Monthly Archives: January 2009

Very Cool Shoot and Post Tutorial

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Well, I just stumbled along this guest post on Scott Kelby’s blog. Ok, stumble is not the correct word as I usually stop by every day or two. This is from photographer Dustin Snipes, and a shoot he did of high school basketball stars.

This was just good timing, as I started the studio lighting class yesterday. It is great to see how others have set up their lights, and the effect on the pictures. Even better how he shows how he created the entire look, from the lights to the post processing. I like his use of the “high contrast” look. (Even better that he knows that this is not a look for every pictures.)

I learned a great photoshop tip from this post too. One way to “dodge and burn” is to create a new layer an fill it with 50% grey.¬†Then¬†set the blending mode to Softlight. Now, with a¬†brush opacity¬†of 5% and¬†hardness of¬†0%¬†, you can paint with either white or black. This will accent the highlights or darken the shadows just by switching the brush color on the same layer. Neat.

Studio Lighting Class

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Alien Bees B400I just got back from my first studio lighting class. It wasn’t too bad. We just went over equipment, so we didn’t get into any real detail. Next class is when the fun starts and we get to set up lights and shoot pictures of a model.

The class is through continuing education, with this class at Jefferson High in Uptown. The instructor is Gil Dignen, and he seems to be a great guy. I have signed up for the intro and the advanced course that follows it, so I have 9 weeks total I think.

A cool thing about the class is that we are going to go to his studio for the next 3 classes (at least), and he will be bringing in a real model that he works with. This should be a lot of fun.

Lameda Plugin

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Here is another plugin, Lameda, that uses the exif data that comes from the images as uploaded into WordPress. Lets take a picture:

Tulip in the Rain

Here is the exif data when you put this tag in your post: [lameda_exif id=556]

lameda

The thing with this, is you still have to go into the post html and find out what the wordpress id of the image is. Still a bit of a pain. I like that it is pulling this from wordpress. Looks like wordpress stores this in the post_metadata table in an entry about the image. Not all data is saved, just some of the more basic ones like those shown. We just need a more automated, and visually appealing way to show it.

Exzo WordPress Plugin

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Exzo is the Exif and Zoom Image plugin for wordpress. I thought I would try it out. It is supposed to display some exif info around your pictures. Not sure it will work for me. I already post my photos on flickr, and just link to them here, but it seems like an interresting idea. One issue is that there is no way to pop in the image using the library tool. You need to goto the library and find out the image name, then in the HTML tab of the blog editor, you can add a statement like this:

[exzo url="" title=""]dsc_0021[/exzo]

That will get you this image on my site:

Exzo EXIF

Most of the styling and which exif data that shows up is all customizeable. But I have a couple of issues. First, there seems to be an issue in the plugin where is doesn’t reference the zoom.css file. I had to modify exzo.php to point to it correctly. Second, the included lightbox effect isn’t so hot. The biggest issue is that the image pops up full size. Other versions I have seen try to scale the image for the viewport.

It does look like you could opt to just show the exif data though, like this :

[exif="dsc_0021.jpg"]

Exzo plugin example

What would be really neat is if instead of the formatting of the picture, and the need to use this tag, is if via javascript, it could just attach itself to the image and display on a hover, or a click or something. Hmmm… that would be interesting…

Added the Series Plugin

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I have now added the series plugin, and we have a page that acts as an index to the different series on the site. I have removed the previous pages that existed for the two java tutorials that I had up. They are now part of a series. That is why you see them posted again today. I had to convert them into a post, not a page to put them into the series.

I also have a new series going, on building a NAS. There are two posts there now, and it will be ongoing as I rebuild my NAS and show how to use Linux with RAID, LVM, and other tools.

Deciding on the NAS Software

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This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Building a NAS

tuxSo, I hope you have a box ready, because we are going to install some software today. I had said this was going to be built using Linux, but we really should take another look at some of the possibilities. I don’t want to run Windows server on this box. If that is something you are interested in, you will have to use some Google skills. I wan to look at how we can use some Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to do what we want to do. There are some alternatives to rolling it ourselves, and they are worth a look. But first, lets decide what it is that we want to run on this box, or what capabilities it needs to have.
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Intro to Java and Static Stuff

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This entry is part 2 of 13 in the series Intro to Java

This lesson will cover some basic concepts in Java related to static variables and methods. It was created as a lesson for a class room setting. I have converted it to a post here.

What does static mean?

Lucky for us, static has nothing to do with statics, a class I had to take in Engineering about the forces on objects that are not moving.

What is does have to do with, seems to go against the concepts we talked about in the Classes vs. Objects lesson. If you followed along there, we talked about how the Class was the blueprint, and the Object was a concrete, instantiated, “built” Class. Its variables were its own, and the methods belonged to this Object.

When something is static, it means that it belongs to the class, and not the object. Every object has access to this item, but it is not unique to the object.

Sun Trails

Index: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/index.html

Link into OO Trail: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/java/javaOO/classvars.html
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Intro to Java Objects and Classes

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This entry is part 1 of 13 in the series Intro to Java

This lesson will cover some basic concepts in Java related to classes and objects. It was created as a lesson for a class room setting. I have converted it to a post here.

Class vs Object

Definition from page 10, Java A Beginner’s Guide (Herbert Schildt)

A class defines the form of an object. It specifies both the data and the code that will operate on that data. Java uses a class specification to construct objects. Objects are instances of a class. Thus, a class is essentially a set of plans that specify how to build an object.

The code and data that constitute a class are called members of the class. Specifically, the data defined by the class are referred to as member variables or instance variables. The code that operates on that data is referred to as member methods or just methods.

Sun Trails

Index: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/index.html

OO Trail: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/java/javaOO/index.html
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SPD missing byte 23 or 25

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21 of 365 So I started putting my parts together. I put the motherboard, memory, and CPU together, and then put the whole thing into the case. Plugged in the power supply, and the hard drives. I then hit the power switch and got the message “SPD missing byte 23 or 25” and then press F1 to continue. Well, it looks like there is not much I can do about it. Found some answers here in this forum. It looks like we can blame the motherboard, the bios, the memory, or the AMD chipset. Narrows it down a bit. Anyway, doesn’t really matter, there is something getting reported that there is a memory error, but it is a red herring. Aparently you can just let your motherboard know that you don’t want to stop on this type of error. Only thing is, this Foxconn motherboard and AMI bios doesn’t give me that option. I can stop on all errors, or ignore keyboard/mouse errors. Well, that doesn’t help. I won’t have this box auto rebooting I guess.