Comment posting may break tonight if you post comments on any of the blogs on this site. Please be patient and visit again later!
Ten killed in New York ferry crash
I got an awful fright this morning when I heard this story on the radio. Martina and I took that same ferry many times when we stayed with my cousin on Staten Island.
I just heard on the radio that the pilot of the ferry may have fallen asleep. He’s in hospital after apprently trying to commit suicide!
Comment spam on blogs.linux.ie
Well done spammers, you finally discovered this site! I received 3 comment spams last night and others have been hit too. It was inevitable I suppose but now it’s time to take care of the problem.
There are so many methods of stopping this abuse of the site and they’ve been endlessly discussed in the blog world. I tried to pipe 2 of the spams to spamassassin but it doesn’t work too well unfortunately. Chances are, it won’t work when run as “nobody” either.
I’m opting for the method that keeps the CLUG and Webdev mailing lists free of spam: moderation. When someone posts a comment to your blog you will receive an email as normal with that comment, but it will also include a moderation link to validate or delete the spam. By default moderation will be turned on.
The next step would be a “registered user” mode so that regular visitors can register (with email validation) and post comments by-passing the moderation system.
Linux Graffiti
This evening on the river…
I went into town this evening to take some photos.
I noticed this boat a few days ago when I parked my car down the road.
As I was taking the previous shot several fire engines and an ambulance raced up the quays towards Patricks St. they stopped on Patrick’s Bridget so I went to investigate.
Two firemen searched the river with a high-power lamp. It could have been a false alarm as they didn’t find anything or anyone.
Lots of people gathered to watch.
When they didn’t find anything at Patricks Street, they searched near the bus station. Again, without finding anything. I hope I don’t hear bad news tomorrow morning.
There’s a fire engine on the bridge and ambulance on the quay above.
It’s strange. When you have a camera and a tripod, people think you know what’s going on! At least half a dozen people asked me what happened, but I didn’t know any more than anyone else!
Here’s a tip when taking photos at night in a lit area: If you want to set the exposure for more than a second, then set the EV compensation down as low as possible. You’ll be able to capture the motion in the picture, and it’ll also reduce the glare off street lights or other light sources. The same effect can be achieved with a dark filter of course!
I'm off to Spain!
I booked my flights last night and I’m off next month for a week. Can’t wait to get back to Madrid!
I support the ban on smoking in the workplace
But I’m a crap artist. Will someone please do better than this please? Those pictures took me ages, but they’re not very good!
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Lots Today?
So much to say but not today.
Some photography links and discussions:
- Apparently, the digital zoom on the Sony 717 is better than zooming and cropping in Photoshop!
- Don’t you hate shutter lag and autofocus time? They’re annoying, but at least the autofocus and exposure setup time for an action shot can be removed by pre-focusing. Unfortunately you’re still left with shutter lag. Here’s a long discussion about this issue.
- I read with interest an article by David Mc Williams in the SB Post last Sunday. In it he proposed that paying a mortgage is dead money, not paying rent. Yes, that’s sure to get up people’s noses!
- Keith Barry caught a bullet in his teeth on television in front of a crowd. Amazing illusion, however he did it. Never mind the dodgy looking site, navigate in. They’ve a recording of his appearance on the Late Late which is probably worth downloading just to see Pat Kenny have the sh*t frightened out of him!
- Film Degrain – a plugin for the Gimp. I tried this on one image and it worked quite well. It did make details a bit softer though so examine the photo carefully.
- I got 50 digital images printed by Spectra Photo in town. It only cost me €9.50 for 6×4 prints. Quality is very good and I’ll get more printed there as it’s a quick overnight service! (and a dial-up line can’t compete with the bandwidth of a CD dropped into a shop!)
Damn, typing html links on a keyboard with broken left shitft and ctrl keys is really awkward!
Later … I thought something was wrong. I counted the photographs I had printed and only 39 were there. The first 10 on the CD hadn’t been printed! (I had burned 49 images.. ls -l|wc -l counts an extra line at the top of the ‘ls’ output) I can’t wait to hear what excuse they give for this! *mutter*
Nothing Today
A Daytime Fireball Over South Wales
Wow! Amazing photo of a “sofa-sized” fireball over Wales.