Broofa.com

A reverse image search is probably not something many people will have a need for, but if you do, TinEye.com is an incredibly useful tool.  Point TinEye at a picture (either a URL or upload one), and it returns a list of all the places on the web that use a similar image.

This recently proved invaluable for me, as I’m in the process of overhauling my wife’s travel website. I discovered that I had (again, damnit!) misplaced the artwork files I used to create several graphics on her site.  And, specifically, I couldn’t for the life of me find the images we had used to create the stamps in her company’s logo, pictured here.

Normally, figuring out what paintings these two stamp images came from would be a daunting task, essentially requiring a degree in art history (“That one on the left sorta looks like Renoir, right???”), but I’m no PhD in that regard. I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to do a Google search –  ”Renaissance Woman”, “Painting of Virgin Mary” (if that’s who is pictured here!), etc – but obviously these are such generic terms that it would take hours of sifting through search results to find the right one… if I was lucky.

Fortunately I’ve used the TinEye search engine in the past to crack a little puzzle game a buddy of mine likes to play.  He periodically changes his Twitter picture to an obscure photo of some celebrity, and challenges his followers to guess who it is.  ’Turns out 90% of the time you can just point TinEye at the picture and it will turn up a page telling you who it is.

So that’s what I did with the stamps.  I used Pixelmator to crop the image down to two files, one showing the innards of each stamp, and then simply uploaded them to TinEye.  Lo and behold, in a few short minutes, I had the answers! (You can click either of the images to the right to see the results TinEye came up with for each.)  It turns out the first one is Delphic Sibyl, by Michelangelo (from the Sistine Chapel, no less), and the latter is Venus and the Three Graces by Bottecelli.

Pretty cool, huh!

P.S. On a related note, I just used IdentiFont.com to identify the font in Cartolina’s logo as Garamond.

A. The Beard Team USA National Beard and Moustache Championships are being held here in Bend, OR in a few weeks. Don’t ask me why – I don’t know.  But it’ll make for some fun news headlines, I’m sure.

B. My money is on this guy for the Freestyle category:

My mother-in-law just pointed me to the Yike Bike, a “A radical new electric bicycle … expected to transform the way urban commuters navigate congested cities.”

And I have to admit, it looks really cool! … or really stupid.  I can’t decide which. My first thought was, “Why would you make a carbon-fiber tricycle,” because that’s sorta what it looks like (in spite of having only two wheels).  But that was soon over-shadowed by the reaction I had when I dug a little deeper, which was, “What, this again?”

Yup, the YikeBike is, for all intents and purposes, just another Segway.   Both offer high-tech solutions to the problem of getting around in an urban environment.  They feature the latest in battery technology, regenerative breaking, composite construction, and both have a top speed of ~20km/hr.  There are differences of course.  The Segway’s range of 20km gives it the edge over the YikeBike (a paltry 10km), while the YikeBike’s folding design makes it a much better choice for commuters.  But  the most striking similarity is the price.  The YikeBike will set you back a cool $4,700 (which happens to about what the Segway originally cost).

And there’s the rub.  All that fancy tech costs a pretty penny.  Unfortunately it doesn’t actually do all that much for you because getting around in urban environments is not a difficult problem to solve.  You don’t need a lot of high tech gadgetry and industrial design.  All you need is a couple wheels, rechargeable battery, motor, brakes, and a handlebar.  Bolt ‘em together and you have yourself an electric scooter, of which there are literally dozens of makes and models already on the market.  $200 will get you a Razor E300 (range: 10km, top speed: 25 km/hr… sound familiar?) which, aside from it’s weight (20kg) is just as portable as the Yike Bike.  And if you’re willing to spend a bit more, you can get the Go-Ped IPed for $1,400.  Yeah, that price starts to sting, but it’s still 1/3rd the cost, and weighs only 12kg. That’s a little more than the YikeBike, but you get much better range (15 km) and speed (30km/hr).

So, props to Yike Bike for inspiring industrial design, but I’m not seeing this getting much of a following.  The company is targeting a market that simply doesn’t exist.  Or, at least, doesn’t exist here in the U.S.  Unlike Segway the Yike Bike is being launched in Europe.  Who knows, maybe those crazy Europeans see things a little differently.  But somehow I suspect the story will be the same.  There just aren’t that many people with $5K to drop on a gizmo that will only take them on a 3-mile round trip.

Like the good, responsible, post-millennium, Gen-X, yuppies my wife and I are, we try to do our part not to be too conspicuous in our consumption.  But, boy, sometimes it’s pretty damn difficult.

Take, for example, our cell phones.  They’re old and beat up but they work well enough, except the batteries are toast; gotta recharge ‘em after pretty much every phone call now. *sigh*.  So I’m scrounging around the internet for new batteries (like I did last month for the DustBuster, and the month before that for our WaterPic, and the month before that for my cordless drill, and…and…and… *sigh*)

Anyhow, the replacement battery market is basically one giant fucking scam. Pardon my french. You more or less have two options: buy direct from Motorola, where batteries cost $50/per, or buy shady “OEM original” versions on Ebay, where they cost 99¢.

In the former case you’re guaranteed a good battery, but you’re also guaranteed to feel like a complete chump for paying a 500% markup.  The latter case is little better. Odds are good you’ll still feel like a chump when you discover you’ve wasted 99 perfectly good cents (+$4.99 shipping, what???) on a battery that’s completely dead anyhow.  Either that or the battery will cause your phone to explode into a fiery hell from which an unending stream of demons bent on extinguishing all mortal life will emerge.  At least, that’s what the Internet says might happen.

So since nobody wants to feel like a chump, we’re forced to look for alternatives. Which means either re-upping the contracts we have with our mobile providers – “hey, they’ll give you a phone for free!”† – or turning to EBay where, surprise, you can get a brand new phone + battery for about what a new battery would cost from the manufacturer.  Of course the obvious consequence there is that you’ll soon be pitching your perfectly good (albeit old and worn) phone in the trash nearby e-recycling center that’s oh so convenient to find/use.

(† requires 2-year commitment, at new rates, generally costing at least $200 more over the life of the contract.)

Of course if you have any sort of moral code, you’ll eventually realize what the environmental cost of throwing away your cell phone every two years is, and feel like an even bigger (say it with me now!)… chump.

Welcome to Consumerism 2.0.

Keeping to my theme of, “‘Loving Fatherhood, but Not Getting Gushy About It”:

And, yeah, I don’t know why they don’t have this stuff on the Cartoon Network either.