The Author – Bart Busschots
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May
10
More Photos Uploaded
Filed Under Photography | Leave a Comment
I’m now completely up-to-date with my gallery. With all this amazing good weather of late I’ve managed to get loads of shots I’m really happy with. Lots of nice shots of the area around Maynooth and loads of lovely shots of flowers and butterflies. If you’re interested you can see all my May shots in this gallery.
May
9
April Photos Added to Gallery
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I’d gotten very behind in getting my images posted to my gallery so I spent the afternoon today getting my April images up. I already have loads and loads of images taken so far this month to upload but at least I’m less far behind now! You can check out my April Photos on this gallery page.
May
4
Photo of the Week 11 – A Lunar Reflection
Filed Under Photography | 2 Comments
Although planning and preparation are very important in photography, some of the best shots are still happy coincidences. This is the perfect example of such a shot. I thought I’d figured out the exact shot I wanted so I was making my way to the spot I’d chosen very carefully when I glint of reflected moonlight hit my eye. I stopped my bike immediately and managed to get this shot after a few attempts.
I took this shot not long after sunset on an evening early last month from the edge of the playing fields on the campus of St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Ireland.
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 6 Sec
- Focal Length: 28mm
- Focal Ratio: F4.2
- ISO: 800
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: 0.0
[tags]Maynooth, Ireland, Moon, Reflection[/tags]
Apr
30
OS X Leopard 6 Months On
Filed Under Computers & Tech | 1 Comment
It’s hard to believe it’s only been six months since Leopard’s release. At this stage most of the commentary and reviews have been done and dusted for months and people are just getting on with using Leopard. Although it’s only been six short months we’ve already had two major updates to the OS and we’re expecting a third any day now. The reviews ranged from un-fettered admiration to utter condemnation. Reality is of course somewhere in between. I’ve heard a lot of comparison’s made between Leopard and Vista and at least one of them is correct. Like Vista, the first release version of Leopard should have been called a public Beta. Like Vista Leopard was late yet still only half-baked when it did finally ship. However, other comparisons to Vista don’t hold. Leopard has delivered substantial new functionality and it has done so without adding significant bloat. Sure, Apple’s list of 300 changes was hyper-inflated but there were still some real gems in that list. Also, Leopard runs just fine on my first generation Mac Mini which was underpowered even when it was new over three years ago!
The ultimate question is whether or not Leopard was enough of an improvement on Tiger to warrant the price of the upgrade? Are many of the new features actually useful or are they just eye-candy and fluff? Six months on I’m taking the time to reflect and ask myself which Leopard features I’d really miss if I was forced to down-grade to Tiger in the morning.
[tags]OS X, apple, Leopard, Tiger[/tags]
Apr
30
It seems like a long time since my first article pointing out the security problems with Eircom’s default wireless setup. At the time I got a few requests for screen shots but couldn’t deliver since I don’t have one of these Eircom routers myself. Last week a very kind reader contacted me and asked if I’d like some screenshots. I happily accepted and used them to illustrate this post showing the step-by-step instructions Eircom customers can take to improve their security. As always this post comes with no warranty of any sort. Although I am quite knowledgeable on these matters I do not pretend to be an expert and as this advice is free I will accept no liability what so ever for any undesirable outcomes which anyone may experience while following these instructions. I have of course done my best to ensure the instructions are clear, concise and correct. These instructions are for Eircom customers with the recent Netopia wireless routers Eircom provide as standard to home users.
[tags]Eircom, Wireless, Wifi, security, WEP, WPA, router, Netopia[/tags]
Apr
29
Like my Photo of the Week 3 (El Castell de Guadalest) this shot was taken way back in 2000 with the old Olympus OM-1 I inherited from my parents. In fact, this shot is taken just a few meters from where the last one was but looking in the exact opposite direction. I have no idea why I like this shot so much but I just do. There’s something about it that I really love.
Since good old fashioned 35mm film doesn’t store EXIF data I can’t give any technical specs for this shot.
[tags]Spain, El Castell de Guadalest[/tags]
Apr
24
Sure Won’t Play – DRM Flaw Illustrated
Filed Under Software Development, Computers & Tech | Leave a Comment
This week Microsoft are providing a great practical illustration of one of the fundamental flaws in the whole idea of DRM. When you buy DRMed content you don’t really own it because your ability to play it is dependent on third parties who can cut you off at any time. Showing a fantastic flare for irony Microsoft are pulling the plug on their MSN music licensing servers hence removing people’s ability to play music sold under Microsoft’s PlaysForSure DRM scheme. At the end of August the plugs will be pulled leaving people in limbo. Any licenses they will have already downloaded by then will continue to work. However, the next time any of these poor unfortunate customers buy a new computer or have to re-install their OS they will loose the ability to play the music they payed for and thought they owned.
Personally I hope this gets a lot of publicity so that it drives the dangers of DRM home to people. The more educated people are about DRM the more pressure there will come on the music industry to drop it for once and for all.
More in this Wired article.
[tags]RDM, PlaysForSure, Microsoft[/tags]
Apr
20
Photo of the Week 9 – The Light of Christ
Filed Under Photography | 10 Comments
No, I haven’t had some sort of epiphany, I’m still every bit as agnostic as ever, however, I think the title fits the photograph perfectly. I took this image months ago but was never quite happy with it until yesterday. So what’s changed? I converted the image to partially black & white using the technique I described yesterday. I had a hunch this image would work well partially mono-chormoed but my jaw still dropped when I saw the result. It went from a picture with promise to one of my very favourite photos.
The image is of one of the stained glass windows on the back of the Gunne Chapel on the campus of St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Ireland. I took it shortly before Christmas last year.
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Sigma EX 30mm 1:1.4 DC HSM
- Exposure: 1/15 Sec
- Focal Length: 30mm
- Focal Ratio: F1.4
- ISO: 800
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: -1.0
- Post Processing: Partially converted to black & white with the GIMP.
Updated (21 April 2008): At the request of Paul in the comments I’ve tilt-shifted this shot too. Personally I’m not over-joyed with the results. You can find the tilt-shifted version here.
[tags]Photography, partial black & white, stained glass, Maynooth, Ireland[/tags]
Apr
19
Sometimes it can be very interesting to take a colour image and convert all of it to black-and-white except for some carefully chosen areas. I just added a number of images processed in this way to the collection of wallpapers in my gallery.
The only reason you would want to do this is for artistic effect. You can use the technique to draw people’s attention to specific parts of an image, or to accentuate a particular colour your interested in. You are really only limited by your imagination when it comes to applying this technique.
You’ll be happy to know that the technique for doing this is a lot simpler than the technique for tilt-shifting images I described recently.
[tags]Photography, GIMP, tutorial, partially-coloured black & white[/tags]
Apr
19
New Wallpapers Added
Filed Under Photography | 4 Comments
I’ve been experimenting with a technique for producing images that are part color, part black and white. Some of the images that I’ve been experimenting with were suited to being converted to wall papers so I’ve uploaded those to my Wallpapers gallery.
[tags]Photography, wallpapers[/tags]