As much as I have loved photography over the years, I’ve never owned a professional camera. The portability and capabilities of small point and shoots have always appealed to me, yet every “photographer” reaches a point where it is no longer possible to remain content and satisfied with the results achieved with one of these cameras and DSLR’s enter the picture.
I won’t go into much detail, but suffice to say I have had my eye on the Canon DSLR line up for a while, so, when the opportunity to own a Digital Rebel XT came up, I jumped on it.
Helped by the fact that I’m reading books on Canon DSLR’s and Apple’s Aperture, my need to shoot is growing exponentially. Luckily I’ve done a bit of traveling in the past month and have been pressed to shoot as much as I probably needed to learn a good amount about the entire process (playing with apertures and shutter speeds, etc).
In any case, and to wrap this up, here is a slideshow of my best pictures so far taken with my new Rebel:
Pride weekend has started, as you can see in the second picture attached, however due to the obvious circumstances given Michael Jackson’s untimely death it wouldn’t have been right not to pay some respects. Attached is a picture of a flashmob moonwalking in the middle of one of Toronto’s major intersections (Yonge/Dundas).
I’ve been on Flickr for a few years now as a Pro user, paying each year (except for that year whenDannygot me a gift membership) to host my photos and support the service. I’ve never doubted that it’s a great value for my money and I’ll continue to pay for it for as long as it continues to provide value to me.
However, there are others who feel differently about it, like Colin who wonders if it’s worth supporting the service now seeing as how Yahoo! is tanking. It’s an interesting argument for sure, and he’s asking for feedback via a video:
There are no words to describe the awesomeness of this music video. With over 3000 pictures taken to make it work, it really is a damn well-executed concept.
I don’t usually try out Firefox themes. For ever i have used takebacktheweb.org’s mac theme, but for some reason i decided to try out Personas. Perhaps because they aren’t themes as much as they are skins… this extension really customizes Firefox’s chrome, mostly by adding a background image to it, but im pretty happy with what it does, it goes well with my menubar.
the “persona” you’re looking at now is called Firefox Pipes.
Also, the website I have open is one of my latest designs.
I have a long history of trying to use my computers as the sole entertainment center in my home (skipping a TV set completely) and I’m pretty happy with the way it’s worked out over the years, specially after FrontRow made it’s debut, but there’s still a lot of work to be done in this area. Ideally what I want is a rich full screen interface for my computer (kind of like the way game consoles let you do much more with TVs than simply watch a station), a piece of software allowing me to browse the web from my couch, to check my flickr contacts, watch streaming tv, you name it, I want to fully use my computer without sitting in front of a mouse and keyboard.
Thankfully there is a very promising solution which already lets me do much of what I want, Boxee. A fork of what originally was XMBC (Xbox Media Center) has turned out to be pretty amazing. It’s a cross platform full screen interface for your computer (or tv via apple tv) which not only hooks up to the media stored in your hard drives but it connects to the cloud and let’s you access streaming video from torrents and television networks, music from last.fm, pictures from Flickr and basically anything you can find a feed for. It doesn’t do web browsing just yet, but I’m sure it will, soon enough.
The software is free, there’s a great community around it and it keeps getting better every day. There’s not much else to say about it, it works great and is a dream come true for me and I’m sure many others.
Having attended interestingnetworking events recently, I completely agree with Vergel when he brings up the topic of how to properly network and shares some good tips everyone should follow if interested in really taking advantage of such meet ups.
It’s always hard knowing how to interact with people you don’t know but share common interests. I find it’s hard to really make long lasting impressions, which makes having memorable and useful business cards at hand really important.
I keep meeting people but it’s always so hard to stay in touch afterwards (except for when people are on twitter, which really should simply be a rule if you really want to build relationships and stay in touch).
I’m working on improving the way I handle myself amongst geeks like me, mostly because I really love it. The Toronto Twestival can’t come soon enough.
Poladroid is a great application for converting your digital photos into digital “polaroids” applying some filters and producing great results. I’ve fallen in love with the app and have used it on many of my photos, but there’s some which simply stand out because of what’s in the photo or the colours or what they represent for me as a whole; I’m sharing those with you:
Putting up wall decals:
Some clutter:
Downtown Toronto:
Biking in august:
Rocks, lake & volcano:
Funny face:
Panama city from Casco Viejo:
This all makes me want to get an actual Polaroid camera.
Through Twitter I found out there’s been a 6.2 degree earthquake in Costa Rica pretty close to where my family lives. They are all fine but the damage through the country has been substantial (over 100 houses with damage, landslides, 25 hurt and 2 dead). Apparently there’s been over 250 smaller earthquakes after the big one and they are still happening.
The earthquake took place near the Poas volcano and there’s an impressive Youtube video from one of the tv stations that really captures what happened (and is still happening).
There’s a lot of coverage from ticos on Twitter reporting live, which is amazing. Technology has come such a long way for this to be a reality (getting reports live from people experiencing it). I’m in the loop even though I’m nowhere close to Costa Rica right now.
The highways are collapsing with traffic making it impossible to get around the capital. There’s reports of casualties already, people are being sent home by employers and there are still smaller earthquakes happening three hours after the first one. Newspapers websites and local internet is saturated, the biggest newspaper in the country set up a live chat on their home page for people to report on and others to stay in the loop.
I’ll be keeping an eye on twitter for more reports and information.
