Archive for July, 2008

Photos from Nilgun Kara, Turkish photographer. Need I say that I loved her work? I’m simply dazed and I adore her photos…

Her portfolio on Art Limited, and on DeviantArt.

Look closely. The word LIFE is not as slanted as you’d think at first.

It’s very simple, with this video, if you have fear of heights, you MUST NOT watch this little video movie. And certainly not in full screen. Warranted as vertigo-inducing.

El Camino del Rey walkway. Via GeekPress.

The newest fad about search engines is Cuil (say “cool”). It’s been created by people from Google and is set to replace Google (or is it?)

I tried it and I could not think of a reason to use it. The biggest problem is that it does not find anything useful. I may be a little egocentric, but I tried my name and I could not even find the roumazeilles.net web site in the first results. I know that a search engine is not supposed to replace typing correctly addresses, but I did not expect to find page after page of results pointing to ***old*** pages relating to my software development of 5 years ago. All these pages where not updated in the last half-decade… They are pretty much redundant and contain a lot of crap around download links.

The most regular web sites I work for, the papers I signed where really difficult to find in the stack of results while they are supposed to be the most pertinent information concerning my (not-so) important little person.

Furthermore, I learned that the servers crashed several times during the first day of operation.

I’d say: wait for the next implementation and stick to Google.

A martial arts adept knows how much you have to repeat the same basic exercise (a kata) before mastering free fight. This is the same with most pianists who need to practice long and often to get reflexes, natural grace.

So, why not the same for programmers?

Dave Thomas decided to create basic exercises for the software developer. To be practiced continuously with not constraint of environment or language. He called it the Code Kata.

I no longer write a lot about software programming (I no longer code by myself nowadays) but it was such a great idea, a flash of light so obvious and elegant that I needed to share with you. No programmer should avoid the regular exercise of Code Kata. Many companies should also force their own software developers to apply it.

You want to download free short movies. Here comes BritFilms – Short Films. A neat web site with a very pro look and content.

Filled with short movies, some news about independent cinema and quite a few other things to discover.

At first, I thought that this was a Photoshopped montage, but I feel that this must be true. A monkey having fun with (young) tigers.

Prank Monkey Introducing the raddest monkey ever. Ever better than that rifle stealing monkey from earlier today.

Link to video

Unknown author.

A scientific study coming from Iceland suggest that in the recent years the minke whale population suddenly dropped from 45000 in 2001 to less than 15000 last year. This is a enormous change that is not yet explained for a small whale that was more or less protected by its smaller size (big whales bring bigger profits).

Source: Science Blogs.

For most people, this is absolutely minor information, but the web site just went through an important change. Nearly nothing visible (except some possible bugs still to be uncovered), but it’s now using WordPress v2.6 (the latest version of this excellent tool to manage web sites and blogs).

This should help a little the readers willing to write posts on Roumazeilles.net…

Source: Shooher.

Several times, I talked about the limitation to photo image quality by light diffraction but I failed to go into the details. To the general request of one reader who asked, I will try to give some explanations to better understand why the digital photographer must absolutely take that into account to make better pictures and to choose its camera.

The first thing to know is that light diffraction is a very general phenomenon and quite natural. It’s been a long time already that scientists and engineers noticed that -on the one hand- light rays are slightly deflected while running through a very small orifice and -on the other hand- two light rays can interact with each other on the condition that they are have very paths nearly perfectly parallel. This is even one of the most significant and founding elements of quantum physics. When you combine both those phenomenons, you will notice that light going through a very small opening like camera lens diaphragm will produce not exactly the expected neat circle but a more irregular and circular shape that you can see in the illustrative figure that goes along this paragraph: Usually named an Airy disk or Airy disc.

(more…)

Aube-Nature.com is a web site I tend to track nearly continuously because Cédric Girard tends to write interesting posts about nature photography. But I also caught a few posts with nice images of cats This goes farther than the usual “nice companion” photos.

I recommend heartily to check regularly Aube-Nature.com.

hanks to FreeGeekery, here are 101 Awesome Downloadable Fonts for Designers. I am sure that you will appreciate teh variety, the diversity and the quality of this archive.

You loved the Canon EOS 30D, then the EOS 40D. But since you’re hooked to buying always the best technology that money can buy, you are already looking for the next digital SLR camera from Canon. And you’re right. If something can be learned from history, the regular schedule of launches for the mid-range line of SLR cameras from cameras will bring us the Canon EOS 50D around the beginning of 2009.

Can you recognize the pattern?

But it does not tell us the features list of the future camera, unfortunately.

Some people have been speaking about seeing Canon moving into a much faster cycle of replacement for its D-SLR cameras. However, it seems that this is the case for entry level only. You can expect that competition is so hot there that the Canon EOS 1000D will need to receive a replacement in Spring 2009 already. But the Canon EOS 50D is aimed at a higher price point and more stable population of photographers. But it won’t be true forever (what about the Canon EOS 60D and then the EOS 70D?)