Posted on 20th February, 2007 by TW
To try and change the subject away from Religious crackpots for a little while, I thought I would upload some photos! Here are a selection from Stonehenge and Stourhead. As you can see these are quite old photos which have been scanned in.
Ok, in reality, they have been run through Adobe Lightroom which is actually a wonderful bit of software. I downloaded the beta version quite some time ago but never really made any use of it. Today I had a reminder it was going to expire on 28 Feb so I thought I would try it out.
It is not a photo / picture editing package along the lines of Photoshop but it is excellent for photo management and applying quick preset filters to pictures. This one is called “Antique Grayscale” and seems to be a mix of normal greyscale and sepia tones. I quite like the effect 
Where Lightroom really excells is in creating Web Sites for photo galleries. It is amazing how easily this will take a collection of picures and turn them into a functional, usable (valid XHTML!) website. There is only limited control (in the beta version) over the exact style but the look and feel is good enough that most people wont mind. If you are a graphic artist or photographer, and want a quick and easy website, this package really is the best I have seen. Before my trial version runs out, I fully intend to upload some sample sites so you can see the output. At the moment I did two quick sites (one flash gallery and one html gallery) which are now online. Remember, you need ActiveX and flash player to view the flash site in IE.
As a rule of thumb, a site with 28 pictures takes about 30 seconds to select the pictures, a few mins to type in some basic details and then another 30 seconds to build the site. It really is that quick. The longest part is uploading the images!
This is pretty much software that anyone who can actually copy a image to their computer, can use to create photo galleries in seconds.
Popularity: 40% [?]
Popularity: 40% [?]
This post has been tagged with: Adobe, Editing, English-Heritage, Flash, HTML, Image-Effects, Images, Lightroom, National-Trust, Old-Sarum, Photo-Effects, Photographs, Photos, Photoshop, Special-Effects, Stonehenge, Stourhead and Technology.
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Posted on 16th February, 2007 by TW
A while ago I posted about how “uncommonly warm” the weather was for February. This got me thinking about the recent weather in general, and it seems fairly safe for me to say that despite the one or two days where it was cold enough to snow it has been very warm this winter.
As some more examples, this is a picture taken at Old Sarum on 25 Nov 06. Although you cant see how warm it is, trust me it was warm - and English Heritage sites such as this are not known for their nice climate…
Normally, when you visit an English Heritage site which dates back to the iron age it is like taking a holiday in a fridge. Only windier and colder.
This year, it has been very different. The weather has been nice all winter, the skys have been clear and while there has been a fair bit of rain, it has not been anything major. The sun, on the other hand, has been brilliant.
Now I am not going to make the same mistake as last time, so I wont joke about the “joy” of Global Warming, but having such a nice, warm winter has been…. fun…
Popularity: 23% [?]
Popularity: 23% [?]
Posted on 3rd February, 2007 by TW
Today’s news papers (for example the Guardian) have been talking about the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which says that, for those really slow on the uptake, climate change is influenced by human behaviour. How this is news is beyond me, but there are some unreported aspects which I thought people should be aware of.
Today is 3 Feb 07. It is winter. February is traditionally the coldest, snowiest, month of the year in the UK. When I was younger, there would be so much snow schools would close. Dont even get me started on the rain.
However, this is today (Photos taken at Old Sarum, an English Heritage Site in Wiltshire):
Today it was clear, very sunny and really warm. No wind. Not a cloud in the (perfect blue) sky. Fantastic. On Flickr there are a few more pictures which are worth checking out:
(before anyone gets all hyper, the title was a joke - it is not trying to imply there are any “good things” about Global Warming. If you were offended - get over yourself.)
Popularity: 27% [?]
Popularity: 27% [?]
Posted on 25th October, 2006 by TW
For some reason, this picture has by far the most hits of all the ones I have uploaded onto Flickr. At the time of writing it has had 560 views.
The next most popular has 340, yet this is still not an “interesting” picture according to Flickr’s system. I have no idea what criteria they use…
If anyone knows why this picture was getting so many hits before the blog entry, please let me know.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Popularity: 10% [?]
