Neil's News

Queen Mary 2

5 February 2007

Yesterday the Queen Mary 2 arrived in San Francisco. I walked down to the shore to watch and was stunned at the number of people who turned out to welcome her in. It was all the more surprising given that the Super Bowl was on. My excuse was that I don't have a TV (nor do I intend to get one). Given the crowds, it seemed like nobody else in San Francisco has a TV either.

The Queen Mary 2 is either "freakin huge" or "jupiterian", I'm not sure which (inside joke). She was escorted into the bay by a fireboat and a swarm of helicopters. Fitting her under the Golden Gate Bridge is only possible at low tide. I took some photographs, then stitched them together using JPG Video. The result looked a bit static, so I did some calculations then cropped each frame manually to produce a panning/zooming effect. Next time I create this sort of effect I must a) automate it and b) use non-linear algorithms.
Update: The Google ski party got a bit loud and boozy for my taste, so I retreated and created a VBA script which commands Corel Photopaint to zoom and pan each frame in a more pleasing manner. The video no longer looks like the camera is about to achieve escape velocity.

P.S. Have I been taking too much LDS, or is this the street where Dr. Gillian Taylor picked up Kirk and Spock?

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