Click on the thumbnail above for a 1280 by 1024 pixel desktop image with a February 2010 calendar. Its on my desktop computer for what is left of this month. James Watt (with slide rule and plan) on the left, so a tenuous link to Maths.

Ruth gets chocolate from an international sweet shop in Birmingham. This Japanese pack seems to contain mock mushrooms with chocolate caps and biscuit stalks. I love the typography on the back of the package…

Some of the details appear to be telling a story (aimed at children?)

And the teacher figure appears in red on the back – I wonder if this is some kind of food labelling thing?

I rather like the teacher-cat, so I used the levels tool in GIMP to remove the colours and exported him (her?) as a GIF cartoon. I might add this as a logo to some of my worksheets to keep the atmosphere light. I can always use the Inkscape trace tool to tidy the edges up.

Click for a 1280 by 1024 desktop wallpaper image with a January 2010 calendar on it.

Can you guess where the postcard photo was taken from? I’ve been printing calendars. Back to work Monday, kicking off with the data handling module.

The Library of Congress has high resolution scans of Walker Evans’ images taken for James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. I like the ‘scan junk’ around these images, a density wedge and primary colour samples. From the Steamboats are Ruining Everything blog. Alas the page numbering in my Violette Editions copy of the book appears to be different to the page numbering in the edition that Cain is using. Good excuse to re-read.

Scan of a foil pack of tea bags found in the local Polish shop. Love the graphic design.

Image*After and MorgueFile are Web resources where you can find and download high resolution photos for use in PowerPoint presentations or Web pages. MorgueFile’s name comes from the archives kept by newspapers and the Police of old photographs. You can used the ‘advanced’ search page in Flickr and specify only images with a Creative Commons licence.

Remember Seth Godin’s Really Bad PowerPoint e-book?

“You put up a slide. It triggers an emotional reaction in the audience. They sit up and want to know what you’re going to say that fits in with that image. Then, if you do it right, every time they think of what you said, they’ll see the image (and vice versa).1”

I’d use the image above if I was doing a presentation about how newspapers are failing to react to the Web and the new advertising models. The old press with swarf on the cogs and dull metal rollers conjures up the smell of the presses (I used to walk past the Liverpool Echo presses most days 30 years ago) and conveys the oldness of the medium. I’d need other images to show what is being lost as the newspapers drain money and eyeballs.

Digbeth Is Good is a blog devoted to a part of Birmingham I walk through most days. The chip shop is being done up. I hope they keep the sign.

Bought a new Fujifilm point and shoot digital camera today. Its a cheerful bright blue with a brushed metal look that the scanner emphasises above.

This device replaces my camera phone (phone got pinched, not from college premises) and is small enough to stay in the messenger bag. I use a digital camera to record (traditional) whiteboards, and to record student work using the macro mode. The results can be popped into PowerPoint for the next lesson, or even in the current lesson with a USB cable or laptop with card reader connected to the projector. Sort of low tech classroom visualiser.

Some daffodils…

A picture of some daffodils that are wilting a bit now, full frame scaled to 400px wide (from 3264 px)

Central part of the daffodil frame cropped out and scaled to 400px wide. Notice how the bell of the flower is slightly in front of the plane of focus. Depth of field is limited at the maximum f/2.8 aperture (low light levels).

Full resolution crop from the very centre of the daffodil (stamens?) with some brightening and contrast enhancement. This is on the ‘default’ image quality setting, hand held (the camera display was showing a ‘shake warning’). There is a finer image quality setting available in the largest resolution, and there is a tripod fitting.

Things I don’t like… You have to take the battery out to charge it. I know this is pretty standard with digital cameras, but still means a lot of taking out and putting back of the battery. The same hatch contains battery and SD card, and the lid is made of plastic (the rest of the case is thin alloy) so might be a wear point. A usb lead is provided so no need to transfer images using the card all the time. The flash and macro modes are not remembered when you switch the camera off. This is typical of point and shoot cameras I understand. No viewfinder, but I’m getting used to the LCD panels.

It is that time of year again, teaching will be under way in a month or less. This photo makes me think about negotiating the ground rules with new classes of students (I’m a bit more liberal than the ‘manager’). I’ll need to add in some rules about using Moodle/e-mail as well, if only to reassure students that it is OK to e-mail and post questions on the course forums.

Today’s partial eclipse of the Sun viewed in projection through one half of a pair of binoculars. I had to work quickly – no time to set up a screen at a better angle – because of the rapidly moving cloud and rain showers floating around the Midlands at present. I think I missed the maximum of the partial eclipse at this latitude.

It is 40% of the Moon covering the Sun in Scotland, but only around 15% here in the Midlands. The eclipse is total in Northern Canada, Greenland, parts of Russia and China.

Nice to think of the approximate alignment of the Moon, Sun and my shed for a few hours…