Well I randomly ended up in a fuchsia nursery near Warrington last weekend which I actually found quite enlightening. Never one to miss a photo opportunity I snapped a shot of random field nearby which I thought looked rather nice.
A lovely field in Walton, Warrington
On a side note, I’m starting to add my photographs to Panoramio. The fuchsia nursery was Walton Nurseries.
Wikipedia on Fuchsias:
Fuchsia (pronounced /ˈfjuːʃə/FEW–shə) is a genus of flowering plants that consists mostly of shrubs or small trees. The first, Fuchsia triphylla, was discovered on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola(present day Dominican Republic and Haiti) in 1703 by the French Minim monk and botanist, Charles Plumier. He named the new genus after the renowned German botanistLeonhart Fuchs (1501–1566).
Seeing as though BBC News 24 have been ramming this story down my throat all day, I decided to do something topical for a change. (In the current affairs sense of the word, I didn’t apply anything to my skin)
This was technically achieved by a print process in that I applied the ink to some paper using pressure alone, the pressure in this case provided by the weight of my pen. I like to get a bit pedantic when it comes to print.
The qualifying round of the paleo that I was supposed to see got cancelled due to rain, which is a pity because I wanted to take some awesome photos!
I did manage to stich a panorama of the town square however:
Panorama of Siena Town Square
In other news:
A sieve, or sifter, separates wanted elements from unwanted material using a filter such as a mesh or net. However, in cooking, especially with flour, a sifter is used to aerate the substance, among other things. A strainer is a type of sieve typically used to separate a solid from aliquid. The word “sift” derives from sieve.
A readme (or read me) file contains information about other files in a directory or archive and is very commonly distributed with computer software. Such a file is usually a text filecalled README.TXT, README.1ST, READ.ME, or simply README, although some Microsoft Windows software may occasionally include a README.WRI, README.RTF, orREADME.DOC. The name is chosen so that users unaware of the existence of this type of files would be drawn to read it. It is traditionally written in upper case so that on case-preserving environments using an ASCIIbetical ordering, the name will appear near the beginning of a directory listing (since upper-case letters sort before lower-case letters in ASCIIbetical ordering).
This is my picture of README.txt:
This is readme.txt
Got the photo from this month’s Computer Arts free CD, I always like to do something with the free stock photos they put on there!
I went skiing a few weeks ago to Ischgl, Austria. Got stranded due to the volcanic ash cloud but that’s another story. I was at this café at the top of a mountain and thought I’d take a panorama, and here it is:
Panorama of Ischgl, Austria
This is taken from 4 photos, on a Panasonic Lumix of some description, not sure what model, it’s my dad’s. I would have taken my DSLR, but I deemed it too risky in case I fell on it!
All in all, I had a great time in Ischgl, I’d definately recommend it for skiers/snowboarders of all skill levels, there’s something there for everyone. Apré-ski atmosphere is very lively there too!
Hugin isn’t anything new, but I’ve only just tried it for the first time today and I have to say I’m very impressed. The process of creating a panorama with Hugin is beautifully simple and quite straight forward. It involves loading pairs of images and specifying points that ought to match up. That’s about it, Hugin then does it’s best to align the images according to your lens’s horizontal field of view angle and the points you specified, and allows you to crop the resultant image.
And what’s wonderful about this project is that it’s open source. There’s a ton more options to customise how it handles your images, and even a command line utility. All in all, a great piece of software. I’m planning on experimenting with PTGUItoo, which is based on the same library, Panorama Tools.
Panorama of New York from the top of the Rockafeller Centre
I’ve always been interested in pinhole photography, but the process in the traditional sense (with 35mm film) has always put me off … for what it’s worth, it’s quite a lengthy and tedious process!
Then I noticed the body cap for my SLR, and thought “hey, if I could put a really small hole in the center of that then I’ve got a pinhole camera!”
