January 2005 – Page 2 – Something Odd!

Cinema Access for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Petition

Deaf culture doesn’t get much of a look-in here in Ireland but here’s a petition asking for “subtitles on cinema screens for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Ireland”.
The UGC on Parnell Square in Dublin has 2 subtitled showings a week so there’s obviously a market out there for it. If you are deaf, or know anyone who is, please sign this petition!
The Sunday Times ran an article on deaf culture a few weeks back which I meant to link to. Read it, it’ll surprise you!

Megan Alexander looks like any other cool 15-year-old girl… Without trying, she embodies the values of the self-styled deaf community, proud to be who she is, saying she wouldn’t have it any other way. “I have never wished that I can hear,” she says. “Why would I?”

Photojournalist Student Kicked Out Of Dorm

A student at San Francisco State University has been kicked out of his dorm for taking “pictures of partying, binge drinking, oral sex and, in particular, an alleged car burglary”. Here’s the latimes story and a thread started by Omar Vega himself.
What would you do if you saw someone breaking into a car? Take their photo or stop them?

Can you fool the drink driving test?

I wish I had sound on this PC but I can guess what’s going in this movie. hehe.

F-Spot – Picasa like application for .net, mono and Linux

Liam’s going on again about how great the combination of “picasa + hello + blogger + ftp” are on IRC but unfortunately Picasa is a Win32 application so it’s not something on my radar.

He says that F-Spot is a similar application, developed using Mono so it’ll probably make it’s way to Windows .net too.
If you want to install it on Debian Testing you’ll need to install the unstable port using the following:

Add “unstable” to your /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://ftp.somehost.com/debian/ unstable main
Then edit /etc/apt/preferences and set the “pin priority” of unstable lower than testing. This means that “testing” packages will be installed before “unstable” ones.
Add these lines to /etc/apt/preferences:
Package: * Pin: release a=testing Pin-Priority: 650 Package: * Pin: release a=unstable Pin-Priority: 600
Thanks Niall for that last bit!
Now, install f-spot:
# apt-get -t unstable install f-spot Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done The following extra packages will be installed: binfmt-support libgconf-cil libglade-cil libglib-cil libgnome-cil libgnomedb2-3 libgnomedb2-common libgtk-cil libicu28 libmono0 libsqlite0 mono-assemblies-base mono-common mono-jit Recommended packages: icu mono-assemblies-arch The following NEW packages will be installed: binfmt-support f-spot libgconf-cil libglade-cil libglib-cil libgnome-cil libgnomedb2-3 libgnomedb2-common libgtk-cil libicu28 libmono0 libsqlite0 mono-assemblies-base mono-common mono-jit 0 upgraded, 15 newly installed, 0 to remove and 377 not upgraded. Need to get 20.7MB of archives. After unpacking 59.2MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

F-Spot is an application designed to provide personal photo management to the GNOME desktop. Features include import, export, printing and advanced sorting of digital images.

Winter's Day at Iniscarra

The sun set slowly last Sunday. It was a cold but glorious day!

Battlestar Galactica – Finishes Tonight!

It’s been a rollercoaster of a ride, but Battlestar Galactica comes to an end on Sky 1 tonight. I think my favourite episode was just 3 weeks ago when *muffle* *struggle* “argh! let me go!” Oh, alright, I won’t say a word. it’s a good ‘un though!
Anyway, here’s the Battlestar Galactica Blog if you need more of a fix.
Later… Oh My God! What a finale! Wow! Please tell me they got funding for further episodes?

Insulation Day!

Today was insulation day, pic to follow but we laid 56 sq m of attic insulation in less then 5 hours! Go Us! Thanks Justin for all the help! He’s the one with the red zip!

Why Focus-Recompose Sucks

I use this technique, as do most photographers I’m sure, but it can make the subject of your photograph blurry as the auto-focus is focused on a slightly further back point. It makes sense when you think about it but it’s still useful when you have a long depth of field. Anyway, here’s the explanation why it’s not good for portraits and other close-camera work.

The Job of a Photo Journalist

Mark Hancock, as a photo journalist, is exposed to situations that many of us never see. A police warrant roundup is one such occurance and he describes it well.
He has several things to say in his accompanying post about what PJs do:

Before I continue, PJs mostly cover tax dollars at work. When we cover wrecks, fires and such, we focus on what the police and firefighters are doing. This is why we are there. We also cover the people affected by the event to get them help from the community. Lastly, we cover the people who may have caused the commotion in the first place (hostage takers, etc…).

The beauty of Winter Photography

One day last week on my way to work, the local area was shrouded in a deep mist. The sun tried to shine through but all that could be seen was a glowing ball in the eastern sky. I was late so I couldn’t stop, but this essay on winter photography brings back some of those memories.