Presented without comment: Hello Kitty Mega Monster Cosplay Editiob http://t.co/oUjNf1cMGI
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Stockholm Poster Idea
Was going through some photos that I took yesterday and I started thinking about a minimalist poster idea. Here is a quickie attempt. Have some other ideas I may add to this post or may post separately. Enjoy.
tweet: Losing all my US 4sq mayorships, but got my first…
Losing all my US 4sq mayorships, but got my first Swedish one. Guess I am officially a Swede now!
Posted my GTC 2010 on using GPGPU techniques in commercial software talk to slideshare
The best part of this talk was getting a nice write-up on anandtech (one of my go-to sites). You can also find this talk synced to a recording of me speaking on NVidia’s site.
How I read Swedish documents
So far I’ve been getting along pretty well in Sweden. Learning my way around Stockholm, figuring out how to do things, picking up some Swedish words and phrases… The one thing I can’t come close to doing yet is reading large blocks of text. Most of the time, this isn’t really a problem. Context gives you a lot and some Swedish words are somewhat similar to words in other languages that I actually do know (especially if you sound them out).
What kills me is official documents that I actually need to understand, not just get the gist of. Like the documents that came with my phone or from my bank. Some of these I can hand to someone at work to translate for me (if I am very nice about it). That doesn’t work with sensitive documents or when I’m not there.
I got my new ATM card tonight along with a raft of rather important instructions that were all in Swedish. I tried downloading some iOS apps that claimed to OCR and translate. Those were useless.
I ended up with the following process instead:
- Connect iPhone to my computer over USB
- Take shots of the text as straight-on as possible, with flash
- import to the desktop using image capture
- import to Photoshop
- auto-tone
- auto-contrast
- rotate (if necessary)
- convert to black-and-white
- change to 144 DPI *
- Save
- import images to Acrobat as a single document
- OCR document with Swedish hinting
- copy/paste into google translate
- read (finally)
This is an insanely painful process and not worth it for less than the most critical things. It will get easier when I get my scanner (currently on a boat), which will cut out steps 1-5, but that is still sucky.
If someone could get this working with 70% accuracy in a single iOS app, I would gladly pay $75 for it. I would work on this in my copious free time, but it would probably be more productive for me to learn to read Swedish.
Making a big change
Coming to Adobe was a dream come true for me. Someone first showed me Photoshop on a Mac SE after hours at the Center for Art and Technology at Carnegie Mellon back in 1989 or 1990. It was captivating to a computer science student with a deep interest in imaging and graphics. I knew that someday I would work there. It wasn’t a direct path, but I did get there eventually.
In my nine years at the company, I have been able to work on some intensely cool projects: Adobe Image Foundation, Pixel Bender, and Revel. Each have been technically challenging, but each have also had an impact for Adobe customers. Solving cool technical problems is fun, but doing it in a way that millions of users can benefit from is massively rewarding. I am grateful that being at Adobe has allowed me to work on such personally and professionally gratifying projects. I am also grateful that I have been able to work with some absolutely stellar teams.
Adobe is the best company that I have ever worked for, but it is time for me to make a change. This will be my last week there.
To all of Adobe’s customers: I hope that my work has helped make the tools you use a little bit better, faster, and more stable. It has been a joy to build stuff for you. Thank you.
Now, I’m looking forward to my next adventure. I will be joining Spotify in Stockholm as Director of Engineering in a few weeks.
This is my new dream, and I am incredibly excited about it. The people that I have met at Spotify are intelligent, creative and passionate. They are working to change the world; making available all the music in the world to anyone, while making sure that the people who create the music that we love can do it as a profession. This has been my mission multiple times in the past, in the days before I came to Adobe. I’m excited to pick up that banner once again and do my best to help it become a reality.
Things are gonna get interesting, stay tuned.
Filet of Feedback at the Birmingham Lofts, Pittsburgh, PA – August 10, 1991
I think this is the first recorded performance of Filet of Feedback. Another one from the archives…
Filet of Feedback at the Birmingham Lofts, August 1991 from Kevin Goldsmith on Vimeo.
transAtlantic iceFlow (transPacific) playing at the Crocodile – January 2003
Something more recent from the archives for a change. The audio is a mix between the board and the video camera mic, gets better over time.
Another Filet of Feedback video from the archives – Beehive show, March 1992
Filet of Feedback at the Beehive, March 13, 1992 from Kevin Goldsmith on Vimeo.
Filet of Feedback performing at the Beehive in Pittsburgh, PA on March 13th of 1992. FoF was opening for Illusion of Safety with Grae Com. For this performance, FoF was joined by the Guitar Army.
Good Review of Windows 8 Usability
This sums up a lot of how I felt when I first starting using Win8 on a non-touchscreen laptop. It was even more painful when using it through a virtual machine. I’ve found it a bit better when using it on a surface, but there are still so many weird UI choices and odd edges that are continually ruining the experience. I can actually use it to do things, I just don’t like to now. Microsoft really needs to fix this.