Monthly Archives: September 2006

HDR Photography

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With Jamie and Mike getting their cameras, my interest in more technical photography was aroused. A new trend of High Dynamic Range photography has taken off. HDR has been around for almost ten years now, but has taken off recently with easy to use software and the wide use of digital cameras. The concept is you take a number of photographs, each with a different exposure setting. You begin with the ideal picture, lets say at 1/8 sec, then you would take one at 1/60 sec and one at 1/2 sec. This will give you a wider range of colours and tones then you could get by just taking one image.

1/60 sec 1/8 sec 1/2 sec

One of the most important things is to keep the camera very still for these! I took a total of 12 images for this as this was my first experience, from the 12 I chose these three images, plugged them into my HDR software and here is the result.

HDR Sunset

This technique is very useful for taking pictures inside churches and anytime you wish to take a picture in an environment where you have a bright light in a dark room, like stained glass windows, or from doorways facing outside. I look forward to testing this in November!

{edit September 30}
Today I did two more pictures with HDR.

 

{edit October 05}
Today I did one more picture with HDR.

New Macbook

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I bought a new Macbook for the office for sales, one of many new ones I hope to get. The price is amazing for what you get, Dual Core 1.83GHz, 512meg DDR2 RAM, 60GB HD, 13.3″ 1280×800 LCD, iSight at 640×480, DVD-ROM/CDRW and a 5.5 hour battery life. The battery life is the part that really catches my eye, it’s to the full day at the office or school level, but I won’t be happy until it’s at 12+ hours. I digress, the point is, you get all of this for $1250CND, a price per hardware ration unmatched by anyone else.  This bundled with OSX, iLife, iWeb, iPhoto and other integrated applications which for the most part work seamlessly makes it a perfect computer for a. students b. new computer users and c. any family members you want to stop calling you for technical support. One of the greatest things about a Mac laptop is how well it works for suspend mode. Too many times my Windows laptop has drained its battery because a Windows popped up a message balloon letting me know my network cable has unplugged, where are the Apple would gracefully go into sleep. As well how fast the Mac wakes up, it’s instant, none of this waiting for 10-20 seconds.

Now the things I hate, from talking to people I seem to be the minority when it comes my my “issues”. First of all, enough of this wide screen crap. The main purpose of my laptop is not to watch movies, but to work, to browse the Internet and to type. So having a wide aspect ration screen does not help me and makes the laptop wide and rectangular in shape. I really enjoy my 4:3 ratio screen, it gives me lots of work area, in a nice confined environment. So please, Apple, make me a new 12″ laptop, like your old G4 ones which was the perfect size. GIVE ME A BACKLIT KEYBOARD!!! I hope that’s clear enough.

Things I would like, mostly a SD Slot, as all new cameras are SD, and not having to lug around my camera cable to plugging, hell I haven’t seen that cable in two years! Like I said at the beginning, 12+ hour battery life.

Macbook

Birthdays

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As my birthday approaches faster then a speeding bullet, which contrary to popular belief you cannot dodge “matrix style” got thinking on the whole concept of getting gifts from friends and family. It seems almost silly to me that they are the ones giving me presents for putting up with me for another year. I should be the one giving presents to them, for another year of misery I have administered to them from me waking up each morning.

Sunridge Store

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The new location is now open in Sunridge. We are doing well so far, but the demographic is totally different then the people around Kensington. Things I have learned so far.

  1. Everyone seems to carry cash, where in Kensington it's very very low.

  2. WAY more ethnic/immigrant crowed.

  3. Very low high end tea sales, and when it is it‚ by Asians

Posted in Tea

Cryptography

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I came accross a cryptography page recently, and decided to give it a shot. This was a basic letter replacement one, which was made fairly simple because word spaces were included. Here is the first one I did.

MTF IWNNXK ZJ TZM HZO DWQI GVQ ZWM.  TWQOGK JVQI TVH MZ TZXH MTFYG HZOI YQ HYIPVGHFH EWMWFX MYPUFMI.

It took me a hour and a half to solve, but was happy that I did manage to do it. Here is another interesting thing I found, it seems Poe enjoyed Cryptography a fair amount.

http://www.bokler.com/eapoe_challengesolution.html