Monthly Archive for June, 2008

Recent Photos

Published
by
Anton
on June 22, 2008
in Photography
. 2 Comments

I thought it’s about time I mentioned the photos I have been taking recently

Some are random (as seen below)

img_14884

I also snapped a close-up of some ants and other insects (aphids?)) eating at the stem of my sunflower. I was quite surprised at the detail I got, though admittedly it was with my ef-s 60mm macro lens

img_15206

I also got a nice shot of a bee while on a walk one lunchtime at work

img_14933

And then there is my whole set of photos from Hinton Ampner, which I realised I didn’t have the old ones from last year up, so theres a fair few in there including a whole pile trying to catch a bee flying. (click on the photo below to see the whole set)

Hinton Ampner

And I recently took photos of the Hursley Model Railway (again click on the image below to see the whole set). Some of these were done with an off-camera flash with a coloured gel, which produced some interesting effects, though not very life-like.

Hursley Model Railway

Bank scams by phone

Published
by
Anton
on June 15, 2008
in Blogging and Humor
. 0 Comments

UserFriendly has 2 fabulous comic strips on Bank scams by phone (the kind where someone phones you up and pretends to be your bank in order to get secure information by asking you to “confirm” some details)
Cartoon 1, Cartoon 2

Its a shame that they don’t let you hotlink the images like xkcd does

BMW Gina

Published
by
Anton
on June 11, 2008
in News and Technology
. 0 Comments

Theres an interesting buzz at the moment on a new BMW concept car which has a shell made of some sort of rubber fabric.

Theres a short articlt on Top Gear

And theres a wonderful video on Youtube

Wordpress, k2, openid

Published
by
Anton
on June 5, 2008
in Blogging, Internet and Technology
. 0 Comments

I use the k2 theme for this wordpress blog. I used to write my own, but k2 is much, much neater. I also use the openid plugin for wordpress. (I wrote about openid’s before)

To get the two to play together, you need to turn off live commenting.

In my case, as my blog is also my openid url (see this tutorial in delegating your open id if you want to use your blog or website as your openid url, and any provider), I had to add some code the the k2 style’s functions.php

add_action('wp_head', 'custom_header');

function custom_header () {
        ?>
        <link rel="openid.server" href="...openid provider url..."/>
        <link rel="openid.delegate" href="...openid provider url..."/>
        <?php
}

Now you have your own blog as your openid url, and your blog accepts openid’s for comments with the k2 theme :)

The Decisive Photograper - Bert Stephani

Published
by
Anton
on June 3, 2008
in Photography
. 0 Comments

Bert Stephani (Confessions of a Photographer) has done two very interesting posts as part of a workshop he ran titled “The Decisive Photograper” - Live Shoot Outdoor and Live Shoot Indoor make for fantastic reading if you want to know more about balancing a portable flash with natural light for that perfect portrait.

I have bee following Bert’s blog for a while now, and it really is fantastic - I strongly recommend reading through his archive, particularly for the videos he’s done during shoots.

Petition to reduce fuel duty

Published
by
Anton
on June 1, 2008
in Blogging
. 0 Comments

I suppose it was only a matter of time given the current prices of petrol in the UK
Petition to: Reduce Fuel duty to bring fuel prices back to an acceptable level [petition.pm.gov]