Links, links, links

URLinfo – wow, lots of tools in one place!
morgue file – “free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use.”
Come, Gentle Bombs – everyone needs the threat of nuclear violence!
Vi-Improved
What Google Knows About You – scary, if you think too much about it!
Tricks of the Trade – all trades it seems!
Web Dev mistakes
Anatomy of an Icon

Standard vs Fine, Resolution and Printing

Someone asked on STF about the differences between Standard and Fine digital camera compression. A reply pointed to this page showing examples of each. I don’t think the example photos are great however, being rather flat and hazy. I agree with his conclusion though, except the resolution issue – I may want to print out my photos in the future!
This guide gives a reasonable idea how well your photos will print out. I haven’t printed any 11×14″ or 16×20″ photos yet, but you never know. I think I’ll stick with 2560×1920 pixels and standard compression! That’s a good compromise between resolution, quality and file size.
I almost forgot. The Sony F717 has a “2560(3×2)” mode. This is actually 2560×1712. Looks like widescreen tv and doesn’t save much space but could be handy if you knew you were making 6×4″ prints later.

On Camera Policies in Privately Owned Public Spaces

Here’s an editorial piece on photography in public areas. It’s lengthy but it and the comments explore the subject well.
There’s a lengthy thread on the Street Photographers list after a number of members were stopped by police. Trouble, trouble, trouble.

All because some paranoid daytime-TV-watching shut-in saw someone outside with a camera. And because the local TV news tells him to report any suspicious activity said fear consumer dutifully calls the police. After all why would someone want to take pictures of anything other than their family and those Kodak spots at Disney?

This is even worse that some third-world banana republic. At least there you can usually bribe your way out.

Smarty Plugins Working in WP!

Yay! I got the “relatedstories” plugin working! The hardest bit was converting to use $wpdb instead of the PHP MySQL interface. I love that I could call get_permalink in post.html to figure out the story link:

{relatedstories}
{if $relatedstories}
  <b>Related Stories</b> ({$relatedstoriesWords})
  <ul>
  {foreach from=$relatedstories key=key item=story}
    <li> <a href="{get_permalink id=$story->ID}" >{$story->post_title}</a></li>
  {/foreach}
  </ul>
{/if}