STUPID PIXELS

Hey everybody. Nothing is still happening here. So much nothing, I couldn't even take a picture of it. Frank went home today. Dutch's farts stink. My human still doesn't sleep. Yesterday she (and Kim) broke the world record for deskmill walking. 11 hours and 35 minutes in one day!

What a freak.

In case anyone's wondering how my human can sleep so little and still not have the other 999's galleries full, I think I know why. It's kinda boring, so I'll let my friend Gracie in Texas help explain it. Me and her brother Arnie go way back, but he's a dude and Gracie isn't.

Does anyone know why pugs named Gracie are all so freaking cute? I mean, seriously.

Anyway. Here's one of Gracie's pictures. Cute, right?

600 x 400 pixels of Gracie

Ok. Now here's Gracie's nose. This is how big it is when it comes out of Nikon. Like, actual size or whatever. It's wet, funk-free and still pretty cute. For a ginormous nose.

430 x 345 pixels of Gracie

So. I guess when you take one of Nikon's giant pictures and shrink it down to internet size, there are like a gazillion pixel things that have to go somewhere. Some get thrown away. Others get smushed. Whatever's left ends up kinda mangled.**

Mangled pixels = pictures that look like poo.

My human says if you're really nice to the pixels, you can make the shrunken pictures look less poo-ey. This means a whole bunch of extra steps and it's what she's been doing like non-stop for weeks. It's also why it's still taking forever to get everyone in their internet galleries even though the printable pictures are all done. Apparently she's not used to making pictures that don't end up on walls.

If you're not a camera person, you probably don't care about stupid pixels. I know I don't. But nobody wants to look like poo. If you are a camera person and want to know how to be nice to pixels, my human can explain it waaaay better than I can. Ask her.

OK. Now that you know all that, here's some of my friends' cuteness:

Cletus shared his sweet potato fries with me in Atlanta.

Bogie is an extrasupermodel.

I don't think Gracie wanted to share Nikon with her brother.

Kingston's dude is the best. His blonde lady is pretty awesome too.

Suki's mom is better at making Suki look cute as she really is.

Maggie likes Nikon about as much as Dutch likes Nikon.

Fergie stole BACON off a plate for me.

My human has a pug crush on Pinguina.

I knew Bouncer back when he had all his toes.

Chaos is... uhm... what his name says.

 

This is not me.

I stayed with Trunks in Florida. I might have humped him too.

Alright. I guess my human's brain is all warmed up now. Time to give back the thumbs.

 * * *

 **If you're a camera person and not afraid of numbers, here's the technical junk:

Why does working in steps produce better results? Resizing reduces some number of pixels into one. It considers three pixels horizontally and three pixles vertically to compute one output pixel. The input pixels nearest the one out are weighted the most. To get from 2400 x 3600 to 320 x 460, a block of very roughly 8 x 8 pixels, 64 in total, around each output pixel might be considered  for contributions to the computed output.

If the reduction is done in a single step, only six of the 64 pixels in the large block will be used to compute the one output.  However, if we go in steps the 8 x 8 will first be reduced to 4 x 4 with all of the original block contributing to that reduction. Then all of the pixels in the 4 x 4 will be used, and so forth.  The final result is better, because 64 rather than 6 pixels in the original contributed to each pixel in the reduced image.