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What Matters Now? PDF Print E-mail
Written by Day Tooley   
Monday, 14 December 2009
Want to shake things up?

More than seventy extraordinary authors and thinkers contributed to this ebook. It's designed to make you sit up and think,
to change your new year's resolutions. (the book is free and free to share)

Seth Godin compiled these thoughts and is one of my online mentors.

Get his 82-page book here. Image
Last Updated ( Monday, 14 December 2009 )
 
Image Software Recommendation PDF Print E-mail
Written by Day Tooley   
Monday, 21 September 2009
For years I have used a software application called CompuPic Pro to manage and edit/resize my pictures. It worked great on a Windows computer until recently when I replaced my old computer with a new HP Pavilion running Windows 64-bit Vista. CompuPic was last revised in 2003 and is no longer being updated.

I didn't want an application like Picassa that wants to take over all pictures on my computer like a photo nanny. But then I discovered a fantastic program called FastStone Image Viewer.

You can download and use it for free, but they request a donation. After just a few minutes using the program, I made my on-line donation ($15). Very good value. Here's the summary description from the FastStone website:

FastStone Image ViewerImage is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touches the four edges of the screen.

Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more.

It supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CRW, CR2, NEF, PEF, RAF, MRW, ORF, SRF and DNG).
You won't be disappointed.
Last Updated ( Monday, 21 September 2009 )
 
Interesting 1500's Trivia PDF Print E-mail
Written by Day Tooley   
Thursday, 03 September 2009
Next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. My brother sent these facts about the 1500s:

They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery.......if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor"
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot...........they "didn't have a pot to piss in" and were the lowest of the low.


Most people got married in June because they took Imagetheir yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell ... brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.

(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

ImageLead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string to the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer...

And that's the truth...Now, whoever said History was boring ! ! !
Last Updated ( Saturday, 05 September 2009 )
 
My Previous Nifty Canon S5 Digital Camera PDF Print E-mail
Written by Day Tooley   
Sunday, 21 June 2009
Image
    Camera envy.
            Lens envy.
                    Pixel resolution envy.


Now and then one or all of these wash over me when I notice other photographers doing their thing. But then, I remember why I chose my $399 (now the msrp is $349) Canon S5 camera.

First of all, it has zillions of pixels (8 MP), more than I ever need. All the way up to 3264x2448. But one of the formats is 3264x1832 (widescreen 16:9 format) which matches HD television. Anybody making video these days needs to make HD format their standard. About 2500 pictures fit onto a 4GB SDHC memory card.

By the way, 3264x1832 works out to 6 MP, still 3-times more than necessary for 1080p HDTV which is 1920x1080 (2.1 MP). Nice megapixel calculator here.

Secondly, it has a "hot shoe" that accepts an external flash that can bounce light off of ceilings and walls to illuminate big areas and eliminate shadows.

Third, this little camera is a compact 450 grams (1 pound) but can take 640x480 30 fps video movies with stereo sound that rivals my video camera. About an hour of video fits on a 4GB SDHC memory card.

Oh, there's a fourth indispensable feature. The LCD can be twisted in any direction to allow shooting from awkward positions – such as waist height or with the camera held above the head. Just what a paparazzi photo journalist needs to see things from a more creative angle.

Nearly all of the video slideshow examples on this site from September, 2007 to June, 2009, including the video, were shot with this camera. Take a look and see what you think.

For the more technically curious, read the review at Digital Photography Review. It lists tons of additional features, many of which I am still learning. It just gets better.
Last Updated ( Monday, 13 July 2009 )
 
Thanksgiving Googles PDF Print E-mail
Written by Day Tooley   
Thursday, 27 November 2008
Here are some of the Google logos from Thanksgiving Day:

Image
Is WALL-E in that logo?
2008

    2007

      2006

        2005

          2004

            2003

              2002

                2001
Last Updated ( Thursday, 27 November 2008 )
 
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