can be outright beautiful, some are crappy.
The way it works is this: after having an account, you "reserve" a piece to work on. You have a set time limit to turn your piece in before somebody else gets it. As an example -- and since she reads Slashdot, she's gonna kill my ass -- you can also view individual pieces and jump from there.
The most interesting behavior I've seen, though, is that work breeds work -- when one or a few people decide to bounce in, the entire community picks up, contributing to an almost organic growth and decline of the various levels and sub-projects.
This is obviously a subliminal ad campaign promoting:
A. Tommy Hilfiger (how else do you explain the random inclusion of the logo?)
or
B. guns and violence (who else saw images of guns, mobs, and some rather strange looking individuals?)
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Cut and Paste If Necessary
This cloud looks just like an HTTP error message! Amazing!
This cloud thing is just asking to end up where you get just enough opacity on a layer to recognize a boob, but it fades into a Peugot before the nipple!
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
We remember you, Whiskers
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Won't someone please think of the children!
If you want a more controlled mosaic image, check out tiles.ice.org. It's a collection of images created by artists where each artist bases their work given only the edges of the adjacent tiles on which to base their creation. They've come up with some pretty amazing finished pieces.
I sure hope this is coffee I'm drinking.
I'm at work...
#!
Mmmmm yep.
Site might die soon...
From Peffis
2004-08-24 16:39:22
[ 0 comments ]
At least they are being a good sport. On the front page the center photo caption reads "Site may die soon". This image explains why.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Who would of though chaos theory at its best..
a collection of random images, arranged and displayed and it looks exactly like a 404.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
btw, obviously (and it seems some of the mods got it) I wasn't being seriously critical in my previous post. I just thought it was amusing to be going to www.wetsexygirls.com to see only a mirrored picture for a slashdot story...heh...with a domain like that, I was half expecting firefox's pop-up blocker to go crazy. ;-)
Cheers. :-)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Ass! That's my Mother.
Is this the output for that camera snoop virus I asked to be ported to cell phones yesterday?
This looks an awful lot like Debris, a program from the guys at Nullsoft that creates a very similar collage from random pictures pulled off of the net. I'll get a link here in a sec...
--- Bwah?
I'd take a picture of the Cloud, then post it on the site. Recursion rocks. Would you get one of those weird tunnel effects?
My brain hurts. It's lunchtime.
Keep your friends close.
Keep your enemies in a little jar on your desk.
After first reading the title, I thought he was getting as many people as possible to photograph a single point in the sky from as many view points as possible, then doing a Matrix style spin-around of the resulting set of images.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
The "clouds" are generated using this formula:
C(x + x0, y + y0) = á(x, y) * Csrc(x, y) + (1 - á(x, y)) * Cdst(x + x0, y + y0)
Surely you dorks can appreciate crap like that, even though the results aren't that "whiz-bang"??!
I mean, judging by the previous posts, it sounds like everyone else thinks it's garbage.
I think it's actually kind of an interesting concept, though. What if this "cloud" were actually randomly composed of your childhood photos? Or maybe the daily scenes of life on a farm? Or still frames from a movie?
The fact that this cloud was composed of random cell phone shots makes it look seemingly... well, random. However, I think one could take this concept and actually apply some interesting things to it.
You can see the current cloud.
Now you see it, now you don't...
Eh.
If you go to the website now, you'll see that the user's account has been suspended. Ahh, the power of slashdot ... messing up everything it links to.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
- for paraphrasing 2001:ASO
Is it a rule, that there's an exception to every rule?
Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.
Cue Music: Another One Bytes The Dust
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
someone in their server room is seeing a cloud right about now.
" Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible."
:) /. frontpage, I would be pretty pissed of if I were him...
omg, someone`s moving to a low cost rental trailer one of these days..
seriously, i kinda feel sorry for the guy, it`s actually a pretty nasty thing to do, post this site on the
Doolittle :
Bomb no.20 : To explode of course.
That pixcloud looks like the "memory glasses" kids make at bar mitzvahs and sweet 16 parties. We'd fill a large goblet with small, emblematic items from the party, like matchbooks with the birthday kid's name, ribbons, centerpiece ingredients. Then we'd top off the glass with water, and seal it with a thick coating of wax from some candles. The murky depths would trigger memories for months later.
--
make install -not war
"It's craptacular"
-Lod
I clicked on it at work just as I noticed the domain name. I'm expecting the jackbooted goons to come my way any minute now...
It's such a reassurance in today's youth when they are toting firearms.
"The result is quite fascinating."... *click* "Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible." Hmm, it always facinates me when other peoples bank accounts are soon going to be in as much difficulty as mine is.
This Account Has Been Suspended
Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.
I guess the slashdotting pissed off the admins...
You know what really fascinates me? Lots and lots of unimaginative, redundant criticism by a pack of nerds-turned-art-critics... Now *that's* fascinating.
Personally, I love the idea of this, even if the results are unpredictable (which is, uh, kind of the point, right?) The oft-touted macro-collaborative nature of the internet, combined with new artistic media (and you thought PHP was just a programming language), should, I hope, inspire new artistic movements and ideas, and here's an example: pseudorandom collaborative art.
Think you can do better? Good! Let's see it!
The combination of blogging and photos has many possibilities and this is just one of them. It's a neat idea. The randomness of the current approach may not be very interesting but imagine correlating the photos of a single event taken by multiple "witnesses." (kind of like handing out disposable cameras at a wedding)
The blogged photos of the witnesses could be displayed as a montage, as in this case, or could be viewed dynamically using a variety of interfaces, including dynamic montages. The addition of timestamps and GPS information could be used to drive the alternate interfaces. A user could view an event through the eyes of multiple witnesses and control how the images are presented. Imagine the possiblities with video and automated editing.
Personally, I think this would be a great way to see something like Burning Man.
Interestingly and eventually, it might not do "thugs" any good to try to confiscate photo and video footage. Multiple perspectives of the situation may have already been transferred to the internet and made available to the world.
Looking carefully at the cloud, it seems like all the pictures were taken by the same person. A swedish guy named Stefan, riding a funny bike, and likely a ping-pong player who won a tournament in Asia. Oh my ... ! Does someone like this really exists ?
"Clouds, The Collaborative Photo Mosiac"
alternative title:
"Lame, The techno-fetishist wank du jour"
I think this pretty much sums it all up.
I dunno about you, but if my kid looked like that dipshit, I wouldn't buy him a .22...
People are getting arrested for wearing body paint with advertising at the olympics, how soon before an idea like this devolves entirely into spam.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
That montage is incredible!
I mean.. what are the chances of so many people seperately posting identical blank grey square images, and one person posting one that looks like a "509 - Bandwidth Exceeded", and them compositing together in just the right way like that!
Oh.. wait...
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Now if he (or someone) can devise an algorithm to identify the important part of each picture and then actually make a mosaic of those (sans alpha)... that could be sorta cool. Sorta.
this site is better than google images for that type of thing: WebGoggles
I remember a story from mainframe days where the sysop had carefully explained how to log in on a decwriter, feed labels, and run the mailing-list-printing program to some blonde several times, then shortly afterwards he noticed that she'd logged on, but wasn't running the program. Remembering the mistake she always made, he found the terminal's location on a site map, found the nearest telephone extension, rang up, waited a looong time for her to answer, then said "Hi, you need to do such-and-such" and was instantly rewarded with a piercing scream 'coz Ms Blonde was totally freaked out that someone knew here every move (cue twilight zone music) without being there.
I got similar results with a girlfriend of old. I rang her prior to going out together for the evening, and she took a long time answering. Since she lived in a one-bedroom flat at the time, the likely reasons for the delay were either being on the 'loo or in the shower, so I took a punt and greeted her with "Hi Gail! Ooh! You're all wet!" Human nature being what it is, she didn't stop to think "how could he see me down the 'phone", just squealed and dropped the handset.
This was from the days when mobiles were expensive analogue briefcase-sized monsters, so I couldn't have been peeking through a window.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Keyworx for MacOSX allows something similar, but then for video, and realtime. I haven't seen it doing as much overlays as this project, but it is impressive.
.mov cruft works in MPlayer here).
http://www.keyworx.org and see the demo's (the Quicktime
Just a quick follow-up, yesterday I got 11k hits, and between /cloud.jpg, /favicon.ico and plain /, you leeches racked up 3.6GB in traffic. Congrats!
/. effect, maybe submit it as a story (with a non-pr0n site) and see how bad the real-deal is. Not 'till next month, though... can't afford another one of those for a few days. =)
That was on a single 600k JPG. On one of at least two mirrors. With a pr0n server name.
It almost hurts to think how much traffic other video / distro sites take when they get slashdotted...
I think i'll plot some pretty graphs to illustrate the
My server (peffis.com) got 380k hits during a very short period of time (roughly 16 GB downloaded) before it was offline because "bandwidth exceeded". Thanks for helping out mirroring though...
...and if you do as you say and publish a report on slashdot about the slashdotting - please don't link to my site. I would like to be left alone this time thanks...