I've just released a new plugin for Adobe Lightroom, Video-Asset Management, allowing a modicum of video management from within Lightroom.

I spent much of the last several weeks working on a custom-metadata plugin that looked to be really great, until I ran into a Lightroom bug that totally killed the project (and my spirits).

Then, I had a moment of inspiration where I relized that in this age where more and more cameras and cell phones are offering video capabilities, it would be really useful to manage those videos from within Lightroom, along side the images from the same event. [...]

Anthony noticed a crown-shaped image on a carton of milk (seen at right), and asked what it was. I explained that it was what happens when a drop of milk splashes, and he was quite interested, though somewhat skeptical.

I promised to show him, explaining that it was too fast for the eye to notice, but that we could use a camera to stop the action. His interest was piqued.

I set the camera up on a tripod, got a black dish and put some milk in it, set my SB-800 flash as a slave on 1/64 manual power and [...]

Just to continue on the string of tech/geek posts I've had lately, a quick addendum to yesterday's "Programming in the Stone Age: SHA-1 and HMAC-SHA1 in Pure Lua", I've also published my Twitter OAuth Authentication Routines in Lua, for Lightroom Plugins in case anyone has use for it.

On our way back from our short day trip to Awaji Island last week (about which I posted lotsa' flower pictures here and here), we stopped by the highway rest stop just south of the big Akashi-Straights bridge. I wrote about the rest stop before in Heavy Lifting: Supporting the Longest Suspension Bridge in the World.

This time it was dark, and the Ferris wheel ("the largest at a highway rest stop in Japan! if not the world!") was lit up with pure green floodlights that made a dizzying sight...

The "dizzying" came not from its height (it's not really [...]

After our visit yesterday to Kyoto's Konzou Temple, Anthony and I headed all the way across Kyoto, around some small mountains, and into Otsu City to play in the park with his friend Gen. They have a great park across from their place that we've visited many times.

Gen's little sister, Tamaki-chan, has a very important quality that every child should have: she likes me. Even though her Daddy had to wake her up from a long nap and she was a bit pouty, her puzzling like of me allowed her to put up with me and my camera.

She [...]