Archive for April, 2007

This is a delicatessen reserved for HTML- and CSS-loving palates. It could be helpful to some CSS developers : in an article titled “Really undoing HTML and CSS“, Eric Meyer offers a CSS file that undo all default values preset by the default interpretation of HTML by some browsers.

As a matter of fact, some additional explanations may be useful and they can come from another article written by Richard Rutter: “Resetting default padding and margin“.

Additional thoughts from Eric Meyer on the same issue:

• Reworked reset
• Reset reasoning

For HTML and CSS specialists.

Small predators, but a dangerous set of fangs:

Yawning jackal


Wild dog
(Click on the thumbnails to see the larger image)

Posts about EOS 40D: EOS 40D initial scoop All of them

It was quite some time that anybody had any news of the long-expected Canon EOS 40D digital camera. Today, a rumour is popping from a forum. It would be arriving on the shelves in July.

From Fred Miranda forum.

To be confirmed, of course.

Shooting a few good images is quite often a matter of time. The following sequence extends over slightly more than an hour (and sometimes, fed with waiting the photographer looks for a different subject like in the last photo of the series) and we only stopped because night was about to come:

Cheetah


Cheetah


Cheetah,
marking its territory


Sitting Cheetah


Sitting Cheetahs


Lying cheetah


Yawning cheetah


Yawning cheetah


Two cheetahs, a portrait
[my prefered]


Cheetah on video
By a photographer tired of looking at
the same suject from
the same point of view…
(Click on the thumbnails to see the larger image)

You knew that I had been buying STALKER (officially S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl - Did you ever see a worst-to-type PC game title?) Today, I finished the game playing at Stalker level (not the easiest rookie style, but neither veteran nor master).

I can tell you it’s real fun all along. I had a real difficult time to enter the Chernobyl plant: It’s quite well defended, there is a simultaneous attack by the military (these guys decidedly don’t want to make a difference between the defenders and me; Worse, they use helicopters against me!) and you need to manage your equipment nicely if you want to run and shoot simultaneously on a very large open ground…

Highly recommended. I’m going to redo it differently (higher difficulty level and different approach to the overall cooperation). It’s worth it because the end is depending a lot on what you did during the game. Obviously, I appeared as a greedy person when I arrived at the final stage (I believe that there are at least seven different endings). We’ll see next time.

Performance note: I used 800×600 resolution with minimal quality during most of the game. However, my AMD Athlon XP 2600+ with 1GB of DRAM and old ATI 9800 Pro also allowed to use a good anti-aliasing (not full, but some makes it nicer).

As you certainly know, continental/communist China is one of those countries that have an institutionalized censorship system to protect its citizens. It starts with a very strong management of Internet cafés, but it is also based upon a stringent filtering of many web sites out of the country and judged as undesirable. Very efficient, but what are the filtered web sites? You only have to test on GreatFireWallOfChina.

I am happy to report that roumazeilles.net is not censored there and can be read from China.

For the Science Fiction fans that stop by this site, here is a new monthly online web site whose #2 is just published. Very good reading material, interesting authors and you can even have your own work published (and be paid for it). Very nice, very pro: Darker Matter.

A magnificent web weaving spider observed in good light. It is a nice female of 3-4cm and you can recognize a much smaller male a little higher on the web:

Golden orb web spider (femelle et mâle de dos)


Golden orb web spider (femelle et mâle)
(Click on the thumbnails to see the larger image)

If you are willing to discover the entrails of your prefered technology gadgets but you do not want to loose the advantage of the warranty that goes with your purchase, here is a solution: Go to the web site open by EEtimes that allow you to visit the deepest of many consumer electronic devices that we enjoy: Under the Hood.

For the curious photographers, the archvies have the following camera wide open:

• Nikon 4800

Amongst the big five (the prefered game of safari hunters in the 19th and 20th centuries), there is -of course- the mighty lion. I did not kill any, but I shot several images:

Lion cub


Lionness
(Click on the thumbnails to see the larger image)

Most wildlife photo amateurs are very found of long focal length tele-lenses. Quite often, the ideal is to be able to go up to 400mm. However, ideally, we should have a zoom to adapt up from a shorter focal length. These last years, the technology evolved so significantly that there is no doubt the 100-400mm span appears as quite natural with an aperture never tighter than f/5.6 (Canon has it and Nikon has a 80-400mm zoom too). Sigma joins the competition with the 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG OS.

The Digital Picture has a review of this Sigma lens that should be of interest to many wildlife photographers.

80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG OS lens review.

If there are so many predators in South Africa, it’s because many big grass-eating ruminant mammals are present too. They are the walking larder of big cats and other canines.

Impala (male, jumping)


Gnus


Nyala antelope (male)


Kudu (female)


Kudu (female)


Cobb
(Click on the thumbnails to see the larger image)