I've been sticking it to the man here in Las Vegas. Won $10 the first night playing roulette. Didn't bet anything on the second night. Last night was big: Won $5 playing video blackjack; then won $46 playing roulette; then skunked Mike at bowling for another 5-spot; and on the way out, Steve and I stopped at the roulette table. We both put our night's winnings on the table. I chose black, he chose odd. Black 33! We both doubled up and walked away.

With the help of the Wayback Machine, I am pleased to present an abridged history of North as it has appeared through the ages.

March 3, 2001I think I was using Dreamweaver to create templates for the pages, but then editing by hand. I'm most likely using table and font tags at this point.

January 22, 2002Still using combination of hand-coding and Dreamweaver.

August 4, 2002Upgraded to Blogger. Able to provide more frequent updates about how my broomball team was doing.

August 23, 2003I've switched to Movable Type by this point. Definitely using CSS instead of tables.

June 18, 2004

September 9, 2004

March 5, 2005

This doesn't include anything since my switch to Wordpress -- which has encompassed at least three different appearances (including the default WP theme). There's at least one version missing from within the sequence, too. It would have been my first CSS based layout. I worked on it over winter break in Portland, must have been December 2002-January 2003.

Also not included are pre-North sites. I think I've had a web presence since at least 1996, but those files are long gone. Even if the Wayback Machine has records of them, I don't remember the URLs to be able to look them up.

Of these samples, I like the look of August 2003 the best.

This weekend I shot another panorama of Centennial Olympic Park. But this time, it's got sound.

This is a (misnamed) high dymanic range, or HDR, image. HDR isn't actually accurate, though. As Erik describes, monitors can't actually display HDR images, so the extra information is adjusted in order to be viewable in a process called tone mapping. I imagine this is analogous to how infrared images are mapped into the visual spectrum to generate false-color photos and video.

The tone-mapped image is generated from multiple photos of the same subject. In this case, three photos were taken: one at 0 EV (properly exposed according to automatic settings in camera, seen below), one at -2 EV (underexposed by two stops) and one at +2 EV.

I used a program called Photomatix to create the tone-mapped image. This example isn't particularly dramatic, but there are more interesting samples in the Flickr HDR group.

I found this cassette in a pile of freebies in my building's laundry room. I haven't listened to it yet, but the affirmation list looks amazing.

You can't really make out the text on the cassette in this picture, but it reads, "Play for one hour per day for at least 30 days, and thereafter as needed, for best results."

The copyright is dated 1984 by a company called Mind Communication, Inc. in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Any G-Rad folks know if this company is still around? The address on the tape, "945 Burton S.W.," doesn't seem to exist. 945 Burton St SE does, but it looks like a residential area.

I need to find a cassette player, then I'll try listening to the tape and see if my bowling improves.

Also found in the pile of cassettes was "Star Trek: Sound Effects from Original TV Soundtrack."

... double true!

I've been playing around with Google Maps and created a map of the towns in which I've lived.

If you zoom in on some of the places, the markers are off a bit. I used the lat./long. data from Google Earth, which seems to be off by a couple miles compared to Google Maps.

The points are loaded from an external XML file, so each time I move, I can just add another line to the file and the map will load the new locator, too.

My long-term goal with this is to create a mini-guide to Atlanta. The data would be stored in a MySQL database, which would be accessed through PHP to generate the XML file for Google Maps to read via Javascript. It's kind of a convoluted process -- there may be a simpler way.

Updated March 16: I'm stupid. Google Maps and Google Earth are totally sync'd, I just wasn't converting the coordinates correctly. My apologies to the staff members at Google, who are much smarter than me.

I got a summons for jury duty the other day but I have to request a postponement because I'm going to be out of town. I'm a little disappointed.

Why do so many people dislike jury duty? I have this impression (which could easily be way off base) that people tend to avoid jury duty like the plague. Is it just because you have to miss your regular job, and therefore earn less money that pay period? Are there other reasons?

Updated March 16: My summons has been deferred. I'm now scheduled for may.

Here is a QTVR of the hotel room I stayed in.

You can see panoramas of New Orleans at CNN.com.

Good eats.

Not pictured is the Muffuletta sandwich I had. It was at least a foot in diameter and three or four inches thick in the middle. I ate 3/4 of it before having to throw in the napkin. When I woke up the next morning, I was still full.