Fireworks Photography

Fireworks

Fireworks photography can be a daunting experience. Here is a simple set of steps to follow while clicking night photos, especially fireworks.

1 Use a tripod (Important)
2 Manual exposure & set focus to “infinity”
3 Use “bulb” mode
4 Shutter speed can be between 2 to 10 seconds. Use a “remote” shutter release cable to minimize shake.
5 ISO between 100 or 200
6 Aperture between f/8 tof/16
7 Lens: Medium – wide angle focal length
8 No flash
9 No polarizing filter
10 White balance to”Tungsten”…”Daylight” gives great colors. Much better than using “Auto”

Usually, 4 sec. at f/8 and ISO 100 gives the best results.

w.bloggar – Blog from your desktop!

I am not particularly fond of blogging from the default WordPress editor. It’s just a little slow for my taste (especially when the post is long) and also I hate firing up a browser window just to post a new article.

Say hello to w.bloggar! This cool application lets you blog right from your desktop. It is an application that acts as an interface between the user and one or more blog(s). Because w.bloggar runs over the Windows GUI, it allows the user to edit posts without being connected to the Internet. Perfect. Just what I was looking for.

Few popular blogging services supported by w.bloggar are Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, Upsaid, UBlog, Drupal, Livejournal etc. Setting up w.bloggar was a breeze. I just had to do a quick google search for finding my endpoing API for WordPress.

Following are the steps for setting up w.bloggar to use WordPress -

1. Select if you want to create a new account or already own an existing account -
Here I selected the first option since I already have an existing account on WordPress.

2. Setting up your blogging service -
Use this option to select your blogging service (eg: WordPress, Blogger etc.) The alias can be any easy to remember name for you to refer to this blog.

3. Account Connection Settings screen -
This is the most important screen. You need to tell w.bloggar where your blog is hosted and how w.bloggar can access it.

• The first question is where is your blog hosted. Mine is – synapse.wordpress.com
• If the blog was on my own Website, for instance http://www.synapse.com, the host would be www.synapse.com (without the http://)
• Then it asks you for the full path to the API endpoint of your blog tool. Mine is /xmlrpc.php. If you have a blog on wordpress, yours will be the same. But, if your blog lives on your Website, for instance www.xyz.com/synapse, the path would then be /synapse/xmlrpc.php
• The default port is set to 80, which you can leave or change for security by clicking the https button; this will change the port to 443.
• The next page asks for your login details and you’re done.

Download w.bloggar from http://wbloggar.com/

Some similar tools for other operating systems -
* iBlog (MacOS) :: http://iblog.soapdog.org
* BlogApp (MacOS) :: http://www.objectivelabs.com/blogapp.php
* BlogGTK (Linux) :: http://blogtk.sourceforge.net/
* BlogniX (Linux) :: http://blognix.sourceforge.net/

Sort Outlook mails using multiple columns

Found this tip via a LifeHacker post. For those who use Outlook express, I am sure you try sorting emails by date, subject etc.

An often overlooked feature of Outlook express is the ability to sort emails via multiple columns. All you need to do is hold down the Shift key while clicking on the column header for one column, and continue to hold the key down while you click on another column. This can be very handy for more advanced sorting – you could sort by sender, and then by message size to find the biggest file from a particular sender.

A great little tip that should save heavy users of Outlook express some time. Thanks Lifehacker!

Improve font appearance in Firefox Linux

Don’t you just hate the way fonts look in Firefox in Linux. A couple of simple solutions exist in order to fix the problem. You could try and reduce your screen resolution. Another thing you can do it press ‘Ctrl + Mouse wheel’ or ‘Ctrl and +’ in the Firefox window. I use this shortcut a lot while browsing. But I have found that the following settings (Edit -> Preferences) make a huge difference to the look of web pages. It’s all about choosing the best looking font. You can do a search in Google for msttcorefonts if you want to install Windows based fonts like Verdana, Tahoma etc. on your Linux system. Here are screenshots of settings that work best for me. Don’t worry you can replace my fonts with any that look good on your system.

Select “No to all” in file copy dialog

I came across this great tip on the Download Squad site. When you try to copy a group of files from one folder to another, Windows will bring up a handy little window if it notices files in the target directory with the same name as files from the source directory. You can manually choose which files to overwrite or leave be one by one. Or you can click “Yes to All” to effectively overwrite every file with a duplicate name in the target directory.

But what if you want to click “No to All?” There’s no button for you, but that doesn’t mean Windows won’t let you skip all the duplicate files. All you have to do is hold down the Shift key and click No. Now Windows will skip all files with duplicate names and copy the rest of your files to the new directory, thus saving you a lot of time, heartache, and repetitive finger motions.

Use Gmail to convert .pdf, .doc, .xls, .ppt, .rtf, etc to HTML

Gmail is a nifty little application that handles email in a very efficient manner. It can, however, also be used for converting the following types of files to HTML -

.pdf, .doc, .xls, .ppt, .rtf, .sxw, .sxc, .sxi, .sdw, .sdc, .sdd, and .wml.

This is a great way to view of a particular type of file in case you are missing the application that opens that file. Here are the steps -

1. Compose a new message in GMail. (Sign up at http://mail.google.com in case you don’t have an account)

2. Attach any PDF or Word document that you want to convert to HTML You can attach multiple files in this step by clicking Attach another File.

3. Enter your own email address in the To: box and click send.

4. You instantly receive a message in your GMail Inbox folder. Open the message and click the “View as HTML” link next to your attachment.

5. The contents of your attachment appear as HTML in a new browser window without having to download the file. When you’re finished reading the attached file, close the new browser window to return to Gmail or you can even save the file to your harddrive.

Enjoy your new found multi format viewer

Demystification of your xorg.conf

Disclaimer : Editing the xorg.conf can make things go horribly wrong if you don’t know what you are doing. Unless you are sure of yourself, do not try this. At the very least you should be comfortable with some basic Linux commands in case you need to restore a backed up copy of the file. You have been warned.

The first thing that you should do, and I cannot stress this enough : Make a copy of your xorg.conf file. It can be found in the /etc/X11/ folder. The command to do the same is -

su

cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf xorg.conf.backup

After this you can begin editing various sections of the file. I will try and explain a couple of important sections. With trial and error you can become pretty good at this and have more fine tuned control over your display.

The xorg.conf file is divided into a minimum of eight sections. The start of each section is marked by the word Section followed by the section’s name, and its end by EndSection. Sections can be placed in any order, and you can have more than one section that cover a certain purpose — for example, if you are using multiple monitors. As in most configuration files, you may also see lines that start with a number sign (#) that provide comments for human readers. These lines are ignored by the operating system, and you can add more for your own purposes.

Fonts

Quick tip for fonts : You can add new font paths by following the format of existing entries: FontPath “<absolutepath>”
It is suggested that you place any directory for 100dpi bitmap fonts before those for 75dpi bitmap fonts, and add :unscaled to the end of all the paths for bitmapped fonts. This ensures that the higher quality fonts are used by the xserver first.

Module

You should prevent editing this section. xorg.conf’s Modules and DRI sections refer to modules loaded by the X server for such purposes as 3-D acceleration (glx, dri) and font support. Unless the relevant resources have been compiled in the kernel, it will not make a difference if you edit this section.

Input Device – Keyboard

Most probably you will want to use the XkbRules options to define the general behavior of the keyboard, since the alternative is to define all aspects of the keyboard layout separately yourself. Driver ‘kbd’ will work fine 90% of the time. The XkbModel for the keyboard can be defined, using one of the options listed in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst, or else a generic one such as pc104 or pc102.

Input Device - Mouse

Two important sections here are ”Driver” and ”Device”. The driver ’mouse’ will work fine for most. Device indicates the location where your pointing device is present. The protocol section defines the type of mouse you have – whether a PS2 (round connector), a USB or a serial mouse. If you have a three-button mouse, you should add the “Emulate 3 buttons” option as follows -

Option “Emulate3Buttons” “true”

Device & Monitor

These sections define your monitor and your 3d card. Make sure that they have got detected correctly. If you are having trouble with the display, you can try one of the drivers in the /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers directory for the graphic card ‘Driver’ section. If all else fails you can get basic video support by entering “vesa” or “vga” for the driver. The bus ID for the first 3d card is usually PCI:1:0:0.

For the monitor, the DPMS, enables Display Power Management Signaling in order to conserve the power used by the monitor.

Screen 

The screen section can be used for setting the depth and resolution. Pretty handy if you want to bump up/down your resolution or if you know beforehand that your monitor does not support a particular mode.

After you hav made changes to your xorg.conf file, save the file and restart X by pressing ‘Control + Alt + Backspace’. I case something goes wrong you can always restore the the copy of xorg.conf that you had backed up earlier. You can also look for logs related to the error in the /var/log folder. Look for recent entries.

Download this article as a PDF -> Demystification of your xorg.conf

Speed up your connection and stay secure with OpenDNS

Here’s a surefire way of speeding up your internet access and getting secure from DNS spoof attacks. The answer is OpenDNS. Every ISP (Internet Service Provider) has a DNS server setup so that the website addresses you type get translated into IP addresses so that your browser understands where the website content is to be fetched from. But most of these DNS servers are overloaded and at the same time are prone to spoofing attacks like DNS poisoning.

Here’s how you can protect yourself and speed up DNS requests at the same time -

In Windows XP-

1. Open up your Control Panel
2. Open Network connections
3. Right click the connection you want to configure
4. Select properties
5. From the dialog that pops up, select Internet Properties (TCP/IP)
6. Click the properties button
7. Type in 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 as your DNS server addresses
8. The dialog should now look like the screenshot below -

Thats all! All you have to change the Preferred DNS server and the Alternate DNS server. Leave the rest as is.

For Linux -

1. In Gnome, goto System Administration -> Network
2. Change your DNS servers to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
3. The same procedure can be used for KDE, just goto Control Center and enter the above addresses as your DNS addresses in Network Configuration

This tip not only reduces your internet DNS requests lag but also makes you secure against DNS poisoning attacks.

Goto http://www.opendns.com/ for more information.

Quoted from the above website -

 

OpenDNS is safer

OpenDNS protects you from phishing — bad websites trying to steal your personal information. When you try to go to a phishing site, we let you know. We also let you optionally block adult sites as a category, or individual websites of any type. These services help you better protect those on your network from websites they shouldn’t be visiting.
Learn more.

 

OpenDNS is faster

You use DNS every time you use the Internet. The speed of your DNS service determines how quickly websites load for you. That’s why you want your DNS service to be blazing. OpenDNS is so fast because we run some of the largest DNS caches around and do it on our own high-performance network.
Learn more.

 

OpenDNS is smarter

The address bar is how you navigate the Internet. We make your address bar more intelligent. With OpenDNS, you can create shortcuts that let you type something easy-to-remember into your address bar and leap straight where you want to go. And we’ll correct your common spelling mistakes, on the fly. That means when you are typing fast and type yahoo.cmo instead of yahoo.com, you still get there.
Learn more.

 

OpenDNS is more reliable

Little is more frustrating than intermittent Internet outages. When your DNS service isn’t working, you can’t access the Internet. When you start using OpenDNS, your days of dealing with DNS-related downtime will be over. We know reliability is important, and we stand behind ours.
Learn more.

Open ports for your Airtel connection (Port-mapping)

This write up will explain to you how to speed up your Airtel Broadband connection / solve other problems regarding connection failures due to closed ports.

Although I use Airtel and a Beetel 220 BX modem as my basis for this write up, the same rules can be applied to others as well. So lets get started. First thing make sure your DSL modem is on. Fire up your browser. Type http://192.168.1.1 as the address with the following Username/Password -

Username : admin

Password : password

Note : These are case sensitive. Make sure all are typed in lowercase.

Click on Advanced Setup -> NAT in the page that loads. If you do not see these options try entering http://192.168.1.1/main.html as the address. Some routers/modems deliberately try to prevent users from accessing these options. On the NAT virtual servers page click the add button. Now add the port number that you wish to open up. You can even open up a range of ports using the add button. You should see something similar to the screenshot below. Click it to view full image

This technique can be used for any operating system / modem / service provider. It may vary slightly but the essential principle remains the same.

2 great ways to sharpen an image in Adobe Photoshop

Method 1 :

1.  Open image
2. Filters -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask
3. Set threshold to 0,  radius to 250 and  amount between 20 – 25
4. This causes  sharpening as well as  contrast enhancement

Method 2 :

1. Open image
2. Layer -> Duplicate Layer -> Click OK
3. Filter -> Other -> High Pass
4. Set Radius between 3.0 and 6.0 depending on how sharp you want the image
5. Set the mode of your layer from “Normal” to “Overlay” in the layers toolbox

2 really simple yet highly effective ways to sharpen your images in Photoshop!