by R.I. Pienaar | Nov 11, 2004 | Uncategorized
Somehow, more than any other online service, Feedster really annoys me. For the last few days I noticed some 404 error on their feed of the day feed. I really should have unsubscribed from it when I said I would, but then they fixed it.
So this is what happens, they seem to be returning error codes based on user agent:
Connected to feedster.com.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
GET /search.php?q=f-botd&limit=15&type=rss HTTP/1.1
Host: feedster.com
User-Agent: NewzCrawler/1.7 (compatible; MSIE 6.00; Newz Crawler 1.7; http://www.newzcrawler.com/ )
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
compare that 404 error with this:
Connected to feedster.com.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
GET /search.php?q=f-botd&limit=15&type=rss HTTP/1.1
Host: feedster.com
User-Agent: test
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
wtf? One less feed to worry about.
by R.I. Pienaar | Oct 16, 2004 | Uncategorized
I really don’t know why I still bother checking feedster for things, I cannot remember the last time it returned anything useful for me. It’s just a pain in the arse. It is much faster now than before and that’s fine, but they are including tons of weird shit in their database now like news sources from places like Google News, Newsnation etc.
Why is this irritating? Because it means you cant actually find BLOGS easily because you are bombarded with tens of news aggregators spewing out the shit that organized news sources dish up as fact. Really, if I wanted to read crap that politicians pay to get into news papers I would buy one, or read Google News.
The world really do need a blog search engine ๐
by R.I. Pienaar | Oct 12, 2004 | Photography, Uncategorized
Photoxels.com has a good article about the various categories of digital camera. The article covers Point and Shoot, Beginner, Serious, Prosumer and dSLR. It also has something to say about how you go about choosing the right one, well worth reading if you are in the buying market.
by R.I. Pienaar | Oct 9, 2004 | Uncategorized
For anyone wanting to get into photography for more than just snapshots of people at a party it is often a painful process, they buy expensive kit, learn all the tech behind it and then hope they get good photos but end up being disappointed.
The problem is learning to see something and knowing how it will look as a static two dimensional photo. Evaluating the range of colors in the scene to see if they will complement each other on a photograph and keeping track of things that distract from the intended frame. Things become much more difficult if you intend to do black and white versions of the photo since you cannot just see how something will look once converted into a black and white.
It is for this very reason that I carry my point and shoot 4 meg pixel camera around, it is not a great camera, did not cost an arm and a leg and force me to concentrate on aesthetics rather than sharpness, tonal range, depth of field and all of those things that while being required knowledge often distracts amateurs or semi pro’s that’s still learning to find their vision.
It takes patience and practice, something that an article titled Finding Ones Vision on The Luminous Landscape covers and explains very nicely, well worth a read.
by R.I. Pienaar | Oct 7, 2004 | Uncategorized
Today in an email announcing the new issue of 28mm.org the site owner said it will be the last issue. This issue is packed with work from a whole pile of artists that has taken part in previous issues, it is well worth checking out.
Apparently there will be a book coming out soon, it should be fantastic.
by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 19, 2004 | Uncategorized
It has been a long time since I posted a tutorial in my Photography Tutorials section so I thought I will add one that shows a new feature and combine some of the older ones to produce a final result.
I will use Photoshop to change the overall color of an image by applying a color tone to it. This effect only works on a small amount of images but used correctly it can be valuable technique.
The sample image is one I took on Trafalgar Square in London recently and features the well known fountains. These fountains are made from a bronze material and has the typical green cast due to oxidation. I wanted to create a special photo by showing these fountains as they may have looked without the oxidation.
(more…)
