I’ve been a little behind on my photography posts, but I have not been behind on expanding my horizons and taking all kinds of crazy pictures; most of which will not end up around here. However, for Christmas Dad got me a flash for our camera. He miraculously did this through leaving it in his old SLR camera bag ( big thanks Dad! ) I’ve had a heck of a time trying to get it working the right way with the much newer Canon camera.

Just a warning to digital camera owners, thanks to Mr. Ian Munroe: Careful with old flash vs new camera voltages. They could blow the hot seat off your camera if you’re not. So do your research in advance to make sure that it’s safe with your camera.

So after about 5 days of toying, learning that the auto settings on the old flash won’t communicate with newer cameras, and trying desperately to search online for the manual, I decided to take my own way out and through caution to the wind. I spent a while toying with the shutter speed, aperture and ISO to try and stop the insane hot spots the flash was giving me. I ended up using something along the lines of 100ISO, 1/500, F16. This worked fine for the direct shots, but I’m finding the flash is more useful when I point it somewhere else….

I really enjoy finding new ways to shoot the same shot, give it different character etc. Setting the angle and zoom of the flash is allowing me to essentially ignore the other lights in the room, and create the exact lighting effect that I want. Hell Yeah!

So my experimental subject this time around was my new Keurig coffee machine that was graciously gifted to me by my to be mother-in-law, Mrs Liz Sloan ( thanks! ). Much to my delight, the machine ended up being placed in a fun, cornered part of the room where I could bounce the light off whichever wall, or fixture I wanted!

Experiment Results (1/250, F5.0, ISO 100, UV Filter):

Left Wall Bounce	Ceiling Bounce
click for larger version

I’m really excited to learn more about using flashes to set the mood I want, mess around with a bounce board, etc. I’d really appreciate any tips or tricks for use with my new (old) flash , and I swear I’ll post some more of my learnings. Jessica caught on to my hobby and thoughtfully gifted a Digital Photography Handbook to me during Christmas, so I’ll have a ton more experiments to sod around with!

Until next time, I’m going to keep screwing around. Hopefully something cool will come of it.

Update:

I forgot to mention the specs on the flash. It’s a Focal DT-5000S Zoom flash, with a ton of acronyms and glyphs plastered all over it that I do not understand yet.

If that means anything to anyone, I’m glad to have been of service.

Tags: crazy, Dad, Photography

All of the Police activity around my apartment building is winding down, and Police report was finally submitted to halifax.ca, but they don’t have permalinks for their reports so I thought I might just paste it below for future reference.

Drug Charges

December 9, 2009
Drug Search Results in Charges
Four men and one woman face charges after a drug search last night in Fairview by the HRP/RCMP Integrated Drug Unit assisted by the Quick Response Unit.

A search of a residence in the 0-100 block of Dawn Street resulted in the seizure of a quantity of marijuana, cocaine, hash and other drug paraphernalia. A handgun magazine containing bullets was also seized. Five people were arrested at the scene without incident.

Stephen Andrew Coleman, 21, of Dartmouth, is charged with drug trafficking and weapons related offences. He was also wanted on a parole warrant. Shea Alexander Durnford, 21, of Halifax, is charged with drug trafficking and also had an outstanding parole warrant. Ryan William Ross, 20, of Dartmouth, Ashley Rose MacNeil, 23, and Eric Thomas Whickens, 53, both of Halifax face charges of drug trafficking. Coleman, Durnford, Ross and MacNeil were all held for court today while Whickens was released but also scheduled to appear in court today.

Tags: crazy, Personal, police, swat

On a regular basis I find myself looking at something and thinking “damnit, I wish i could keep this”… often times what I’m seeing in my head isn’t really what would be captured on film, my imagination is often much less literal. That has been one of Photography’s biggest turn-offs for me in the past and hopefully this is where capturing and editing skills from a few of my friends will keep me motivated!

In my Photography & Lightroom corner, I have Ian Munroe. Ian is doing a lot of over time getting my technical photography skills up to par. Anything from helping to fix my over-zealous white balance settings, to being my personal Wikipedia for technical knowledge, he’s been right there. He’s also helping to keep me inspired with constant feedback on what I’ve placed in his DropBox, and donating tips (hard learned, I’m sure.) on using Lightroom to put some finishing touches on my photos.

In my Photoshop & Editing corner, is Chris Lowe. I’ve been working with Chris at Norex for 6 months or so now, and he’s been helping me out a lot with any Photoshop and design related questions I might have. I’m especially keen on learning editing techniques that will help me try and transfer my vision into something solid.

With all this help, I’m sure that I’ll be able to do some transferring of ‘vision’. That’s what I like to call it anyway. So I’ve been playing around with Photography more and more since I’ve inherited my Father’s Canon Digital Rebel XTi. I’ll say that I’m having more fun than ever. With the tips and tricks from my teachers it’s really helping me to get it on track.

This week’s experiment for me is the Tilt / Shift Effect.

With this example, I took a little extra time to mask out the taller items, so they didn’t blur out like the rest of the background, since it’s based on a z-index depth of field, items in that space need to remain with the same amount of focus. If you’d like to try this out yourself, here’s the basic deal:

1. Snap a photo: for a better effect, try to look down at about 45 degrees.
2. Open your new photo in Photoshop.
3. Create a hue/saturation adjustment layer & crank up the saturation. This will help to harden the shadows and make it seem as if the light is a lot closer, as if your scene is within a diorama.
4. Give your scene a layer mask and use the reflection gradient to draw a line through the focal point.
5. Disable the layer mask, select your scene and goto Filter -> Blur -> Lens Blur…
6. crank the radius up and tell it to use your layer mask for the blur.
7. viola. you have a mini scene.

This is obviously a simplified set of steps, to complicate it further you could adjust the light levels and draw your layer mask by hand, to make sure you’re not blurring things close that are in focus, but are also tall.

So I’m going to be keeping up with this whole photography thing for the next little while and you should see a lot more posts of this sort, if I can teach something while I’m learning — Hurray for us!

Tags: Photography

Earlier this week I was presented with the opportunity to write a blog post / case study for the Google App Engine Blog about how I leveraged App Engine while developing the Canoe ‘09 results application. How could I refuse such an honor? Well, I couldn’t. So after some careful edits from the guys over at Google, and the folks here at the Norex office, we came up with an interesting piece about the Agility, Reliability and Stability that we saw during the course of the event. True Story!

Preview:

“… we saw over 1,000,000 page views from 93 countries around the world, and experienced incredible stability and scalability from Google App Engine even when we were spiking 350 requests per second during the finals. It was a big win for Norex, and App Engine has proven itself to be a serious contender for developing scalable web applications. Thanks so much to the Google App Engine team for providing such an outstanding product!” [link]

One thing I think may have been missing from the case study is the notion of how great of a team we had working on the application. As much as I did the bulk of the programming and behind the scenes work, It wouldn’t have gone anywhere without the:

• Idea & Motivation (Julia Rivard)
• Management who believed in the project (Brandon Kolybaba)
• Development Help (David Wolfe & Chris Troup)
• Thorough Testing (Anas Trabulsi)
• Human Power (Mark Jamieson)
• Designer (Justin Bellefontaine)
• My Fiancee (Jessica Sloan) – for putting up with my LONG nights during the event!

Thanks Guys!

Here’s a little screencast I put together of the iPhone interface in action that didn’t really fit into the discussion, but I’ll share it anyways:

Link to the full case study from Google: http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2009/09/agile-paddling-with-app-engine-lessons.html

Tags: agile, appengine, canoe, development, django, norex, python

This is my iPhone tethering story. With the cable down and no where else to turn. I looked to my trusty swiss-army knife of utilities: My iPhone… did it pass or fail?

Well, before I tell my Saturday evening Internet story, I’ll preface with the fact that I’m upset that Rogers isn’t including Internet tethering into us lowly 500MB/month folks. Seriously, what’s up with that? They can’t be worried about me going over my data limit, as that would just make them more money!

The Story:

The cable seemed to be out in the apartment this evening, so I decided what better time than now to get tethering work on my phone. This was not a huge feat of wizardry, as it is quite well documented throughout the web. After that went smoothly, i just plugged it in. I’m writing this post on my new fan-dangled tethering device, and the connection is wonderfully persistent (so far).

I’ll be Frank, Frank is surprised how easily and wonderfully easy (did he mention that it was easy?) it was to get running. One thing Frank noticed is that iTunes appears to be taking ~%12-18 CPU to keep the connection going, which he figured was just because iTunes was pulling double duty as an emergency Internet connection, frankly, Frank was okay with that. Frank also enjoyed the browsing speed, he immediately noticed that pages were a lot snappier on his laptop as opposed to his phone, which he used to partially attribute to the 3G network, but he is now seeing that it’s mostly due to the slower rendering speed of a page on his iPhone!

Since such a discovery, Frank decided to run a speed test while hooked to his new tethered interwebs.

The results:

A decent 308ms ping time and a whopping 3.89mbit down speed. That’s quite honestly faster than he can reliably count on his eastlink cable speed going.

---

So this evening, Frank and I discovered that in case of emergency, the Internet is always there for me; braving hell and high water, through broken cable and wireless data networks. It was just as simple as switching a setting and plugging the iPhone in.

Does anyone else have feedback on iPhone tehtering? I’d like to know if your experience was as freakishly smashing as mine!

It’s about that time that I come out and see how my planned goals are coming. I hate making excuses for not doing things, and it hurts me to do so. So here’s a long list of excuses.

Whether anyone has heard or not, my father passed away from complications with chemotherapy on July 3rd. Sparing all of the emotional outcry, it’s thrown a wrench into my plans, and put me out of commission for a week or two. I won’t say that I haven’t made ANY progress, as a couple goals are in the double digit completion range.

Here’s an overview of my status:

Goal : Contribute something good to an Open Source project

Verdict : 0%. Sadly I haven’t had any time to work on personal projects / scour github for fun code to do stuff with.

Goal : Follow up with at least 1 of the micro-startup idea

Verdict : 15%. I’ve actually had a few minutes to think about this, so I determined that any decision is a good one. So I started investigating the isdanecookinthismovie.com idea. Haven’t gone any further than doing some proof of concept iMDB apps, but the ball IS rolling.

Goal : Break the 100 Twitter Followers barrier (real 125)

Verdict : ~75%. At the time of writing, my twitter counter reads 119 followers. I’m quite surprised at this growth, as I’ve really been slacking lately in good tweets / anything not involving my father or his funeral. It’s amazing how supportive even people I know only on twitter can be. Thanks everyone, and I promise that I’ll bring more fun and geeky goodness again soon.

Goal : Work on our Wedding & RSVP website

Verdict : 5%. Again, Sadly this has been put on the side recently with all of this commotion going about. I’ve been thinking about it some and I am aiming to begin having some fun programming this on Tuesday. At LEAST 2 hours. Signed and Verified by me, even entered into my Google Calendar.

Goal : Finish 2 Paintings

Verdict : 0%. Just getting back on my feet this week, this one I seem to be having the more difficulty justifying spending extra time on. I hate putting it off, but this month is super crammed. I’m going to revise this goal to be a more reasonable 1 painting. (either half of my huge canvas painting, or a start to finish smaller one).

Goal : Finish my Mother’s Website

Verdict : 0%. Considering both my Mother and I have been disposed of for the last week, I don’t think that she’ll be ready to work on this one in the short term, so I don’t expect to start on this one until at least the end of the month.

Goal : Lose 15 pounds

Verdict : 5%. This i could have worked on while i was in Parrsboro, but i just couldn’t find the energy. So I started last night again, with a regime that is sure to help me out in this department. I haven’t lost any more than what could just be day-to-day weight fluctuation so it’s not even worth reporting on. (however my new jeans seem to just barely now require a belt)

This is not the outcome I was hoping for, but I did make some effort in a few of these goals. and I’ve revised a few of them to make them more realistic in the time frame that I have left.

FOCUS ADAM!

I took a day off from going to the hospital and visiting my Dad. As much as we love to be there with him, we there are other people’s needs that need met. While working today I was slowly writing down my thoughts about the current events and it turned into a letter. I think that the best way for me to keep on top is to share how I’m feeling, and I’m feeling like hell… So as you might imagine, this is very emotional and probably sounds like a bunch of rambling, but either way.

A Letter to my father.:

Hey Dad,

I love you.

I know we don’t talk about mushy things much, but there are a lot of things I’d like to tell you.
You’re an amazing inspiration to me, you’ve taught me so much about living life. I have so many memories of us having a good time.

Jumping off of the roof in Ottawa into your arms, you taught me to trust.

Making those cassette tapes with scary noises around halloween, you taught me to laugh.

Being with mum and always doing the most thoughtful and wonderful things for her, you taught me to love.

Preserving through your entire life of obstacles, you’ve taught me to be so strong.

You’ve introduced me to all of my hobbies and loves of life. When i was just a kid you would bring me to the base and let me hang out with all of the computers. They fascinated me and I’ve never looked back since. One of my most vivid memories was playing Q-Bert on one of the ladies’ computer. It was so much fun and yet i had a need to know how it all worked. You always took to new things with chutzpah, and showed no fear to me when I was in control of a full sized car, speeding around in an open parking lot. You taught me that the best way to drive a car isn’t to steer it, but to guide it around corners. And later, how to drive in the snow and do reverse donuts in the Taurus. Always teaching me and instilling your huge amount of knowledge in a fun way to me.

In an effort to stop wasting your gas, i’ve discovered that the most fuel efficient speed for my car is 88 km / h. i get almost 55 mpg going that fast (thats how fast i drive on the highway). Thanks for always slipping me a 20 when mum wasn’t looking, it always went towards that damn gas bill, but i would have paid it myself if it meant coming home to see you guys. I cherish every weekend that I spent in Parrsboro.

The house now feels so big and empty without your big heart inside of it. There’s so many small un-finished projects around the house that need to be finished! Looking around i see all of the handy work we’ve put into it together. You taught me to always measure twice and cut once, not always by example. We’ve built so much of this house you and I. The metal shed out back, the back door steps, so many of the renovations downstairs, landscaping to small things like replacing fuses (and finding a penny in one to keep it shorted, LOL), light fixtures, running cables all over so we could have satellite TV in every room. You’ve taught me everything i know about fixing and repairing a home.

More than anything, I want you to be around to be the grandfather to my children, i don’t know if i can provide the same caring and knowledge that you did, you always know what to do and i’ll need your help raising them.  I want you to be present when they have their first steps, when they say their first words, even when they graduate high school and go off into the real world. I want them to know what an amazing man you are and I don’t think they’d grow up half as wonderful not knowing their Grampie.

You’re a great community man, always doing so much for everyone. You continually inspire me to help people who are less fortunate than I am, or are just in need.

That’s about all the guts i can spill for now, I just want you to know that I’m so proud to have you as a father. It’s an incredible experience that everyone else in the world is missing out on.

The puppies miss you. we miss you. i love you.

your son (adam)

xoxoxo

Tags: Cancer, Dad, Letter

I had a good chat with Jessica the other day about my work load, the things I say I will do, things promise I will do, priorities, and life decisions. She always gets me in a thought provoking mood. It turns out that I have made it a habit for myself to tell everyone YES! to whatever they’re asking, and then attempt to cram it into my schedule. It’s been pointed out to me that if I somehow don’t get these things fit into my schedule…. I appear un-reliable. eek. So there are 2 action items that I’ve decided i NEED to take. I need to start telling people that I’m busy, and I need to come up with some clear goals that I am going to work on. So i’ve decided that in order to build motivation… I need a list! I’ve always been inspired by Erik Kastner’s Blog posts about his goals and I think that writing them down and making it permanent will help make it happen. I have a reputation to uphold, you know!

This Month’s Goals:

1. write this post
2. contribute something good to an Open Source project
3. follow up with at least 1 micro-startup idea
4. break 100 twitter followers
5. work on our Wedding & RSVP web page
6. finish 2 paintings
7. finish my mother’s website
8. lose 15 pounds

Write this Post! (and more more after this)

I’ve had this post stored in a text file on my computer for about a month. It NEEDS to be written out, and followed through with. So in completing this post, goal number 1 should be adequately sufficed!!

Contribute something good to an Open Source project

This has always been one of my goals. I know that i contribute to the Dashboard Framework almost daily, but that doesn’t count. I’m talking big time project, small time grunt work. I’ve been using this software and giving them a pat on the back, saying it’s great, reporting bugs etc. I need to give back to the community that I am continuously taking from. It’s the nature of it all.

Follow up with at least 1 of the micro-startup idea

I’ve come up with so many great little web startup ideas over the past year or so that i no longer know which ones are good / feasible / possible. I’m going to try to whittle it down to 1 for this month and attempt to get the ball rolling. Even if it is as little as IsDaneCookInThisMovie.com, it’s still a tiny step in the right direction.

Break the 100 Twitter Followers barrier

They say that you don’t get the full experience of twitter until you have at least 100 followers. So I really want to experience the full effect of this social network.

*update* This happened yesterday. I’ve reached 100. So i guess i’ll aim for 125 by this time next month!

Work on our Wedding & RSVP website

This is something very important to both Jessica and I. I’ve been saying that I’ll work on it as soon as i get some time. All I need to do is set some time aside for this, and without design, the programming shouldn’t take more than an hour or 2. (design help is very welcome — thurloat at gmail dot com *wink*)

Finish 2 Paintings

I have 2 paintings on the go right now, and they always take the back seat to other projects. It’s something I really enjoy, and something that I can connect with Jessica on. I started a huge one around Christmas for her and I still haven’t passed the pencil-on-canvas stage. This won’t be an easy one to fit in, but if i can hold off on doing other things, I know i can find time.

Finish my Mother’s Website

So my Mum started her own cloth diaper business last year and I’ve been promising all along that I would make her a website for it, and help her with online marketing for it, etc. I can usually only seem to find 20 or 30 minutes at a time and I’m stuck at about 85% on this one, I just need a little boot in the arse to complete it. The only reason it’s on here is to make sure that I get it done.

Lose 15 pounds

I know this goal sounds un-reasonable, but I know i have the power to do it myself, and they say the first few pounds come off really quickly. I’m not expecting this sort of weight loss to be linear. I just know that if i put a ton of work in early, than I can see faster results which will motivate me to continue. The muscle burn that I’m feeling already is motivation so far, but the numbers do help.

So that’s my list to complete over the next 30 days. I’m going to make it a priority for this month to post a weekly check in with my goals to make sure I’m following through with them. If you’re noticing me slacking on these goals, put me in line! This is extremely important to me, and I hope you’re all kind enough to help !!

Tags: change, goals, programming, website

So, here I was (you are here). Sitting on the couch, leisurely watching “John and Kate plus 8”. When I looked over at Jessica’s Psychology Quiz. This text is quoted straight from an University Psych textbook… seriously.

If Captain Picard leaves Deep Space Nine at 0900 hours and travels at Warp 4 his shuttlecraft, he can rendezvous with the Starship Enterprise in 4. 2 hours. However, in order to reach the ship so quickly, he would have to travel through the Neutral Zone, and his presence would undoubtedly be noticed by Romulan warships, which would attack and destroy his craft. Thus, Picard realizes that he will have to take another route to the ship and thus devises what comes to be known as the “Picard loop” to get around the neutral zone. The Captain has applied ____.

A) crystallized intelligence ability

B) an algorithm

C) deductive reasoning skill

D) means-ends analysis

My question is: Why is picard on Deep Space Nine?

“….[u]nder the terms in the memorandum of understanding, Penske would obtain the rights to the brand as well as certain other Saturn assets. GM would continue production, on a contract basis, of the Saturn Aura, Vue and Outlook.”

-

[Source: General Motors] [more details]

Looks like the Saturn Astra is getting canned. It’s such a great dissapointment for me, as i haven’t had a single issue with it and i continue to enjoy driving it every day. Although, maybe this will make the resale value skyrocket because my model and options will be rare (XR, 3dr, 5spd, handling package, no 18s) ? Here’s to hoping, along with the dissapointment that I probably won’t be buying a Saturn again.

[Source: Adam Thurlow]