David Naylor: Blog

Firefox 3.5 - Get It Now

2009-06-30T23:24:00.004+02:00

Firefox 3.5 has been released today. Many improvements over 3.0. Faster, better privacy options, better standards support. Get it now.

Ordered a Few Games

2009-06-22T10:34:00.003+02:00

With the new computer on its way, I also ordered a few games to play during the summer.

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X (annoying name to write) is bundled with the graphics card. Not sure if it's any good.

It'll be interesting to see how far I can push the graphics settings in GTA IV. BTW, I just saw a great video review of GTA IV here.

New Computer on its Way

2009-06-20T12:46:00.009+02:00

On Wednesday we ordered a new computer. Not that there's really anything wrong with the current one (AMD something 3200+), but we both had an urge to play some newer games. Such as The Sims 3 and GTA IV.

We've ordered it from a local shop, Proxdata. They seem to know what they're doing. Here's what we decided to throw into the mix:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD3P
CPU: AMD Phenom II 940 Black Edition
Video card: XFX Radeon HD4890 Black Edition
Hard drive: Seagate 1TB, 7200 rpm, 32 MB cache. Not sure exactly which model number.
Memory: 4GB DDR2 PC6400

That should be plenty of gaming power for the time being I think, but if we need more in the future we can add another identical video card and have them run in parallel (Crossfire).

All in all, we're getting much more punch for the money than the big electronics chains in Sweden are offering right now.

We'll keep using XP, since we see no real point in upgrading to Vista. Not even Direct X 10 has convinced me. All games seem to support version 9 still, and the visual difference, when there is one, is negligible.

There may be a day when we want more than 4GB of RAM. Then we'll have to get 64 bit Windows 7, since 32 bit XP can't use more than 4GB. (I'll gladly skip Vista, for various reasons.) Until then though, I think we'll be sticking with XP.

Hopefully we'll be getting the computer on Tuesday or Wednesday. Then we can get started on the wonderful process of installing all the many different programs that we have on the current computer.

Koenigsegg Buys Saab

2009-06-11T17:03:00.007+02:00

This is unbelievable stuff: Koenigsegg buys Saab.

The car-making world is upside down. Lets just hope Koenigsegg haven't bitten off more than they can swallow.

Here's a translation of the short news article:

Rapport has learned that Koenigsegg and Norwegian investors will get to buy Saab Automobil.

The buyers have signed a letter of intent to buy Saab. Final negotiations around details of the deal will be held the coming months.

Koenigsegg is a small manufacturer of exclusive sports cars in Ängelholm (Sweden) and has according to Rapport's sources been given support by Norwegian investors to be able to buy Saab.

Visby Panorama Framed

2009-06-10T15:46:00.002+02:00

Well, I let Jenny decide which of the panoramas we would frame first, so it was the Visby one.

For the print I cloned out the slight shadow along the flag pole to the right.

Now we just need to get a second frame so we can hang this one too:

Bokeh Panorama Attempt

2009-06-10T07:29:00.004+02:00

I read here about an interesting technique which I hereby rename as the Bokeh Panorama Technique.

It entails shooting several photos at a longer focal length and stitching them together to give the effect of a shorter focal length with very large aperture.

Here's my first, rather useless attempt. (Don't look to closely.) I just went out into the garden to shoot this, couldn't be bothered to find anything more interesting.

Here's one of the better shots I've seen made this way. Here's another one.

To stitch the photos together I use Autostitch which is about as good as it gets, for free or for money.

Since you're not really doing this for the resolution, it's a good idea to choose a smaller JPEG size in your camera. That way you save quite a bit of time in the stitching and get a more manageable file size at the end.

Also, you'll want to do this in manual mode and with manual focus for consistency between the shots.

Cats

2009-06-10T07:26:00.001+02:00

This first shot is only 99% sharp for some reason.

Brorsan (below) has had a hard day, as usual.

Kronskogen, Eskilstuna

2009-05-30T13:21:00.004+02:00

Felt a sudden creative urge yesterday and headed out to Kronskogen. Nice light and some nice dandelions.

And a slug.

And some Lilacs in the garden.

Ordered Some Panoramas

2009-05-29T17:38:00.006+02:00

Today Jenny and I finally got round to sending some panoramas off for printing from Crimson. We already bought a panorama frame from IKEA (88 x 30 cm, or roughly 35" x 12"), but haven't had anything to put in it so far.

Since the printing place doesn't do 88 x 30 cm, we stuck two panoramas in one image and had it printed at 100 x 70 cm. Plus a small one along the edge as a bonus. Obviously we'll have to cut them out ourselves.

We're thinking of sticking one of the large ones above our chest the drawers in our bedroom. Which one remains to be agreed on, with me voting for Paris and Jenny voting for Visby. We'll probably end up getting a second frame and putting it above the bed ...

Getting the Most out of Photos on Facebook

2009-05-25T11:49:00.004+02:00

Image quality on Facebook is awful. That's the simple truth. Just compare what you get at Flickr and Facebook.

Flickr:

Facebook:

Facebook just completely mutes the colours. Look at the red lights on the cars, or the red windows of the building. And sharpness is nowhere to be found. The tree is just a mushy green mess.

While Flickr's default size is a bit on the small side (500 pixels), it still contains more than twice as much information (163 kB) as the Facebook version (67 kB).

So ... what can be done about Facebook's mangling of perfectly good photos? Well, if you do the downsizing and sharpening yourself you get more detail left at the end, in the resulting image after Facebook has done its ruthless compression.

This is very easy if you're using Lightroom, but can definitely be done with any other imaging software as well. Simply resize your photos to 604 pixels on the longest side, which is the maximum for Facebook, and then apply some sharpening. Personally I do sharpening for screen, level High, in the export window of Lightroom.

This is what you get: (Hover to see the improvement.)

So, you get slightly more detail, but Facebook still murders your colours. Below is a comparison between Facebook version and the 604 pixel original that I uploaded (when hovered):

An alternative to the hassle of downsizing and sharpening is to simply boycott Facebook for photos and just post links to your sets on Flickr ...

Snake's Head Fritillary by Vaksala Church

2009-05-20T09:50:00.003+02:00

I spent the weekend in Uppsala, mainly to celebrate dad's birthday. We had a very tight schedule, seeing Jenny's mum and dad and my parents and some other friends, but I managed to fit in a little visit to the meadow by Vaksala kyrka.

This meadow is one of relatively few places around Uppsala where Snake's Head Fritillary (Kungsängslilja or Fritillaria meleagris) grows, and has always been something of a favourite spot for me. This flower is the provincial flower of Uppland and is protected by law because of its rarity.

It's quite a charming little flower which can be either a deep red or white, or a mixture of the two.

Optimally, I should have got up at the crack of dawn, around 5 am, to get the nice morning light. But having watched the Eurovision Song Contest until midnight that wasn't really an option. Instead these shots are taken at about 9 am, so the light is a bit harsh.

I have some more shots in a set at Flickr.

Eskilstuna shots

2009-05-15T13:38:00.003+02:00

Some more shots from my last photo hunt.

Fairly new buildings on Hamngatan.

Pretty Tulips in Fors kyrkopark.

Eskilstunaån, or Eskilstuna river if you wish, with the local heat plant in the background.

The first shot was made from three bracketed exposures using my Gorillapod. The last two were done the same way but hand-held. Slight movements between the three shots don't matter because Photomatix can align the features of the photos when making the HDR image.

Amazing Macro

2009-05-15T11:13:00.001+02:00

This has gotta be the most amazing macro I've seen for a long time.

The Need for Speed

2009-05-14T22:28:00.004+02:00

At the end of March, we launched a new version of our website at Eskilstuna-Kuriren, ekuriren.se. We replaced our ancient content manger with a new, modern, flexible system known as Polopoly. Polopoly is developed in Sweden and used by many of the large Swedish news sites.

The launch went smoothly, but soon we started getting e-mail upon e-mail from users about speed problems. After a while it turned out that many Internet Explorer users were having huge problems both loading the page and scrolling the page.

Apparently, when loading the website in Internet Explorer it can sometimes make the whole computer slow down to a halt, forcing a hard reboot. If you manage to load the page, it can scroll painfully slowly.

Obviously, this mainly shows that the site hasn't been properly tested. A huge majority of our visitors use Internet Explorer. Or at least they used to. Perhaps the percentage has gone down now, from people simply giving up on us. It truly amazes me how the developers still haven't properly managed to sort out the performance issues. They have supposedly been working on this from day one, which is almost two months back now.

While I still haven't actually heard a precise technical explanation of what the problem is, this experience shows in a very tangible way how big a difference there is between Internet Explorer and the more modern browsers when it comes to speed. Whether it is the scripting engine or the rendering engine or something else that is causing the problems for Internet Explorer users I don't know.

What I do know is that we simply haven't had a single complaint about performance from Firefox or Safari users.

Here's to hoping that the site admins get the issues sorted as soon as possible and that all browsers will be able to display our news site without the user suffering serious illnesses from frustration.

Stunt kids by the library

2009-05-14T12:39:00.003+02:00

Had a good photo hunt yesterday. I was mainly looking for some nice old ruin of some kind, but didn't really find what I wanted. Still I ended up having some fun with some acrobatic kids outside the library.

I never asked what the guy on the bike was called, but the other two are Cristian Bati and Philip Nordström. They call themselves Ultimate Upgrade and have a few videos on Youtube where they do this kind of stuff too.

Tingeling

2009-05-14T00:27:00.005+02:00

After having watched the first semi final of the Eurovision Song Contest, the Swedish interval act Tingeling is about ten times funnier than it was the first time I watched it: (Skip to 4.15 for the music part.)

This was done as a parody on Russian culture, and then the Russians themselves go and do exactly the same thing for their real, 100% serious interval act:

But the thing that kills me is that the Russian embassy in Sweden handed in an official complaint to SVT (Swedish television) saying that the parody was humourless and insensitive. (Or something along those lines.)

And while we're on the subject of interval acts, the best one I can remember was the Stockholm 2000 one:

An Old Favourite (3)

2009-05-11T08:29:00.002+02:00

Me and crazy Silvana got up really early one morning in Sundsvall and walked up the north mountain. That's two years ago now. Time really does fly. This was one of the best shots I got.

The same morning a woman was found frozen to death in the city harbour. A few of my photos covered the area where she was found so I sent them in to the police, thinking they could see if she was in them (as a tiny speck) or not and use the time-stamps.

An Old Favourite (2)

2009-05-10T00:24:00.003+02:00

This one I dedicate to Patrick Finch whom I met for the first time this week.

I hereby rename it Tuna Park.

Paris: Tour Montparnasse

2009-05-08T23:45:00.005+02:00

Day three was spent entirely at Disneyland Paris. Since it wasn't a very photogenic day, I'll just leave it out.

So, on to day four. Which consisted mainly of two things. L'Arc de Triomphe and Tour Montparnasse.

The view from our hotel window.

Handheld, triple exposure HDR of the Arc.

Jenny resting her feet (and waiting for me to finish taking my photos).

Tour Montparnasse. Huge (~210 meters) office building with the top floor + roof open for visitors.

The lift did 56 floors in 38 seconds!

Great view from the top. Very nice and relaxed since there weren't many people there really. A great visit for any photographer.

An Old Favourite (1)

2009-05-08T00:16:00.003+02:00

Having the possibility to post large photos I feel inspired to look through my favourites.

This shot was inspired by a set of photos I saw in a photography magazine of vegetables. I went out and bought a few different veggies that I wouldn't normally buy, used my desk light for lighting and a big white sheet of paper for the surface.

IE8 Sorted

2009-05-07T23:54:00.002+02:00

After finishing my slight redesign here I found that IE8 made a complete mess of it. Turned out of course that I had forgotten to change the doctype into something other than XHTML Strict, which IE still doesn't understand.

I went with the nice, simple HTML 5 doctype, which seems to be the best option:

<!DOCTYPE html>

That was all that was necessary and now, miraculously, my blog looks ... decent in IE8! Looks like it has finally understood my max-width rules as well! Amazing stuff.

New Design Done

2009-05-07T13:10:00.006+02:00

Well, this is the new modified design. Nice and tight and snug! Obviously the font size in the left column isn't web 2.0 compliant, but you can't get everything.

For comparison, here's a screenshot of what it used to look like:

So what has changed? To start with I removed a couple of things from the right column and moved what was left to the left column. Then I made the left column quite a bit tighter to allow for 1024 px images in my posts. I tried to use a sans-serif in the left column but the combination looked really weird.

I decided to revert my choice to use a downloaded font, for two reasons: A, i find Georgia is actually prettier than Dustismo and B, I don't really like how Firefox 3.5 (beta) deals with downloaded fonts at the moment.

Firefox will display the page with the fall-back font first, and then redraw the page when the @font-face font is downloaded. This behaviour is annoying when viewing the page – Safari does this much better. Safari simply waits with displaying the text until the font is downloaded.

While I was fiddling with the design I decided to remove the alternate stylesheets for a slight simplicity win.

I have considered implementing columns in my posts, but I'll need to think that through properly first.

Edit: Argh!! Internet Explorer 8, supposedly CSS 2 compliant, messes the design up completely. I'll have to look into that some other time.

Test post

2009-05-07T09:01:00.003+02:00

This is just a test to see if large photos actually are visible if you're not logged in to Flickr.

Edit: My blog may look more or less weird while I mess around with the design. Sadly I have no good way of working on it offline.

Blog Redesign?

2009-05-07T01:32:00.003+02:00

I'm thinking of perhaps redesigning or at least re-arranging this blog a bit. I want to try to make one side column instead of two, mainly to allow 1024px photos in my posts. This is 2009 and it feels just a bit 2004 to have what feels like 500px thumbnails. (On a side-note: Why hasn't Flickr increased the default photo size yet? Surely they must do at some point?)

I'll make sure the new design fits on a 1280px wide screen though. That's what I have myself and obviously the world will just have to adjust if they have anything less.

Some recent shots

2009-05-06T16:47:00.005+02:00

Edit: Republished this one too with larger photos.

Skjulsta, Eskilstuna.

Triple-exposure HDR with my Sigma 17-70mm, f/8 @ 17mm.