Archive for December, 2006

Saturday, December 30th 2006

Canon/Photography Tip of the Day

Here’s a tip for those of you who have one of Canon’s digital EOS cameras (30D, 5D, 1D Mark II, 400D) and possibly others too:

Turn the contrast down to -4.

This may sound strange. Won’t that make my pictures grey and boring?! you might think.

No, it won’t. But it will bring out more detail in highlights and shadows. It gives the impression of increasing the dynamic range in the photos, even though – technically – it doesn’t.

Below are two example photos. The shown image is at contrast 0. Hover the image to see contrast -4.

Vaksala Church (kyrka)

Vaksala Church (kyrka)

So … the last few days or so I’ve been re-developing all my (~2200) raw image files with the contrast set to -4.

🙂

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Monday, December 18th 2006

Firefox Gaining, Thunderbird 2 Beta Out

Firefox logotype (logo), 200x200 pxI love the fact that Firefox is still gaining on Internet Explorer even though MS just released version 7.

According to WebSideStory, Firefox is now at 10.7%, having increased by 0.89 percentage points between October and December. Internet Explorer meanwhile dropped 0.86 percentage points to 88.2%, even though version 7 is seeing increased usage.

IE7 holds 16.3% of the market, or 18.5% of IE usage. Firefox 2 meanwhile has 3.1% of the market, or 29.1% of Firefox usage. As usual, Firefox users seem to be more with it.

Keep in mind that nearly all other browser stats show Firefox at higher percentages than WebSideStory. XiTi, for instance, show that Firefox usage in Europe is at roughly 23% and 14% in the US.

Thunderbird 2 beta 1

Thunderbird logotype (logo), 200x200 pxMozilla have just released the first beta of Thunderbird 2. There are many great new features and enhancements:

  • Message tags – sort your emails using tags instead of folders, or both if you like.
  • New theme, which uses the every-second-line-is-light-grey scheme for the message list.
  • Improved performance of saved search folders, which btw is a wonderful feature.
  • Improved information popup when you receive new mail.
  • Session History Navigation – New Back and Forward buttons which work like back and forward in your web browser.
  • Improved filing tools. Remembers folders that you recently copied or moved emails to and makes them easier to find in the context menu.
  • Several others, but the above are my favourites.

Finally a word of caution. If you are planning on reorganizing your emails in Thunderbird 2 beta 1, make a backup of your profile first.

I found a nasty data loss bug, which drops some messages if you try to move too many in one go from one folder to another. (It seems to depend on message size.) A simple and seemingly safe workaround is to copy your messages and then delete the copy in the first folder.

I haven’t been able to find a bug for this at bugzilla.mozilla.org, so if you’re good at searching bugzilla and feel like helping me (and everyone else) out, I’d be very greatful.

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