Hamarana

Blog has moved.

kyte — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:40:32 +0000

This is a note for those few of you who read regularly or who may have subscribed to the blog.

I have opted to take it out to its own domain again. Sadly, I have been unable to acquire hamarana.com again except at huge expense. This might even be a bit of a boon, I’ve now taken hamarana.net instead and that’s where we will be for the forseeable.

I will not be removing this blog, one never knows when changes may occur again. Suffice to say that for now, there will be no posts here, after today, unless something really critical to both sites happens to occur, or if I move back again. This is all highly unlikely.

Blog Themes

kyte — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:22:46 +0000

Whilst the free wordpress.com account has over 170 themes to choose from, I am still finding a great deal of difficulty making a decision about which to use. What I was using for what was mostly text, is not necessarily suitable for photography except in passing, and vice versa. There is a distinct argument to be had with regard to moving the blog to private hosting again.

I can’t get hamarana.com back again, and I’m not sure I want it anymore, given its chequered history since I let it go over 2 years ago, but hamarana.net is available and if its possible for me to substitute that for my current domain, I’ll do so. I’ll email VentraIP or hit their forums fairly soon. Its a shame I never liked the e-sack.com domain beyond the day I thought of it. Its rubbish and I have not been able to bring myself to use it in any serious way.

More updates soonish.

Olympus XZ-1

kyte — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:01:16 +0000

Just recently bought this one, instead of the Fuji X-10 (which, knowing me, I’ll get sooner or later anyway, along with the new Canon G1X)… The IQ from this camera, even though its a compact, is just amazing.

Big Aussie Sky

Glass ornament

and if you wondered about how clear and crisp the shots could be, take a look at the following. Its a 100% crop of a shot I took of a friend, across a table. The shot of her right eye is as good as it gets in a compact.

Anna's eye

I’ve more shots on my flickr site, in the Olympus XZ-1 Set, and if ever you wanted a compact that fits in your bag or can be carried in your baggy pants pocket (its never going in those tight jeans) this is the one. Brilliant.

January: Week two

kyte — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:28:02 +0000

Week two was a bit of a washout for me. I didnt really like much of what I shot.

Almonds

I love almonds so this one is it. I don’t quite know why I didnt submit it…

January: Best of week one

kyte — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:22:16 +0000

Eucalypt leaf

The leaf was just laying there on this old weathered picnic table. It seemed like a good subject for the single in January, and was the best of my week one submissions.

Weekly shooting

kyte — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:35:28 +0000

Because of my involvement in the Single in January quest at Serious Compacts I thought I might do a whole year. I know I cannot commit to shooting every day, but there’s never a week goes by that I don’t go out with the cameras. So I am going to try to organise myself well enough to post at least one photograph every week. Sometimes there will be more than one.

I had intended to do it on a new blog but really, what a waste. Here is just fine. I’ll use a different theme as well, one which is more in keeping with a blog which now has a stronger leaning toward photography.

Recent from the K-5

kyte — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:03:52 +0000

I’ve been spending more time with the K-5 lately, as well as my new XZ-1 (Shots from XZ will come in a separate post or 6). I’ve also been spending more time with my old Minolta lenses. They are working out really well (look at the weeds, the callistemon, and the rose). I think points of light, the grevillea, was done with my FA43 or the DA35. Not sure.

Update on Stanza

kyte — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 20:12:22 +0000

Many people will be aware now that Stanza is broken for people using iOS4.x and its only partly fixed for iOS5.x

Amazon, ownling the lexcycle website, has chosen to dump that site (which is where the builtin catalog was housed) this making it difficult for Stanza users to access the catalogs they used to. I knew this time would come, so I saved out the page from the lexcycle site in advance, and published the list on Get Satisfaction (we never did get any, by the way) and here it is again, with one extra (Manybooks).

Munseys: http//www.munseys.com/mobi/
Project Gutenberg: http://m.gutenberg.org/
Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/catalog.atom
O’Reilly: http://catalog.oreilly.com/stanza/main.xml
AllRomanceBooks: http://allromanceebooks.com/epub-feed.xml
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/lexcycle/
Bookglutton: http://bookglutton.com/api/stanza
Baen Free Library http://www.webscription.net/stanza.aspx
ManyBooks: http://www.manybooks.net/m/

There are other catalogs out there, but these are the most useful – and legal.

Less than a Minute a Day ‘Keeps Diabetes Away’

kyte — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 19:58:08 +0000

This sounds really really good. Seems I havent been using my exercise bike very efficiently.

Scientists at the University of Bath asked volunteers to perform two 20-second cycle sprints on exercise bikes, three times per week and after six weeks, researchers in the university’s department of health saw a 28% improvement in their insulin function.

Type 2 diabetes occurs when blood sugar levels build up to dangerously high levels due to reduced insulin function, often caused by a sedentary lifestyle. Regular exercise can help keep blood sugar levels low but busy lifestyles and lack of motivation mean 66% of the population are not getting the recommended five 30-minute sessions of moderate exercise a week.

Go to the following link for the full article.

Less than a Minute a Day ‘Keeps Diabetes Away’.

Reading eBooks in iOS5: Stanza?

kyte — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 01:22:37 +0000

Well… some of us chose to use an application called Stanza a few years ago, in order to read our ebooks. We were also able to buy (unless we lived in Australia) from several builtin bookstores. Stanza was/is an app which allows a huge amount of customisation, annotation, editing of metadata, as well as excellent database management. Its great for actually reading with, as well, with adjustable colours and font sizes, and a simple swipe on the screen to brighten or dim the display for night or day reading.

Long story short, Amazon bought Stanza (and its parent, Lexcycle) back in 2009. For a while, the original Stanza developers continued to work, and we received updates periodically to keep up with OS updates. However the last of the developers (Marc Prudhommeaux) left in May this year, and with the release of iOS5, Stanza is now broken. We always thought Amazon would kill Stanza off. It was a competitor (in a way) to its own Kindle app (which is primitive by comparison, but then its geared entirely toward getting you to spend your money on the Amazon Kindle store). For reasons best known to the Corporate Mind, instead of combining the two applications and taking the best of each, Amazon intends to kill Stanza completely.

Many of us have been emailing and getting responses beginning with “We dont know anything about Stanza, its nothing to do with Amazon” and then, when it was proven that it is owned by Amazon.. “Go to the lexcycle site and get support there” … even though lexcycle is all but dead and has not been maintained in 2 years… to “We will release one more update to Stanza for iOS5 but after that there will be no more”

I think this behaviour on Amazon’s part is unconscionable. Clearly they have a corporate mindset that tells them everyone will switch to Kindle if Stanza is not available. I have news for them. Most people who don’t already use Amazon to buy books will not make the switch. I am running a poll on facebook and so far only one of 72 responders will make the switch. I don’t think the numbers will get better as time progresses.

In the meantime we wait. I’s chosen to take the radical step of downgrading my iPhone from iOS5 to iOS4.1. It wasnt difficult. My 3GS is starting to get a bit elderly, and it doesn’t really like iOS5. I have to reboot daily so it doesnt lag. It was a no-brainer to downgrade, get a fast phone, and Stanza as well. I’m going to be rethinking my commitment to Apple phones if I can no longer find an adequate replacement.

[NEWS FLASH FOR APPLE] iBooks is an inadequate substitute. With minimal customisation and not even a night mode, never mind a lack of capacity to ignore publisher margin settings… makes iBooks a really poor relation. I would switch to iBooks IF the margins issue was addressed. Howver there does not seem to have been much development in terms of the interface, since its release… and its just not good enough to give us something pretty which doesnt do the job properly.

I’m also looking at Android: So far, fbreader and moon+ reader both step up to the mark really well. Theres a distinct possibility of a switch from iOS to Android in the future.

OK, enough rant for today… I can promise more in the coming weeks