OK - I'm impressed!!

I just uploaded Picasa 3.5 a couple days ago and I'm impressed with the Facial Recognition software in it! I think it's pretty good that software can scan a picture and determine what area of the picture is a face. It's even better when it can make an identification of who that face belongs to. If it can scan a photo of a big group of people and pick out all of the faces and identify all of them that's beginning to be kinda mind boggling. It doesn't care if it's a good quality photo or not or how much the person has changed or what angle the image is from. It's doing this at greater than 95% accuracy. And even when it makes mistakes, it's usually close. In some pictures that it was suggesting were Beverly, there were some older, poor quality shots that it got wrong - but every one of the wrong ones was either Bambi, Vicki, or Suzie. When all of this happens on a free software upgrade, what can you say!!



Here's one of the suggestion screens - it thinks each one of these is Deanna and of course, it's right. I can click to verify - one or all.



In this picture, it correctly identified Jill, Caroline, Pam, Bambi, Kevin, and Julie!! (I don't think it's through working on it yet.)

This is Picasa 3.6 on Youtube

I'm getting behind on my posting so I'll catch up here

Last week we drove over to Athens because that's the only place we could find to accept the kittens with a good chance of them being adopted rather than the alternative. When we were there we spent a little time at their arboretum where I took this picture. Kinda like it!



Yesterday we were in Carrollton and had lunch at a cafe on Addison Circle. We walked around the main plaza there and I took this similar photo. Also took the one below of a resident there helping me clean my plate:





It's been a week or so since the storm and we're seeing new tree losses down along the trail. The leaves on the fallen trees are beginning to die and what we didn't notice as fallen trees then, we do now. We also walked the long trail today and found several more - one was huge and it was along the west property line. This one, although the picture doesn't really show it, was a good size tree too.



This weekend was Mayfest in Winnsboro. This is a street shot and a picture taken in Art & Espresso. The guy in the black shirt is Gene. His wife, Suzanne, is the one with the white hair and the boy is their grandson. (They're looking at someone coming in the door.) Marilyn is the one that owns the shop. She's short but not as short as she looks here - she's getting something from under the cabinet. They make what's been recognized as the best coffee in Northeast Texas and their lunches are excellent too. It's every Wednesday lunch for us and Gene and Suzanne - and, as you can see, we were all there on Saturday too.





And you know what this:



Oh - one last thing. I posted a picture a while back of me and another Master Gardener accepting a local award for the Quitman Special Education greenhouse project we worked on last year. Recently the project won another award - a second place award for the Texas Master Gardner's 2009 Project.

My first YouTube - More still photos

Still photo video

I took this picture after 10:15 PM

It's just a great illustration of what a digital camera is trying to do to normalize the exposure. It's about a 26 second exposure. There's a bright moon out so that created the shadow - but it IS night! It's foggy and that was the reason for trying to take the picture but the camera just wanted enough light to create a normal exposure and it took seconds rather than a fraction of a second! The eye was not seeing any color - just grays, dark grays, and darker grays!

Morning photo

I went into the kitchen this morning to fix breakfast and the sun was shining in on a bowl of grapefruits that Glynda bought yesterday. Knowing that sun like this doesn't last long I hurried back to get the camera and, even then, the effect had lessened by the time I got back back. I did get a couple shots but it was in shade in less than a minute. It's not as good as the shot I missed but I still like the picture!

Wendi's little one - Lynlee

We did a bunch of pictures of Wendi's little one. Lynlee is two months old now. Here are a couple where I tried and idea from Brenna.

Thursday's Picture

Actually, the two weeks are done and went really quickly! But here's one more picture. It's a little ant hill along the trail - about 3"-4" wide. There are a couple ants in the scene but they're really hard to see!

Wednesday's Picture

Today's picture lacks artistic merit but it does mark a significant event. It was taken in Winnsboro and it's the drink menu from the only place in miles where you can walk into a nice atmosphere and have a bottle of beer such as Bass Ale. They serve wine too. It opened yesterday and it's a very well done, small establishment (six stools at the bar and eight tables)and meals are available. It's part of Winnsboro Bakery but also has it's own entrance from the street behind. It sorta felt like "Cheers".

Tuesday's Picture

This is another "assignment" shot for the master gardeners. The first one was for hand tools, this one is for the full size variety of tools and emphasizing planting shrubs in the fall.

(We bought the plants in the picture for Glynda's church and we planted them there today around their sign.)

Monday's Picture

So did you notice there was no Sunday picture? I just did too much stuff until I ran out of time. Some computer problems had me in bad need of an attitude adjustment. Here's today's picture! I was getting the camera to go outside and realized that there was a picture right in front of me if I could get it. First morning with no A/C and the windows open.

Saturday's Picture

Today's picture is an "assignment". I was asked to do a picture for the Wood County Master Gardener web site. I don't know if I got what they want but this is what I took.

Friday's Picture

We were at the coffee shop in Winnsboro after a walk around town looking for photo opportunities and finding little. We were about to leave when this gentleman came out of the store across the street to have a smoke.

Thursday's Picture

I feel like I'm cheating on this one. I was working in the yard this afternoon and was running out of time for my picture and then noticed a frog sitting on a lily pad in the pond. I ran in the house, grabbed the camera, and took the picture. In uploading it I realized that the lens had fogged up on me bringing it from the cool house into the hot and very humid outdoors. So this is a second picture for today and there's nothing special about it (except it's a very nice Belinda's Dream). I've learned that flowers can make simple and impressive shots especially when taken with a long lens. BTW (and I confessed this last year), I usually take several shots of my "picture" of the day. I do select only one subject and I keep only one picture but I give myself several trys to find the best interpretation. That's always a learning experience!

Wednesday's Picture

There's a lot of hay being cut now around here. This cutting is just down the road at Oscar's place. Wish I could have gotten the smell in the picture!

Tuesday's Picture

It's been a busy day today with four hours of work on the greenhouse this morning and another two or three getting the computer fixed and trying to solve a software problem. So when I went out the door I didn't have a great deal of hope in finding something I liked today - even told Glynda I should go into town since I've been working Wildernest pretty good. But I stood in front of the house and saw the little statue peeping through a hole in the crepe myrtle. It's nice.

Monday's Picture

I worked at the greenhouse this morning and it's next door to a power station that has the huge power lines running from it. I'm used to seeing these towers in the gray galvanized color but had noticed the rust color of the ones here on an earlier workday. When you combine that with the rusting row of heavy mountings it does make a interesting picture.

I've been scolded by my granddaughter

And she's right. In her comment about yesterday's picture she said I should have waited for the correct light. I found out today that the correct light comes about five hours later than the time I took the picture. This afternoon I returned to the Treehouse and took a group of pictures. It was an interesting experiment. The sunlight was filtering through the trees and hitting the window in different patterns and intensity. Once the camera even focused through the window on the trees beyond. Here's one picture and the link to the others on Snap Fish.

Sunday's Picture

Not much of a shot - but, on this day when the temperature isn't even reaching ninety degrees, it's a reminder that the worst of summer is behind us. It's an American Elm and it's a "me first" tree when it comes to the colors of autumn.

Saturday's Picture

This one is a detail from the stained glass window in the Treehouse. It probably would have been better if I'd taken it a little later in the day when the sun was more direct. That could have been a challenge though waiting for a sunbeam to find it's way through the trees and fall on the window.

Friday's Picture

We had storms last night that left us without electricity. Long story shorter we got up early and went into town for breakfast and got back home shortly after seven. The 70 degree weather felt great and we took the opportunity to walk down to sit in the Treehouse for a bit and I took this picture. I did a little work on it to get the feeling I was after - shading it, adding a grain to it, and removing some of the color. The original is down below.