September 2nd, 2008
Well I like it it a lot for all the reasons that Google tell me that I should, except for a couple of things :
1. I cant work out how to detect RSS feeds on a page. Even if i could detect them its seems there is nothing I could do with them as when i click on little feed icons i just get a nasty dump of the xml. It must be me but so far I cant find a way around it. I definitely miss my live bookmarks and sage plugin for firefox.
2. I don't get a new tab with a right click on the tab bar. I guess I will get used to that
Other than this its great. It's snappy and so far I haven't found compatibility problems.
Of course this is WAY more than a browser. Goodbye Microsoft. I give you 5 years!
Posted in Tech Stuff | Comments Off
August 15th, 2008
My Ikelite DS-125 strobes come in two pieces, the expensive head bit with all the extremely expensive electronics and a relatively inexpensive (relatively is the key word) battery compartment. Now what I didn't know is that the expensive electronics are sealed from the batteries. It says this in the manual and if I had known this when my strobe showed signs of flooding I would have got straight out of the water and would have had a chance to rescue the electronics.
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Posted in Under Water Photography, Photography, Scuba Diving | No Comments »
August 15th, 2008
Progress has been slow in my quest to take a decent underwater cave photo. A lot of travelling and othe distractions have kept my cave diving gear dry for longer than I would like.I took one of the strobes into the ocean and had a nasty flood where I learned a valuable lesson.
Back to the cave
With one strobe and a far more solid tripod mount I headed back to Cenote Taj Majal. I decided that around 10 am would be a good time in August to catch a few nice rays and around 11ish I would get some of the nice vertical beams coming down into the dome rooms.
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Posted in Under Water Photography, Photography, Scuba Diving | No Comments »
July 14th, 2008
I have avoided IDEs for along time mainly because I cant live without vi. I set up vim with exuberant tags and really didn't feel that I needed anything else. I could click around fairly happily finding the classes I wanted. As my code gets bigger though and i get a bit more advanced it was starting to be a bit of a drag. I experimented with eclipse and pydev, but just couldn't stop hitting j k and escape.
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Posted in python, Tech Stuff | No Comments »
July 4th, 2008
After strobe nightmares this trip is all about ambient light in the cavern zone. The idea being to take some of the pics i took earlier with a lower iso and longer shutter speed by using a tripod.
First things first I had to some how get the camera housing without a tripod mount onto the tripod. After some deliberation I decided epoxy would do the trip. If it doesnt work I will get one of the local metalworkers to tap out a thread in the aluminum tray. So here's some pics of how it looked.
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Posted in Under Water Photography, Puerto Aventuras, Mexico, Photography, Scuba Diving | No Comments »
June 1st, 2008
Following on from my first serious attempt at underwater cave photography. I decided to play with a remote slave.
I have two Ikelite DS-125 strobes. I left one on the camera housing and set up another one with a slave sensor. My plan was to revisit Cenote Taj Mahal and check out how the slave would light up a small formation. The slave sensor I used is triggered by a flash. You can change the sensitivity of this trigger. I thought hmmmm.. caves dark so daylight wont trigger this. Surely if its set to max sensitivity it will be easier to hide maybe. Of course i was wrong. So here's what I learned about strobes in underwater caves.
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Posted in Under Water Photography, Puerto Aventuras, Mexico, Photography, Scuba Diving | No Comments »
May 10th, 2008
After endless problems with my Ikelite housing, I finally conceded and bought a new one. This seems to be OK and so far hasn't leaked. After a couple of dives in open water i headed off to Taj Mahal to catch the early morning light in the cenote. I have taken some interesting photos with my old Canon powershot and the Canon housing but never with a DLSR. I can say its tricky. Really really tricky.
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Posted in Under Water Photography, Puerto Aventuras, Mexico, Photography, Scuba Diving | No Comments »
November 22nd, 2007
Though I publish photos on my main website. I wanted a way to quickly share pics with friends and family. As quite a few other people were sharing their photos with me using flickr, i decided to go the same way.
As it turns out free flickr is far too restrictive so its time to find something else.
There is a limit of 3 sets (groups) that is far too small and also on the number of photos that can be uploaded.
I will give zooomr a go and report back. It seems it has no limits and looks pretty decent.
If you know me and have a zooomr account let me know and I will add you to my contacts.
Posted in Photography | No Comments »
November 20th, 2007
I meant to look into this for a while and now I have I am very pleasantly suprised!
import win32com.client
ps = win32com.client.Dispatch("Photoshop.Application")
ps.Preferences.TypeUnits = 1
ps.Preferences.RulerUnits = 1
mydoc = ps.Open("IMG_1630.jpg")
if mydoc.Height > mydoc.Width :
print "Portrait"
else :
print "Landscape"
mydoc.ResizeImage(Width=640)
Basically you use the vb api docs :
PS VB API
The API seems quite detailed, certainly enough for my needs. If all else fails you can always call a Photoshop Action if it gets too tricky.
Lots more coming soon on this subject!
Posted in Tech Stuff | No Comments »
September 20th, 2007
I'm not sure how this would be in a cave but it looks like it could be fun in the open sea.
I want one!
Navy Seals PowerSwim
Posted in Scuba Diving | No Comments »
