My poor neglected blog

Is it really that long since I last posted on my blog?!? OMG!

It has been super busy at work since November... trying to get things prepared for the Windows 7 and server 2008 R2 rollout. With the little darlings back on Tuesday, I've nearly managed to get everything sorted and I should have a few minutes spare to update my blog.

Watch out for a post about profile pitfalls very soon!

Adobe Badges

IMG_3159
Originally uploaded by Ric Charlton

I was sorting through some 'old' pictures to upload to Flickr and stumbled across this one.

I'd forgotten I'd taken this and, I think, it's rather good :-)

Noise versus ISO for Canon EOS 1Ds

Gary recently pointed me towards a forum post discussing noise on a EOS 40D at different ISO settings. The forum post can be seen here.

This whole 'faking' of ISO settings - basically using a full stop lower ISO setting and boosting the EV in camera which caused problems.

It seems that the 5D also suffers from this, although the effect is seen at different points through the ISO range. This got me thinking... does my 1Ds do the same thing? An experiment was required!

After a few practices, I settled on the following conditions:

1. Camera set to Manual



2. No lens - just the body cap



3. Eye-piece cover shut



4. Exposure time set to 30 seconds (this exagerated the noise at very low ISO)

I then took a shot at each ISO setting (from 50 to 1250) and measured the mean luminance in Photoshop CS4. That produced the following graph (which didn't show a lot because I didn't have enough noise!).

I re-measured the luminance after increasing the EV on each shot by 20. This made for some noisy shots at high ISO (as you would expect!). The following graph was produced which showed the differences a little clearer.

So... what does this prove? IMHO, the 1Ds does not suffer from the faking of ISO settings in the same way as the 5D and 40D were described. Although the graphs do not clearly show this, ISO 160 did produce slightly less noise than both those ISOs below and those above it - the difference was only 0.06 on the +20 EV shot mind ;-)

Picasa and Flickr

I've been contemplating a switch to Flickr from Picasa Web for some time because it tends to have better integration with many Web 2.0 apps - e.g. Facebook. The main reason stopping me migrating, though, is that I really like Google's Picasa application.

Today I came a cross a great little app called Picasa2Flickr which adds another button to Picasa which uses Flickr Uploadr to get the selected pictures onto the web. Not the prettiest solution but it does seem to carry across all the titles, tags, etc. (except for the geotag data).

A note about the installation though... it's not immediately obvious but you need to click the links in the instructions to get the button to install correctly.

Facebook Test Post

This is a post to check whether adjusting my Blog feed (as per the instructions here) would allow full posts and piccies to automagically import to Facebook.

Anyway... here's a pic...

Blackpool Air Display

Finally getting caught up on blog stuff since I came back from the EduGeek meetings down south...

Before the meetings, I popped along to Blackpool for their annual air display. It was glorious sunshine and it was really nice to relax on the prom at North Shore for a couple of hours.

The air show also gave me the opportunity to play with my 500mm camera lens :-) By adding my 1.4x extender I got a full 700mm too :-D

Here's a sample of the pics I took (the noise was awesome when the Vulcan flew over - full afterburners, the lot!)

Pocket Scrobbling!

Last.fm is something I've been trying to use to find new music. It's a massive web application that analyses your listening tastes and connects you with bands you may not have heard of and with people with similar tastes to you.

A part of the Last.fm experience is the 'Scrobbler'. It basically sits there while you listen to music and sends information to your Last.fm profile - it only sends deatails of tracks that you listen to a certain percentage of though so that you can skip through the rubbish.

Anyway, I primarily listen to music on my phone (HTC Touch Pro2), so these haven't been getting 'scrobbled'. Today I stumbled across an app though... the 'Pocket Scrobbler'.

The Pocket Scrobbler will work offline too and only send data when you want it too. Brilliant!

Check it out at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pocketscrobbler/ - I decided to try the 1.8 beta... TinyURL is http://tinyurl.com/l3qrxw if you want to easily download it onto your device.

Web albums updated

I just got around to updating my online pics. This post has a couple of my favourites :-)

Lazy cat

Came home today to find the cat asleep in a rather unusual position.

Take a look at the pic!

Matt of the 'Mill

Matt (the assistant manager of the Windmill Tavern) is going to kick himself for reminding me of the attached photo :-D

I think it looks rather fetching ;-)

HTC Touch Pro2

So I got myself a second hand Touch Pro and it's been AMAZING. It does everything you want and more with ease. Plus the keyboard made SMS and email a pleasure.

I recently had the opportunity to swap it for a Touch Pro2. I knew it would be nicer but it's INCREDIBLE!

The phone is quicker, smoother and generally easier to use. The bigger screen is amazing and the battery life is far superior. Hell, even the audio from it is better.

I do have one criticism mind... the keyboard isn't as good. The keys are now spaced apart and are bigger - hence less of them. I really think that the old layout should have been kept... it was perfect after all ;-)

How full?

So we all had a good feed at The Fusion Room for Caroline's birthday. I think some people are starting to feel the affects though ;-)

The Windmill does take-out

2 pint cartons for taking your beer home! Genius!

The instructions are maybe a little much though... You don't deserve to drink if you think holding the carton upside down is a good idea!!!

Straight from the 80s

It's like Gav knew that we were going to be going to the 80s bar and he dressed appropriately!

The EduGeek giant and his wine

Shaun (the EduGeek giant) struggled to drink his red wine out of a normal large wine glass

More Success at The Windmill Quiz

Whilst I'm waiting in the pub for Chris I thought I'd blog about Tuesday's quiz...

This week the team comprised four and the questions were a lot easier than last week - last week was particularly difficult!

Although we almost came joint first (a re-count was called) we ended up second by one point :-( All was not lost though as this achievment won us a round of drinks :-)

All in all not bad then, eh?!?

So Tom had chicken

We eventually got seated and had some food. The food was rather nice... Tom expected a little more medat on his chicken though ;)

Eating out for Dad's birthday

We decided to go out for a meal since it is Dad's birthday and Will suggested 'The Bobbin Mill' at Buckshaw.

After getting lost we're all here now but we aren' allowed to sit down and eat because there's no tables (see picture!)

Anyway... Only another 30 mins to wait.

Blogtastic Birthday Gift

Caroline and Gary gave me a lovely birthday present that was crying out to be blogged! :-D

Picasa and Picasa Web Albums

I decided last night (whilst we performed miserably in the pub quiz) that I would post a few of my photographs to the web for all to admire.

The easiest way to do this was to use Picasa (which I already use to organise my pictures) which allows easy upload to Picasa Web Albums. After a few clicks, the job was done.

I've even added a couple of albums on the right hand side for you to enjoy if you can't be bothered bowsing all the way to http://picasaweb.google.com/ric.charlton.