Marten Veldthuis

Links for 2009-11-09 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-10T00:00:00-08:00

Links for 2009-11-07 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-08T00:00:00-08:00

"The Message" to "Objects in Space" / Firefly Elsewhere - Chinese by Story - Firefly-Serenity Chinese Pinyinary

Links for 2009-11-04 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-05T00:00:00-08:00

Links for 2009-11-03 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-04T00:00:00-08:00

Using the New Gem Bundler Today « Katz Got Your Tongue?
require "#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../vendor/bundler_gems/environment" class Rails::Boot def run load_initializer extend_environment Rails::Initializer.run(:set_load_path) end def extend_environment Rails::Initializer.class_eval do old_load = instance_method(:load_environment) define_method(:load_environment) do Bundler.require_env RAILS_ENV old_load.bind(self).call end end end end
A rails template for gem bundler · tomafro.net
tomtt's emacs-rails at f2c4f8f4c0f728d7b37e2d1e2e15c9a6164428f1 - GitHub

Links for 2009-11-02 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-03T00:00:00-08:00

Links for 2009-10-23 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-24T00:00:00-07:00

How We Made GitHub Fast - GitHub
ldirectord
Playdar - About
ezmobius's chef-deploy at master - GitHub
Simplifying your Ruby on Rails code: Presenter pattern, cells plugin | Dmytro Shteflyuk's Home
used everywhere on the site. It accepts a lot of parameters to configure how rendered code should look like. The header of this partial, which initializes default values of parameters, becomes larger and larger. The
incollector
Linux Compose Key Sequences

Links for 2009-10-22 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-23T00:00:00-07:00

Headphones again

2009-08-19T00:00:00+02:00

Citydance Groningen 2009

2009-08-09T00:00:00+02:00

More photos here.

Hat

2009-08-07T00:00:00+02:00

Phones

2009-07-29T00:00:00+02:00

Bunker

2009-07-25T00:00:00+02:00

Second world-war bunker from the inside.

Mine?

2009-07-20T00:00:00+02:00

This silly gull reminded me of Finding Nemo.

The Dom Tower of Utrecht

2009-07-14T00:00:00+02:00

USB over RJ45

2009-07-08T00:00:00+02:00

USB over RJ45

I came across this little dinky at DealExtreme. Costs only a couple of bucks, and it lets you turn a normal network cable into a long USB-cable. Anyone who ever shoots tethered should have one of these.

You don't want to go there

2009-07-06T00:00:00+02:00

Very rainy and occasional lightning. Not a good time to go out. Had my tripod in the window sill for this (holding the legs tightly… I’m up on the third floor here). Taken at 11mm f/8, exposed for overall scene and enhanced contrast in the sky in Photoshop.

2009-06-20T00:00:00+02:00

Shooting on the stairs

2009-06-11T00:00:00+02:00

This one is from the RUG gala earlier this month.

Smaller Cameras

2009-05-28T00:00:00+02:00

I’ve never quite understood these… are they much better than a flat pocket camera?

Ringflash Mania

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

One big advantage – besides the quality of the light – is the attention you instantly get. Everyone wonders what the heck that weird thing on your camera is. And that’s when you snap your picture. Sounds to me like there’s actually a photo project in there, collecting facial expressions of strangers as you shoot them up close with a ringflash.

Above image is a composite of three seperate mugshots. Shutter speeds were around 1/15th of a second at f/4. Really digging the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 for this kind of party stuff. An older f/4 wideangle would probably have problems focussing in dim party light, but that’s no problem with this one.

I’ll probably keep posting shots from this party for the next few days. Then maybe a London intermezzo from my trip there next weekend, but next week I’ve got a symposium and another party planned, so be ready for plenty of party shots the coming days.

I'll Zig if you Zag

2009-05-20T00:00:00+02:00

Taken during a hip-hop workshop last night.

Land Rover

2009-05-19T00:00:00+02:00

Dabbling a bit in HDR, with thanks to DJN of Chromasia’s wonderful tutorials.

Red and Green

2009-05-17T00:00:00+02:00

Who’s afraid of a little red, white and green?

Reichstag

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

An old one from the archives of 2006, the Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany.

Bike on a pipe

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

Hello mr. Jekyll

2009-05-13T00:00:00+02:00

Hello mr. Jekyll

This site is now running a — slightly modified — version of Jekyll. The modifications I made are so that I can navigate by previous and next post within the category the post belongs to. I have a seperate category for photos and blogposts, and to stop previous/next links from intermingling I needed to add this feature. If you need it, you can find it in my fork. The source for this site is here, though the contents remain copyrighted. If you want to use my design, feel free to send me an e-mail, I’ll probably give you the go-ahead but I put the all rights reserved license on there to maintain control. And given that my photos end up there aswell, I thought this was just the easiest.

Rake

Because of the photos, I needed thumbnails, and for that purpose I added a rakefile.

task :default => :publish

desc "Builds thumbnails for photos"
task :thumbs do
  files = Dir["photos/files/*.jpg"]

  FileUtils.mkdir_p("#{ROOT}/photos/files/thumbs-86")
  thumbs = Dir["photos/files/thumbs-86/*.jpg"].map {|th| File.basename(th) }
  files = files.reject {|file| thumbs.include?(File.basename(file)) }
  files.each do |file|
    dest = "#{ROOT}/photos/files/thumbs-86/#{File.basename(file)}"
    puts "Building #{dest}"
    `convert #{file} -thumbnail x172 -resize '172x<' -resize 50% -gravity center -crop 86x86+0+0 +repage -format jpg -quality 91 #{dest}`
  end
end

desc "Run Jekyll"
task :build => :thumbs do
  puts `/Users/marten/code/ruby/jekyll/bin/jekyll`
end

desc "rsync everything to server"
task :publish => :build do
  puts `rsync -avz "#{ROOT}/_site/" marten@robinson.veldthuis.com:~/web/public/`
end

Goodbye Blipfoto

2009-05-13T00:00:00+02:00

Goodbye Blipfoto

It’s been fun while it lasted. Due to growing irritations with Blipfoto I’m moving to my own hosted site. Not to discredit Blipfoto here though.

Any site can be slower for some time while they experience some growing pains. I know that first-hand, having worked at a webhosting firm which became quite popular really fast. We could hardly add more servers to keep up. Recent downtime issues haven’t been my worries.

The problem for me lies in an inherent mismatch between my primary shooting style, and Blipfoto’s rules and philosophies. The one photo a day, taken on that day rule… it simply isn’t for me. While I do strive to shoot multiple times a week, I don’t have the time to do it every day. And when I shoot, I’ll often have multiple great shots. Having my own site means I set the rules, and can post whatever I want, whenever I want to.

The one thing I expected when I came here was actually to find a good community. While there surely is a community, the thing I find lacking is constructive criticism, or pretty much any criticism at all. I’m in this to improve my shooting as much as anyone else, but yet no-one is telling me specifically what they like and don’t like about the shots. “Great shot!” comments aren’t helpful.

Then there’s something nagging me at a more basic level. I have the technical know-how to set up my own site, have everything exactly as I want. As a computer nerd, I like having everything under version control. On my new site, posts are text files which I can edit with whatever I want. I’m pretty sure that in 50 years time, when I’m old and grey, while the software which currently transforms that into HTML files may no longer work (it probably won’t), the text files will still be readable just fine, and I could write a script at that time which extracts the titles and bodies of the posts, and outputs them in whatever format people use by then.

Wanting to have everything hosted under my own domain name, under my own banner is another factor. At some point, I’ll occasionally post a regular blog post. I can’t do that at Blipfoto, and I’d like a one-stop hub for my online presence.

It’s been fun, but Blipping isn’t for me. Hope to see you at my new site, I’ll be working on it in the weeks to come, one thing to do is commenting, but I wanted to switch and keep my pace going.