yamahito

For apparently, that’s what those average faces are called: Facial Prototyping

It looks faffy. Basically, to get clear outlines you need to morph all of the pictures to the same shape. Interesting though.

So SilentBob has posted over on EverythingEverything about this picture I showed him:

which is made up from a fairly large equal number of women and men. To me, it’s a teenage boy, but to Rob, it’s a fairly attractive girl. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing Rob on this one - I think it’s very androgynous whatever it is, it’s a tough call.

So when I came across this tool that applies transformations to faces, I had to have a play. Part of the way it applies transformations is by comparing the images to the average images for a rough ethnic/sexual type that you define at the start: in our case either a caucasian male or female (hispanic would have been closer, I think, but not available). So here are two very obviously different routes to take - both older adults, one male one female. Which do you think looks more realistic? (images are clickable)

Macro Spherical Panorama

It wasn’t that long ago that spherical panorama were relatively unheard of. Not the case any more, but I think relatively few people have done it the way this guy does. He takes macro pictures of tiny hemispherical mirrors, and gets some amazing shots.

It inspired me to take shots like this one:

Which I really must make 3D at some point…

My friend Gareth kindly asked me along to St Fagan’s today - he’s quite proud of Cardiff, and was shocked that I’ve never been (to St Fagan’s, obviously). So I called my sister and borrowed my niece for the day and we went.

Now I want to build a roundhouse. One of the ones we went into had a fire going, and it was quite warm and comfortable (allbeit smoky). The entranceway is only a few feet high, but you can easily stand up once you’re inside.

(c) BBC - Full version here

Anyway, I’m sure I could get a few people to help, and I can think of a use or two, as well… Now I need to find someone with some land and an open mind

The Face of Tomorrow was the one I was thinking about: the photographer takes about 50 male and 50 female headshots and overlays them to find an ‘average’ face. The averages tend to be attractive - they blur out blemishes whilst retaining an astonishing amount of detail:

Technically, most of the challenge is aligning the features - particularly the eyes. I must have me a go at this at some point. I mean with my own photos.

If you can’t wait for that, why not have a go yourself?

I’m probably waay behind the times on this, but…

There are others (and some spoofs):

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc_PU3D3QNE
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55YYaJIrmzo
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pxar6SSOko
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7dnGo_2tZA

Man, I thought that changing around a few pictures/text orientations would be easier.

But maybe it’s a good thing that it isn’t. I mean, at least the ‘theme’ consists of a bunch of php (!) and css files that you can hack about with - that’s power to the user, which is good.

But it means that you have to have

1. Knowhow
2. Time

Still, 50% there.

The other thing is this whole ‘categories’ thing. Stop me if I’m wrong, but gmail came out well over a year ago now. I know that there a lot of people who have missed the significance this rightly has on how we store and find things, but I can’t believe that this evolutionary cul-de-sac still has such prominence…

FILTERS, people.

Hopefully there’s a plug-in for it.

Oh god, what have I started?

 I’ve started getting down with my bad self, that’s what: