Scotland Holiday 2009

Two and a half weeks driving around in Scotland. The weather was extremely good, which we didn't anticipate, so we didn't have enough t-shirts etc. Who would have thought that over two weeks of sunshine was possible in Scotland?

Saw lots of ruins, castles, sheep, churches, sun, beer, whisky, ruins, castles and stuff. No need to get bored when you're over there. Only downside to the extremely good weather was that I wasn't able to shoot many of those typical cloudy/rainy Scotland photo's.

The trip started with the ferry IJmuiden-New Castle. After that it was Dumfries, Oban, Spean Bridge, Struan (Isle of Sky), Ullapool, Thurso, Ballater, Glenrothes, and back to New Castle. Basically a trip covering the best parts of Scotland (we did miss the Orkneys though).



Also available on my flickr page or here.

Photofocus Question - Tilted Horizon

Oh yeah... One of my questions was 'answered' in the Photofocus podcast #09 by Scott Bourne and Rick Sammon (last question of the episode).

My problem' is that when I shoot in portrait mode that the horizon is always a couple of degrees off. The right side of the image is significantly lower than the left side. No matter how hard I try. Even though the problem is easily corrected in post-processing, it's annoying as hell.

Scott suggested a using the virtual horizon (which isn't present on the D300.... hmmm which gives me an excuse to upgrade ;-)), or using a hot shoe bubble (which is a whole lot cheaper). Rick mentioned possible lens related distortion. It's not the lens, because the problem exists in the range of 10mm wide-angle to a 200mm telephoto. So I'll be trying a hot shoe bubble for a while. Let's see if that helps.

Apple Releases Safari 4.0.2

Apple released Safari v4.0.2. Besides the regular security fixes they also fixed the bug which made Rabobank Internet Banking 'go haywire'. So I could in theory move from Firefox to Safari.... In theory I said :).

Internet Data Retention Law is Live in the Netherlands

It's a fact. As of this Tuesday, the Dutch ISP's are required (by Dutch law) to log all Internet activity of their customers and store the data for 12 months (at the moment). Gitmo Nation has expanded a bit further to the east, according to the No Agenda podcast host Adam Curry (which is a great podcast by the way).

Anyway, the logging is no longer limited to the basic IP connection data, the new law requires the ISP's to log the following information:

General Internet Access:

• Loginname
• IP Address
• Name and address details of of all the parties involved (when available)
• Time and Date the communication took place
• Used service(s)
• The callers phone number in the case of dial-up Internet access
• The number called for dial-up Internet access
• DSL, phonenumbers, MAC address (when using public/ISP sponsored WiFi/Network access)

E-mail:

• IP address used to access or send e-mail
• User ID
• E-mail address of the sender, recipients etc. (basically the FROM, TO, CC and BCC fields)
• Registered e-mail alias addresses when available
• Time and date of the communications
• Name and address details of all the parties involved (when available).
• Method used in sending/receiving the e-mail (webmail, POP, SMTP, IMAP, etc.)

Internet VoIP:

• Phone numbers of both parties
• IP addresses
• Name and address details of all the parties involved (when available)
• Time and date of the communication (start and finish)
• Protocols used during the communication
• Successful and failed attempts to communicate

The 'fun' part is that the Dutch government won't (or can't) give a real reason why this information is required..... Why can't they give the proper reasons for creating and passing this law. Theoretically we still live in a democracy.

My thought is that it's probably based on some vague report by some high-profile consulting company that scared the shit out of the politicians (accountability??). Especially the terms 'child pornography' and 'terrorism' are most likely THE keywords on which the decision is based. And no one wants be publicly not against those two.... And so the privacy of the Dutch citizens crumbles, and crumbles.

Time to start using more and more encryption in all of your communications if you ask me, and start running your own services on a server in your attic .

/me is removing the dust from his PGP keyrings....

Why I F#cking Hate Windows

Yes, you read it correctly. I f#cking hate windows. Why? Well, let me explain;

Microsoft has this nice feature called Automatic Updates. Basically nothing wrong with that. It makes sure that you have the latest patches and updates without having to think too much about it.

Every now and then you get a mildly annoying question if you want to reboot (no, off course not... I'm working at this moment), but you can postpone those during the day. So when you shutdown the laptop/PC at the end of the day, the changes are taken into effect, and you can be (pretty) sure that your system is up-to-date the next time you boot it up.
So far nothing wrong.......

Somehow there are certain updates which enforces a reboot of itself (see the screenshot below). This is a reboot from hell, because no matter what documents you have open, no matter how many things you need to save before restarting. This bug-from-hell (I have no other words for it), will close everything by force and reboots your system. And with force I really do mean force.

Automatic Update RebootNormally, when you close a program, you get a question if you would like to save the document if it has changed. Even when you shutdown the PC the official way, the shutdown process stops (actually, it hangs, because stuff stops responding) at those dialogs. Waiting for your input. But this enforced reboot ignores this all together.

After the first message appears on your screen you've got exactly 5 minutes to change its mind. So if you're at lunch, or on the toilet, you might be in deep sh#t. Because when you come back, the OS has rebooted. Every open document (saved or NOT) is closed, and you can start over again.

The worst part is that a unwanted shutdown can (and will at some point) corrupt data. Something you don't want, but just happened to me....

Damages:

• Corrupt Outlook PST file
  which was an archived mail file, which can be recovered from an earlier backup.
• Corrupt MS-Word document
  thankfully the auto-save function was enabled and recovery seemed to work. No idea what content is missing yet.
• Lost several notepad files which were open with several to-do things, and pieces of code I was working on.

And that's why I love Apple OSX, and f#cking hate Windows.

B.t.w. I already blogged about this feature a while back, but I hadn't lost any data that time. This time it's personal.

Oh, and spare me the advise on reconfiguring Automatic Updates, because this feature should not even exist.

5 Years of Photography

I started out with a Nikon D100, and grew to a Nikon D300 in those 5 years. The Nikon D200 was in my possession only about 6 months or so. Man, the noise on that body was humongous.

The Lightroom library shows me that I started (semi-serious) with photography about 5 years ago. 2005 was a bit of a slow year though.

It seems that the number of photo's I make grows exponentially.

At this rate, my Drobo wil run out of space in about a month or so :)

Nik Color Efex Pro versus Topaz Adjust

For those who follow the photo's on my flickr account may notice that I do like HDR(like) post-processing on my images. I use Photomatix's Tonemapping functionality to create the basic HDR. After that I add (a lot of) drama to the picture by using Nik Color Efex Pro.

Nik Color Efex Pro has a plugin called Tonal Contrast. This plugin adds the detail/drama in the picture. Last weekend I ran into Topaz Adjust from Topaz Labs. This plugin is able to create the exact same drama in the picture. The difference is that Topaz costs only $49,99, while Color Efex Pro (with the Tonal Contrast filter option) costs $299,95 (but you also get a lot more filters for that price).

The following pictures are the result of either Nik Color Efex Pro Tonal Contrast filter or Topaz adjust. The differences are minimal if you ask me.

Nik Color Efex Pro Tonal Contrast Post HDR Processing Topaz Adjust Post HDR ProcessingSo if your looking for HDR-like drama in your photo's you might wanna consider Topaz Adjust. It's relatively cheap compared to Color Efex Pro, but you get 52 filters for that price (instead of one filter with several presets).