Passport Photos

    • 187 posts
    May 30, 2024 1:39 AM PDT

    Technology is quite amazing nowadays, needed to renew my UK passport, here same image used for Drivers Licence.

    Used a service called https://photobooth.online/ and didn't have to visit one of those photo booths they have in supermarkets.  Just take a selfie with your mobile, background doesn't matter.  An AI sequence takes your facial image and makes the background automatically compliant.  The only awkward bit is getting the lighting correct with no shadows and making sure you look at the lens, not necessarily the mobile phone image.  If the image fails the quality test you just take another with your phone and upload that.  I ended up doing about eight till I got it right.

    Once successful your are sent a code which the UK passport office accepts so no photos need to be sent.  If the photo needs verifying as a true likeness this too is all done online as I verified one recently for a friend.  I got an email with a passport office link, this opens the image which I then verify.

    As I didn't require any printed copies cost was just over £3 here in UK.

    Wonder if 'Beam me up Scotty' will ever become a reality.

    Geffers

    • Moderator
    • 284 posts
    May 30, 2024 4:07 PM PDT

    Wow, that's really an efficient way to get a passport photo and send to the UK passport office.  I went to your photobooth website to take a look.  Our passports are still up to date, but I'll look into this when it comes time to submit a photo and see if our county will accept a photo this way, rather than going in person. 

    • 187 posts
    May 31, 2024 12:45 AM PDT

    I think that photobooth link is a US company so reckon it will work for you but seems it is good for other IDs too.

    Our driver licences here use passport photos if driver has a passport.  Digital currency on its way, social credits for being a compliant citizen 🤓

    Geffers

     

    • Moderator
    • 284 posts
    May 31, 2024 7:51 AM PDT

    Oh, good grief, don't get me started on digital currency and social credit scores. 🙄

     

    • 187 posts
    June 7, 2024 12:15 AM PDT
    Web Diva said:

    Oh, good grief, don't get me started on digital currency and social credit scores. 🙄

     

    The odd thing is most people are good hearted and do the right thing but social credits scores is where Government decides what is good.

    So many do good deeds that go unnoticed, help an animal and it may bite you then run off 😂😎 but the satisfaction of helping is reward enough.

    Geffers

     


    This post was edited by Geffers G at June 8, 2024 3:14 PM PDT
    • Moderator
    • 284 posts
    June 7, 2024 4:16 PM PDT

    I just watched a bear freed from a metal piece around it's neck by people that were able to anesthetize the wild black bear and help him to be free from that awful metal piece.  That's an awesome good deed.

    On social credit scores, I think about what kind of point system the government would create for us and would it be fair or not?

    • 187 posts
    June 8, 2024 3:23 PM PDT

    Any older folk have been through oil shortage scares in the 60s, then the 70s was an impending ice age, later we had ozone layer, acid rain, millennium bug, global warming became climate change so that it could cover dry, wet, hot, cold, windy or still.  My GF in California often gets emergency alerts interrupt TV warning of winds or flood alert.

    Permanently scared,that seems to be the objective.

    • Moderator
    • 284 posts
    June 8, 2024 5:13 PM PDT
    Geffers G said:

    Any older folk have been through oil shortage scares in the 60s, then the 70s was an impending ice age, later we had ozone layer, acid rain, millennium bug, global warming became climate change so that it could cover dry, wet, hot, cold, windy or still.  My GF in California often gets emergency alerts interrupt TV warning of winds or flood alert.

    Permanently scared,that seems to be the objective.

    Totally agree with your comment.  Weather reports and TV weather people are high drama now.  People are told to take cover during regular storms and scaring people.

    Ohhhhhh....I remember all of those scares too.  I can remember being very young and being scared about global cooling and then there was the threat of killer bees arriving to the states.  I thought we would all have to wear silver space suits so we wouldn't be stung...of course that's coming from a child's mind.

    Right on climate change covering everything...good way to look at it.  That's a lot of emergency alerts in Cali interrupting programs.😱

     

    • 187 posts
    June 9, 2024 1:15 AM PDT

    What amazes me is we live and work in earthquake zones, hurricane and tornado areas, equatorial and arctic regions, The Netherlands and eastern UK is below sea level.  Others reside near volcanos and yet an apparent 1 degree rise in temperature over the next few decades is a threat to humanity.  I think we need to adapt to a  slight change in temperature rather than try and stop the rise. 

    • Moderator
    • 284 posts
    June 9, 2024 8:45 AM PDT
    Geffers G said:

    What amazes me is we live and work in earthquake zones, hurricane and tornado areas, equatorial and arctic regions, The Netherlands and eastern UK is below sea level.  Others reside near volcanos and yet an apparent 1 degree rise in temperature over the next few decades is a threat to humanity.  I think we need to adapt to a  slight change in temperature rather than try and stop the rise. 

    I think about that 1 degree temperature change too and have wondered the same. Is the human race really causing the rise in temperature or is the natural wax and wane over centuries is how the living earth really works?  Our ocean degree temperatures seem to alter every year whether the seas are in an El Nino or La Nina pattern or neutral pattern.  Sure, some hurricane seasons are more volatile than other seasons because of the changes but seasons are reactive to more than just sea surface temperatures.  It's the whole package from the location of the jet stream, atmospheric rivers, arctic polar vortex's, trade winds, erupting volcanoes, the Coriolis effect and so much more.

    I didn't realize part of the UK was below sea level.  Miami, Florida is like that and several other eastern and western coastal areas of the US.  Miami is unique though, if you really study the claim that Miami is sinking, you realize that Miami was originally a boggy soft area and the city shouldn't have been built to begin with.  Is it sinking or is it the buildings putting too much pressure on the soft soil and the sea water is coming in a bit every few years?  Hurricane's don't help either with beach erosion, but I still wonder as a novice, what is the real truth?🤓

    • 187 posts
    June 10, 2024 1:03 AM PDT

    Good point about the weight of building, that must be a colossal figure and surely must be a factor.  One thing that has always fascinated me is, whatever building project you see, whether it is a shopping mall, a housing estate, the Empire State Building or any other central city development the entire structure is brought in by truck, foundations, bricks, cement, steel reinforcing, lifts, stairs, lighting, cables, paint, furniture. The entire  structure on the back of a truck.

    We've gone off topic here me thinks 😂 😎

    Geffers

     

    • Moderator
    • 284 posts
    June 10, 2024 4:13 PM PDT

    Lol...I'm okay with off topic....this is good stuff we're talking about here, Geffers. 🤓

    Okay, so you've articulated well how entire structures are brought in by truck.  That point, I never visualized before, but now I see it.  I wonder how we can graph the entire process of shipping for like one item.  So how did the bricks get there?  The bricks were produced in a factory to certain specifications, shipped by rail and then by truck?  Then you have cement structures which would be really hard to visualize, because I would think you would need structure engineers involved to design by spec and specific concrete?  Where's the concrete made, shipped and arriving at it's final destination?  How many trucks would it take to ship so many hundreds of columns, walls, etc.  I would think the flooring is poured by a cement truck though right? 😃  Look what you just did with your suggestion of "how it's made and shipped". 😄

    Just proof read my paragraph.  Looks like a word problem?😝

    • 187 posts
    June 11, 2024 2:51 AM PDT

    It is mind boggling, I often think similar with what appear to be one off designs of speciality machines.  Think I'll look for a few on Youtube and post them now, got me thinking about it.  An example, look at a steam locomotive, the valve rods attached to the wheels, how on earth did they think that up, put it on paper then get it manufactured?

    Geffers

     

    • Moderator
    • 284 posts
    June 11, 2024 7:02 AM PDT

    Mechanical and structural engineering is amazing and as you said, mind boggling.  Engineers have to be real out of the box to resolve solutions or create devices that make a structure or moving product go, like your valve rods, which are a precise part, but without them the wheels won't go.  I suppose at the time steam locomotives were the way to get from A to B, there were a lot of engineers specializing in locomotive's and would think and draw out their solutions to make the locomotive, better, faster and more efficient.  Now today, we don't have as high of concentration of that specialty train engineer, but have higher concentrations of jet and auto engineers for transportation vehicle's.  Seems like I'm forgetting another mode of transportation, oh yeah, ships and submarines.  I would think shipping engineers have been the longest lived occupation compared to transport by land engineers.  I'm thinking back to the Vikings and even before.  Ships from barges, to aircraft carriers, frigates and cruise ships are pretty amazing.

    Looking forward to your YouTube finds. 🙂