1. Photocopy (black and white) the actual birth certificate and scan the resulting image into the computer. You should have something like this: http://i.imgur.com/nR0ND.jpg

2. Get a green and white "security paper" background, like this: http://i.imgur.com/cQLu6.jpg

3. Overlay the black and white image over the green and white security paper (using a layer effect such as "multiply"), giving you something like this: http://i.imgur.com/WOKFB.jpg

The only piece that's missing is whatever OCR software they supposedly used which apparently attempted to automatically identify text in the scanned document and apply a white glow behind it, which made the text look "sharper". This optimization process also apparently separated the parts of the image that it was able to identify as text into their own layers.

Note how the OCR software only applied the sharpening halo to some of the text. Parts of the text that it was unable to recognize, it left on the bottom layer: http://i.imgur.com/hOBY2h.jpg

Final optimized composite: http://i.imgur.com/RYgqq.jpg

Additionally, here's a black and white, high resolution version of the birth certificate (not on the green security paper background) which was released to the AP by the white house before they put up the digitally scanned and optimized version in PDF format: http://i.imgur.com/X7FjQ.jpg

This high resolution image of the birth certificate was clearly not created by printing out the low-resolution, optimized PDF, so the whole "layers in the PDF means it was all a fraud" argument that birthers like to use simply doesn't logically hold water. The existence of this high quality black-and-white copy of the birth certificate means that if the birth certificate was forged, it would have had to been forged in high quality mode, in some other software, long before it was scanned and turned into an optimized PDF with a green security background and mechanically separated layers.

Also, for what it's worth, both Snopes and FactCheck.org have articles about this particular topic.

2. Sensors on the front of the car which monitor how closely you are following the car in front of you. When this information is combined with your current speed and the knowledge of average braking distances and human response time, a buzzer or dashboard light could notify you to increase your following distance.

Now, instead of the web address being in all black like you might have grown accustomed to over the past 10 years, the powers that be have decided it would be better to color all of the URL gray (except for the primary domain name, which still appears in black).

I can see how this could be helpful to the ignorant masses who get scammed by phishing emails, but I'm a relatively intelligent internet user, and I have been browsing the net long enough to know what the primary domain name is in the URL without needing to have it colored different.

If you are like me and wish to set the address bar colors back to the way they used to be in prior versions of Firefox, simply follow these easy steps:

1. In your Firefox address bar, type "about:config" (sans quotes), and press enter.
2. In the filter search box, enter "browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled"
3. Right-click on the "browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled" line item in the listing and select "Toggle" to switch it to false

Over the years, there have been a number of companies/organizations that have tackled this problem, and recently a couple of solutions have bubbled to the top in popularity. OpenID, Google Friend Connect, MySpaceID, and even the Twitter Login API have all been used as "universal login" methods which can be integrated with a web site.

None of these solutions, however, have even come close to the adoption rate boasted by the Facebook Authentication system. Practically everyone has a Facebook account these days, regardless of age, gender, education level, location, favorite web browser, email address, or internet provider! Facebook embraced this fact and built a nicely packaged authentication system which enables developers to integrate Facebook Authentication into pretty much any app or web site they can imagine. You can now find the Facebook universal login method in everything from iphone apps and desktop applications, to normal run-of-the-mill web sites.

This brings me to my point: Potential Security Risks

While logging into my Facebook account via all the different web sites and various applications which I use on a daily basis, I became acutely aware of a glaring security risk with the Facebook Authentication system. Basically, the way how Facebook instills a sense of security is via a recognizable blue bar which has a gray bar and diagonal stripes underneath it. This familiar imagery is displayed whenever you are asked to provide your Facebook login information. The idea that is consequently trained and reinforced in end-users' minds is that the familiar imagery represents a genuine Facebook login screen. As such, if you are being asked for your Facebook information in a login popup, but the unique blue and gray bar is missing, you would immediately suspect that something was wrong.

Notice, however, that the Facebook URL is nowhere to be seen in the login popup. There is literally no easy way to verify where the contents of the login form are actually going. This is especially true in the countless iphone applications and computer programs which are making use of the Facebook Authentication system. A rogue developer could easily create a form which displayed the blue and gray bar, but that actually transmitted the login information somewhere else entirely (such as a database on their own server) before it sent the information to Facebook.

The exact same thing could be easily accomplished by any semi-competent web developer with 15 minutes worth of spare time. All they would have to do is make a mock-up copy of the legitimate Facebook login popup, but have it submit somewhere else entirely. The end user wouldn't know the difference.

In summary: Facebook's way of instilling a *false* sense of security via their blue/gray bar is totally flawed and easily exploited. They need to come up with some sort of method which enables end-users to verify the form's authenticity before they enter their login information.

Premise: We have a set of three cards, all of which are known to us. We attempt to force a specific card on the unsuspecting participant by instructing them to randomly point at one of three cards, which are all laying face down. Theoretically, they have a one in three chance of picking the correct card randomly. If they point at the desired card, we immediately instruct them to flip it, effectively "forcing" the card on them in one try. If this works on the first try, the trick will be especially impressive. However, if it doesn't work on the first try, we still have a fall-back method:

If they point at one of the other cards, instead of telling them to flip the card, we pretend that they're playing a game of elimination and we simply remove the card, instructing them to point again. If they point at the next incorrect card, we instruct them to remove it, leaving one final card: the correct one.

Potential downside: If they point at the desired card on the second step, then the "force" fails,
because when we remove it, the end card will actually be the incorrect one.

Cards used: Ace of Hearts (the desired card), Queen of Clubs, and 8 of Spades

Approximate Results After 2000 Simulations:
Times ended on Ace of Hearts: 1322 (0.661)
Times ended on Queen of Clubs: 339 (0.1695)
Times ended on 8 of Spades: 339 (0.1695)

Click here to run the simulations yourself using javascript

Explanation:
Odds of picking the right card during the first step: 1/3. If incorrect card is chosen on first step, we pretend it's an elimination game and remove the card, leaving only two cards, the desired card, and the incorrect card. At this point, you might think there is an even 50/50 chance they will choose the correct card, but in reality, the odds of them choosing and eliminating the desired card are still 1/3 because it hasn't been touched. The odds of them choosing and eliminating the second incorrect card, however, have increased to 2/3. This is unintuitive, but the simulation shows it to be true.

Verdict:
Because of the fact that we know which cards are which, we can effectively double our seemingly low 33% odds all the way to 66% simply by using this card force method.

The only unsolved problem is, how do you handle a dead end where someone chooses the wrong card, and then the right card on the second step?

Photo -After (click on photo to see large version):

For a synopsis of the elements used, click here.

For what it's worth, I went and edited it a bit, removing the music visualizer stuff and just making it spin according to your mouse position over it. Fun stuff. Check it out (P.S. Get Flash 10, Now!):

My business partner, Chris Tingom, came along (he rode in the other balloon) and he took a video of the experience, and a few photos. I took a video as well, but he beat me to the punch in getting something up online, so I'm just going to show you his stuff for now. At some point, I'll eventually get mine all edited and up online for viewing, but that could be a while.

Now, I just want to take a moment to emphasize the fact that I've never been a good bowler, probably only bowling a couple of times a year (if that). Even with my best attempts, I have never really averaged more than around 115.

I *do* enjoy bowling, though, so I was pleasantly surprised when my Aunt Pam bought me a pair of bowling shoes as a gift. They are extremely comfortable (maybe even more so than my normal shoes), and fit me perfectly. Bowling shoes usually rent for $3-5, so bowling just got that much more affordable.

Since receiving the shoes, I have gone bowling a couple of times and have been amazed by what a difference they made. Each time I bowled, everything just seemed to click... Literally overnight, my average game went up over 20 points!

At any rate, last week I went bowling with my two buddies, Brian Shaler and John Murch, and I bowled a 201!! Now, I know that a lot of people out there bowl around 200 all the time, but for me that was a big deal (the highest I've ever bowled). I even got a print-out of the scores (upon Brian's recommendation) as proof!

So, yeah. Go get yourself some bowling shoes!

100 Facts About Literally Anyone

Basically, you put in someone's name, and it returns 100 (funny) "facts" about the person.

Let me know what you think!

The way I see it, it's practically a guaranteed sale...

"Sorry, we're not interested in whatever you're selling! In fact, we hate door to door sales people!"

"Well in that case, you'll love this sign!"

The best part about it is that if they don't buy the sign, you can just come back every week until they do. After all, they don't have a sign saying you can't!

If someone paints a picture by number, this is not art. They are not "creating" something from nothing. They are only following directions in the same sense that your printer might follow instructions from your computer. Would you call your printer an artist? No. It's just a machine following instructions.

If a young piano player presses the keys on a piano in exactly the manner he/she is instructed to and hammers out a musical sequence, this also, is *not* art. It would *only* be "art" if the student were to connect with the music on some level and create a *new* song or variation using their imagination.

So when you ask someone what art is, why do you get so many different responses? Why is there so much ambiguity in the overall definition of the word? If you ask one person if a trash can is a piece of art, they might say "yes", whereas another person might promptly reply, "No!"

I believe this problem arises from the way how humans arrive at definitions in their mind largely from context. They see an amazing painting and they hear it referred to as "art", so they assume that "art" is defined only as "an amazing painting". Another person might hear a piece of music or poetry referred to as "art", so they come to the conclusion that "art" is defined as "music and poetry".

As a result, if you stick the two people together, they might hem and haw and argue for days about what "art" is and what it means. Eventually they might arrive at the conclusion that "art" is defined as "amazing paintings, music, or poetry".

The problem is quite simple. They're failing to look at the true underlying concept that all these items share: None of these things would have been possible without human imagination and creativity.

So what about all the other paintings? You know, the crappy ones that never make it to a museum? Are they art? The people that created them would most certainly argue that they were! After all, many of the most famous paintings weren't given proper credit until long after the artist was gone. It appears that "amazing" isn't necessarily a requirement for something to be "art".

You see, there are many different kinds of "art", some of which are fascinating and amazing (the Mona Lisa, etc...), but there are countless other day-to-day creative expressions (an email written to a friend or a new spin on a pastry dish, for example) which are largely ignored.

However, just because a "creative expression" is ignored as "art" doesn't make it "not art". All it means is that it's not intriguing or amazing art. It's boring art. It's every-day art. Or... something.

At around 45,000 miles, I noticed that my car had developed a "ticking" sort of noise in the engine during acceleration. However, once the engine got warmed up the noise went away, so I didn't give it much thought. My extended warranty wasn't going to expire till 60,000 miles and I figured that if the problem got worse I would just have to make sure to have it checked into before then.

At around 55,000 miles (a couple of days ago), I finally decided to do something about it (that warranty expiration was getting too close!). So I drove the car up to a local Nissan dealership, where I left it overnight (so they could hear the cold engine ticking the next morning). At first, they couldn't replicate the problem, but I persisted, and they were eventually able to hear it.

Turns out, my engine had developed "piston slap", where the pistons were hitting the side of the cylinders when they went up and down. The compression in cylinder #1 was only 90 PSI, when it was supposed to be 175 PSI! Not only that, but there was scoring of the metal where it had been rubbing together, and there were metal shavings in the oil. So yeah, not pretty.

So they gave me a new engine.

How do you like that? 5,000 miles from warranty expiration and my used car gets a whole new lease on life! I hope it lasts me a long time, because I still owe a small fortune on that darn car.

Just this last Friday, we landed a job with Warner Bros. Records, revamping a multi-media CD for Green Day. The deadline was Tuesday, and we actually managed to meet it (although I had to work practically all weekend). Then, out of the blue, they referred *another* project to us, a multi-media cd for the Gipsy Kings. The deadline for that CD was Wednesday (today), and we managed to meet it, too! So yeah. Things have been pretty crazy lately.

In other news, I re-vamped my living room last week! I got a new entertainment center and a much-needed coffee table that I've been wanting for a long time. I'll have to post some pictures or something.

eNTj:
"Fieldmarshals will usually rise to positions of responsibility and enjoy being executives. They are tireless in their devotion to their jobs and can easily block out other areas of life for the sake of their work. Superb administrators in any field -- medicine, law, business, education, government, the military -- Fieldmarshals organize their units into smooth-functioning systems, planning in advance, keeping both short-term and long-range objectives well in mind. For the Fieldmarshals, there must always be a goal-directed reason for doing anything, and people's feelings usually are not sufficient reason. They prefer decisions to be based on impersonal data, want to work from well thought-out plans, like to use engineered operations -- and they expect others to follow suit. They are ever intent on reducing bureaucratic red tape, task redundancy, and aimless confusion in the workplace, and they are willing to dismiss employees who cannot get with the program and increase their efficiency. Although Fieldmarshals are tolerant of established procedures, they can and will abandon any procedure when it can be shown to be ineffective in accomplishing its goal. Fieldmarshals root out and reject ineffectiveness and inefficiency, and are impatient with repetition of error."

eNTp:
"ENTPs are usually verbally as well as cerebrally quick, and generally love to argue--both for its own sake, and to show off their often-impressive skills. They tend to have a perverse sense of humor as well, and enjoy playing devil's advocate. They sometimes confuse, even inadvertently hurt, those who don't understand or accept the concept of argument as a sport.

ENTPs are as innovative and ingenious at problem-solving as they are at verbal gymnastics; on occasion, however, they manage to outsmart themselves. This can take the form of getting found out at "sharp practice"--ENTPs have been known to cut corners without regard to the rules if it's expedient -- or simply in the collapse of an over-ambitious juggling act. Both at work and at home, ENTPs are very fond of "toys"--physical or intellectual, the more sophisticated the better. They tend to tire of these quickly, however, and move on to new ones.

ENTPs are basically optimists, but in spite of this (perhaps because of it?), they tend to become extremely petulant about small setbacks and inconveniences. (Major setbacks they tend to regard as challenges, and tackle with determin- ation.) ENTPs have little patience with those they consider wrongheaded or unintelligent, and show little restraint in demonstrating this. However, they do tend to be extremely genial, if not charming, when not being harassed by life in general."

However, I *have* at least managed to play around with something new today: Adobe After Effects

Check out what I made after about 3 hours of tinkering (click the image to view the video):