Jukebox The Ghost

Hawaiian Tsunami Timelapse

~ randyaa ~ 2 Comments

I heard about the possible Tsunami hitting Hawaii on Saturday about an hour before the predicted time.  As any photographically inclined programmer would do I went searching for some WebCams.  Once I found some that were returning images (most were timing out or saying too many users) I decided it would be neat if I could capture the images over time and throw them together into a video later.

About 15 minutes later and  WebCamTracker was born.  It’s nothing fancy, just a small Java class that’ll pull down a single image or multiple from the specified URL. To run it just use:

java WebCamTracker <webcam URL> <output directory> <?Max Duration?> <?Delay?>

Fortunately (but unfortunately for the video) the Tsunami didn’t really amount to much in Hawaii.  The video does however show the surges so it’s still pretty neat.  I ran WebCamTracker on 3 WebCams: Kanaha, Sprecks, & Hilo Bay. They turned out pretty sweet even if they don’t show much wave action.  Pretty good for my first time-lapse, even if I didn’t actually take the pictures myself.  Something I might play with soon though…

Anyway, Check it out:

side note: Music by JukeBox the Ghost, one of my favorite bands.

WebCamTracker.java

The Passion of Ben

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

Watching anyone that is passionate about what they’re doing is both exciting and rewarding.

At the last minute Rachel and I were able to get Tickets to the Ben Folds Show at the Waterstreet Music Hall last week.  During the show it became clear that Ben thoroughly enjoys his music and his shows.  He played some of the most energetic piano for over 2 hours and when he finally went off stage he shook his hands and you could tell he was exhausted.  Even so, as all bands do, he came back for an encore and rocked the house again.

Needless to say the show was incredible.  Everything was amazing from the opener, a band I’d not previously heard of called “Jukebox the Ghost“, to “The midnight Ramblers” (an acappella group from The University of Rochester) to Julia Nunes (a famous ukalele YouTuber from Rochester NY).  The only music we really knew was the older stuff from Ben Folds Five but it didn’t really matter, The place was alive and it was a blast.

Unfortunately all I had with me was my iPhone camera so It was difficult to capture the moment with any clarity.

I’ll remember the show forever even without the pictures.  That’s what Passion does.