gwax's rumblings

A couple months ago, I bought a pair of Vibram FiveFingers shoes, specifically a pair of KSOs. I’ve been wearing the shoes pretty regularly and, to be entirely honest, they are probably the most comfortable shoes that I have ever worn. The shoes don’t provide support in the way typical shoes do so it takes some getting used to and rebuilding strength in muscles that have been under-utilized since childhood. Once your feet get used to the FiveFingers, it becomes a truly fantastic experience to rediscover walking, jogging, sprinting, and the like.

Additionally, recent research shows that barefoot running is low impact in a way that shod running is not. Apparently, running barefoot changes your gait, which I can anecdotally confirm.

Worth noting, in the negatives column, you cannot wear traditional socks with FiveFingers and they will start to smell if you wear them regularly without socks. FiveFingers shoes are machine washable, which is an option, or one can purchase toe socks from Injini (or others), which is the solution that I’ve chosen. Sadly, the toe socks solution is somewhat expensive but, for me, I’m sufficiently hooked on my FiveFingers that it’s worth it to me.

I guess that we’ve finished a decade and moved into a new one. On account of predictions are fun, I’ll give you a few that are all but guaranteed to come true in the following decade:

• We’ll all get personal jetpacks.
• Hoverboards will make it to market.
• Everyone will start driving flying cars.
• Jesus Christ will return to us.
• Skynet will be born.
• We will reach the singularity.

This is just a few of the wonderful things that are going to happen within the next decade; I’m really looking forward to all the fun.

Happy new decade!

As I just recently suggested I might do, I have made a script for automatically generating color cycling animations of arbitrary sizes and speeds.

The script can be used at: http://blog.gwax.com/files/rgbanim.php

The script accepts the parameters height, width, and delay, so it can also be used in more interesting ways. Feel free to play around (if you crash it, let me know).

Ex.: http://blog.gwax.com/files/rgbanim.php?width=100&height=100&delay=7

Or, better still:

 - Width
 - Height
 - Delay

For the curious amongst you, the relatively simple code follows:

< ?php
if(isset($_GET['delay']) && is_numeric($_GET['delay']))
	$delay = max((int)$_GET['delay'], 1);
else
	$delay = 10;
 
if(isset($_GET['width']) && is_numeric($_GET['width']))
	$width = max(min((int)$_GET['width'], 1920), 1);
else
	$width = 320;
 
if(isset($_GET['height']) && is_numeric($_GET['height']))
	$height = max(min((int)$_GET['height'], 1080), 1);
else
	$height = 240;
 
$out = new Imagick();
$out->newImage($width, $height, '#FF0000', 'gif');
$out->setImageDelay($delay);
$out->newImage($width, $height, '#00FF00', 'gif');
$out->setImageDelay($delay);
$out->newImage($width, $height, '#0000FF', 'gif');
$out->setImageDelay($delay);
 
header('Content-type: image/gif');
echo $out->getImagesBlob();
?>

My previous article on Unsticking Stuck LCD Pixels having been rather a hit and having been asked for an alternate gif image, I figured I should revisit the topic briefly.

The animated gif images were created with ImageMagick. Having long since forgotten how I did it last time, I reacquainted myself with ImageMagick and have developed this little one liner:

convert -delay 20 -loop 0 -size 100x100 xc:#FF0000 xc:#00FF00 xc:#0000FF rgbanim.gif

This command will generate an animated gif to use in attempting to fix stuck pixels. Key parameters are:

Image size can be changed by changing the size parameter.
ex.: -size 640x480

Cycling speed can be varied by changing the delay parameter.
ex.: -delay 7

So, if my original images don’t serve your purposes, go grab a copy of ImageMagick and make one of your own. (If I feel ambitious, I might hack together a script to auto-generate these gif images)

UPDATE: Apparently, I was sufficiently ambitious.