<obligatory lame no-post-in-months excuse />

anyway, I shelled out for a new Lens for my camera about a week ago after I got a gift voucher for my Birthday. Decided to put it towards a Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 Digital Lens. I’ve been using the 18-55mm USM kit lens that came with my EOS for the past 6 months and it was seriously lacking in the general use department. Half a dozen times in the past couple of months, I’d seen real nice oppurtunity shots, whipped out the camera, only to realise that I was just too far away which leaves you with several poxy options.

• Get Closer… Not always an option
• Take the shot and edit it in photoshop later to strip away the 80% of garbage round the edges
• Sulk and wish you’d a better lens

So out I went with the new lens this weekend. I’m home in Drogheda and spent most of the weekend in the garden anyway and got some real nice shots of our dogs, Scamp & Bounce, going mad round the garden. (Our springers are the coolest dogs ever)

All the photos were taken with the following settings.
2496×1664
72Dpi Horizontal & Vertical
ISO-200

Bounce (1.85Mb) 200mm 1/500sec F/10	Scamp (2.90Mb) 88mm 1/250sec F/10	Bounce And Scamp (3.18 Mb) 48mm 1/250sec F/11
Bounce Dumbo(2.05 Mb) 59mm 1/250sec F/10	Bounce Hiding (1.37 Mb) 200mm 1/100sec F/6.3	Bounce Chasing Scamp (2.55 Mb) 59mm 1/250sec F/10

The plans are in motion already for a big overhaul of our production platform in work.
As part of this, we’re looking at new hosting facilities to move our kit too. First stop on the list to check out
was Hosting365 in Parkwest yesterday. Very cool place. We go the grand tour from the MD, Stephen McCarron.

Have to say I was more than well impressed. From security, to connectivity, to redundancy to plain old good customer service,
it seems to have it all. Especially cool was their NOC with the two big projectors and 4 Big Plasma Screens. Though I didn’t spot
the Xboxes for Middle-Of-The-Night XBox Live ;-)

~cambo

I finished an epic 2hr install of .NET 2.0 and VS2005 at about 5:30, and having been to tired to messa then, I’ve been playing with it since I came in this morning. And I felt obliged to tell everyone just how unbelievably good it is. *insert usual disclaimer about first impressions etc…”

So right out of the gate everything looks really nice. And it should. Comparison would be the difference between Office2k and Office2003’s look and feel. Everything in the IDE is made up of nice blends of grey to white, and curved blue edges. Lets face it, face lifts are nice :)

Image Here

When you first fire it up, it will ask you what profile you would like to work out of (C# , VB etc) and then spends a few moments setting up your IDE layout and homepage etc… However once this is done, it starts responding really really fast. From opening the IDE application -> open a solution to the point where you can actually begin coding happens alot faster than the 03′ IDE.

I work in Dual-Screen Land </brag> so first port of call was to try and configure my layout which is infinitely easier since they added this funky docking-helper to the main screen.
Image Here

The breakdown of project types has had a face lift also. Now on the homepage there is the option to create a Website or Create a project (service/windows app).

Windows application controls have all gotten a face lift with the new menus, status bars, prog bars etc all having that office2003 look and feel. In addition theres a couple of nice new controls that I’ve spotted so far including the webbrowser control, backgroundworker and menustrips to name but a few. Code management has been given a revamp as well. Form code is now broken up into 2 “partial” classes. Formname.cs is the file you will do all your work in with Formname.Designer.cs being the autogenerated file where all the IDE DesignTime code gets put.

When you create a website now theres no more messing around with IIS/Localhost/Virtual Directories either. It builds the basic file structure on your C: Drive and then seems to run it in its own web server instance on a different port to ISS:80. Also, there no longer a distinction between web/wap projects. All you do is choose what you want (wml/xhtml) on a page to page basis.

I can see today being a day of experimentation with it.

Got a nice pic of the cranes down at the docklands as the Sun was coming up behind them. I was standing underneath the dart bridge on the northside of Butt Bridge. I think the ISO setting was up a wee bit high so the image looked a bit grainy but I think it looks good with this blur effect on it from Picasa.



The large blurred image is here (~350k)
and the original image is here (~3,200k)

So I went and got my Canon EOS 350D yesterday. Did quite well out of it as well.

Jessops had a deal on which beat the pants of most other places including buying online in the UK/Ireland

Silver Body EOS 350D
18-55mm EF-S USM II Lens. (its near silent when focusing)
A Canon Carrycase (which fits the body, 2 lens, Charger Kit & other nicknacks comfortably
512Mb 100x Speed Compact Flash Card
Scratch Resistent UV Lens Filter
A booklet of £600 of vouchers for different EOS Accessories if i buy through jessops.

On top of that, by buying it on the Mastercard before Dec31st I’ll get a €150 rebate from Canon & a 256Mb SanDisk CF Card for my troubles. So thats me happy.

Took some indoor flash shots last night and a few more Day shots this morning just to get a feel for it. I’d heard people saying that it was a little uncomfortable to hold (slightly smaller than the 20D) but I’ve not had it out of my hand for the past 12 hours and it fits and weighs really well. The 18-55 Lens is nice and chunky and the right hand grip is just the right size for my index finger to reach the shutter release.

It comes with 12 different shooting presets on the selection dial. A Full-auto mode which automatically sets everything for you so you can just click away.
Then there are 6 “Basic Zone” modes for Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Action, Night Portrat & Full Auto (No Flash)
These are all preset modes which are tailored for specific shot types. Outside the basic zone there are another 5 Modes for Programmable (essentially a tweakable Full Auto), TV, AV, Full Manual and A-Dep for staggered Depth Of Field shots (i.e. people lined up behind each other).

The hispeed CF card is definitely recommended. I was able to squeeze off about 30 shots in 10 seconds out doors in good light this morning before the buffer filled up and even then it was still able to dump them to the card and let the burst continue at about a shot per second. Considering DPReview benchmarked a 1 GB Extreme III Card at about 2.7fps and 1.8fps when the buffere was full, i have to say I’m quite happy. (*makes plans to go back down to Tipperary for the redbull air-race this year*)

I’ve still a whole load of experimenting to do with it but suffice to say I’m well happy with my purchase. Heres a few images i took around my parents house in the last day.

All these images were taken in JPEG/Fine mode @ 3456*2304 px so they’re quite large (~2.5Mb)

1.jpg (2.44Mb)
This is a shot south towards Drogheda. I was fiddlin with the Exposure Offsets to see if I could get a good silouhette in teh foreground while preserving the cloud colour behind.
[1/500 F18.0 IS0200 27mm -1EB]

2.jpg (2.58Mb)
This is a very close (< 15cm) shot of a berry on a shrub in our front garden. The sun is high to the left of frame.
Macro Preset, 1/500 F4.0 ISO200

These two are just indoor full auto shots with the flash on.
One of a Christmas Ornament and the Other of a flower on the hall table.
3.jpg (2.27Mb)
1/60 F5.6 IS0400 FlashOn 55mm

4.jpg (2.50Mb)
1/60 F5.6 IS0400 FlashOn 55mm

No doubt there shall be many more photos taken in the coming weeks.
*crosses fingers for some snow*

I just realised I’ve been neglecting this blog for the last while. Not that I’ve been lazy about it… ok maybe I have a little, but the last few months were pretty hectic. However happy days… Christmas is here… I’m finished with my stint on support… my dad had 4 bottles of Glenfiddich in the press when I got home and its been a week of drinking and eating and general merriment all round. Excellent.

The week before christmas was actually a bit of a bore. We were under strict orders to do no forward-dev at all and just make sure everything was honky dory for the holidays as none of the techies were going to be in Dublin from the 23rd to the 3rd. The most interesting thing that happened that week was that I got to interview our Intra Student who’ll begin with us in April. When I did my placement it was a brickie who interviewed me and that I worked with for the 6 months so it was kind of fitting that the student we’re taking on is also a brickie. And so the torch is passed on.

Christmas has been cool . I got home on the 23rd, and have done sweet feck all for the week bar travel down to see Elaine in Athlone. And I’ve got a mountain of DVDs to work my through when I get back. Godfather Boxset, 3 Seasons of Family Guy, 7 Seasons of RedDwarf and the PoP: The Two Throwns game for the XBox. Jackpot.

best served on a 11ft x 6ft High Def projector :-) Got my copy of Burnout Revenge from play.com before the weekend. *drools a little* It’s great fun. As it turned out, I had a pretty intense Xbox weekend. Went home on friday night and ended up playing Halo against my brother and his mates til about 5 in the morning. (Alcohol makes you shoot better). And then I sat in front of the telly playing Burnout 4 for the next 2 days. Excellent way to spend a weekend.

I’d seen mixed reviews about Revenge, but I can honestly say it doesn’t disappoint. There are 2 big changes from Burnout Takedown. First is that you can now slam into same-way-traffic turning other would-be-sunday-drivers into hurtling weapons of twisted steal. Makes for great fun when you send a soccer mom SUV spinning across the centre of the road into an oncoming truck causing absolute carnage. Second is that they’ve added a vertical element into the game. Tracks are no longer the same old loop but have lots of shortcuts. You can slam through gates to cut out some of the track but most fun is to find a ramp shortcut, leap of a section of track and then land on an opponent for a vertical takedown. I’ll have to give it a blast online next time I’m home.

We launched our new Web Platform during the week. Was a bit of a squeeze to be finished by last friday but myself and Ro managed it and got both the TXTUK and the ZingTones skinned versions up and running for the weekend. Backend is all singing sweetly anyway tho i need to go back and clean up some of the HTML/CSS as theres bits that were kinda chucked together at the last minute. and several <table> used because of my frustration at trying to do grid layouts with css.

Was coming through town yesterday morning and there were flocks of white t-shirted punters around O’Connell St/Bridge and outside Tara St DART station collecting for charity. I think it was for Cystic Fibrosis Ireland. Anyway, very good concern to collect money for, and i’m sure these people are all going to heaven for being up so early to collect money but here’s what absolutely vexes me. Why do they have to shake the damn coin box at you so that it makes such a racket. Now it’d be seldom that I’d stop and take out money at the best of times, but if theres one sure fire way to make me walk on past, it’s to shake the money box at me. “Yes I can see you, yes I can hear you, you don’t need to make that god awful noise at 8am”. And apparently I’m not alone on this pet hate. You’d think that the people who are organising these fund raising schemes would give their flock some advise before sending them out on the streets. “Don’t shake the coins at people. It pisses them off”.

Well apparently its a brand of television… tho i wouldn’t know that unless elaine hadn’t arrived home with one out of the blue yesterday. Her logic is, “the house needs a telly, and we’d all be chipping in to rent one, so why don’t we just buy one and get everyone else to chip in anyway, and at the end of the year, we’ve got a free TV”.

And to be fair I see her logic however, I’d much prefered to throw in a few quid extra for a decent TV that we’d eventually own rather than this thing. It’s a reasonably ok TV…. i suppose. Easy to tune/setup tho what tv isn’t these days, remote control is a bit chunky and for some reason, they thought it would be a great idea to layout the remote control like this.


1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 0

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
0


Equally annoying is the teletext, if you turn on teletext, it always goes back to p100, so you have to leave text on and wait for the page to cycle round (yeah i’m impatient). Its a small thing, but frustrating all the same.

Top it off with the fact that I can’t find one review online for a “Wharfedale m2126″. Meh!
As long as it doesn’t explode while I’m directly in fornt of it, I suppose I won’t be too bothered.