Natural Light Workshop

Posted by Dave in Artistic
Monday, March 10. 2008

Natural Light Workshop Photos


I had the opportunity to attend a photography workshop focusing on the use of natural light for portraiture work. I was invited to attend by Howard Nowlan after expressing my interest in learning more about portrait work.


So when I first arrived I was extremely nervous. This is the first time I have done anything like this let alone working with a model, Kat who was easy to work with and get on with. I also only realised after the session that my camera (Nikon D40) does have a black and white option. For some reason I got it in my head that it didn't have one as it is only an entry level DSLR. This wasn't a major issue as I converted to black and white during post processing.


Also helping out were Maureen Douglas-Green and Tony Smith who gave great inspiration and mini lectures.


So after listening to Howards introduction and pointers we got straight into it......



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Glest - Review of free 3D real time strategy game

Posted by Dave in Games
Thursday, September 27. 2007

Glest Intro Screen

I have just recently started playing a game called Glest. I was aware of it some time ago but couldn't get it working on my Linux Desktop at the time (I now use Fedora 7). But one day I tapped in yum install glest and there it was. So looks like it is being actively built for various Linux distributions, which is nice! It is also available on Windows but I have not seen an OS X version.


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Free Virtualisation with VirtualBox

Posted by Dave in Computing
Thursday, September 6. 2007

I had an opportunity to test out VirtualBox on a server at work with Fedora Core 6. Due to a hardrive crash our sales system was unable to send pricing to the website.

Whilst trying to build the system from backups I came across problems due to missing libraries which I couldn't resolve using various compatible libraries which I needed for a custom Apache build. I was already aware of VirtualBox and went to check out their website and saw they had a new release 1.5. So I promptly installed it on my newly built Fedore Core 6 server. This concept isn't new. VMWare Inc. have been offering virtualisation products for quite some time now and are really mature products. However VMWare offer premium products and not suited for casual users. VirtualBox on the other hand is available as a free product and also an open source community edition.

There are only a few steps to be aware of before installing or running VirtualBox. First up is making sure you have gcc and the kernel sources available. So a quick yum install gcc and yum install kernel-devel sorted this out so VirtualBox could do a custom kernel module.

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Republic: The Revolution running on Linux

Posted by Dave in
Tuesday, July 24. 2007

Screenshot of Republic: The Revolution running on Linux using WINE

Using Wine 0.9.41 I have finally managed to get Republic: The Revolution running on my Linux distribution, Fedora Core 6. Unfortunately this game was not really that popular due the use of a brain being required. Bit of shame as it is a great idea, beautifully presented and has a great soundtrack. I have not really played it that much as Windows is not my primary operating system. It was only there to keep the missus happy with Sims 2 ;-)

Everything seems to work ok but it is really slow though. Maybe another couple of more updates to WINE and hopefully will be smooth. I think this is a DirectX 8 game so there may be hope.

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UFO:AI SDL_ttf Fedora Core 6 64bit Problems

Posted by Dave in Entertainment
Friday, July 6. 2007

I thought I should make a note of a problem I had running UFO:AI 32bit on Fedora Core 6 64bit edition. Hopefully this may help others.

I couldn't find any specific version of UFO:AI for FC6 so I grabbed the binary avsilable on sourceforge onthe UFO:AI downloads page. After extracting the archive and running ufoai I kept getting a error complaining that UFO:AI requires SDL_ttf. When checking it appears it was installed but after some poking around not the i386 version which for some reason didn't get installed. The only way I could find to install it was to get it straight from Fedora extras download. After installing this UFO:AI ran perfectly :-)
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Some more games

Posted by Dave in Entertainment
Thursday, June 28. 2007

AstroMenace Screenshot

Whilst I was looking at those other games I came across a game which I bookmarked before called AstroMenace from an independant games company in the Ukraine called ViewWizard Games but just found out there is a free version for Linux. I played this for a good couple of hours and was really hooked. The screenshot doesn't do it justice.



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Play some of the best free games available

Posted by Dave in Entertainment
Wednesday, June 27. 2007

I have been looking at some great new free software (games) recently. These have been around for quite some time now but have really matured to really show off the worth of free software. So in an attempt to get more people playing and/or contributing here is what I have been looking at:

World of Padman

Alien Arena

UFO:Alien Invasion

Danger from the Deep

This is not an exhaustive list by all means but these are ones I have looked at recently that have grabbed my attention for more than 5 minutes.




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Gallery to Flickr

Posted by Dave in
Friday, May 25. 2007


Ok I tried Gallery and tried to like it but after I had a look at Flickr I decided that was the way to go. Don't get me wrong. Gallery is an excellent piece of software but it seemed so slow . I didn't really go through any of the code to see what the specifics were as I relied on Fantastico for the install, although I had to manually upgrade to the newer 2.2 version. And yes I did play with the performance options.

I think Gallery is excellent if you want to keep all your photos on your own webspace or if you are a professional and want to sell them. But for novice photogaphers like me who just want to show off photos from their latest excursions and share experiences then you can't beat Flickr. There is a lot in Gallery to make a fully functional gallery but maybe that's the problem. The installation was huge.

Before anyone says anything, I tried Google's Picassa. But after uploading a photo I found it has a restricted license in that your photos can be used by Google for their own purposes. It's wise after all to read license agreements, something I don't do these days. Also Picassa didn't seem as fully developed as Flickr.

So here is my Flickr photo gallery.


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Neighbours to be removed from BBC

Posted by Dave in Entertainment
Friday, May 18. 2007

It appears the BBC has finally come to their senses and decided not to renew their contract to air Neighbours

All I can say is it's about bloody time. Can we have Rolf's Cartoon Club back and the half hour cartoon slot before the 6 o'clock news?
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About Me

Posted by Dave in
Tuesday, April 10. 2007

I am a PHP developer living in Plymouth developing mostly ecommerce solutions.

In the past I have developed web solutions for clients such as:
Westward Bound (warning: content may offend as they are a leading fetish clothing company)
Devonport Highschool for Boys
Mid Cornwall Galleries
JG Business Machines who I started doing freelance work for in 2002 and are now my employer.

Recent clients include Looe and Polperro Holidays.

My main skills are with PHP, MySQL, Apache and Linux. I have been using this combination since late 1999 and was introduced to PHP at PHP 3. I now prefer to use PHP 5 and try to update code to this as I go along. The updated object programming is much better so have started utilising this in more projects. I have yet to attain Zend certification due to lack of cash unfortunately.

I have used linux in one form or another since 1996. Since 2003 I have used Linux as my exclusive desktop at home, currently Fedora Core 6 which is definitley my favourite distro so far. I am a free software advocate. I don't mean free as in beer but the free speech side of it as it affects us PHP users more. I also have my own website where I try to show off the best free software at Free Software Links.

I am currently employed at JG Business Machines continuing development on ClickCat, a white label solution for business machines dealers. There are over 70 dealers using this system now. I am also developing an emailing solution called SmartShot for sending ClickCat related emails to the dealer's customers.

I am also a keen novice photographer. I have started to use Flickr to show my photos. Currently I have a really old Fujifilm 6900z. But it works. I am hopefully going to get a DSLR, a Nikon D80 would be nice!!!

Insignificance

Posted by Dave in General
Sunday, April 1. 2007



I was sent this in an email. Really makes you realise how insignificant we all are.





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I am here

Posted by Dave in About
Tuesday, March 20. 2007


For those that are looking I am no longer doing freelance PHP development. I can't seem to find a way to get off those lists I added myself to.

Instead I am now on a full time contract with JG Business Machines who were a good client of mine. I have been extending and adding many enhancements to ClickCat which is a dealer branded solution for JG Business Machines customers to sell office machines.

And now I have the free time (and when I am not playing Battlefield 2142) I am working on my own projects. The only one I have in a usable but pretty nasty design is Free Software Links. My original idea was to get certain free and open source desktop software noticed. I may have to rewrite the whole thing though as it didn't turn out as I expected. But please have a look around as there is some good unnoticed software in there.

Also I thought it would be worth checking out this blog lark so I installed Serendipity which is quite a nice down to business blog. The other ones I looked at just didn't do what I wanted. Only downside of this is the amount of porn, gambling and medicine spam added to comments. Are these spammers that dense. How many people think "Oh look, some cheap penis enlargement pills. I think I will buy some?". What a bunch of tossers.

Walk around Cardinham woods near Bodmin
I have also rekindled my interest in photography and installed Gallery 2 registered with Flickr to show off my photos I quite like. My camera is a now old but expensive at the time Fujifilm 6900. Although it is only 3.2 megapixels the colours it produces, I think, are pretty good. After almost 6 years of using it I have only just started messing around using the manual settings. But the results have been pretty good.
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