Monthly Archives: April 2006

Decided on the Digital Rebel XT

Posted on by
Reply

After spending a bit of time last night researching both cameras, the Digital Rebel XT is definitely looking like the best fit for me. IT has a bit more clairty over the Nikon, its RAW files are pretty standard so I won’t have a problem working with them in Photoshop, it seems to perform just a tad bit better in low light situations than the Nikon, and best of all it has a $100 mail-in rebate attached to it through July 15th. :)

Now comes researching where to buy it from. Hoping to actually have it in my hands sometime in May. Knowing my luck, the day after I actually first use it my Canon Powershot S45 will showup, which would actually be interesting because I would LOVE to know where it’s been hanging out this entire time.

Anyway, so ETA for new pictures seems to be around mid-May at the earliest. Until then I am going to try and get some old slides scanned in to at least get SOME pictures added to the gallery site.

Share

Need a new camera

Posted on by
Reply

So my previous camera was a Canon Powershot S45. It was a compact 4 megapixel camera that had essentially the same guts as the Canon Powershot G3, just with a compact camera lens and flash (the G3 is a full body model).

Well, you will notice that I keep refering to the camera in the past tense. This is because at some point and time it was either lost or stolen. I won’t get into the specifics of it, but needless to say I have scoured the earth for my camera and can’t find it. So here I am with no camera.

So I’ve been looking at a camera to replace the missing S45 with. Anyone who knows me knows that when I research something I get pretty deep into the ins and outs of it. This is what landed me with the S45 in the first place. That same type of research has lead me to two potential candidates to replace it: The Nikon D50 and the Canon EOS 350D.

Now the Nikon seems to fall to the Canon in almost every comparison, except for two things. First, I have yet to see how either camera feels in my hands. This is an important thing, especialyl when talking about full body cameras that aren’t quite as “pickup and go” as a compact camera. Second is because both cameras are SLR, I am really buying into a specific system more than just the camera itself. As I buy additional lenses for the camera, that pretty much ties me to that manufacturer for future cameras unless I am able to unload the lenses for a good price.

So far I am undecided, though currently leaning a little bit more to the Canon. Hopefully I will have a decision made soon and can buy one and get some new pictures up.

And yes, in case you were wondering, I have all the pictures up on the gallery that I currently have (at least that I want to put up). I have no newer pictures than what is currently there, thanks to losing my camera.

Share

Standards, who needs them

Posted on by
Reply

So I’ve been hard at work converting our site to valid xhtml. In the process I am quite excited to moving the site into a new direction as well.

To understand this direction though, you have to understand how the web works. The web is made up of HTML, code that your browser reads and then puts into the format you are all familiar with. So

<ul style="background-color: gray">
<li style="color: black; font-size: 16pt">Item 1</li>
<li style="color: red; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: bold">Item2</li>
<li>Item 3</li>
</ul>

becomes:

  • Item 1
  • Item2
  • Item 3

Now if you look closely you will see that there are actually two things going on. The first is that a list is being created. This is called the layout. The second is that text is being resized and bolded, colors changed, etc. This is called the style.

Previously, as in my example, the layout and style were all located in the same place, in the page itself’s file. Now what is happening is that the layout is being kept in the main file, and the style is being moved out of the file into a stylesheet. This allows a few advantages, the biggest one is that now the main file is nothing more than your text/data given importance in layout (paragraphs, headings, tables, lists, etc). It doesn’t have any particular look to it, and it shouldn’t. It is just the raw material from your page.

You can then through various web tricks assign all sorts of styles to it. You can assign a style for Halloween or Easter; a style for if it is being viewed over a web browser, a mobile phone, or being printed; or send the raw data through another program and create actual graphic design layouts for a book or other publishing media.

The other thing I have been doing during this project is cleaning up the code. This is something I am also very proud of. the web has always been a very loose collection of standards, and that looseness is something that web designers have never been afraid to take advantage of. Fortunately with HTMl 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 things are changing in that respect also. Web developers are now taking more care to make sure their sites are compliant. This one is for example. You can see by clicking the Valid XHTML link over on the right hand side. You can see if any site is compliant by going to validator.w3.org and typing in your favorite site into the address bar and seeing how it turns out.

Anyway, the project has been fun, but now I am done, and relieved. While fun, it has been long and requiring quite a bit of brain behind it as well.

I know this isn’t the family or picture update many of you have been waiting for, but nonetheless it is something I wanted to share.

Share