barely fatal

Tried the new version of Picasa, 3.5. It has a new feature: it finds and identifies faces in your photo libraries.

It even finds faces in paintings, in comics, on billboards in the background, on statues, when they are over or underexposed or blurred, or half-hidden behind another face or obstacle. Or in screen shots from games, non-human faces even (a Wookie from Star Wars Galaxies!). Multiple faces in one photo are no problem, it finds them all. After confirming some by comfortably selecting the right person from your address book (or adding a new one), it also becomes pretty good at identifying who it is in the picture, though still far from perfect.

But we still don’t have to be afraid of machines taking over Terminator-style any time soon. It also identified as faces: clouds, a book shelf, a blurry sign, a face of a building, garden furniture, a wall, a window, and a perfectly clear and well-lit lamp post.

… before the “holiday season” hits and the first AAA titles come burning through the atmosphere to crush all smaller competition. Some have been delayed and hey, let’s face it, nobody can play everything anyway.

It doesn’t look as if Jumpgate Evolution would be released, or even reach open beta status, any time soon. We FS have been waiting on it for years, and most of us would have been happy only to get the same old game with nicer graphics and a bigger community. Of course a modern, large-scale MMO that pays off financially for the developers needs a little more and apparently it’s turned out to be a little too much for Netdevil. I guess they cannot afford another failure like Auto Assault… They post news, visit shows like GamesCom and PAX, … but the momentum is waning. Though an MMO would totally ruin my schedule, I’d still like to see this fly, and succeed.

Oh any if they wait too long it’s gonna look old again – like last time. It’s pretty enough now and runs on smaller boxes but the hardware market never stops evolving.

Battlefield 2 is back. It’s the one old game everyone we got on board can play on their computers. We have yet to get more than 3 people together, but if we can get this started we could have some cool games. We even have your own server. Downloading the countless mods again took forever. And then finding out that most of them are dead was a disappointment, though not really a surprise. I think I’ll settle with AIX.

What else … I saw GI Joe and I wish I hadn’t … I wanna see District 9, like, real bad. Gotta talk a workmate into it tomorrow.

Great movie, In Bruges.

The latest iPod OS update 3.1.1 broke my earphone volume control and mic. Greaaaaaat.

Soooooo what a week this is no time to rest no time to do anything but work really not even time to catch a breath *hhhhhhreeee* so I reactivated my video rental subscription and filled up my wishlist to satisfy my body’s needs to come down at night comfortably by watching second-rate movies and third-rate shows well actually The International was pretty rad (Yay! That’s exactly were I stood too when I was in NYC and boy I walked the same street in Istanbul and …) while Beerfest which I stumbled upon by accident on TV let me question human evolution *sheeeehaaaaarr* man too much caffeine will kill y’all

I dig Clive Owen hence I was happy to find Shoot Em Up in my post box today thanks falkman for the brill recommendation *pant* but now I really gotta run I’ve got a forum to set up a system to update and a mod to install *weeeeze* kthxbye does this shop sell fertilizer my ficus really needs a boost

PS. I liked Lissi und der wilde Kaiser best of all Herbig flicks call me weird maybe it’s Vienna resonating which I remember well yet it feels like a lifetime away now though it was only a couple month ago does time get shorter when you get older?