Photo Credit
One of my photos from this summer was selected to use in an online tour guide for San Francisco. It is one of my better photos I think (it's actually my current desktop photo on my main monitor). It's not anything that I get paid for or anything but I do get credited which is pretty cool. The site that used it is called Schmap and they do guides for a variety of cities.
They used one of my shots from Sausalito as a reference for a place called "Sausalito Bay Adventures" which is actually in San Francisco and I didn't take the photo from a boat so I'm not convinced it's a fantastic fit, but whatever. I guess you could see a very similar view from a powerboat if you sailed it across it across the Bay and looked back. Anyway, you can see the image on their site if you'd like.
One day I'll process the rest of the photos sitting in my "to be processed" folder in Aperture. :-)
One of my photos from this summer was selected to use in an online tour guide for San Francisco. It is one of my better photos I think (it's actually my current desktop photo on my main monitor). It's not anything that I get paid for or anything but I do get credited which is pretty cool. The site that used it is called Schmap and they do guides for a variety of cities.
They used one of my shots from Sausalito as a reference for a place called "Sausalito Bay Adventures" which is actually in San Francisco and I didn't take the photo from a boat so I'm not convinced it's a fantastic fit, but whatever. I guess you could see a very similar view from a powerboat if you sailed it across it across the Bay and looked back. Anyway, you can see the image on their site if you'd like.
One day I'll process the rest of the photos sitting in my "to be processed" folder in Aperture. :-)
They used one of my shots from Sausalito as a reference for a place called "Sausalito Bay Adventures" which is actually in San Francisco and I didn't take the photo from a boat so I'm not convinced it's a fantastic fit, but whatever. I guess you could see a very similar view from a powerboat if you sailed it across it across the Bay and looked back. Anyway, you can see the image on their site if you'd like.
One day I'll process the rest of the photos sitting in my "to be processed" folder in Aperture. :-)
While I'm Fussing About
Since I'm already fussing with the blog I went ahead and did something I've been meaning to do for a while: installed WP Super Cache. This was triggered mainly because some of the sidebar stuff seems to take forever to load, so I wanted to make sure there wasn't any weird load on my end. Every so often I see some sort of comment to the effect of "If you're running WordPress you should have Super Cache" and it finally sunk in.
Everything should be fine but if you see oddness let me know.
Since I'm already fussing with the blog I went ahead and did something I've been meaning to do for a while: installed WP Super Cache. This was triggered mainly because some of the sidebar stuff seems to take forever to load, so I wanted to make sure there wasn't any weird load on my end. Every so often I see some sort of comment to the effect of "If you're running WordPress you should have Super Cache" and it finally sunk in.
Everything should be fine but if you see oddness let me know.
Everything should be fine but if you see oddness let me know.
Flickr Weirdness
I noticed this morning that the Flickr display in the right sidebar wasn't working. No idea why really, it was working last night - I even saw it update with the new pictures mentioned in the last post.
Anyway, I uninstalled that plugin and found a different one that works. (I replaced flickrRSS with Quick Flickr Widget.) I think the Flickr list should be displaying just as it was before but if you see anything amiss let me know.
I noticed this morning that the Flickr display in the right sidebar wasn't working. No idea why really, it was working last night - I even saw it update with the new pictures mentioned in the last post.
Anyway, I uninstalled that plugin and found a different one that works. (I replaced flickrRSS with Quick Flickr Widget.) I think the Flickr list should be displaying just as it was before but if you see anything amiss let me know.
Anyway, I uninstalled that plugin and found a different one that works. (I replaced flickrRSS with Quick Flickr Widget.) I think the Flickr list should be displaying just as it was before but if you see anything amiss let me know.
Smoking the Thanksgiving Turkey
As I do out here in California I smoked the turkey (hot-smoked, not cold-smoked for the aficionados out there) for Thanksgiving last week. Nothing particularly fancy, soak some wood chips while the charcoal lights, then put 'em in a foil packet and let the bird cook at a fairly low heat while the smoke does the work. I mention it mainly because the smoke was swirling prettily out of the grill and I had some time to catch a few photos of it.
There are a couple more on Flickr if you like this one.
One thing that surprised me was I could only see the smoke from one side. I tried taking shots from the other side so there was an orange tree in the background but the smoke disappeared. My completely fabricated explanation for this is that the smoke particles must be sort of teardrop-shaped and the wind orients them in a particular manner. The light was fairly directional (these were shot close to noon, but at this time of the year the sun is pretty southern), so from some angles the smoke doesn't reflect as much light? Anyways, I liked these pictures, and it motivated me to import stuff from the memory card. I still have those Point Bonita Lighthouse pictures to work on.
As I do out here in California I smoked the turkey (hot-smoked, not cold-smoked for the aficionados out there) for Thanksgiving last week. Nothing particularly fancy, soak some wood chips while the charcoal lights, then put 'em in a foil packet and let the bird cook at a fairly low heat while the smoke does the work. I mention it mainly because the smoke was swirling prettily out of the grill and I had some time to catch a few photos of it.
There are a couple more on Flickr if you like this one.
One thing that surprised me was I could only see the smoke from one side. I tried taking shots from the other side so there was an orange tree in the background but the smoke disappeared. My completely fabricated explanation for this is that the smoke particles must be sort of teardrop-shaped and the wind orients them in a particular manner. The light was fairly directional (these were shot close to noon, but at this time of the year the sun is pretty southern), so from some angles the smoke doesn't reflect as much light? Anyways, I liked these pictures, and it motivated me to import stuff from the memory card. I still have those Point Bonita Lighthouse pictures to work on.
There are a couple more on Flickr if you like this one.
One thing that surprised me was I could only see the smoke from one side. I tried taking shots from the other side so there was an orange tree in the background but the smoke disappeared. My completely fabricated explanation for this is that the smoke particles must be sort of teardrop-shaped and the wind orients them in a particular manner. The light was fairly directional (these were shot close to noon, but at this time of the year the sun is pretty southern), so from some angles the smoke doesn't reflect as much light? Anyways, I liked these pictures, and it motivated me to import stuff from the memory card. I still have those Point Bonita Lighthouse pictures to work on.
Software Release!
The application I've been writing was approved by Apple right before Thanksgiving and is available in the App Store right now. I haven't really talked about this much with anyone but I was contacted back at the beginning of the summer by some folks who wanted to do an application. It's called HawkeyeSpecs and you can see it in the App Store if you are set up for those sorts of links. The idea is one of those "I can't understand why this hasn't been done before." utilities. (Well I have some idea why now, but that's a digression :-)) The rough idea is this: take a picture of something small (we focused largely on text) using the built-in camera. After you have the image provide a magnifying glass as well as a suite of simple digital enhancement tools.
There are a whole set of recent applications that provide some sort of "digital eyeglasses" but they all do the same thing: a digital zoom on the live video feed from the camera. This works OK on the 3GS but on the 2G and 3G iPhones it's really a poor choice. The camera on those phones is fixed-focus, meaning you have to hold the phone a very specific amount away from the target to get an in-focus image. This isn't that difficult to do, but trying to do that while reading the screen is very tricky. Imagine trying to read a menu in a dimly-lit restaurant: you need to hold up the menu, hold the phone about a foot away from the menu, and then read from the screen. With Hawkeye you still have to hold the phone about a foot from the menu but you only hold it there for a moment, snap a picture and then you can put the menu down hold the phone where you can best see it and scroll around the image to your heart's content. You can also adjust the obvious parameters - brightness, saturation, contrast, as well as apply a sharpen filter.
I was actually surprised to realize how good the camera in the 2G phone was for this sort of thing when you don't limit it in weird ways. It's actually pretty easy to get a shot of an entire sheet of paper and if you keep the whole 1600 x 1200 image there's plenty of detail to read fine text.
So yeah. If you have an iPhone and a pair of reading glasses you might find Hawkeye a useful program to pick up. Plus you'd be supporting little old me! :-)
The application I've been writing was approved by Apple right before Thanksgiving and is available in the App Store right now. I haven't really talked about this much with anyone but I was contacted back at the beginning of the summer by some folks who wanted to do an application. It's called HawkeyeSpecs and you can see it in the App Store if you are set up for those sorts of links. The idea is one of those "I can't understand why this hasn't been done before." utilities. (Well I have some idea why now, but that's a digression :-)) The rough idea is this: take a picture of something small (we focused largely on text) using the built-in camera. After you have the image provide a magnifying glass as well as a suite of simple digital enhancement tools.
There are a whole set of recent applications that provide some sort of "digital eyeglasses" but they all do the same thing: a digital zoom on the live video feed from the camera. This works OK on the 3GS but on the 2G and 3G iPhones it's really a poor choice. The camera on those phones is fixed-focus, meaning you have to hold the phone a very specific amount away from the target to get an in-focus image. This isn't that difficult to do, but trying to do that while reading the screen is very tricky. Imagine trying to read a menu in a dimly-lit restaurant: you need to hold up the menu, hold the phone about a foot away from the menu, and then read from the screen. With Hawkeye you still have to hold the phone about a foot from the menu but you only hold it there for a moment, snap a picture and then you can put the menu down hold the phone where you can best see it and scroll around the image to your heart's content. You can also adjust the obvious parameters - brightness, saturation, contrast, as well as apply a sharpen filter.
I was actually surprised to realize how good the camera in the 2G phone was for this sort of thing when you don't limit it in weird ways. It's actually pretty easy to get a shot of an entire sheet of paper and if you keep the whole 1600 x 1200 image there's plenty of detail to read fine text.
So yeah. If you have an iPhone and a pair of reading glasses you might find Hawkeye a useful program to pick up. Plus you'd be supporting little old me! :-)
There are a whole set of recent applications that provide some sort of "digital eyeglasses" but they all do the same thing: a digital zoom on the live video feed from the camera. This works OK on the 3GS but on the 2G and 3G iPhones it's really a poor choice. The camera on those phones is fixed-focus, meaning you have to hold the phone a very specific amount away from the target to get an in-focus image. This isn't that difficult to do, but trying to do that while reading the screen is very tricky. Imagine trying to read a menu in a dimly-lit restaurant: you need to hold up the menu, hold the phone about a foot away from the menu, and then read from the screen. With Hawkeye you still have to hold the phone about a foot from the menu but you only hold it there for a moment, snap a picture and then you can put the menu down hold the phone where you can best see it and scroll around the image to your heart's content. You can also adjust the obvious parameters - brightness, saturation, contrast, as well as apply a sharpen filter.
I was actually surprised to realize how good the camera in the 2G phone was for this sort of thing when you don't limit it in weird ways. It's actually pretty easy to get a shot of an entire sheet of paper and if you keep the whole 1600 x 1200 image there's plenty of detail to read fine text.
So yeah. If you have an iPhone and a pair of reading glasses you might find Hawkeye a useful program to pick up. Plus you'd be supporting little old me! :-)