Cute: Squirrel with white eye shadow on a bird feeder- enlarged from a video still (and mini-tutorial- how to do it)

HOW:

I captured a video still of this by pausing it at the right moment, capturing a screen image and pasting as a new image into photofiltre.

then I used smilla enlarger- an open source program to enlarge small images without creating a ghastly mess of jaggy edges and all the other distressing visual clutter which usually comes with trying to enlarge a small source image.

I loaded it back up in PhotoFiltre and did one more trick which helps with enlarging small source images: I used the filter "ink outlines" - this smooths out the edges nicely. Just it alone can help yield very good results when enlarging a small image.

Thus we went from 640x480 to 2400x1800, a pretty significant increase!

WHY:

I don't normally like "tree rats" but this fellow is the cutest squirrel I've ever seen, with the white circles around his eyes and the perfect "squirrel" color to his fur.

DEEP EXISTENTIAL THOUGHTS:

Something doesn't have to be as breathtaking as the flower I posted yesterday to be worth while. Just as beauty for beauty's sake is a sufficient reason to take and look at a picture, share it with others, get lost in it yourself, so too are the fun and frivolous. CARPE MOMENTUM! What ever gives you a smile, gets you through the day.

When you are disabled, this is especially important... you have to make the most of the opportunities to be distracted from the torment and limitations of your body.

PERSONAL:

I've got a number of clips of this fun fellow playing... maybe some day I'll be able to figure out how to work through the fibrofog and do video editing again. Baby steps. I'm learning how to do some simple photo projects now, once I get into the groove of that, I'll move on to trying to apply the same techniques to working with video.