Cricalix.Net

Hot off of my RSS reader, courtesy of DPReview:

Sony has today announced the brand for its digital SLR system and it’s hardly a big surprise. The new system will be known as the Sony (Alpha) mount, the same name as Minolta has used for its SLR / D-SLR cameras in the Japanese market for over twenty years. This choice of name will perhaps be designed to provide some sense of continuation from the Konica-Minolta photo buy-out. Sony has confirmed that the new system is based on the existing Alpha / Maxxum / Dynax mount and will continue to be compatible. The other hint in the press release is the plural in ‘cameras that will be launched worldwide this summer.’

Here’s hoping something good comes out of this.

For whatever reason, WordPress doesn’t seem to log errors.

I’m currently fiddling with doing direct inline uploads as an easy way to get some thumbnails into post about going to the Netherlands. Two days ago, it worked fine, once I installed the GD component of PHP. Today, it doesn’t want to generate the thumbnail for a 600KB JPEG, and won’t tell me why it doesn’t want to.  I smell an issue in GD, but with no errors being presented…
I looked under the hood, and there’s not one single logging call, anywhere, that I can see. I really wouldn’t care if it was in Sanskrit, SQL or a flat file, just give me a log! Oh well, time to scratch an itch, at least in inline-uploading.php.

Addendum: Chop the file from 3012 x 2004 to half that, and the thumbnail gets generated.  *twitch*

Craig has pointed out that I’ve been posting for over a year. Good grief, where does time go?

Remember when you were younger how the year seemed to take sooooo long to pass. Christmas seemed to be forever and a day away until suddenly it was there. Summer vacation was never long enough, and school terms were way too long, until it was exam time.

These days, working the 8 to 5 rat race I find myself wishing for a long year. Not going to happen, so I’m just going to have to make the best of what time I do have. Never know when the number 19 bus is going to strike.

While meandering around the ‘net today, I stumbled across a bit of software called RawShooter essentials 2006.  It claimed to have a nice workflow, and some other handy features, and even better, it was free.  Windows only by the looks, but free.  I queued it for download on my home server, and played with it when I got home.

To say it’s a nice bit of software would be a bit of an understatement.  The real-time previewing of any and all changes rocks, and the fact that the changes aren’t made to the RAW file, but are recorded externally (like Bibble) is very nice.  1 RAW file + 1 meta file = 1 TIFF output.  It’s generating 16-bit TIFFs for me, complete with EXIF data, so I’m pleased as punch.

I’m taking the exports from RSE, and feeding them back into digiKam for my final work.  It’s nice to know that even though I can’t work properly on my RAW files yet in digiKam, I can still use it for the final conversion to JPEG/PNG, and for tracking things like location, rating and categories.  I’m also starting to understand the sheer beauty of the RAW format, as proprietary as it may be at the moment.  Being able to change the exposure compensation, saturation, detail and more, without causing any artifacts or aberrations just rocks.
My writeup on Amsterdam is mostly complete, so it’s just down to the processing of the 1000+ pictures (which RSE is making a breeze with the queued conversions feature), posting them into my gallery and uploading the data to my mirror server.  I can then link a few images into the posting, and make it public :)

So ‘Drew mentioned the semi-exorbitant cost of the Beeb’s license fee. Yep, it’s a pain in the rear, but it does provide for some excellent content. All of the nature documentaries, news shows (including the World Service and localised feeds), radio content and things like the concerts Radio 1 run come from that fee (directly or indirectly). Toss on a digital Freeview box for another £40 or so, and you’re up to 30-odd channels. Still, it is expensive, and when it’s not a necessity, there’s no real need to pay it. It’s a pity the BBC’s trial of on-line content is over now, otherwise that’d be another way to watch (though I think they weren’t carrying live stuff).

I’m fairly happy to pay the fee, as I’ve said before. I find the content to be well worth it, and channels without advertisements are a thing that should be treasured.

Happy birthday Andrew.. or perhaps that should be ‘I hope that you encountered a modicum of joviality and pleasantness on the passing of your annual mark of age.’ Or maybe not. Blame a hunger-addled brain that wants food – so shopping I shall go.

Oh yeah, if you can reach Newcastle (if you even see this on Saturday), you can watch Dr. Who at my place :)

Well, I’m back from the Netherlands in one piece. I didn’t manage to shoot 18 GB of photos, but I think I managed about 10 GB. I’ll know when I dump the cards from the camera and the Archos. I think I shot 3 or 4 GB when visiting Keukenhof – way too many tulips, narcissus and hyacinths. I’ve also got a veritable ream of notes from my journey, where I wrote down anything that crossed my mind as I walked along, sat on trams, trains and planes, and sat at various other places.

I’ve got two days of vacation before work, so I’ll be looking at doing a writeup on my stay in the Netherlands, and processing all of my photos. Then I’ve got to process Slimbridge!

In 36 hours, I should be in the Netherlands on vacation. Marco has confirmed he can meet me at the train station in Den Haag (otherwise called The Hague), so life is easy (Schipol -> Den Haag, probably via Centraal Station). The KM 5D is packed, the 18-70 and 75-300 mm lenses are packed, both batteries are charged, 3.5 GB of CF is formatted, and 18 GB of Archos storage plus battery backup is also packed. Tonight I’ll iron a few clothes, wash a shirt and pair of jeans, and pack my nice large backpack – I don’t see a need for more than a few jeans, shirts, socks and underwear. It should be a nice light backpack on the way out at least.

Speaking of 75-300mm – Dad bought me a KM 75-300 AF as a gift. It’s been showing a bit of chromatic aberration on bright, sharp edges, but for nature, it’s turning out to be quite brilliant. The f-stop needs to be cranked down a bit for sharpness, and it hunts at the far end of the zoom, but I’m really not complaining – I’ve been missing shots because the 18-70 can’t reach far enough, and a 75-300 can reach quite far :) I’ll have some samples up later today I hope.

On the subject of samples and cameras, I’ve got a multi-gig backlog from trips to Slimbridge (birds), Apedale and general walking around that I need to process and post on my gallery. Don’t expect to see anything there until after I get back from the Netherlands (with probably another 20 gig of photos [at 8 MB per shot]!)