Daily notes: Photography and graphics

How to manually set the correct white balance

Place a white piece of paper or card board in the middle of the scene.

• Zoom in on the paper, filling up the frame.
• Select "Manual" from the white balance menu and take a picture of the white paper.

==> This process tells the camera what white should look like under the current lighting.

Colors "seen" by the camera are affected by different light sources, so digital cameras use white balance to make a picture look genuine. Don’t ask me any further though. One of the most common setting where the white balance goes off is fluorescent-lit area.

The picture has a visible dark-green cast as seen here. 

Resolution – Photo sizes

1.3 MP – 3.5×5 to 4×6
2MP – 4×6 to 5×7
3MP – 5×7 to 8×10
4MP – 8×10 to 8.5×11
5MP – 8.5×11 to 9×12
6MP – 9×12 to 11×14
8MP – 14×17 to 16×20

Focus (simple notes)

• Auto focus: the center area of  the frame
• Spot auto-focus: a tiny spot, can be anywhere, smaller than the center area.
• Flex (zone) auto-focus: focus on areas which does not need to be the center area.
• Continuous (tracking) auto-focus: lenses refocused continuously, good for tracking moving objects.
• Predictive auto-focus: too complicated, I don’t 

PNG Transparency in IE

IE does not correctly display PNG with great color depth than 256-color-palette  To render it correctly, Microsoft use AlphaImageLoader. Osola even goes as far as writing a Javascript to loop through each images on a website and apply AlphaImageLoader code to them.

[PC magazine, issue Oct 5, 2004]

QuickLink: Daily surf

• DailyLit
  Online literature delivery. (I receive 3 daily emails, each contains parts of whichever literary work I subscribe to.)
• del.icio.us
  Online social bookmarks (now I don’t have to worry about using multi browsers, multi computers anymore.
• Federate Media Publishing
  Connect blog authors, marketers, and audience. (I use this site to find the best, most influential weblog there are for inspiration.)
• Lulu Self Publishing
  Let authors publishing their books without a traditional publisher. (I will publish my first story book this way.)
• reddit: what’s new online
  User submitted news, articles, posts, blogs, etc. (Since the discovery of reddit, I barely read news elsewhere.)
• Tabblos
  Host images, create collage of images.
• Top WordPress plugins
  Useful plugins for WordPress blogging software.

QuickLink: Daily surf

• Free dictionaries for Windows: Available in many languages which share a common user interface. I download a single dictionary file (.exe) once and four word list (for each language). I’m currently using Spanish, Czech, Croatian, and Vietnamese.)  With Vietnamese, I have to install the extra font. I really like these dictionaries: free, light-weight, easy-to-use, easy-switching from XLanguage<->English, XLanguge and English word appear at the same time I’m typing eliminating typos, typo tolerant, and I can add words and phrase to the word list. 

  

• Sync Google Calendar to MS Outlook: This post gives a detailed tutorials on how to sync your online Google’s Calendar with Outlook (I use MS Outlook 2003). It took a little bit of time downloading and installing, but I finally got it to work.  However, this is only one way sync as I don’t think Google’s Calendar can retrieve info from Outlook.

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Tech: Bugs, tips, and tricks

Right now, I throw everything together. Later when I have some time (well a lot of time), I will clean this post up a a bit.

Adobe ImageReady 7.0

1. I can’t save my animation as .gif?

A: Open the Optimize panel and choose .GIF in the “Settings” drop-down list

Blog

1. Thingamablog QaA

which I found to be very useful.

• FAQ from Thingamablog’s site
• Thingamablog Forum at SourceForge

2. Thingamablog’s add-ons

• Skins: http://www.blogskins.com/
• Comments
  • http://jsoft.ca/reblogger/
  • www.blogtools.com

3. Cool addons for blogger
http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/mydownloads/topten.php?rate=1

4. WordPress FAQ

5. Blog web clients

• w.bloggar

• blog desk

Bloodshed Dev-C++

1. Official Dev-C++ FAQ
2. Aditsu’s unofficial Dev-C++ FAQ
3. Bloodshed Dev-C++ Forum
4. Installation and configuration screenshots

5. I cannot compile my code?
A: If you’ve tried everything, and it still doesn’t work, just download a new dev-c++ .exe and reinstall it.

MS Excel 2003

1. Problem with importing CSV file (American/English user locales) to Bosnian user locale.
ex: Decimal numbers e.g. 4.5 will be convert to Date format e.g. 4.May
Solution:

• Go to Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options->Regional Options
• Manually change the formats of the currency and dates or select a regional setting under the drop-down menu list next to the Customize button.
• Choose English (United States)

2. How do I use the Data->AdvancedFilter feature?

Flash MX

1. How do I find out the version of the default Flash player?

• Click File->Publish Settings->

• Select theFlash tab

• Look at the Version drop-down list (Version 1, 2, …6,…)

2. What is the ActionScript version? (1.0 or 2.0)
A: 1.0

3. What is the basic differences among Flash versions?
A:Flash 5 used AS 1.0 and Flash Player 5.
Flash MX used AS 1.0 and Flash Player 6.
Flash MX 2004 uses AS 2.0 and uses Flash Player 7.
Flash 8 will use either AS 2.5 or 3.0 and use Flash Player 8.
Flash MX 2004 and Flash 8 have both standard and professional versions. Source: http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=191548

4. “Unexpect file format” error when opening a .fla
S: File created or modified in Flash MX 2004 cannot be opened in Flash MX.

5. I created a stop button and put the following ActionScript, but the movie did not stop when I click on the button.
on(release){stop();}
Solution: I’m not sure if this is the answer but after I did the following, the button worked

• Name the button instance in the panel.
• Select all the frames containing the button (instead of just the first frame) so that the code exists in all frames.

FrontPage 2003

1.How to publish the website from FrontPage to tripod.com?

• Click File->Publish Web
• Type http://frontpage.tripod.com/username in the text box
• Hit OK

2. What is FrontPage enabled?
A: To publish your website directly from FrontPage, you need to enable FrontPage Server Extension (FPSE) on your web server.
For example, Tripod is a free web hosting service which has FPSE. After registering your account, FSE is automatically enabled for you.

3. Where can I find a list of Web hosting service that have FrontPage Server Extension?

• www.microsoft.saltmine.com/frontpage/wpp/list

4. What is FrontPage Server Extension?
A:These are a set of server-side scripts and programs which enable users of Microsoft FrontPage to use its special components (called Web Bots). The extensions can be installed for Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) and on other Windows (usually Windows NT) and UNIX web servers.

5.List of Free Webspace Hosting with FrontPage Extensions.
http://www.free-webhosts.com/free-frontpage-extensions.php

6. How can I use a web template?
A: Uh, it’s very simple guys! All you have to do is open it in your web editor, e.g. FrontPage, modify it, and make it your own. A web template is just a name for a HTML file.

Web design

1. Can I use a free web template for commerical work e.g. design website for companies?

As long as you don`t sell/distribute the original sourcefiles ( PSD, PNG & HTML ) : NO ! You can use the templates for your commercial design work ( customize the logo, buttons and other graphics, implent the text content of your customer, add pages, hyperlinks etc. ) . The only restriction is that you can`t sell/distribute our templates as templates in any way. That`s our buisiness.

Depend on the templates’ creators. Some might not allow. Check for rules.

2. Transparent PNG images conflict with some web browsers.

I created an PNG text logo with a transparent background. It appears flawless without the rectangular background on Firefox, Opera, and Netscape. However, an ugly white background displays when I tested the pages on IE, AvantBroswer, Maxthon. If the problem only lies with AB and M browsers, I will ignore it since these two browsers are not too popular. But given IE’s dominance in the browser market, I have to fix it asap. I will save the image as GIF and see what happens.

Solution: I solved the problem by saving the image as GIF.
Other tips:Somebody wrote a javascript to fix this PNG’s transparency. It has something to do with PNG’s raster format technology and lack of support from IE version 6 and below. It’s complicated and I don’t want to get involved right now. I included the script but it did not work so I just use my simple GIF image instead. But if I want a professional looking image, I’ve better understand this PNG concept soon. If you’re interested, read this tutorial.

Hardware/Software

1. Printing error : “Can’t get the dc of the printer” It happened when I try to print a .pdf document opened in Foxit Reader to a HP LaserJet 1020. Not sure which causes the problem. When I switch to Adobe Acrobat Reader (v. 7.0, not sure if the version makes much of a different), printing okay.
2. Error “Unable to Locate DLL – The Dynamic Link Library mscoree.dll could not be found: Indicate that you don’t have .NET framework installed.
3. Enable “switch user” option in Windows XP Pro. Answer from Microsoft website. However I still don’t see the option “Change the way users log on or off.” http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=279765
4. Windows XP do not recognize my USB 2.0 hard drive, 3′5 DiskGo Edge.
   Believe it or not. Pick it up and shake shake shake it!

Networking

1. I can’t see my computer (Windows XP) on Windows 2000 network

• Make the folder shared.
• Set the clientcomputer’s workgroup name to be the name of the network domain that you want to connect to.

2. The system security log is full. Only the administrator can fix this error!
A: Eh, will definitely solve this problem. The network administrators came and was able to fix this problem, but it seemed to me that they didn’t let me follow to keep trade secret.

3. I unplugged the network cable from the other computer which hooked up to a cable modem and plugged to my laptop. However, I could not connect to the internet

Cable modem identifies the computers by their MAC addresses. So unhooking and hooking the cable alone will not do it because the cable modem remembers the old address and now sees a new one. So I restarted the cable modem by disconnected it from the power source after I hooked the cable to new computer.

4. What is a 1394 network connection?

This network device is actually your FireWire card. Although most users use FireWire to connect video and storage peripherals, Microsoft chose to list FireWire as a network device, which might confuse some users. Either you can ignore this connection, or you can disable it by right-clicking the connection from within Network Connections (from the Start menu, go to Settings, Network Connections) and selecting Disable.

5. “5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first” error when I tried to send mail (Gmail) from Thunderbird email client.

This error may come up if SMTP server that you’re sending through has email sending restrictions. Sometimes, mail servers are configured to e.g. only allow emails from common email clients (outlook, etc.) and block any email sending requests coming from other programs. You should try a different SMTP server or use Email Seeker’s internal mail server (comes with Pro version). (source)

This answer did not directly solve the problem, but at least it helped me to narrow the problem sources. So my SMTP was no configured correctly. Then, I found a tutorial on how to add Gmail account in Thunderbird from the Mozilla website. Turned out, I had to choose “SSL” for the security connection. And it worked.

Update: The next morning, I could not send mail again and got another error complaining about my smtp configuration. So I changed from “SSL” to “TLS” for no reason, and again it worked. Wondering what will happen the next time I start Thunderbird.

Online Services

1. Convert documents to pdf
2. http://www.faxdigits.com (receive free faxes)
3. http://faxzero.com/ (send free faxes to us and canada)
4. Word processor
5. 25G free online storage (streamload.com)

Cool wiki pages (name too)

• pickle.com (share photos and videos)
• wetpaint.com (wikis)
• markboo.com (bookmarks)

Information

1. USB hard drive

DiskGo Edge

Where: from egghead.com
When: December 2005
Notes: 1 year warranty
327 East 14St Street
Ada, OK 74820
800 332 6581
580 332 6581
www.edgetechcorp.com/support

What to do when phone contacting our potential employers?

Contact potential employers by phone

• Be prepared – have a script at the ready. Not leaving a voice message unless it is clear you are not going to get the person live.
• Keep notes and keep track of your calls and contacts. Include the date & time, the contacts name and phone/email. Where did you find this contact (or who gave you the persons name and how do you know that person). And of course, the results of the call – and next steps. Yellow stickies in a situation where you could not keep track of the calls and contacts. The then put together a simple form and a note book.

Content taken from Job Stuff

Phone interview
Phone contact might be less effective with the lack of non-verbal communication. You can not sell yourself much unless you are verbally persuasive. However, for those who are easily intimidated in stressful situation like a face-to-face interview, phone contact might give them the extra confidence that would have vanished if they have to eye-contact the interviewers. Plus in phone interview, you don’t have to worry about the extra factors: looks and behaviors, instead you can focus on your strengths, skills, and talents, and sell them.
Although I get nervous in a traditional job interview, I still prefer face to face with the interviewers or my potential employers because I am an animated speaker. My personality is revealed through the way I speak. Without seeing me, people might as well read the script I prepare for myself and make an educational guess. Plus I like to be able to evaluate the big boss for whom I am about to work.

No secrets about getting rich post

http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/archives/2006/06/i_dont_have_any.html

I downloaded his couse syllabus. It is a just a two page note of finanical key term, tips, and links to other sources.