Kindled

I got an Amazon Kindle for my birthday/graduation, and I am definitely in the honeymoon of my relationship with it. I have always wanted an ebook reader. I understand that many people just can't get over reading something from a screen, and desire the physicality of a book. Personally, I have backpacked too many hardback books, and just plain read too many pdf documents to hold that view. I used to be a book junkie, but about 8 years ago, I declared a moratorium on buying new ones until I had caught up with reading the ones I had on deck. Plus, I need to be able to clip and word search books to be happy.
Since I am writing my literature review right now, I really wanted to:

• not be tied down to my computer for my reading. My laptop has about 20 minutes of battery life, and at 6'4", I can't open a laptop on an airplane, because the screen will only open far enough to point at my navel. Plus, I can't put the tray table down because my knees are higher than the hinge.
  
• not have to print out reams of paper and hear the trees crying.
• be able to take notes while reading and export those somehow

The Kindle is working well on all counts. The battery life is great, and you can clip/annotate the text and export it. To me, the best part is that it works perfectly happily on Linux. As seen in the screenshot, Ubuntu Jaunty just automagically recognizes it as external storage, and you can immediately upload files, or download annotations. The Kindle doesn't always seem to detect when it has been ejected, and still displays the USB Drive mode, but it hasn't seem to cause any problems.


I have also been using the Calibre ebook manager, which has worked really well at indexing my enormous collection. I use Zotero to manage bibliographies and get my PDFs. I am a bit of a Zotero evangelist, having gotten sick of Endnote a few years ago.

Calibre detected my Kindle, and converted files pretty reliably from my old formats to make them Kindle compatible. I found lots of material from Project Gutenberg in Mobipocket format, which is directly Kindle compatible.



Calibre converts to the Kindle format, and will upload them directly, or you can just use the Kindle as a thumb drive and drag-drop stuff onto it. My biggest disappointment has been PDFs. Web pages, text files, and ebooks of various formats all convert well, but PDF is more problematic. Calibre often chokes at reading their metadata (if it exists), and Amazon's free service doesn't do a great job of converting them. PDF conversion is tricky. We'll see how this plays out.

Oh, one other thing... the Kindle is pretty sweet for reference manuals. I have ebook copies of a number of Python and GIS books. One problem with on-screen manuals is that on a laptop you have to flip back and forth, and you have to keep the browser or reader open, which is a pain, especially during reboots, etc.

The Kindle doesn't ship with a cover. There are lots of them for sale on Amazon and elsewhere, but many of them overcome the advantages of the Kindle itself by making it hard to hold in one hand, or by making it heavy/bulky. I was nervous about throwing it in my bag without something, so version 1 of my cover was a padded Jiffy envelope, which worked but was aesthetically lacking. Version 2 was an OCTO faux leather slip cover.
It is light, matches my aesthetic, and not bulky at all.

Photography for Photogrammetry

So you want to model something in 3D using only photographs? No problem. This is one of the fastest moving and most fascinating fields in computing today. M*crosoft has announced that they are building a digital photo modeling software, but no word on when it will be out.

The software I use is called Photomodeler. (Check it out.). It generates very nice 3D models that you can import into Maya, Blender, CAD, or GIS software. It costs about $1000 USD, and requires a few days to learn to use. Almost any camera can be used, even historic photos.

However, a few things will help generate better models for you.

1. First, use the highest megapixel digital camera you have access to, and use it only at one zoom setting (if possible). All cameras require some calibration, and each zoom setting requires its own calibration. For my software, usually all this requires is a single photograph of a piece of Letter sized paper from a forty-five degree angle. If more than one zoom setting is used in your project, you must re-photograph it at each setting. Ideally this should be done with each individual camera used, but generally one picture for each specific model of camera will be okay.
   
2. Next, when photographing your subject, try to shoot in overlapping rings. Shoot inside and outside of all surfaces. Be creative. Small cameras can fit inside tiny spaces.
3. One way to get good outside shots on a hot dog budget is to use a camera monopod and the self-timer. From each camera location, shoot once from a natural height, and then set the timer and hold the camera high over your head on the monopod. Sometimes you will have to re-shoot, since it is impossible to frame the photo this way. It looks silly, but it works great.
4. Make visible targets that can be seen from multiple photos. If you are thinking about doing a project with me, contact me and I will send you some stick-on targets that will make the process smoother and more accurate. If you are doing the processing yourself, or do not have software that uses coded targets, use some visible anchors to make sure you cover the whole surface. I like golf balls for ground surfaces, and stick-on dots for vertical surfaces. You can also use pin flags, driveway markers, thumb tacks, road cones, etc… choose whatever seems appropriate for your working environment. Some software can automatically identify targets like round dots.
   
5. If possible, get GPS or Total station locations for a couple of these markers (and make them distinct). This is not necessary to produce a model, but it is necessary if you want to integrate the modeled object into a larger reality.
   
6. At least one object in the photo array needs to be of a known length. I use a 2 meter stadia rod, aligned N-S magnetic in most of my projects (example). If this is a problem, I can often use some known object in the photograph for scale. For example, the diameter of a tire of a known vehicle can be used for scale. In archaeological excavations, most of the time a scale is not needed because of the visible grid.
7. Last, shoot a couple pictures without any markers visible for use as surface textures in the final model. Try to get these with good lighting and without weird shadows. Some model types (wireframe) will not use surface textures, but in others quality textures make for a high wow-factor.
8. Video is also an option, but generally yields a lower quailty result. Video frames have a very small pixel count. However, it is easy to film lots of angles and cover a scene well using a video camera. Try to avoid using the zoom, however, as this is a problem for calibration. You can also use historic photographs, or photographs taken with a film camera. Once again, calibrating the camera is a problem. It is possible to use these sources, but usually takes considerably longer to process.

Good luck. If you have any questions about photogrammetry for archaeologists or anthropologists, feel free to contact me.

Welcome to my blog!

This blog will contain intermitent posts about mapping software, digital modeling, and archaeology. A few posts have been recovered from my old (crashed) wordpress blog from my website, http://www.flaming-maps.com, but many are missing. Thanks for stopping by, and feel free to comment!