Slimbox2 in Blogger

Just implemented Slimbox2 on this blog to enhance presenting photos.

From the site:

Slimbox 2 is a 4 KB visual clone of the popularLightbox 2 script by Lokesh Dhakar, written using the jQuery javascript library. It was designed to be very small, efficient, standards-friendly, fully customizable, more convenient and 100% compatible with the original Lightbox 2.

I like it, it works well and is pretty easy to set up. I hosted the JS files in my Google Drive so all is sweet.
I followed this helpful guide to put things in the right place. For the bit where you have to specify where the slimbox js files reside I used this post to host the code in my own Google Drive.

More Macro Shots - Not of a Katydid

Further to my previous post (macro-shots-of-katydid), I happened across another of these creatures and managed some snaps. I think they are some variant of Cricket. In these photos I believe it is a Speckled Bush Cricket.

Got a couple of passable shots, but a long way away from the professional type macro shots. These were all handheld shot with my Canon 600D with a Raynox adaptor on the front of my Canon 55-250 lens in the garden, whilst he was crawling around on leaves...pretty hard to get some tidy shots.

I then imported and processed them in Lightroom.

Photography - Got a DSLR!

I have been interested in Photography for some time now, mostly just as a hobby, but also enjoying looking at what the professionals do and wishing I could do that one day.

I have always enjoyed making the most of the equipment I have. My last camera was a Fujifilm HS10 which was a great camera to 'bridge' the way from simple Point And Shoot cameras and phone cameras to DSLR.

BUT I have recently been blessed (by my wife, +Lisa Reynolds) who bought me a Canon 600D DSLR for my birthday! What a fantastic present! Thank you Lisa :)

And so now I am hoping to further improve my photography skills now that I am finally in the world of DSLR. Already, just shooting general photos, the quality of the images is so noticeable compared to the HS10.

One reason would be the sensor size. The HS10 is only 6.17 x 4.55mm vs 22.3 x 14.5mm of the 600D, so light collecting ability is just so much greater.

Also the lenses for a DSLR are going to be much better quality.

One thing I am really interested in is doing some HDR photography. +Trey Ratcliff is very much a source of inspiration for me and he very generously shares his photography and knowledge freely over the Internet via his Google+ page and his own website, http://www.stuckincustoms.com/.

I am certainly going to be purchasing his tutorials in the very near future as I am merely starting to scratch the surface of HDR photography.

I have tried a few HDR shots before using the HS10, but here is my first attempt with my 600D (click to view full sized version).

It isn't the most exciting, in terms of the sky, as I have been waiting and waiting for some decent sunsets and its been cloudless for the last week or so! so this was my first chance.

Got a lot to learn to improve the quality, but its a start.

Cinemagraphs

Just experimenting with Cinemagraphs. This is my first attempt made from a short video clip. Its by no means perfect, I haven't tried to make the image look 'nice', its just as it came out the camera. Ignore the dodgy leaf movement.

Link to Google+ post for bigger image

This was all created on Ubuntu.

I edited the clip in Avidemux to narrow it down a small section with just enough frames. Then exported the video as individual JPEG frames.

I then imported these frames 'as layers' into GIMP. I then narrowed down the number of layers again to a minimum (6 in this case) that was enough to make it work (well enough to make something look half tidy but mainly to prove the method).

Then on each layer I went Menu > Layer > Transparency > Add Alpha Channel. This allowed me to use the eraser on each layer in turn to remove all but a section I want to move.

So using the Ellipse Select Tool, I drew an elliptical selection around the area that the windmill is moving in. Then I feathered the selection and then inverted the selection. I then used the eraser on each layer, EXCEPT the last layer, to remove everything except the windmill. The last layer was left in tact as the static part of the image.

Then I changed the colour mode: Menu > Image > Mode > Indexed... Chose the Optimised palette (animated Gifs can only be 255 colours).

Then, export as gif, choosing the animation option. Seemed to work OK.

What I need to figure out in GIMP, is how to apply colour effects to all layers. This does not seem to be something I can see how to do yet, hence the colour is just 'as is'.

Will try to do some more of these, as I quite like them. Better next time!

Macro Shots of Katydid(?)

Another few macro shots I took a while ago. Found this fella (or girl) sitting on top of my wheelie bin. I am not quite sure what it is and am struggling to identify it, so if someone recognises it, please leave a comment. I have seen a few of these.

So of course I stuck a camera in his face. What was quite amusing was that he/she seemed to get a bit offended and took an offensive stance and even seemed to make attacking type moves towards me as if to say 'piss off!'.

Anyway, click here for a few more shots.

Scale

The Sun is ~1,392,684 km in diameter. That's hard to envisage.
The Earth is ~12,750 km in diameter. that's also hard to envisage (although, travelling around the World in a plane is kind of within our brain's capacity to envisage.
Pluto is ~2300 km in diameter. That's a decent plane flight, within distances we talk about on Earth, but still hard to visualise.

The distances between these bodies, I think, are too big to visualise;

Sun to Earth = ~150,000,000 km.
Sun to Pluto = ~ 5,874,000,000 km. (on average, it is an elliptical orbit)
Sun to nearest star (Proxima Centauri) = ~4.243 light years = ~ 40,142 x10^12 km = ~ 40,141,750,100,000 km (40 trillion km!)

For whatever reason (fun) it is interesting to scale things down to try and give perspective to these sizes and distances.

So, if the Sun was the size of a basketball (dia. 238.5mm) then the Earth would be ~2.2mm and located about 25.6m away. You can picture that. It might surprise a lot of people how much bigger the Sun is than the Earth and just how far away it is. Although now we start to have the reverse of the problem: realising how small a human is on that 2.2mm sized Earth!

Pluto is a mere ~0.4mm about the size of a grain of castor sugar (not granulated but castor - not sure about other places, but in the UK, castor sugar is finer than granulated - granulated is about 0.8mm diameter, hence 2x bigger than the scaled Pluto). Scaled Pluto is located 1km away from the basketball-sized sun! That's getting hard to picture. I can picture 1 km, but I can't picture a grain of sugar 1km away.

But the best bit is that the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) in this scale is a whopping 6875 km away! ****ing far, even on this scale!

Its this scale that so many people fail to realise. Its this scale that is going to keep the fantasy of travelling to distant planets and stars (and galaxies) exactly that, a fantasy, at least for a very long time until maybe one day technology moves somewhere that we just cannot predict yet. 

I don't want to seem negative, just realistic. I'll still enjoy science fiction.

Car Logs Added to j0nr.org

Started moving my car logs over to car-logs.j0nr.org. Again, I am making use of Blogger for ease of use and backup.

I have been keeping a running log of work, maintenance and anything of interest to do with my cars for the last few years. This is my own kind of service history. So if I try to sell a car I can show the buyer a log of all that's happened to it whilst I have owned it.

Also, I try to make some of the work I do into DIY guides which will hopefully be useful to others.

I have only got the Volvo (my current car) copied over so far, but will back-fill the older logs and guides soon.