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Getting Into Macro Photography

January 24th, 2010

Common Butterfly

I’ve been looking over most of my Photo A Day project and I’ve realised that I really enjoy taking Macro photographs. The only problem is, I don’t have a macro lens, nor the money to purcahse such a lens.

The art of macro photography is simply to take pictures of the smallest things that are in our daily lives, whether that be insects, as the more popular macro photographs are usually of, or just pictures of water droplets, and at it’s simplest, maybe just pictures of the things you use daily, whether that be a phone, a watch or even a toothbruch (If you would want a picture of that.)

I have a few options to solve this problem: I can either save up money and purchase a 60mm Macro Lens, or I could buy some magnifying filters. The filters are 30x cheaper than the lens, so I’ll probably go with that option for the moment, although I would really love the 60mm f/2.8 USM Macron, mentioned above.

Macro photography seems like it would be a lot of fun, and I already like taking pictures of nature in general, but it’s the tiny facets of nature that really fascinate me, that’s pretty much the whole reason I’m interested in Macro Photography.

Well, if you have any tips or questions on macro photography, I would be more than happy to receive/answer them,
Calum Gilchrist

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Some Voice Sampling Songs

January 10th, 2010

Well, this is the first post of the New Year, so I thought I would take it easy and just make a quick post about one of my favourite artists and an album that is very interesting to me. The artist is Pogo, and the album is Symphony of Science.
These artists have one thing in common; they both make songs through Voice Sampling. Voice sampling is simply where you take voice clips and sounds and re-mix them to make music. Pogo makes his music almost entirely from music featured in films or television series, where Symphony of Science mainly uses voice clips from famous scientists, like Carl Sagan, Steven Hawking, David Attenborough, and quite a few others.

The main reason I wanted to make this post is because both artists have released a new song for the New Year, so I felt it appropriate to mention them.

Symphony of Science: The Unbroken Thread

“”The Unbroken Thread” is the fourth video in the Symphony of Science series, and it features David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, and Carl Sagan. The clips used in this installment come from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, David Attenborough’s Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, The Life of Mammals, The Living Planet, BBC Life, XVIVO Scientific Animations, IMAX Cosmic Voyage, Jane Goodall’s TED Talk, and a clever Guiness Commercial. The themes present in The Unbroken Thread attempt to explore the wild diversity of life on our planet, the intricacy and origin of its mechanisms, and its close relation to all other life forms. ” – Quote from <a href=”http://symphonyofscience.com”>Symphony of Science Site</a>

Pogo: Upular

Upular is made from voice samples and sound samples from Pixar’s Up.

Well, I hope that you enjoy the videos, if you have any other Voice Sampled songs I would be more than happy to hear about them in the comments,

Back soon,

Calum Gilchrist

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Posted in internet, music, video

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Happy Pac-Mas

December 11th, 2009
Pac-Mas Cake

Run Away!

Some of you may know that I ended up doing Cooking for Independent Living at High School. I do not like the subject, but I guess it’s been a little useful in showing the proper methods of doing things.

Now the only reason that I mention it is because I made a PacMan themed cake. Now it’s not the exact way that I wanted it, but I still have some pride for it.

I wanted to basically make the base, cut a slice out of it and then put yellow icing on the top. We didn’t have enough time to do it, so I may do it some other time. Cake decoration is actually kind of fun. You can see the whole cake after the break, but the cake got damaged in transport so it’s not as good as it was when it was fresh.

Update: It actually tasted alright. I’ll probably be able to make a better one if I make another cake.

» Read more: Happy Pac-Mas

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AMP Uploadr

November 7th, 2009

Well lately I’ve been working on a simple file uploader, mainly for the mobile platform. I thought that I would take the time to talk about how it’s doing and what I hope to do. In the future I’ll probably get a blog going on Amp to make life easier.

Right now you won’t find much on Amp, in fact you can’t even sign up to the service yet. I will be changing this in the near future. At the moment you can upload the standard image formats and view what files you have uploaded. The UI and look of the site are horrible and need a lot of work, and a few basic features need to be added, but right now I’m quite happy that it works.

File List

One of the first things I’ll need to do is make a page in order to view your uploaded content and share it. I would also like to integrate Twitter into the system, as that’s pretty much the whole point in the site. I am trying to think of interesting ways to seperate my simple file uploader from the big daddies like: Imageshack, Flickr, TwitPic and Photobucket.

Later on I will be adding (hopefully) video and audio support, maybe even support for reading documents you have uploaded on your phone, but it’ll be a while before I start thinking about that. I am thinking about making it open source, but I am unsure whether to do that for a web application, so we’ll see where that goes.

Well, I’ll try to keep you up to date with the development and will mention when sign-ups are open, if you’re interested in helping test or even use the site in its current state.

If you have any suggestions or ideas at all please e-mail me at: Calum@Homelinen.org all suggestions are appreciated.

Calum Gilchrist

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In Twilight

October 25th, 2009

The reason there have been no updates to the site’s theme or even any posts is because we’ll be moving web-host next month. Once I sort all of that out expect posting to resume semi-regularly as I want quite a few changes to the site, in content and looks.

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October Holidays 2009: Paris

October 11th, 2009

Yeah, I’m going to Paris for about a week tomorrow. I’ll probably be Tweeting quite a bit, or I’ll at least try to. If I have nothing to do I might try and blog from an Internet cafe or something, although I doubt we would be doing that, what with all the historic buildings to visit in Paris. I will come back with a TON of pictures as there’s so much to see in Paris and I’ve never been before so it would be nice to have photographs of the lovely place.

Until I get on a computer again,
Calum Gilchrist

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PC MOD: New Fan

September 18th, 2009

New Fan Front

Well I got my new fan yesterday, and I’m really happy with it, but I thought I would take the time to talk about it’s performance and installation for anyone that wishes to know these things.

Performance

Well it works perfectly, I’m incredibly happy with it. The CPU is 20 degrees cooler and it’s a heck-of-lot quieter, I can actually hear the HDD whirring away, it’s so much more quiet than my previous, stock fan.
My only gripe is that my room is freezing now, due to the coolness of my computer. It used to be rather toasty in my room, but now it’s freezing. I guess I’ll just need to put the heating on from now on, or wear a woolly jumper.

Installation

New Fan Right
The installation is a completely different matter. I’m not really good with the hardware side of computing, but I eventually got everything to work.
I had no problems removing the white solid substance from my CPU, that is hopefully dried thermal compound, or Pc World messed up, big time. I bought cleaning solution and it took the stuff off after about 6 applications.
I stupidly removed the thermal paste from the fan, because I had paid for some Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound, only to find that the stuff on my Fan was actually better than the stuff I bought, and it would have been so much easier to just leave it.
Now onto the thing that I had problems with – Actually fitting the fan to the motherboard. My old fan + heatsink was a screw in one and my new one has the little plastic heads that fit into the holes on the motherboard. (I know how that sounds…) I spent about 2 hours trying to fit the plastic heads into the threads of the screw holders (Don’t the term I should be using). Eventually I figured out the problem and removed the whole motherboard and removed the little Intel screw holder thing. Then I put the motherboard back onto the case and attempted to try and put the cables back. I forgot where half of them went and it was difficult to fit the last few plugs as there were big chunky cables all over the place – actually used a a pair of tweezers to get some of the plugs in.
But after that, it worked first time and it’s working perfectly now. I don’t know if the thermal paste is on it correctly, but the CPU hasn’t melted yet, so it should be fine.

Next for Calum’s PCMOD: Buying and installing a Soundcard – Because my onboard one is dying.

Calum Gilchrist

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Posted in Syndicated, Uncategorized

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Current Goings On

September 12th, 2009

Homelinen Banner

Well, I just wanted to say that I’ve started working on the new Homelinen.org and you can find it here. I’ve got a lot of thoughts on how homelinen should be presented in the future but I’m not sure what to do with the design. Any input and comments would be most appreciated.

I just want to give a big thanks to Grangemouth Rugby Club for linking to my Flickr and giving me the opportunity to do photography for them.

I’ll try and keep this blog going as I’m not going to blog on homelinen until someone else posts or I put the new design up. We’ll see which one happens first. I would really like to get back into blogging for homelinen but no one else posts very frequently and I feel that myself and Steven are trying to keep the thing afloat ourselves. I don’t think I’ll change the format of homelinen, in fact I think I’d be more open to personal blogs and links to interesting things the writers find on the Internet, whether it be a YouTube video or even a tutorial.

I will be changing web host at some point so this site might be down for a few days at some point and I’ll be sure to keep you up to date with the progress of that and if it helps in anyway. I’m considering Fat Cow as my web host, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to make the transition just yet. I do hope that they are faster than my current host as that’s the main reason that I’m considering the move.

Just bought a new fan and some thermal compound, hopefully they’ll arrive by Monday of next week as I’ve finally grown tired of the noise and heat that my computer makes. It really shouldn’t be this loud or hot. This is yet another thing that I’ll keep you posted on, either here or on homelinen.org.

Just thought I’d give a shout out to my friends over at: Asbo, which is a social networking project by Ross Imlach and Eden Graham. It’s coming along quite quickly and Ross has made a lot of progress over the past few weeks of development, hopefully it will continue to develop at this rate.

Well that should just about do it for now,
Calum Gilchrist

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Grangemouth Rugby Games – 5th September

September 6th, 2009

Grangemouth 1sts vs Orkney__042

I was asked to take some pictures for the Grangemouth Rugby Football Club. There were three games on at the Club, but primarily I did the photos for the 1st Team, who sadly were defeated by Orkney.

I also took pictures for the U18s team against Glenrothes, and they won their game 10-8. Normally I would be playing in this game but I’ve sprained my ankle, won’t go into that here.
If you want ALL the pictures in an archive (Folder), e-mail me [Calum@homelinen.org] or if you just want a few head on over to the appropriate Flickr URLs below:

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The Fall of Cartoon Network

August 21st, 2009

Cartoon_network_logo

Cartoon Network is a television channel that I’m sure every one has seen, and for many people it defines their childhood. I am one of those people.

Cartoon Network was my favourite TV channel up until I was about 14, when the Network started to go downhill. My beloved Network used to have such brilliant shows as: Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and many, many others. Now these shows were fantastic and I love these shows even to this day. Sadly, fewer episodes began to be made and new shows took their place, and sadly as the years went by more new cartoons were coming out and the quality was depreciating.Lucky for me, the old classics would still be shown but eventually they were only shown at ridiculous times that a child shouldn’t be awake it.

This is how I used to be before RobotBoy ruined my channel

This is how I used to be before RobotBoy ruined my channel

As time went on, the shows I loved were all taken off the Television listing and shows like RobotBoy and the Cramp Twins began to be shown CONTINUOUSLY, ALL DAY, giving no time for the shows that I loved. When RobotBoy started to have episodes on 8 times or more during a day I gave up on Cartoon Network, even though there were some new shows like Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends that was still funny and enjoyable that I wanted to watch, they were chocked by several other cartoons that I could not stand watching at all and so I stopped watching Cartoon Network.

Every so often I have a glance at the channel to see if my favourite cartoons of old are on show, but sadly, that never happens. I am met with the face of RobotBoy, or Johnny Test or the cartoon I dislike the most: Ben 10. Now I head that Cartoon Network are looking to start showing Live Action reality programs, and this just puts the final nail in Cartoon Network’s coffin, as we don’t even get the brilliant [Adult Swim] stuff over here.

I will miss the old Cartoon Network, but I guess I can just buy boxsets of the cartoons that used to absorb my life.

(Sources: Tv Squad: Will Cartoon Network become “The Network”?)

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