More fun with Gimp 2 - 3d Text

Kinda looks crappy on the white background

Fun with GIMP 2 - Flames

Followed this Tutorial.

Pretty cool effect created from scratch.

San Francisco To Ban Plastic Shopping Bags

Good to see San Fran doing its part.
See it here

Austin Powers Up Green: 'Plug In My Hybrid Baby'

Austin Texas is taking a step in the right direction.

The biggest environmental problem: too many people

This is an interesting article that had a lot of people talking and i think its an important issue.
I guess its really three issues in one. The first being "is our population really causing that much strain on the enviroment?" The second is "is there anything we can do about it... do we have the right to do anything about"?

I think that population raises in first-world countries like Europe and US/Canada will have more of an ill-effect on the environment then it would in poorer countries. In places like Canada more people mean more cars, more consumables, more waste. I guess you could argue that more people in poorer nations mean more land being used, more water required; it really seems like small potato's compared to one person in Canada though.

There are a lot of things we can do to reduce the amount we "waste". Will post some of those things here.

I guess the toughest and most contraversal question is do we have the right to limit population? Not really sure about this one myself. I mean often large families (5+ children) probably don't waste that much more then a family with 2 kids. I mean the big family probably car pools and they need to save money so they might re-use things more... maybe I'm way off with that one.

Your rights as a photographer in Canada/Australia

Canada Photography Rights

Australia
Here and here

Leave some comments people

Don't know if anyone actually reads this but if you do... leave some comments... I get bored and could use something to read. If you don't like something (or you do), if you agree with something or you think something is cool.

Mr Blogger

In Depth: Ban the bulb? What kind of bright idea is that?

Lights Bulbs. Whats being done about the wasted energy they use.
I step in the right direction.

"Australia looks to become the first country to actually outlaw incandescent lighting..."

See it here

Shot of a lifetime

Looks too good to believe all in one picture... a once in a lifetime event no doubt. I wouldn't believe it except for I know the source it came from. She saw it with her own eyes. Did you see the comet in the center... I didn't at first. WOW. This was taken on Australia Day (Jan 26th) of this year. Didn't get the name of the photographer who took this but damn.

Had to be European

"This is an email I got awhile back from a friend of mine from down under. Thought many of you would think its rather humorous. This is what Ashley had to say about it "Something you would probably do! M, I would only consider it with some sort of safety backup."




FEEL SICK JUST THINKING ABOUT IT

This is a case of a photographer photographing a photographer. The following photographs were taken by Hans van de Vorst at the Grand Canyon, in Arizona. The descriptions are Hans' own. The identity of the subject photographer is unknown.

I was simply stunned seeing this guy standing on this solitary rock in the Grand Canyon. The canyon's depth is 2,700 feet where the photograph was taken. The rock on the right is the edge of the Grand Canyon where all the normal people stand behind the established guard rail! Watching this guy in sandals, with a camera and a tripod I asked myself three questions:

1. How did he get onto the island rock in the first place?

2. Why not take the picture on that rock to the right, which is perfectly safe?

3. How is he going to get back?

After the sun set behind the canyon's horizon he packed his things and prepared himself for the jump. This took about 2 minutes for him to make the jump.

He has a camera, tripod and a plastic bag, all on his shoulder or in his left hand. Only his right hand is free to grab he rock. He landed low on his jump and his right foot sliped away as I took the last picture.

He waited for a few seconds, threw his stuff on top of the rock, climbed up and walked away.

Evolution of Man 80 Mile Beach

I found this while checking out some of the places I visited with Google Earth. Google Earth now allows you to post pictures to GPS co-ordinates. I really like this one.

Find it here

Up and coming Music Artist Ro Tierney

A friend of a friend will be releasing his debut album in July. I had a listen and the first three songs are pretty good so I thought I would help out and provide a link here. Of the three songs listed on Ro's myspace page I prefer "Tumbleweed" . The music is a Acoustic /Folk Rock /Indie with a Irish accent mixed in for good measure.

Check it out

Picasaweb and all the new goodies

So Picasaweb (Google online images) have introduced some new (and great) features into their online web gallery community. The two biggest and most noticeable additions are the increase in online storage space to 1GB (from 250 MB for free accounts) and the search for the online community photo's.

What the search of community photo's means is if a person has put an album on picasaweb marked as "public" (rather then private) the photo's will be search-able (probably not a word) by everyone on the web. Now the "private" albums are still viewable by others (other then the person they belong to) but you need the specific link to the album to get there. Very cool in my mind; it should help picasaweb compete with the other online photo gallery's (like flickr).

They have also introduced "tags" which will help with the searching/sorting/organizing.

The info about the New features

Our Paint ball Mission #1

So we (some friends and I) were in our first paint ball tournament for this year (my first one ever). It was just outside of town where most of us live. It was a blast even if we only won our first match and finished second last in the whole things. I guess it just means we need lots of practice.

Here are some pictures of the event

("Team Ramrod" - pictured left)

The "Bigma" - this thing is huge!

Sigma who makes photographic lenses for both Nikon and Canon release what they can the "Bigma" a rather large 50-500 big zoom lens (2.8F throughout). The real reason I mention this is how funny it looks while attached to a camera. You can hardly see the camera.

The Info

Another sign that we need to start taking care of the earth

Some people may or may not know how much I care for the environment and the natural world in general. It is such a beautiful and amazing thing. We really need to start caring for it before it is irreversible. It has provided us with everything we need throughout history can we not return the favor by caring for it?

Even Canada who's vast north is often thought of as untouched is having major environmental problems ... we seem to be as much a cause as the rest of the world.

Canada's North in Danger

Well after yesterday's bit-o-rant about my portable hard drive/audio/video player I found a very possible replacement for it. I present the Wolverine ESP (80GB, 100GB, 120GB and 160GB models). This thing does everything I could think I would want (I guess it could have Wi-fi but generally I want the speed of wired anyway) and it looks good doing it. Sweet!! . I really can't justify buying it now but maybe sometime down the road... it even can view the "raw" format image files... sweetness!!. I would probably buy the 120GB as it seems like a good balance between size and price.

Check it out.

Portable music, photo, video viewer , Portable hard drive

So what is that crazy title all about. I thought I would write about my experience with my portable mp3 player that does so much more. About 2 years ago I purchased a Archos Gmini 400 mp3 player for about $430 (CAD). It was expensive but well worth it.

Now I bought it for the purpose of having my music and a place to store digital pictures on my year long trip to Australia. That was my best pre-trip purchase decision I could have made. I can't imagine not having my music while I was travelling around. It's amazing how listening to music can take you home while you are away.

Now the Archos 400 isn't just an mp3 player. It acts as a external hard drive (usb) without any special software (drivers required) unlike the ipod of old. This was probably the biggest reason I went with this device over the Ipod. I have some friends who had Ipods and getting files off and onto them was a big headache.



Now the Archos 400 also does some other cool things. Another is the Audio/Video output which I've used a lot sometimes to watch movies or to play music through a stereo. Now the video support wasn't great with the first firmware; you needed to use Archos's software to convert the video for it to be compatible. But with the newest firmware a lot of the Xvid movies run fine (I've found some that have out-of-sync audio).

Now the Archos also has a CF Card reader and the ability to view pictures (slideshow and such). Now I find the photo viewing alittle slow with 5MegaPixel pictures but it wasn't the main use so no worries (also the screen isn't the best for viewing pictures). As I am now getting fairly serious about my digital photography I have been looking for a solution for backup on the go. Now the Archos is great when a computer is available but because my camera's use SD cards it isn't Ideal. I also find that with 10GB of music on the player it doesn't leave that much space for photo's (I also keep some movies on there). So what does that mean... a bigger hard drive of course. I looked around at some drives but they are very expensive when you get above 40 GB (1.8 in drives don't seem to be very common). So I started looking at new portable photo/music/video players with bigger hard drives. I found one on the Archos site but it doesn't include a card reader.... kinda defeats the purpose of buying it.

If anyone knows of another portable player with "all" features (video being the least important). For now I will stick with the Archos 400 (and CF to SD converter that is in the mail). Maybe I'm being too picky... seems anything you buy is a tradeoff in someway.


Gmini 402 closest to the 400 I have

Dell to Pre-load Linux on their systems

Nice to see that Dell is now shipping Linux per-loaded on their systems.

See it here

Nikon D80 vs Canon 30D

So I finally went into a shop (local London Drugs) and actually held the two camera's. I've been looking at both of these camera's online for I don't know how long.

Currently have two digital camera's but still feel limited in some the pictures I would like to take. I have a Canon A700 which is very nice for it size and takes very nice pictures. My other camera a Panasonic F20Z is very nice in the zoom (38 to 420 I believe) and F2.8 lens throughout but I still find for the real impressive pictures I am lacking in some the "features" as in smaller apertures then F8 and filters and the whole "noise" and quality level a DSLR should (I really hope) bring to a persons photos.

Now I will be honest I liked the D80 from Nikon from the moment it was released. On my travels I had the chance to hold and shoot a D50 and I loved the feel it felt good in my hands and I guess that spilled over from that. I've read that the Nikon's have a great solid feel to them compared with other camera's. From what I've seen I agree. The D80 seems to have all the features I think I will need and then some. Now where I live (Western Canada) the D80 is priced somewhere between the Canon Rebel XTi (EOS 400D) and the Canon 30D (higher end then the Rebel) so there was that choice... for whatever reason I really didn't like the Rebel so that wasn't a choice but after comparing the slightly (about 200-250 CAD) more expensive 30D I wasn't sure.

Now I'm a photographer that likes to take every kind of photo there is the very wide landscape to Wildlife so a wide range of lenses will be a consideration but from what I've read unless I need super long lenses either company should be ok in that regard. so how did the the camera's feel? As soon as I picked up the Canon 30D I knew it wasn't right it was just too big (and I have pretty big hands). I think its too tall in the grip. The D80 wasn't perfect but it felt much better. Whichever one I get I will have a little getting used to the controls thats for sure.

So which one will I get when I have the money... the Nikon D80. I feel you should almost always go with what your gut tells you anyway.

Here's a comparison of all the players