I’m not here.

I often find myself wanting to use the copy & paste buffer on osx as a stack rather than a register. For example, I have a link I want to paste into a site but I first have to sign-in, so I open my password manager and copy the password which overwrites the original link I wanted to paste. Is there any way to do this on the mac either natively or with a third-party app?

We ordered five yards of compost today to spread throughout the front yard and garden but we’re temporarily stalled by … snow … in April!

(Update: see here for a detailed course description)

Toe Jam Hill is the namesake hill of a local half marathon and the hill, at mile seven, is tough with a 30% gradient according to Ascent and my Garmin 305. The run was today and while I ran and did well last year, this year I chose to sit out because I trained so little over the winter and spring. Once I saw the runners, including my good friend Dave, I immediately regretted my decision — next year.

I did manage to take a couple of photos, the highlight being the ambulance at the top of Toe Jam which received quite a running commentary from the participants.

More photos here.

My dog (a pure bred Llewellin Setter) does not subscribe to the please-my-owner philosophy that apparently all other canines practice. He’s entirely self-centered and drives me nuts most of the time (two days ago he tried to squeeze himself between a rhody and the camera pressed to my face — my nose and the rhody lost) but he’s a good looking dog, I love him and when given the time to run he’s a joy to watch.

I’ve been taking panoramic photos for a couple of years now but until recently have not tried any of the software available for the mac. I decided to give a couple a try last night and came out with mixed results. As input, I used five source files taken by manually panning myself from the top of a hill at a park near my home.

DoubleTake

DoubleTake’s UI is really simple, you drag a couple of images onto the lower pane and DoubleTake immediately aligns the images, crops and offers a preview. I wanted to change some of the colors but the HUD didn’t seem to allow modification, perhaps this is the result of being a trial.

(full size image)

If you look closely, the color of the grass on the left of the image is different from the rest though the photos were taken within seconds of each other.

Calico

Calico is based on AutoStitch technology and also uses a simple drag-and-drop interface. The primary difference I found in my quick trial was it didn’t crop automatically.

(full size image)

The color was much more uniform with Calico but if you look at the tree by the rock it looks superimposed and blurry. This is odd because the input photos didn’t overlap at this point so I’m not sure why this happened.

Both did a pretty good job stitching together the images but neither was perfect. I’m leaning towards DoubleTake but haven’t made a final decision either way. I’m open to suggestions for alternatives.