Cyberward.net

I now have my portfolio at christopherwardphotography.com iPhone ready. The site is heavy on javascript, and loads a lot of images at once. Makes for a slow 3G iphone experience. And the images were too small once safari scaled them. So I fixed that.

After hearing David mention a lightroom gallery plugin that was made for the iPhone, and trying to show someone that site (no flash on the iPhone), and my own (too slow), I thought I should do something. I don’t have lightroom. I have Aperture, but have never tried the web sites it can create. I just decided to create something on my own.

I wanted it to be simple, and not to use javascript. I also wanted it to look iPhoneish, and look good when the iPhone was vertical or horizontal. Also, just like wptouch that I wrote about yesterday, I wanted it to come up automaticly for iPhone users.

If you go there now with an iPhone you will see the iPhone specific site. If you don’t have an iPhone, this is what it looks like:

On the left is the first page displaying the albums in vertical mode. The horizontal mode shows all four in a row. On the right is the blue album in horizontal mode. In vertical mode the images are two wide, and you scroll a bit more. Press an image and you see just that image in the browser. I didn’t make pages for each image. Each album has that nav bar at the bottom like the bottom of the first page.

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Part one of the studio class ended. We didn’t do any shooting Wednessday. Mostly talked about equipment. Gil is very pro studio strobe. I would like to try some strobist style shooting with some less expensive gear. I own one SB800 and would like to get another flash or two I can trigger with it with a couple of umbrellas. The trouble is getting that equipment cheap enough to make it alot cheaper than the studio strobes. Anyway, since I didn’t get a chance to shoot, I thought I would get a night city shot from the north side. This is what I got.

I think I have finally had enough of National Camera. I keep wanting to support a local store, but enough is enough. The Edina store was the place that really pissed me off. I was looking at the D40, and the guy there keep pushing the D80 telling me that the D40 wasn’t a real DSLR. I was pretty pissed at him by the time I left.

I was back a couple of times after that looking for accessories, and a tripod, but no one really wanted to talk to me.

The Golden Valley store was better. I bought the D40 there at their tent sale. Then when the D90 came out, I bought it there too. Last weekend I went and picked up a Manfrotto 55xPRO tripod. They only had the head, not the legs. They sent me to the downtown store. The guy on the phone said I could park next door at the Orpheum. I did, but this big dude with the Orpheum started yelling at me. I told him I was told to park here and he called me a liar. This is why I don’t go downtown where there is no parking. I parked a couple of blocks away.

I got the legs, and bought this leveling tool that fits in the hotshoe. Much more expensive than it needs to be. Anyway, when I got it home, I noticed that the level is busted. Not going back downtown, so I head to the Edina store.

At the Edina store I exchange the level, and look at a few things. The guy looks bored. I tell him I have a D90 and need a wired shutter release. He gets me a MC-DC1, and I head for home.

I head outside at night in the falling snow to take pictures with the tripod and the new cable release. It is the wrong one. I find out I needed the MC-DC2. The “1″ is for the D70/D80. Now I have to go back again.

It is soooo much easier online. And cheaper. And I don’t have to park. The guys on the phone never seem bored. National Camera Exchange won’t get more of my business. I have had enough.

I got an iPhone recently, and I have to say that I love the thing. I have used more minutes of data plan than I have minutes of talk time. I like checking email/flickr/facebook/rss feeds when I have a minute without using a computer, or without needing a wi-fi connection. I will document some of the other plug-ins that I am using later, but right now I want to talk about WordPress and iPhone/iTouch devices.

I was amazed that I could read my blog on the iPhone. I had to zoom in a bit, but it wasn’t too bad. I was happy. Then I started to wonder about creating a theme that is more suited to the iPhone screen. Then I did what all good programmers do before they start cooding. They Google. Sure enough, I found WPTouch.

If you have an iPhone/iTouch, come back and take a look. You won’t believe it until you see it.

This plugin for wordpress intercepts when an iPhone is accessing your blog, and replaces it with a theme that looks like an iPhone application. Amazing. Using a little javascript, it even has menus, ¬†and the comments work just fine. It does make your site a little generic. It has the ability in the admin screen to adjust the colors, but I haven’t played with it yet. I would like to modify the header, but I’ll leave that for another day.

I installed version 1.7.5 from the plugin repository on wordpress .

So, what if you want to make a post? There’s a plugin for that too. I have installed an application on the iPone called WordPress for iPhone. This app provides a simple interface to allow posting to your blog. There are lots of features available, but some things are left wanting. It would be nice to be able to add pictures from your wordpress gallery, but it looks like you can only add pictures from the iphone. Both your synched photo’s, and your camera. You can save drafts locally, but not edit ones from your site. The editor isn’t the “visual” editor from your site, it is the html editor, so links and images are in tags. I think it will be nice to have though.

So why didn’t I write this post from the iPhone? You type even this many words on that little virtual keyboard and tell me how long it would take you

I’ve talked about vision here before, mostly from a “What the heck is my vision anyway?” perspective. David duChemin is my favorite evangalist on the vision thing, but I still haven’t got much closer to figureing out what mine is.

Today I got another perspective. It is good to know that photographers much better than I wrestle with this too. Today on Scott Kelby’s guest blog Wednessday, Zack Arias took the challenge. He definately took that blog in a different direction. Not only was it a video blog, but he went after vision, creativity, inspiration, and the winter blahs all in one fell swoop. This video is very well done, and the message is worth a listen. Or two.

On Saturday I got a chance to go out and shoot. I wasn’t sure where to go, but I headed to Lake Calhoun. Turned out to be a great place to take my new lens. I got the chance to shoot some ice boats.

There were a few different kinds. There was a windsurfer, and both small front steer, and a long rear steer boat. I talked to the guy with the long rear steer, and these guys are really into this kind of thing. Multiple boats, multiday regattas, traveling around to different lakes. Crazy. The one guy thought that maybe this was the first and only rear steer boat to be on Lake Calhoun. Not sure how we can know when they have been around since about the 40′s, but if it is, I have the only pictures!

I missed posting for a few days. It is time for the next studio class, and I am just getting to putting up some pictures from the last class!

I got the chance to use my Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 lens. That thing is very nice. I liked that I was able to stand back a bit and not be on top of the model. I had taken some pictures before with my 55-200, but these turned out sharper. I wish I could remember exactly what type of lighting we were doing with each of the models. Some of the lighting techniques woked better than others. I have some of the images turned into prints to bring to class tomorrow. The “models” in the photos are others from the class. The people that were supposed to sit in the chair didn’t show up.

This lesson will look more at class concepts in Java: Extending, overriding, composition, and inner classes. It was created as a lesson for a class room setting. I have converted it to a post here.

Is a Class just a Class?

I recently heard that the classic contractor response to a question is “Well, it depends.” That might just apply here. There are several different types of classes. There are regular classes, like we have been using, there are inner classes, and there are anonymous inner classes. In all cases though, they behave just the same. They still need to be instantiated, and they still contain variables and methods. What we will look at here is what those different types are, and when you might use them.

To do this, we will once again revisit the Robot. This time we will be adding a head that rotates to the Robot. We will look at placing the code directly into the Robot without using another class, using an inner class to Robot, and using containment to hold another class.

Before we get to that, lets revisit the parent/child relationship that exists when a class is extended and how casting works. Then we will get to the RobotHead.
Sun Trails Index: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/index.html
Link into Objects and Classes Trail: (nested classes) http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/java/javaOO/nested.html

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I feel like I haven’t had time to get anything up on the blog for awhile. I have several things I am trying to get finished, so instead of telling you what I do have, I will tell you what I will have.

• I will have part three of the Intro To Java series up soon. It is called “Revisiting Classes” and will get into class extension, as well as inner classes, and using composition.
• I sure hope I will have part three on building a NAS up. I have the OS installed and I need to get RAID and LVM installed and document the process to put up here. I need my back-up back up!
• I need to get some pictures up from the new lens. Maybe that will come from tonight. I have another class on Studio Lighting, and I will be taking the new lens to use.
• I just got an iPhone, so I have lots to say about that, but little time to do so. Amazing how the next “new thing” makes you wonder how you ever lived without it.
• I am working on a plugin for WordPress that will display the exif data of an image in user configurable ways. The first release will display the data captured by wordpress on upload and display in the title. Hopefully this will be out soon too.

I was completely floored this weekend. My father pulled out a BIG yellow box with the letters Nikon on the side.  What was inside the box, I would never have imagined my father to have picked up for me. I must have droned on for longer than I remember when we drove to Cleveland together last year about this lens. I have wanted this lens for the longest time, but it is quite a bit of jingle.

Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF

The Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 is a monster.¬†¬†Here is a dpreview. (that’s where the image is from) This is an amazing do everything lens. I am psyched to bring this to my studio lighting class. If I get to take more portraits and senior pictures this spring, this will be the lens on my camera.

It is not light, but it does let in a lot of light. It would require a few trips to the gym before you would want to carry this all day at a wedding. But, it is fast in every sense. I love the 2.8 aperture. I love how fast the AF-S ultrasonic motor focuses. I also love¬† that you get VR on top of that. I was shooting indoors at 2.8, and I still got sharp pictures handheld at 1/30. I couldn’t do that with my 17-50mm f/2.8 Tamron. I love VR.

Did I mention that this is sharp. I shot a picture of the door across the room at the hotel in Fargo. On the door was the usual drivel about the room cost, fire escapes, liability, etc. When I zoom in on that writting, it is very readable. It was only a postage stamp size on the picture, but I could still zoom in and read the words. Amazing.

Did I mention how happy I am to have this lens? Woo Hoo. Thanks Dad.

I will try to get some pictures up later from this lens.