A blog about life, linux and photography
Recently I decided that I should have another go at some macro shots of the cactuses that are sat on my window sill. The photos below were taken with one or two speedlights with a sheet of A4 paper to diffuse the light and wireless triggers (ironically called Cactus triggers) to fire them.
If you run a Debian or Ubuntu system and have more than one release in your apt-sources file (/etc/apt/sources.list) then you should probably learn the basics of apt-pinning. Apt-pinning allows you to have a specific package stay at a certain level or set a preference for it to be installed from a specific release. This way you can have the latest version of package X from a cutting-edge server without worrying about the rest of your packages moving up to cutting-edge levels by accident.
Two excellent resources are:
I recently installed KDE 4.2 on my Debian laptop, and found the whole process surpisingly easy and now working very nicely.
Following the instructions from The Debian KDE maintainers website, all that is required is enabling a sid repository and then installing the kde4 package which does the usual full-install of KDE. It is worth noting that it will warn you about installing in a running KDE session, so it is best to logout and use another windowmanager (like the failsafe one) or just a virtual console.
Once done, log back in with KDE and the migration wizard will move your data over (backing up the KDE3 settings in case you want to revert).
For me the process was painless and fairly quick. Configuring KDE to my liking took a little while, but I am quite liking it now and the widgets are quite cool. I have yet to turn on the special effects as I never got round to sorting out the ATI 3D drivers on my laptop since installing it, as they have been rather poor in the past (not sure if they are better now, but I use less power without the effects anyway)
Bruce Schneier linked to a rather interesting statistics article looking at the cause of death in America: John Goekler: The Most Dangerous Person in the World?
The single greatest killer of Americans is the so-called “lifestyle disease”. Somewhere between half a million and a million of us get a short ride in a long hearse every year because of smoking, lousy diets, parking our bodies in front of the TV instead of operating them, and downing yet another six pack and / or tequila popper.
According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, between 310,000 and 580,000 of us will commit suicide by cigarette this year. Another 260,000 to 470,000 will go in the ground due to poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. And some 85,000 of us will drink to our own departure.
After the person in the mirror, the next most dangerous individual we’re ever likely to encounter is one in a white coat. Something like 200,000 of us will experience “cessation of life” due to medical errors – botched procedures, mis-prescribed drugs and “nosocomial infections”. (The really nasty ones you get from treatment in a hospital or healthcare service unit.)
The next most dangerous encounter the average American is likely to have is with a co-worker with an infection. Or a doorknob, stair railing or restaurant utensil touched by someone with the crud. “Microbial Agents” (read bugs like flu and pneumonia) will send 75,000 of us to meet the Reaper this year.
If we live through those social encounters, the next greatest danger is “Toxic Agents” – asbestos in our ceiling, lead in our pipes, the stuff we spray on our lawns or pour down our clogged drains. Annual body count from these handy consumer products is around 55,000.
After that, the most dangerous person in our lives is the one behind the wheel. About 42,000 of us will cash our chips in our rides this year. More than half will do so because we didn’t wear a seat belt. (Lest it wrinkle our suit.)
Some 31,000 of us will commit suicide by intention this year. (As opposed to not fastening our seat belts or smoking, by which we didn’t really mean to kill ourselves.)
About 30,000 of us will die due to our sexual behaviors, through which we’ll contract AIDS or Hepatitis C. Another 20,000 of us will pop off due to illicit drug use.
The next scariest person in our lives is someone we know who’s having a really bad day. Over 16,000 Americans will be murdered this year, most often by a relative or friend.
After that, it’s an overdose on “non-steroidal anti-inflammatories”, acetaminophen or aspirin. About 7,600 hundred a year, perhaps due to the aftermath of those tequila poppers.
…As the data clearly shows, the things that genuinely threaten us are the ones we are most likely to ignore or simply accept. (We’re statistically far more likely to be killed by a lightning strike than by an action of Al Qaeda, for example.) The ones that we’re scared witless of – and spend trillions of increasingly scarce dollars to avert in our boundless paranoia – are less likely to harm us than a bag of peanuts. (Deaths in America due to peanut allergies average 50 – 100 per year.)
Deaths of Americans due to terrorist activities, according to the US State Department, have averaged less than 15 per year since 2002. And all of those occurred abroad. The majority were in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. (Civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan were not counted due to the fact those occurred in war zones.)
On the weekend a few photographers from work got together to have a go at trying some car shots. We turned up with cars and cameras and started off with some shots by mounting the tripod onto the frame of the car
Because of engine vibrations in the sports-car we decided to try the shots with the engine off, and the car just coasting fairy slowly. The shots from the side of the car weren’t bad, however the ones form the front did not have a slow enough shutter speed for the slow movement. Side-shots seem to work better as we had the car turning atight corner, so got some blur out of the rotation.
We then had a go at some panning shots, where someone drove the car past us and we took photos. Pretty much all my early ones were a bit rubbish.
I found it really tricky to do any shots closer to the car, and think I would have done better with a longer lens and being further back. If you are not in the centre of the arc the car is doing round you then you find the nose and/or tail of the car blurs quite easily when you are close
We also tried some tracking shots, where we were in the boot of a car, with the subject car following close behind – tip: don’t use a diesel as your lead car!
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