Alright so here it is, my post. My project is at a stand still and I have requested some outside help. I think once I get past the two "thorns in the side" I will be alright. I just have not had the time to do what I wanted with this project and time is slipping away. This has just been a crazy semester and quite frankly I will be glad when its all over. This project for sure! But I don't give up easy so I will keep chipping away on my own and who knows with enough determination I probably get what I am having problems with. Until next time have a good one.
Friday nite after a long exhaustive and emotional afternoon I came home only to figure out my table situation. I finally created my first table in MySQL and it was created. So now that I know that works I have other crap to figure out. But as usual I forgot to post.......
Alright so here it is. I am now finally posting after a long time of not posting. It's not because Im not working on my independent project either it's because I forget to post and before I know it a week has passed and noooo post.
Well I have designed the calendar and still need to touch up the code by adding the 12 month calendar, as it is now I have not done that yet. I now have access to the server so I can log on and create my tables. I did try to create a test table last night on MySQL but I kept on getting an error message. But I don't give up that easy I'll get it figured out.
I have been spending alot of time on this damn project and I wish Nick would just let me work and be patient with what I am doing. When I say I will have something done you can rest assured I mean it. It may not be right at the moment but give me a deadline and I'll do my best to keep it. This project wasn't a priority until I came on board. If I hadn't of seeked them out he would of been the one who had to struggle figuring out the scheduling calendar. GRRRRR!!!!!!
By the way I spend more than 8 hours a week, except over Spring Break, working on this project. Sorry I don't work fast enough though. Well you can bet I will be posting tomorrow and the next day and so on.
Well I thought I was off to a good start but the only task I am lagging in is posting to my blog. I have been working on my project and am a week late posting, I had to set up my dreamweaver by creating a new site so I could preview my pages. I also had to set up MySQL so I could create my database. Not only did I have to set my programs up but I had to re-do it. It seemed the computer I planned on doing my work on belonged to a student worker, and I was working when she would be in. It really discouraged me but it gave me more practice in setting up my programs. I also viewed code for calendars created with PhP and created my table.
I found a calendar with the features that Disability Services want on their site. It might be easy enough to just download the program and it works with MySQL. That's easy enough but I need to know a few things about the system before I do. Like what version of PhP am I using as well as MySQL. Well my goal this week is keep up on my posts when I work on my project.
Alright so I met with the staff who will be utilizing the scheduling calendar, that I will be creating for their dept. I am sketching out the pages and viewing the website of the current program they are using. This is going to be a big project but yet do able. I predict alot of frustration and self fulfillment to come. I have to visualize it first on paper than I go from there. In order for this to be a success I have to do all my research before hand.
Trying to find a messed up photograph and make something good out of it, is something I don't do often. Since my camera, like most camera's these days, has a LCD display, I can usually see if a picture I took is good or not, right after I take it. And if it is not good, I take another one, and another until it is a good one.
However, I now have a camera phone, with a display that is not as good, and a camera that is not that great either. But they can capture those great, rare moments, that make the quality of the picture less important than capturing the moment itself. Below I show the original picture I took of my oldest daughter. This is a great pose, with a beautiful smile. I just love that picture. But it is very soft, and out of focus. So instead I ran it through a whole bunch of filters in Picasa, and came out with the sepia colored, very focused second picture here. And I'm glad I did not discard the picture, because I think the final result is a great picture of my daughter.
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Editing a picture to show three different impressions of it, was one of the more difficult tasks in this class. I usually take photos with a specific purpose in mind, or even if I take a picture multiple times, I end up with only one or two copies of it. Mainly because the rest is waste disk space, and for me that's a premium. So here it goes.
This is the original picture I will work with.
The next picture is a enhancement for this picture, as I had intended it to begin with. With more contrast (sharpening) and more warmth to it, I think it looks a lot better, and much more like I remember it....
OK, now my second use for this picture was as a banner for my future faculty web site. I'm working on setting that up, and learned how to create a banner in a workshop I took earlier this semester. So in order to do that, I had to resize the picture (crop) and get some of the coloring a little adjusted (I'm feeling lucky settings in Picasa). The result is display in the picture below.
And coming up with the third editing idea was rather difficult to me. But I am actaully rather pleased with the result. Since this was a picture of snow on trees, I figured why not make it look like it was taking while it was snowing. Although that effect isn't completely right in this picture, I stil like the look of it. I ran this through the film grain filter in Picasa, then put it in black-and-white, and as a finishing effect, increased the shadows just a little bit. The resulting picture you can see below.
Ok, this is a fun assignment, and I had just the picture for it....
On a vacation in Arsen, Belgium, I took a picture of a swan who was going after my mom. He flapped his wings and started quaking a bit. Although he did not look that scary to me, he did look very beautiful. But the original picture had too much background focus on it, so I edited the picture to show off the beauty of the swan, and... well, you can see the result below. I hope you like it as much as I do.
I have about 4000 digital photographs that are kind of organized randomly. So as part of this assignment, I actually sat down and made more of a structure to the current archiving, which wasn’t easy, working with that many photographs. And it is by no means done, but I believe it is off to a good start.
Picasa has been a great tool for me during this class. I’m very happy with the ease of use of this great, free, program, and I’m really happy to find out that I can edit and organize my pictures quickly and easily on the fly. And that is good, because I usually do not have much time to do that.
I start with transferring the file from my camera to my computer. I do this manually, and put them all into one big folder, called Originals. In there, I change the view to thumbnails, and delete the pictures that did not turn out well, and rotate the one I took at a different angle.
At that point, I start separating the pictures out into different folders. Most of the folders have names that are the same or similar to the folders I listed below for the “final” pictures. The difference is in the root of the folder, which in this case is still on my “C” drive, and together in a folder called “Working”.
Then I edit the photos with Picasa, or Photoshop, or Paintshop Pro. Its been awhile since I used that last program, but it is similar to Adobe Photoshop Elements. After a photo is “done”, I save a copy of it to the “Digital Photos” folder on my “D” drive. This drive is 1 TB of two mirrored 500 GB hard drives. And for some double protection, I do keep a backup hard drive in my fireproof safe. I back that up once a month.
Below I have a sample of how I divided my photographs in categories/folders. These are the final phtos. It’s a work in progress, but it works so far. Besides that, since I use Picasa for most of it, that program lets you actually view the pictures in real time, right in their folders, which makes it really easy to organize them.
Categories (folder):
- Family
- 1.Us
- Chris
- Danielle
- Liz
- Mari Ana
- Mom and Dad
- Chris
- Kevin
- Hans and Tineke
- Erik and Ilse
- Erik
- Ilse
- Danique
- Sebastiaan
- Peggy
- Places
- Veghel (my home town in the )
- North Pole
- Fairbanks
And on and on......
My current camera is the Konica Minolta DiMage Z5. Its been a camera that has been in every way pretty much perfect for our family. Its easy to use, doesn’t way much, can take pictures in almost every light/dark situation, and can make small video clips as well.
So when I looked up the reviews for this camera, I wasn’t that surprised to find that they were very similar in nature, and kind of what I expected.
Using the web site http://www.dcviews.com I picked the following three reviews:
CNet review
http://reviews.cnet.com/Konica_Minolta_Dimage_Z5_black/4505-6501_7-31305784.html?tag=pdtl-list
Photography Blog
http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews_konica_minolta_dimage_z5.php
DP Review
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/KonicaMinoltaZ5/
Most of the reviews compared this camera with its previous version, the DiMage Z3 or a similar camera from the same company, the DiMage Z20. Also, many reviews compared it with Panasonics Lumix DMC-FZ5, which seems to be the DiMage Z5’s direct competitor.
As for the conclusion of most of the reviews, I found they were all pretty similar in their conclusions. Most of them find this camera to be easy to use and take pictures with. Good color and white balance for most situations, although not particular in artificial light. The flash is quite good, and it has a shoe for an optional external flash. The menu is easy to navigate, and the large size LCD display helps with that of course.
My biggest sell on this one was the Anti-Shake feature which works really well. Even for fast action shots, it focuses quickly, and takes pictures accurately and focused. Also, for the price of this camera, I think I got features that were only present in more expensive camera’s.
Some of the downside to this camera, according to the reviews was that most of the photo’s will require some post processing, most of them because pictures will be too soft/mild/unsharp. The highest ISO setting is 320, which is not at all accommodating. And after this class, I would like to see that a lot higher.
But all in all, I like the camera, and it seems I’m not alone. I did a little research before I bought it as well, but nothing as much as I did for this assignment.
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