April

Yesterday Ali, was not only the day Shakespeare died, it was his birthday too. He was obviously a neat freak.
It was also St George's day (English national day, despite the last Pope demoting him from sainthood. We don't take a lot of notice of what the Pope says since Henry VIII)
It was also the day 15 years ago that we bought our current house, and traditionally the day we hear the 1st cuckoo of spring in this Village (though he's been absent for a couple of years now sadly)
 
Terry60 said:
Yesterday Ali, was not only the day Shakespeare died, it was his birthday too. He was obviously a neat freak.
It was also St George's day (English national day, despite the last Pope demoting him from sainthood. We don't take a lot of notice of what the Pope says since Henry VIII)
It was also the day 15 years ago that we bought our current house, and traditionally the day we hear the 1st cuckoo of spring in this Village (though he's been absent for a couple of years now sadly)
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Reminiscences of Britain...I used to look forward to the sound of the cuckoo, despite the fact that I knew the fat little b*****d had just booted perfectly healthy fledglings out of their nest and taken over.
I also used to love the sound of the skylarks, the smell of bluebells...I could go on and on.
Although my later years there were (and still are from time to time) spent in London, I lived for many years in various rural areas.
The British countryside takes a lot to beat.
 
Hi Angie, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies!

....I had to look that one up; hadn't a clue there was a term for joint Australian/New Zealand army corps.

Happy Anzac day? :wink:
 
lol kool ^_^

Thanks for telling us Angie

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The Last LAN party of the semester is tomorrow ^_^ i am so totally ready!
 
Peter, your talk of bluebells reminded me to check the Savernake Forest (I live on the edge of it) soon.
Exactly a year ago this weekend I took this picture there. It's one of the best bluebell woods I've ever seen, in several places.

(Size Alert - I've had to reduce quality to keep this inside the upload limit, but it's still quite big if your connection's a bit slow)
 

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Fortunately my connection is ultra fast. That's quite a sight, thanks. I've been reading that many parts of the UK are being invaded by foreign varieties - partly due to careless gardeners and partly due to climate change.
 
Friday April 25, 2008

* Goes without saying - TGIF!

* Today is World Malaria Day 2008

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25 April is a day of unified commemoration of the global effort to provide effective control of malaria around the world.

World Malaria Day is an opportunity for malaria-free countries to learn about the devastating consequences of the disease and for new donors to join a global partnership against malaria. It is an occasion for research and academia institutions to flag their scientific advances to both experts and the general public. It is chance for countries in affected regions to learn from each other's experiences and back each other efforts. It is an opportunity for international partners, companies and foundations to showcase their results and reflect together on how to scale up what has been proven to work.
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World Malaria Day
 
Nice picture Terry.
Just a question a couple of trees have these orange stripes on them.
Is that glare or something else??
 
I somehow missed the bluebell discussion - amazing photo there, Terry!

Stitched together, right?
 
Ron!n, those aren't problems with the image, they're forestry marks sprayed on the trees. I'm not quite sure of the purpose, scheduled for felling for thinning purposes perhaps ?
Guru, my camera has an auto panorama function, where you tell it which direction you're moving in (left, right, up, down) and it marks a margin for you to include in the next photo in the sequence. It freezes the focus and exposure on the first frame, so that foreground details or lighting changes don't make the subsequent images incompatible. It records all the details in the metadata and the supplied software stitches the images, with automatic compensation for barrel distortion on wide-angle settings.
The images that make up that paronama (10) were taken on a fairly long telephoto setting and cover about 270 degrees. Because I was hand holding, you can detect slight camera shake on some of the images. The effect would be much better with a tripod.
 
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I know some trees are marked because they are endangered and aren't allowed to be knocked down.
But 10 panorama pictures is awesome. Do you know any cameras that can take 360 degree photos?

Or would it be impossible to display them unless theyre printed out so they would be useless?
 
Terry60 said:
Guru, my camera has an auto panorama function, where you tell it which direction you're moving in (left, right, up, down) and it marks a margin for you to include in the next photo in the sequence. It freezes the focus and exposure on the first frame, so that foreground details or lighting changes don't make the subsequent images incompatible. It records all the details in the metadata and the supplied software stitches the images, with automatic compensation for barrel distortion on wide-angle settings.
The images that make up that paronama (10) were taken on a fairly long telephoto setting and cover about 270 degrees. Because I was hand holding, you can detect slight camera shake on some of the images. The effect would be much better with a tripod.
Click to expand...

That's been my biggest problem with stitching images... By simply taking more pictures than I need, I can pretty much be certain that I've covered the whole range and barrel-distortion, etc. is pretty-quickly fixed in Photoshop.

Which camera are you using, Terry?

I've recently been leaning towards making an investment in a decent DSLR camera; I feel that I'm around that point where my point-and-shoot camera is the biggest problem with my photos (vs. before when the person taking the shots *cough* me *cough* was the bottleneck!).
 
Ron!n, the 10 shots is a limitation of the camera software, but the 270 degrees was purely because I was more at the telephoto end of the zoom range than the wide angle end.
If I'd zoomed out a bit, I'd have completed the full 360. In fact I have other panoramas taken the same day which do complete the circle. In theory, they could be printed and joined, and you could dangle the full strip from the brim of a hat and get the 3D effect. You'd look pretty silly though !
Guru, my camera is an Olympus C770 UZ,
http://www.olympus.co.uk/consumer/29_C-770_UltraZoom.htm#
quite old now in digital camera terms, and no longer a current model, but very small and light.
Its equivalent in the current range would be this one
http://www.olympus.co.uk/consumer/29_digital_camera_sp-570_uz_18509.htm
which has more than double the pixels, and twice the zoom range, with optical image stabilization, which would have avoided the shake visible in the panorama I posted, but is a bit bigger and heavier.
Before the digital age I was a Pentax SLR man for over 30 years, and I'd still prefer to do my focusing and zooming, with a twist and a pull/push of the lens barrel, than relying on auto focus, it's so useless in low light, low contrast situations, and the zoom motor drains the battery so fast. Some of the other digital tricks though (like panorama) are quite fun.
I think just about any Olympus digital will have the panorama function now

ADD

The American site is better for a good view of the camera
http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/product.asp?product=1367&fl=2
 
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1789: George Washington is sworn in as the first president of the United States.

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1945: Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his bunker as Soviet forces overrun Berlin.

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1975: The South Vietnamese government surrenders unconditionally to North Vietnam, ending decades of war.
 
ahh okay April 30th:
1798: US department of Navy established
1803: Louisiana sold to the United States by France
1970: American troops enter Cambodia, Asia
 
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