A bit of an abstract photo this week.

This photo was a slight accident. I was just playing around with my 50mm lens and wondered if I could take a photo of the heater without flash (turned out it was quite easy just by moving the ISO up to 800). The angle was an experiment too that turned out well.

On the processing side of things, really not much past the usual. Just a bit of extra noise reduction (due to the higher ISO), a little extra vibrance, and a fairly transparent overlay layer. No vignette was added to this, but due to the way the lighting is, it got a slight natural one which I really like.

This week is more an experimentation in post processing rather than the photo itself (which is Ok, but nothing special).

This week, I wanted to get a bit of an old photo effect, to do this, I’ve played around with split toning on a slightly desaturated image. I’ve toned with red in the highlights (I think I may have gone a little overboard with it as the sky is quite pink) and cyan for the shadows (which I think is the real essence of making the photo look old and faded). I’ve put a fairly heavy (for me anyway) vignette around the edge to really give out that old photo effect.

This was taken with my 12-24mm lens, but it was out at 24mm, so I probably should have used my 18-55mm as it’s a sharper lens, but I think it came out ok.

As for the building itself, I ride my bike past this building on my way to and from work and it’s always stood out, so I’ve been curious to get a photo of it to see how it would come out. Looking at it on google maps (in satelite view), it’s more of a collection of buildings rather than a single one, but has a nice entrance. I used to think it was just a workshop or something when I rode past.

A quick update on last week’s photo first. For starters, I’m going to re-upload the photo at some stage. I bought a monitor calibrator and after calibrating all my monitors, the processing on the glamour shots is way too warm (around 7200 kelvins rather than the 6000 it should be). Basically the light behind the girl should be a lot more blue rather than the orange it is.

A funny stat though. I’m only a small time blog so typically when I post to facebook/twitter with my weekly update, I typically get around 30ish views. Last week it jumped to 58 – gee, I wonder why?

So, this week is much different to last week.

Went on a bit of a photo walk today up around parliament house which was quite enjoyable (nice and relaxing compared to my bucks party on Saturday night).

I’ve always loved the city circle trams. I think they look fantastic, and it’s a ride I keep meaning to do (possibly a future photo of the week subject source). So the processing done on this is a basic drop in saturation, but not to the point of making it black and white (which I did try with this photo). I think it makes the photo look quite old which really suits the subject. The cars stand out a bit though.

The signs caught the eye a bit much too, so I masked them off and darkened them slightly (along with removing all saturation from them).

So I was going to blog about a story that came through my RSS feed, I went back to it and lost inspiration.  Maybe because I’m watching TV at the same time.  Anyway, so I changed my mind and decided to write about RSS feeds.

So I’m actually a newcomer to the whole RSS thing.  I never really saw the point of it as I had my daily sites all bookmarked and just visited those.  Every time I tried to do the RSS thing, I ended up disappointed.  Live Bookmarks, Google Reader, they just never really grabbed me.  I think the turning point was when I was reading an article that had a whole heap of pages that interested me, so I started looking around a bit more at readers.  I found NetNewsWire for the iPhone which looked pretty nicely laid out, but it required me to set up a News Gator account (I’ve actually known about News Gator for a while from looking at my website logs, one of my most active IP addresses).

So I signed up, and set it all up on the phone, which is a really nice way to pass the time on the train.  I checked out the website reader, and the funny thing is I hardly use the phone reader anymore.

Anyway, I’ve got a bit off track here, I mainly want to just list my favourite RSS feeds.  Funny thing is, I’ve got some Freelancing websites on there, and I’m not actually a Freelancer (or even really want to be).  I think the main reason why I have them there is for the web site design side.

Programming

• http://www.jasperpotts.com/blog/feed – Jasper Pott’s blog – One of the main guys that wrote Nimbus for Swing (in Java 1.6 update 10), lots of great info here.  This is mainly for work stuff, but quite interesting reading.  A lot of JavaFX stuff here now
• http://www.joelonsoftware.com/rss.xml – Joel On Software – one guy’s view on the software world. Quite accurate in a scary sort of way.
• http://www.javaspecialists.eu/archive/tjsn.rss – Java Specialists – Some pretty heavy Java reading here, but gets right into the internals with some nice tips for performance.

Freelance/Web Design

• http://feeds2.feedburner.com/fromthecouch – From the couch – a Video blog on Freelancing/Web Design.  These guys are actually pretty good in front of the camera and are very informative.
• http://rss1.smashingmagazine.com/feed/ -  Smashing Magazine – Another Freelance/Web Design blog with heaps of great info/tutorials

Others

• http://pennyarcadeart.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default – Gabe’s (from Penny Arcade) artwork. Fantastic artist
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/DilbertDailyStrip – Dilbert – Need I say more

You may notice that Penny Arcade itself isn’t up there, but that’s mainly because they are one of the websites I strongly support. I even have AdBlock turned off here (and sometimes click the ads) so they get some revenue.

I have a whole heap more on my feed, but these are the best of them. The best thing I find about feeds is that they’re fantastic for sites that aren’t updated daily. That way you don’t need to visit them all the time to see if they’re updated.

Finally, an update to the blog.  Actually, you should be getting another update after this shortly (within the next couple of days).

I think I’ll need to chuck a disclaimer here too.  I’m not bashing Apple here.  I actually love my Apple products.

Anyway, with the new release of various Mac’s today, I was checking out the store specing up a new $30,000 Mac Pro (I can dream okay), and started having a look at the Xserve’s that Apple offer and it struck me as strange, what problem does this product solve?

To me, it seems like a solution looking for a problem.  But what is it really?  It’s an Apple server (based on Intel hardware) with their server operating system which (which is based on FreeBSD) with the Apple tax on top of it (I actually hate that term, to me it’s the quality of the build/components/support that make up that tax – most of which are either covered by buying server components, or not needed as you won’t get support for your server software anyway).

Now if you need to run some type of server, why not build it out of regular server components (I’m talking Xeon, ECC RAM, etc. here), or buy a much cheaper one with the same spec from Dell/HP/whatever.  Then chuck FreeBSD or Linux on it and pretty much have the same result (I haven’t done any deep research, but to me it seems like all the Apple specific protocols would already be supported).

A 1U rack server is likely to be headless and the apps shouldn’t need to have a UI (command line is more than enough for server apps), so running Mac OS X Server seems like you’d be wasting CPU time for no benefit.  Objective C is also already supported on Linux/BSD too (and has been for years).

Now, back in the PowerPC days, I can almost understand the use for this (although there’s been PowerPC builds of Linux for ages, but they don’t seem as well developed/supported as x86 ones), but since swapping to Intel, I really can’t seem to find a use for it.

If anyone can enlighten me on this, do so in the comments.

Ok, I’ve had my iPhone for a while now, so I thought I’d do my top 5 list (which a lot of people have already done)

1. Pocket Weather – Paid app (only one on this list @ $2.49), but for accurate Aussie weather information (straight from BOM and not some dodgy American site) it is absolutely fantastic.  Very nice interface too.
2. Sol Free – Solitare games (Freecell, Klondike, etc), great for when you are on the can
3. Flashlight – Any flashlight app will work, but being able to use your phone as a torch is fantasic (great for when the better half has already gone to bed)
4. NetNewsWire – For reading RSS feeds that you’ve subscribed to via NewsGator
5. Bloomberg – Great for stock info (includes most of the international markets) and a very slick interface.  At least until Teddy finishes writing the iPhone version of IRESS

I must say though, even though Apple have locked the whole thing down (unless you Jailbreak), they’ve done a fantastic job with the App Store.  It’s such a great resource, and the apps have been (theoretically) audited for safety.

This will let you remotely debug an applet using Eclipse.  As far as I know, this will only work with Java 1.6 update 11 and above, but you can have old VM’s installed and only have them enabled (I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader).

1. You will need JDK 1.6 update 11 installed (which should install JRE update 11 along with it)
2. Open your Java Control Panel, go to the Java Tab, and click the view button for Java Applet Runtime Settings
   

   Applet Settings Window

3. Click Find and navigate to your JDK directory (in my case it was C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.6.0_11\jre)
4. Double click the Version field, add something like -debug to the string and disable the other VM’s
   

   Applet Settings after adding VM

5. Add your normal debug parameters in Java Runtime Parameters (in my case -Xdebug -Xnoagent -Djava.compiler=NONE -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,address=1235,suspend=n)
6. Hit Ok/Apply on everything and close the Java Control Panel page
7. In Eclipse make sure your default JDK is the one specified in the applet runtime settings (in your project properties)
8. Open the Debug Configurations (under the Run menu), select your particular Remote Java Application, and go to the Source tab
9. Click Add and select External Archive
10. Select your src.zip in your JDK directory (in my case C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.6.0_11\src.zip)
    

    Eclipse Debug Window

11. Press Apply and you should now be able to debug your applet as normal, but with the added bonus of being able to step into the JDK code

I picked up Rock Band on Friday. Finally after over a year waiting and a sequel already released in the US, it’s out downunder and boy is fun! Now, I’m probably a bit crazy buying it now with Wrath of the Lich King coming out on Friday (w00t a day off work) but whatever

I’ve finished the drums on easy, but I still need a lot of practice. Drumming is really hard. Come Monday I had drummers wrist (yes, I’ve already heard the jokes).

Ok, time for a bike update. I’ve been a little slack the last week, only having ridden twice, but one of those was a 14km ride to Altona and back. Fitness wise I was fine, but my legs suffered quite a bit. Hopefully I’ll be riding all the way into work soon. Fingers crossed.

So, have a couple of updates for this today. Firstly, I have a very cool girlfriend. For our anniversary (2 wonderful years), she bought me this:-

How awesome! Two of my favourite things, Star Wars, and lots of female flesh

Secondly, I’ve picked myself up a new MacBook Pro

It’s just the base model of the pro’s, but it’s absolutely awesome. Idealy I want to write apps for both the Mac and for the iPhone.

I’m still going through an learning Objective C/Foundation libraries. Getting there slowly. I think the hardest bit for me to get my head around is using the Interface Builder to link my classes to the ui. A very different style to what I’m used to, and not sure if I like it yet or not. I’m all happy with the speedy creation (even if it does feel a bit like cheating), but I’m not a fan of not having actual code behind it for future flexibility. We’ll see how restrictive it is though.

A quick post.  This is funny stuff.  PG Porn.  Looks like it’s going to be a series where they take one mainstream TV Star and one Porn star.

PG Porn