Year: 2009

Careful what you Tweet for – How Twitter changed my life

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Ever mentioned something casually on Twitter, and got replies and help from people you don’t even know? Here’s what keeps happening to me – it’s impressive! I’ve signed up to Twitter in 2008, ever since it became apparent that all the internet hipsters are on it. Thought I shouldn’t miss out on something that could …

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How to upgrade PHP on CentOS 5

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I’ve learnt a lot since this article went up – including how to do this properly. This article is left here for historic purposes. Read how to upgrade PHP on CentOS 5 on my other site The WordPress Guru Original Article: An account of events – not dramatized yesterday, 09:12 Idea: The need for amazing …

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How to shoot at 30.000 ISO and still see pictures

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The other day I spoke to the biggest source of knowledge himself, Mr. Paul Weston. We were chatting away about all things darkrooms and photography, when he told me a fascinating tip I can’t wait to try out: develop a film to become incredibly sensitive to light. Films like Delta 3200 or HP5 allow you …

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Concept: Cigarette Machines

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Style: Social Documentary with community input. Topic: Outdoor Cigarette Machines in Germany, possibly other European countries Synopsis: Although smokers are just as much frowned upon in Germany as they are here, one thing remains commonplace ever since the seventies, almost on every street corner: Cigarette Machines Even the tiniest little cul-de-sac back alley in Germany …

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Concept: Fashion Victims

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Style Portraits / Street Photography Number of Images loads – this could become an ongoing project with communty input Synopsis We went down to Camden Market this weekend, and although I’ve been there every day this week for lunch, I’ve never taken the time to explore the stables until yesterday. So much wacky and off-the-wall …

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New Category: Random Concepts

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There’s an old saying that goes “write down your ideas – otherwise you’ll forget them”. Very true, especially a few months or years down the line, just when you’ve run out of ideas, and you’ve got time on your hands without a clue how to seize it wisely. This can often lead to depression and …

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First Shots from my Holga with Aperture Mod

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This is exciting: I’ve just scanned two rolls of film shot with my modded Holga 120SF! As I said yesterday, I always wanted a larger switchable aperture on Holga. Even in the slightest bit of shade, Holga pictures are too dark (that’s 299 days of the year in the UK). I’ve now got a working switch in …

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I’ve modded my first ever Holga 120SF

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Big news: You remember the first ever Holga camera I’ve bought? The 120SF (plastic lens, no tripod mount, no bulb switch, no colour flash)? Well guess what: I’ve taken a screwdriver, some superglue, a drill bit and increased the aperture by two or three stops using this very detailed article by Mark Hahn. By default, …

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Panorama Shoot-Out, Part 7: Fisheye Holga

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When the colour-splash Holga came out, I knew I had to have one! It had a tripod mount and a bulb setting too – nowadays the standard for Holgas – but it wasn’t pre 2006. This one also has a glass lens, and a dedicated 6×6 gate. Lomography were selling it for a lot more …

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Panorama Shoot-Out, Part 6: Diana (with Endless Panorama gate)

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One of the super funky features Lomography have introduced in their Diana+ is the Endless Panorama gate. It makes it possible for you to shoot square pictures with no overlap and minimal space in between. Now that could DYNAMITE! I grabbed a couple of rolls of Fuji RMS and made my way over to Camden …

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Cross Processed in E6

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The other day I tried my hand at cross-processing some colour negative film in Tetenal Colortec E6. The results are remarkable! Looks like I’ve been back to 1952 for a bit. I’ve tried it the other way round before (slide film in C-41), which also looks rather funky (or shall we say lomographic?) So here …

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Panorama Shoot-Out, Part 4: Diana (without a gate)

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The lovingly recreated Diana+ by Lomography is the ugly duckling in my collection. However, looks can be deceiving; I’ve had some excellent results with this baby since I bought it last year.In fact, it’s slowly becoming my favourite plastic camera! Lomography have added some funky bits to the package, like the possibility to shoot 3 …

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Burger and Chips from McDonald’s, Chiswick

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After such an amazing experience with my own home made burgers, I thought I’d give the Chiswick High Street ago and seek out the ultimate defender of the burger. They stopped counting once they had sold their billionth burger, they had countless re-designs of their stores and re-bradnings. They’ve never had a good review in their life …

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Panorama Shoot-Out – Part 3: Pink Holga

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Time to check out what the contestants can do! [singlepic id=300 w=320 h=240 float=left]As I said before, the Pink Hoga is my favourite (at the moment). I love them all to bits, but the colour really does something for me. “It’s so gay”, people say – but I think it’s more like a funky breath …

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Panorama Shoot-Out – Part 2: Meet the Contestants

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5 plastic fantastic cameras are going head-to-head in my tests, all of them lomographic pieces  of low value. They all eat medium format film, although they can survive on the odd roll of 35mm. They’re happiest in brightest sunshine, they don’t like overcast or twilight shots, unless you utilise the bulb setting. Most of them …

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Panorama Shoot-Out – Part 1: Introduction

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We’re going to Miami Beach in July to finish working on the Miami Beach Huts project – I can’t wait! I thought it would be fun to shoot some wonky panoramas on medium format while we’re there, some of the Beach Huts, and plenty of others in the brilliant Sunshine State sun. But wait a …

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How two of my WordPress 2.7 sites got HACKED!

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This article explains what happened to two of my websites: a successfull hacking sttempt. This is not fun at all, at least for me it isn’t…

I only reaslied it happened this week, so I’m not sure when this went down. Here’s what I know:

This is what I saw when I checked my site: NOTHING!
This is what I saw when I checked my site: NOTHING!

Two of my sites (both versions 2.7) were on shared hosting packages. They’re the only two left that are not on my own server, because I thought why rush, it works, why invest a lot of time before the package runs out. Trouble is, the automatic upgrade function doesn’t work on my shared hosting packages – it does on with my own server without problems. Hence, all plugins and WP Cores on all other 10 sites are the newest version, becasue all I have to do is press a button when I see there’s an upgrade available.

So I was lazy with these two sites, and left them as they were, which was version 2.7 (not 2.7.1 as all the others are).

Enter http://www.Cloud-TV.com: this site was setup to automatically post one picture every day, which was uploaded in a queue. Worked well last time I checked – which was a few weeks ago, so I thought I’d better check again. All I got to my surprise now was a white screen with nothing on it.

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