After having shot a few hundreds (er… a few thousands) photos in Brazil, I ended up with a stack of images. Some were easy to label. Some were less esay to label. Particularly, for wild birds, the problem is to quickly determine the species that is appearing on the photo. Several solutions are open to an amateur photographer like me to avoid making too many big mitakes when trying to differentiate two species of brown hawk-like creatures, to greyish little birds, or even two small greenish parrots.
The first solution (and certainly the best one) is to ask experts. You can go to the nearest University, but the Internet made it even easier with the appearance of many amateur forums with an impressive collective knowledge. Some are so precise and helpful that the best experts may pale in comparison. We’ll come back to it. There are other solutions too.
First, I decided to work all by myself. Failing to write down all the information provided by the guide during the safari (note to myself: next time, bring a small paper notebook), I had to find a large and good source of reference images for the animals I was interested into. With a minimal knowedge and some personal work, a lot of identification can be done like that without too many errors if you stayed concentrated on checking all details in bird feathers and colors (and, sometimes, note : “Right! Noam told us this one was a…”).
For Brazilian birds, I used mainly two good sources: Arthur Grosset’s Birds and Oiseaux.net. The first is in English and contains an astonishing amount of data, surprisingly coming from one guy only. The second is in French and is the result of cooperation on a common project where there are description, photos, living regions, etc.
Like so many collaborative Internet sites, there are surprising holes and it is a work-in-progress. But for all common species, endemic species and even some rare ones, the information is very detailed and precise. Often enough to cross-check and identify firmly the animal. Text comments may be needed to support the small differences between two similar birds, when it all lays in photo details not easy to spot.
Let’s add a remark: recent changes in classification categories and names, recent splits and regrouping of existing species often create some added diffiulties. Finally, names are quite different from one country to the next (not only from one language to the next). So, it may happen that a single birds has several names. Beware!
If you are a gamer (as in video games), if you like the challenge of confronting other players in FPS shootouts, if you are using GNU/Linux, you will be interested to find the comparison brought by LinuX-gamers.net: Comparison of Free Software Shooters with:
When you follow a broken link in this web site, you will fall onto an error page. Of course, this does not happen very often (Ed.: I hope so!); I decided to give you a direct list of the error pages to answer to the standard erorr code 404 page not found.
Year after year, there are a few photo images that wrote History. LukeProg found 52 of them. The choice is always subjective, but most of them really hit the public.
Science-Fiction produced both the worst and the best. Today, let’s look at the worst with the help of ForeverGeek that collected the Top 10 WORST Sci-Fi Shows EVER! w/Videos.
Rock stars do not have a quiet life. But they often have violent or surprising deaths. When you’re a star, you need to stay one even in the process of dying.
But as if this was not completely obvious, there is an English scientist (he’s from Liverpool John Moores University) so bored at Science that he decided to study this issue seriously. And what did he find? That those guys are more susceptible to dying early; That they have too much of everything very early; That they overuse all of it (including drugs and alcohol); That this is “excessive behaviour” and not safe.
The page has been digged so much that they had to move to a different server, but it’s still a very nice collection of impressive photographs (think “saturated colours”) from all origins.
I would even suggest that most of them would make great desktop backgrounds for your computer.
To all the readers that are interested in keeping in touch with us without even the effort to visit us every day, there are two options that you should keep in mind:
Using the RSS feed for the web site. You need to have an RSS reader (one is included in recent versions of Safari, FireFox, Opera and Internet Explorer; Several autonomous specialized software programs exist; BlogLines, Google, AOL and others offer such services -See the Add-To category in the let-hand-side column). It has the advantage of using a now-common interface symbolized by the logo: You can keep in touch with several web sites at the same time and you are informed any time something new is published.
If you prefer to receive an email each time some new article is posted, you can use the RSSFWD tool. it reads the RSS feed and sends you an email to inform you. Just go to http://www.rssfwd.com/ and give the following feed URL: http://www.roumazeilles.net/news/en/wordpress/feed/, the service will work in a matter of seconds.
While I’m on the subject of RSS feeds, let me offer a link to the RSS toolbox of Mashable. It gives information about 120+ ressources (readers and utilities) useful to RSS lovers.
More and more often, accessing the Internet becomes limited by the presence of censoring tools and methods (and I am not speaking of those countries where this has been institutionalized like China, Iran or Tunisia). It may be to avoid your spending too much time idling instead of working or it may be to ensure that you do not access to “questionable material”. But the Internet is highly flexible in nature and there may be good solutions to avoid this censorship.
10 – Go to the IP addresss
Instead of connecting through the domain name (example.com), you could connect directly to the IP address (192.168.0.15). It the network stops you at the DNS level, this will allow you to reach the site.
9 – Go to the Google cache
As you certainly know, the Google search engine offers “cached” links after most of its results. Since those are copies of the original web site located on Google servers, it is convenient.
8 – Go to Google mobile search
Google mobile search is made for mobile phone users, but it can be used by countless others.
This week, I observed a weird tendency (random concentration?) on the information channels I check on the Internet: I saw an increasing number of news about ways to optimize parts of your trips and travels.
Trippish: Take weather into account to plan your trips.
Farecast: Choose the best time to buy an airplane ticket in order to get it at the best possible price (using statistical methods, and with a refund-the-difference commitment)
BizMile: Compute your business miles (for IRS appreciation and with valid IRS report output)
Everybody is moving around more than ever, or is it merely that you are all thinking about your next vacations?
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