Life-Size Photo of a Blue Whale

Smivs writes "The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society have posted a navigable life-size photo of a blue whale! It will take a while to look at all of it, but it starts at the eye (which is a great idea). The picture is navigable — there is an insert of the whole picture and you can change the view by moving a cursor around — but if you just let it run, the whale will slowly 'swim' past you. It's a bit like being in a submarine with the whale going past a porthole. Definitely worth a look!"

Comments

Funny result of NoScript

[Gigiya]

"no content for you please install macromedia flash player 7"

Re:Funny result of NoScript

[apathy maybe]

But once you enable JavaScript, and assuming you have Flash, it is actually pretty cool. You can't actually keep the picture on one part (it just keeps floating), but it's a great way to examine the whale.

Oh, and before some idiot says it, yes we all know blue whales aren't being hunted and probably won't be. However, they are threatened by extinction from various other sources, including pollution of various kinds, and too much noise meaning that they can't communicate. (And we all know what happens if you can't communicate, you can't copulate.)

Re:Funny result of NoScript

[Original Replica]

pollution of various kinds, and too much noise meaning that they can't communicate.

It's not just that it's noisy so they can't communicate. The Navy is maiming whales with it deep sea sonar. Kinda like how a gunshot blast beside your head damages your hearing. They are perfectly aware of this and they don't really care other than the PR problems, but that is being addressed. First they just tried to use bad science to make it OK. And then the blinded whales started beaching themselves. But at least one court isn't fooled by the carte blanc of "national security".

Disclaimer: I grew up in Virgina Beach, VA most of my friends and their families from back home are in the Navy. I want our Navy to be strong and safe, but I don't want to mutilate whales to do it. Good sonar didn't do jack shit for the USS Cole, and I don't think Iraq or Afghanistan has much of a Navy to worry about. How about a new better technology instead of just turning the volume up on the sonar.

So?

[pla]

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society have posted a navigable life-size photo of a blue whale!

I already have a life-size photo of a blue whale, thanks.

Of course, from my 5MP digital camera, that means a resolution of only 2dpi, but still "life size" in the sense that it would take 110ft (by a couple dozen rolls wide) of plotter paper to print.

Cool!

[sm62704]

That was the first useful use for Flash I've seen. I liked how when your cursor went over the "close" icon it says "Think before you close this window. This may be the last life sized blue whale you will ever see".

Kudos to the presenter, and thanks to the submitter. When is Google Earth gong to be life sized? ;)

Re:Cool!

[flyingsquid]

When is Google Earth going to be life sized? ;)

Actually, my startup company already has a working beta along those lines. It's a map search, it's life sized, and it's got a three-dimensional, interactive interface. We call it BoxSearch, and it works like this.

You walk into the Immersive Interface Device, which looks like a large cardboard refrigerator box. We close the flaps on the Immersive Interface Device and render the environment: a high-resolution, three-dimensional map of the world, and then when you walk out of the device, you're in the BoxSearch virtual map. The resolution is incredibly high, the colors are bright and crisp, and using our proprietary BoxSearch technology, you can actually touch, hear, and feel objects in the BoxSearch virtual world, just as you would in the real world. The BoxSearch virtual world includes every object you would see in the real world down to individual grains of sand, and it's updated constantly to reflect the current location of people, cars, etc. The only drawback so far is that movement is limited to the speed through which you walk through the BoxSearch virtual map space.

If you have a few million dollars and are interested in investing in the next Google, contact me and I'll put you in touch with the people at BoxSearch and give you a tour. For now, BoxSearch and the Immersive Interface Device are located in the living room of my apartment, but once we get more funding we're hoping to move to more professional accomodations.

Re:Cool!

[eldepeche]

You must have one of those Apple 3000" displays.

For which screen size?

[funfail]

What does "life-size" mean? Isn't it dependent on the screen size?

A 22" monitor has %34 larger area than a 19" one. Since the whale is 3 dimensional, it translates to a difference of %55.

Re:For which screen size?

[pushing-robot]

The size of your monitor isn't significant; it's the dot pitch that matters. Almost all current desktop LCDs are between 0.25mm and 0.275mm; if they scaled the image for the middle of that range, it should be accurate to ~5% on regular monitors.

Consider also that not all whales are the same size. At birth a blue whale is around 7m long. A large adult can exceed 30m. "Life size" is not an exact number.

I don't think they need to add a disclaimer just because some guy out there might decide to view the site on a large format (+very high dot pitch) display.

Scary

[Calibretto23]

One of the most horrifying experiences I've ever had was at the National Museum of Natural History and seeing the Blue Whale replica as a small child. Thanks for bringing those memories screaming back to the surface.

Re:Scary

[JustOK]

And here I was about to call him Ishmael.

Re:Scary

[rwa2]

Dude, you need to have kids (or borrow some) and take them to see Finding Nemo on the big screen, if just for the whale scene. It will totally give you awesome nightmares. For some definition of awesome.

A neat concept but...

[east coast]

Why don't they have some kind of method to stop the "swimming"? At least I didn't see one. It's kind of annoying to be frank about it.

Re:A neat concept but...

[0racle]

You mean something like a harpoon?

Photo?

[ludomancer]

It's really nice regardless, but it looks more like a high-res CG render.

Server is already dead..

[Anonymous Coward]

after only 10 comments... anyone have a mirror?

That's nothing.

[fahrbot-bot]

I have life-size map of the US. The scale says "1 mile = 1 mile".
When people ask where I live, I say "E5".
[Thank you Steven Wright.]

Re:That's nothing.

[MyDixieWrecked]

I want to get a tattoo of myself on my entire body, only 2" taller.

"Cosmic View" and "Powers of Ten"

[dpbsmith]

This calls to mind a wonderful book by one Kees Boeke... who I assume is no longer alive... published in 1957 and entitled (in its English translation, anyway) Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps. The book is a series of more-or-less realistic drawings, starting with a girl sitting in a chair in a Dutch school playground, then zooming outward, picture by picture, each picture drawn on a tenfold smaller scale than the next.

The third or fourth picture shows a blue whale, which, for some reason, managed to beach itself in the school playground.

After ascending outward to show a cluster of galaxies, it then resumes in the schoolyard, zooming inward, tenfold larger each time. I recall that the girl has a small cut on her hand--to give later opportunity to zoom in on blood corpuscles--and, again for no good reason, there happens to be a copepod (of all things) lying on the edge of the cut!

Later, the same theme, with explicit acknowledgement to Boeke, was pursued by Charles Eames and Philip Morrison in a photographically illustrated book called Powers of Ten, and an animated movie of the same title by the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. The medium-scale shots are aerial photographs of Chicago's lakefront area, perhaps the Museum of Science and Industry, and I guess are undoctored photographs... no whale in it, anyway. Too bad.

Both books are absolutely marvellous, real mind-openers for nerdy kids of the right age... (Click, click) Can it really be that both are out of print? A shame...

Re:"Cosmic View" and "Powers of Ten"

[urcreepyneighbor]

COSMIC VIEW: The Universe in 40 Jumps

To Whom it May Concern

[Kamokazi]

Dear Sir or Maddam:

I am an attourney from the firm Dewey, Phucum, and Howe, contacting you on behalf of the company, Redundant, Overly-broad, Far-fetched, Lame and Completely Obscure Patents and Trademark Exploiting Registry, LLC. (Hereafter known as ROFLCOPTER, LLC). ROFLCOPTER, LLC. asserts that you have violated 1,337 of their patents in your 'BoxSearch' product and demand that you cease and desist all development and production and turn all assets over to ROFLCOPTER, LLC, along with eleventy billion dollars to cover legal expenses. Foremost among these patents is USPTO# 867,530,911, which covers "Any large box used in a manner that causes you to make large sums of money." Clearly your BoxSearch product is an exact copy of ROFLCOPTER, LLC.'s patent, and therefore you owe us 'large sums of money'.

We look forward to your large check.

Sincerely,

Harrison Richard Spallsitch
(The guy on the back of the phone book...two from the right)

Still looking...

[stoofa]

But haven't spotted the pot of petunias yet.

Go on, flame me till I'm charcoal about it being the wrong type of whale... you know you want to ;-)